Word: iraq
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...first year working in Lebanon, I met with an American official at a café in East Beirut. Embassy officials can't easily leave their compound, on a hill outside the city, thanks to security procedures that treat this normally fun-loving Mediterranean country as if it were Iraq or Sudan. That's because the previous embassy was destroyed by a suicide car bombing in 1983, an attack that the U.S. blames on Hizballah, the Shi'ite Muslim Party of God that had been formed a year earlier to resist the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. But this café meeting...
...government. Something needs to be done, for the consequences of ignoring Hizballah will keep getting worse. A rematch between the group and Israel could escalate into a regional war, with Syria joining ranks with Hizballah, Israel bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, and Iran striking back at U.S. forces in Iraq. The unresolved conflict between Hizballah and Israel is becoming a national-security issue for America...
...Tehran were getting ready to release the American journalist Roxana Saberi, who had been charged with spying. But they wanted the U.S. to know that if she was freed, it would not be a concession; it would be a test. For more than two years, U.S. forces in Iraq had been holding three Iranian diplomats they believed were members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, linked to terrorist attacks in the region. Iran was not asking for the three men to be released in exchange for Saberi. But Tehran would be watching for the U.S. response. (See pictures...
...should stand pat. So which way to jump? The U.S. has never been good at making sense of Tehran's knotty power structure, and the distrust is mutual: many in Iran suspect that the U.S. is looking for an excuse to attack their nation, as it did Iraq...
...they have been in a sort of low-level war for 30 years. After the hostage crisis began in 1979, the U.S. seized Iranian assets and cut diplomatic relations. U.S. officials have alleged that Iran was behind the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. During the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, the U.S. tilted toward Iraq. Following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea in an "axis of evil," embraced a policy of regime change in Tehran and rebuffed Iran's offer of talks...