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Iran warned United Nations Security Council envoys to expect retaliation against Israel’s apparent bombardment of a diplomatic facility in Syria that killed several Iranian military commanders. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has exercised considerable restraint, but it is imperative to acknowledge that there are limits to such forbearance,” Iranian envoy Zahra Ershadi, the regime’s deputy representative to the United Nations, said Tuesday afternoon. “The occupying regime must bear full responsibility for its consequences. Iran reserves its legitimate and inherent right under international law and the United Nations Charter to take a decisive response to such reprehensible acts.” -snip- “Do not...

Ukrainian forces raided Crimea and “inflicted fire on the Moscow occupiers,” according to Ukrainian officials, in a campaign to build military pressure on Russia’s forces in the vital occupied peninsula. "There was a battle with the Russian occupiers; many were killed and wounded among the invaders' personnel,” Ukrainian Defense Intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov told a Ukrainian outlet. “Unfortunately, there are losses among Ukrainian defenders too, though these are still not as many as among the Russians.” Yusov offered that statement after his colleagues released a video that purports to show Ukrainian special forces members riding jet skis to the Crimean...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov faced a chorus of condemnations over the invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations Security Council, where he sought to cast Moscow as the defender of international law while chairing the proceedings despite Russia’s attempt to seize Ukrainian territory. “None of the pretexts invoked to attack Ukraine in violation of the U.N. Charter has legal merit, not one of them,” said Hernan Perez Loose, Ecuador’s ambassador to the United Nations, through a U.N. interpreter. ...United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the opening of the debate. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in violation of the United...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov referred to Moldova as “the next Ukraine" in a criticism of the Black Sea state that stokes Moldovan anxiety about the prospect of an attack from Russia. "We categorically reject the statement by the head of Russian diplomacy, which does not correspond to reality, and is part of the already well-known threatening rhetoric of Russian diplomacy,” the Moldovan Foreign Ministry said Thursday. Lavrov drew the analogy as Moscow renews its attempt to characterize its invasion of Ukraine as a defensive struggle against fascist ideology. Russia has maintained a military presence in Moldova over the objections...

Russian troops are reinforcing their position in Crimea in anticipation of attacks from Ukraine, a Russia-installed regional official admitted. “Fortification works aimed at guaranteeing Crimeans’ security are being conducted under my supervision,” Russia’s regional governor of the annexed peninsula, Sergei Aksyonov, said Friday. The prospect of a showdown over Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in the clandestine operation that began the war, has loomed into view due to a series of Ukrainian successes in a counteroffensive conducted this fall. Russia’s retreat from the west bank of the Dnieper River not only freed the key city of Kherson...

“We have got what we wanted,” Russian deputy ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told reporters at the United Nations. "If this all does not happen, I do not mind people saying that Russia is crying wolf because we are speaking about a terrible disaster that might potentially threaten the whole Earth.”...“Russia often accuses others of what they intend to do themselves,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday while visiting the USS George H.W. Bush, the American aircraft carrier leading NATO’s Neptune Strike exercises in the Mediterranean. “We have seen this pattern before, from Syria to Ukraine. Russia must not use false pretexts...

Russian citizens who criticize the Kremlin could find themselves on the receiving end of a nasty visit from Chechen forces, according to an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin’s attempted "partial mobilization" of fighting-aged Russians into the war in Ukraine has prompted a wave of social displeasure, including a mass exodus of apparent draft dodgers and protests in the outlying regions where people are bearing the brunt of the war. Russian lawmaker Adam Delimkhanov, an ethnic Chechen politician known for threatening to decapitate the relatives of a human rights activist, warned university students against any display of disrespect. “I...

Ambassador Nikki Haley used the threat of a U.S. invasion of North Korea to secure a new round of sanctions against the regime last year, according to a new report. Harper’s Magazine reported that Haley raised the possibility of a U.S. invasion by telling a Chinese diplomat, “My boss is kind of unpredictable, and I don’t know what he’ll do." Haley recalled making those comments during remarks at a small gathering of people at the Council for National Policy, and as part of her effort to discourage China from vetoing additional oil sanctions on North Korea last September, following the...

A pair of rogue regimes with a longing for nuclear weapons promise to dominate Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s second year atop Foggy Bottom. Tillerson, in following President Trump’s distaste for former President Barack Obama’s decision-making, declared in 2017 an end to the era of “strategic patience” with Iran and North Korea. As the nation’s top diplomat, he has to try to rally international support for Trump’s more aggressive posture. Diplomacy doesn’t stop at home, though. Tillerson has to persuade Congress to support his vision for reorganizing the State Department, while maintaining his position in the administration, which has seemed...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas urged college graduates who seek to "preserve liberty" to do so by fulfilling the duties of their daily vocations rather than attempting to achieve sweeping political goals. "At the risk of understating what is necessary to preserve liberty in our form of government, I think more and more that it depends on good citizens, discharging their daily duties in their daily obligations," Thomas said Saturday during a commencement address at Hillsdale College, a small liberal arts college in Michigan.

Former governor Jeb Bush said that Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk jailed for contempt of court after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, doesn’t have the authority to defy the courts. “She is sworn to uphold the law, and it seems to me that there ought to be common ground, there ought to be big enough space for her to act on her conscience and — now that the law is the law of the land — for a gay couple to be married in whatever jurisdiction that is,” Bush told reporters in New Hampshire. Davis’s case...