这是从一月份摘录的 12 CNN的《同时在美国》, 面向全球读者的有关美国政治的每日电子邮件. 单击此处阅读以前的版本并订阅.
If you can’t hear @realdonaldtrump, does he actually exist?
Meanwhile at the State Department
- 上个星期, the Trump administration unveiled fresh sanctions on more than a dozen “key actors” in Iran’s steel sector, the latest in a series of “maximum pressure” 制裁 aimed at forcing Tehran to change its ways absent a nuclear deal. Experts, NGOs and local doctors say sanctions penalize ordinary Iranians by making it harder to obtain food and health supplies amid the pandemic.
- 整个周末, Pompeo announced that US officials dealing with Taiwan should no longer tiptoe around diplomatic rules designed to avoid upsetting China, which considers the democratically ruled island part of its territory. US diplomats are now free to consider previous guidelines “null and void,” 他写了, diplomacy be damned. China has already responded that it will “hit back.”
- 在星期一, the State Department put Cuba on a list of “state sponsors of terrorism” with only Iran, North Korea and Syria for company. But there’s scant evidence of Cuban-sponsored terrorism, and Pompeo’s announcement reheats allegations that Cuba harbored American fugitives from the 1970s — most of whom are now senior citizens. The move, which reverses an Obama-era decision, will have little practical effect since Cuba was already subject to most of the relevant sanctions.
- The Department also said Yemen’s Houthi rebels will be designated a foreign terrorist organization — a move that might please their Saudi and UAE adversaries but will have little impact on the Iran-backed rebels. Aid groups, 另一方面, say the designation makes it harder to get humanitarian help to Houthi-ruled civilians, who face crushing poverty and hunger after years of airstrikes.