George Packer's Blog, page 122

Rafsanjani, Iran’s Wiliest Revolutionary, Dies

During his four-decade political career, Iran’s former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani earned many nicknames. He was called the Shark, both for his smooth, hairless cheeks (reflecting his Mongol ancestry) and the killer political instincts that helped him manipulate one of the most turbulent revolutions in modern times. After the 1979 ouster of the Shah, Rafsanjani amassed so much power in fifteen years—as the speaker of parliament, President, a wartime Commander-in-Chief, and Friday Prayer Leader—that he was dubbed Akbar Shah, which means “great king.” After a revolution that ended millennia of monarchy, it was not always meant as a compliment.

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Published on January 09, 2017 09:36

Trump, Putin, and the Big Hack

Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s foreign minister, once remarked while on a trip to Berlin in the early days of the Cold War, “The trouble with free elections is that you never know how they will turn out.”

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Published on January 06, 2017 17:43

Trump and Iran: Yet Another Hostage Crisis

Short of last-minute diplomacy, Donald Trump will inherit another hostage crisis with Iran on Inauguration Day—thirty-five years after the first hostage drama at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran ended, as Ronald Reagan was sworn in, and exactly one year after the Obama Administration’s swap to free five more Americans. The Islamic Republic has quietly arrested more Americans since the nuclear deal went into effect, in January, 2016, which coincided with a separate U.S. payment of $1.7 billion, transferred in three planeloads of cash, to settle a legal case from the Shah’s era. The deals were designed to curtail Tehran’s cyclical seizure of Americans, which had been a problem for both Bush Administrations, too.

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Published on January 06, 2017 11:35

In Gambia, the Defeated President Who Wouldn’t Go

The outlook for Gambia seemed so bright just a few weeks ago. It is the smallest country in West Africa, and in recent years has perhaps been best known for the whims and abuses of its long-ruling dictator, Yahya Jammeh. Since taking power in a military coup, in 1994, Jammeh has been accused of targeting Gambian journalists critical of his government, some of whom have been arrested and killed, and of engineering the disappearance of other critics and activists. He has lashed out against homosexuality, promising to execute gays and lesbians; critics charge him with using the death penalty as a culling tool for political opponents, as well as executing people found guilty of crimes like drug possession. Usually dressed in a flowing white robe and matching stiff cap, carrying a walking stick, Jammeh has overseen Gambia as though he were the chief of a kingdom meant to cater to his needs and desires. Past Presidential elections have been marred by fraud. So when the election came around on December 1st, observers expected more of the same: Jammeh winning by a landslide through a dubious count. But he lost. And, even more stunningly, he conceded.

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Published on January 05, 2017 21:00

Decoding McCain’s Hearing on Trump vs. Spies

On Thursday morning, Senator John McCain, of Arizona, convened a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the subject of cybersecurity, “in the aftermath of an unprecedented attack on our democracy.” By that, McCain meant, mostly, the theft and release of e-mails belonging to the Democratic National Committee and to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, which the American intelligence community believes to have been the work of hackers connected to the Russian government. But a lot of the senators had more on their mind. The main witnesses, James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, and Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, were asked if Donald Trump had demoralized spies by casting doubt on their hacking assessment (possibly, but they hadn’t taken a poll); if the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, had any credibility (neither thought so); and if anyone really listened to the radio anymore (yes). That last question came from Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, who thought that the United States was not on top of the information war against Russia. Graham judged a cautionary note that Clapper had offered about espionage and people who “live in glass houses” inadequate to the moment. “I think what Obama did was throw a pebble. I’m ready to throw a rock,” Graham said. He glanced around the chamber with a look of cold eagerness, and added, “So to those of you who want to throw rocks, you’re going to get a chance here soon.”

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Published on January 05, 2017 16:45

Could Obamacare Save the Democrats?

You Know Who was back on Twitter Thursday morning, and for the second day running he addressed the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act—a venture that is already threatening to turn into a political disaster for the G.O.P., and a much-needed lifeline for the Democrats.

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Published on January 05, 2017 15:32

What If a President Loses Control?

When John F. Kennedy spoke at the United Nations on September 25, 1961, he talked about the dangers of the atomic age. “Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable,” he said. “Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.” Contrast those remarks with the thoughts of the reality-show star, real-estate developer, and President-elect Donald J. Trump, who, just before Christmas, tweeted that “the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” and, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” outdid himself by saying, “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” It’s hard to say what he meant when, on January 2nd, he tweeted, “North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen!”

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Published on January 04, 2017 21:00

Donald Trump’s Alarmingly Trumpian Transition

With the House Republicans reversing themselves (temporarily, perhaps) on gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics, and Megyn Kelly jumping from Fox News to NBC News, the 2017 political-news cycle began with a bang on Tuesday. But there was no getting away from the story that overwhelms all others: in sixteen days, Donald Trump will become the forty-fifth President of the United States. Outside the Trump family and the alt-right, is there anyone who didn’t shudder a little as the ball dropped in Times Square on Saturday night?

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Published on January 04, 2017 12:01

John Kerry’s “Separate and Unequal” Message on Israel and Palestine

Last Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a lengthy and impassioned speech on Israel and Palestine that will go down as a major moment in American Middle East diplomacy. Despite speaking for more than an hour, weaving together Israeli, Palestinian, and American narratives and outlining principles for a two-state peace deal, Kerry delivered a message to Israel that was very simple: “The status quo is leaning toward one state and perpetual occupation,” he said, and America “cannot be true to our own values” while allowing that to take place.

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Published on January 04, 2017 10:04

My Reunion with a Lebanese Hijacker

I met Hamza Akel Hamieh in Beirut in the early nineteen-eighties, after he had hijacked six planes—a record to this day—to draw the world’s attention to the kidnapping of Musa Sadr, his religious leader. One of the hijackings, in 1981, was among the longest in aviation history. He commandeered a Libyan plane midair between Zurich and Tripoli and ordered it on a six-thousand-mile transcontinental odyssey to Beirut, then Athens, Rome, Beirut again, and Tehran, before ending back in Lebanon. Hamieh walked away, free, from all six hijackings. No one was injured or killed.

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Published on January 04, 2017 09:18