Negin Owliaei

editor-in-chief @truthout. past lives @ajepodcasts @ajenglish. any pronouns. also on that other site.

[Séamus Malekafzali @Seamus_Malek]

Amazing reporting here. Feels like almost everything that powers our society is poised on a crumbling foundation just out of view.

[Tim Hirschel-Burns @TimH_B]

The Norwegian Viking Row is objectively cool.

But this type of mass, coordinated fan activity depends on having lots of fans who could get visas and afford exorbitant tickets.

Countries like Senegal have fan culture that’s just as good. But we don’t get to see it

[Sarah Lazare @sarahlazare]

"The divestment vote makes the UAW the first major national union to vote to divest from Israel." https://t.co/lEyiLnu2mV

[kev joon @never_oppressed]

It’s easy to criticize the Iranian team, and I do it often, but each time I remind myself that the majority of this squad didn’t play in a domestic league through months of a criminal war and that their World Cup journey has been the most unfairly politicized one in history.

[Komẹ @KahunaKome]

Cape Verde the best AFCON advert I’ve ever seen. The masses didn’t know these guys know ball

[Mohammad Alsaafin @malsaafin]

Close the Strait until VAR reverses that decision.

[Negin Owliaei @neginowl]

VAR is racist

[Séamus Malekafzali @Seamus_Malek]

The Strait of Hormuz is now closed again, according to the Iranian military. Not just military strikes on Israel, but global economic consequences are now being threatened if Israel does not end its war in southern Lebanon, in accordance with the MOU.

[Dan Sheehan @danpjsheehan]

Chuck Schumer, Dan Goldman, Jerry Nadler, Kathy Hochul, Letitia James, Vanessa Gibson, and Mark Levine all marched in a parade with this wanted war criminal just two weeks ago.

[AJ+ @ajplus]

🇱🇧: Mona Khalil spent decades working to protect nesting sites of endangered loggerhead and green sea turtles on Lebanon’s southern coast.

Israel bombed her home in early June. She died from her injuries on June 19.

[Matthew Petti 👨‍🎓 @matthew_petti]

Remember: the reason Ben Gvir is bad is not that he says uncomfortable things. The reason he is bad is that he has power over prisons and police which he uses to torture real human beings.

[Nate Bear @NateB_Panic]

Look how the Guardian manipulates language to obfuscate the order of events in Lebanon to make it look as if Israel was responding to a Hezbollah provocation and not the other way around

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

While regional states are intrinsically involved in efforts to bring about peace in the region, this Israeli cabinet minister tweets that "All of Lebanon must burn!"

And he repeats that call twice in the post.

When will the West ask the question that never gets asked: How is the rest of the region supposed to live in peace and security next to a state that behaves like this?

[Ali Hashem علي هاشم @Alihashem]

Tense night in south Lebanon.
Heavy clashes continue between Hezbollah and Israeli occupation forces on the Kfar Tibnit and Ali Taher hill axis. Hezbollah rockets toward Kfar Tibnit and destroyed an Israeli military vehicle.
Reports indicate Israeli casualties after roadside bomb and anti-tank missile attacks. Three military helicopters were seen over Yahmar al-Shaqif, reportedly evacuating wounded soldiers.
Israeli warplanes carried out several strikes around Nabatieh, with reports of a strike inside the city.
Meanwhile, Speaker Nabih Berri reaffirmed Lebanon’s commitment to the ceasefire, saying Hezbollah will abide by it as long as Israel does the same. On the ground, however, the ceasefire appears far from holding.

[Sarah Lazare @sarahlazare]

Trump threatened to annihilate all of Iranian civilization. Why tf are Dems goading him that his MOU isn't good enough? We need deescalation, not attacks from the right.

[Benjamin Kunkel @kunktation]

You mean the plan where various countries were to pony up $17 billion and have so far contributed $0.00?

[Esfandyar Batmanghelidj @yarbatman]

I've been engaged with Western, Iranian, and regional negotiators working on the Iran file for more than a decade. Nothing in the MOU surprises me.

I am seeing a lot of claims that the Trump administration has made enormous concessions in the MOU and that this shows the Trump "lost" the war. But if you know why the language of the MOU reads the way it does, you would realize why this view is wrong.

Every major "concession" in the MOU was something under discussion during the negotiations last May, before the 12-Day War.

American and Iranian negotiators had discussed confidence building measures including the granting of oil waivers and the unfreezing of assets. The "reconstruction fund" outlined in the MOU was originally envisioned as a regional investment vehicle, with investment coming from the Gulf states.

We shouldn't criticise the MOU because it contains unreasonable concessions, we should be frustrated that the MOU contains very logical inducements and that the Trump administration was poised to offer these same inducements not just before the 40-Day War, but also before the 12-Day War last year.

In other words, the wars were completely idiotic because the parameters of a viable diplomatic agreement between the U.S. and Iran *were already put forward* to Witkoff and Vance by the Omani mediators, with input from the Saudi, Qatari, and Emirati systems more than a year ago. Iran was inclined to accept the deal, but instead it got attacked.

We should consider ourselves fortunate that two wars later, Iran is still inclined to accept this deal, without dramatically different terms. That is a reflection of hard-nosed Iranian pragmatism and the under-appreciated fact that the Iranian national security establishment takes the idea of diplomacy seriously.

The Trump team have proven slow learners, but they may finally be realizing why diplomacy needs to be conducted with a win-win outlook.

[Mal @UtdMaI]

Last night in Boston, Aymen Hussein scored for Iraq;

At 12, his father was killed by Al-Qaeda.
At 18, his brother was kidnapped by ISIS

At 20, he helped Iraq qualify for the Olympics.
At 30, his decisive goal sent Iraq to their first World Cup in 40 years.

He was detained for seven hours at O’Hare International Airport and nearly denied entry into the United States.

In his very first World Cup match, he scored against Norway.

Some stories are bigger than football!

[Ali Howorth @ahoworth97]

There’s something so cursed about an American content machine profiting off someone paying homage to a man who stood against everything that the US represents globally. Something that he paid the ultimate price for.

Further irony is in the fact that Lumumba Vea is missing the game today because of visa/travel issues.

[Sana Saeed @SanaSaeed]

A lot of people still don’t understand how Trump functions, which is why this shocks them. He’s not beholden to any particular ideology, he doesn’t have a framework rooted in a set of principles through which he looks at the world, politics and governance. He is the perfect vessel for furthering fascism because he has no ideological commitments - he moves where he is taken and also where he sees benefit for himself (financial, legacy). And these can often clash.