Struan Stevenson, the president of the European Union's delegation to Iraq, complained on Friday about vote tampering, which he said boosted prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition at the expense of Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyya bloc.
Stevenson's office sent us a press release this morning that contains further allegations of fraud, both before and after the ballot.
Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party, says he didn't really mean to call Syrian president Bashar al-Assad a "savage" or "an Israeli product."
Jumblatt made those comments in February 2007, at a memorial service for the assassinated Lebanese leader Rafiq al-Hariri. At the time, Jumblatt was positioning himself as staunchly anti-Syrian; he blamed Assad for Hariri's murder, and fretted publicly that he too would be the victim of a Syrian car bomb.
We've updated our Iraqi election results page with numbers from Baghdad, Muthanna, Ninewa and Qadisiyah provinces. Note that these are very preliminary results -- the Independent High Electoral Commission has tallied less than 20 percent of the ballots in each of these provinces. You can view the latest results here.
I put together a dedicated page for the latest Iraqi election results; we'll update this table whenever IHEC releases new data.
IHEC hasn't released any new results (عربي) today, so the latest official data is still the preliminary results from six provinces reported yesterday.
But the commission did release a statement that generally characterizes the vote in four southern provinces. We already knew prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition did well in Babil and Najaf provinces. The commission says State of Law is also leading in Dhi Qar, Wassit, Qadisiyah and Muthanna provinces. All four are majority-Shi'ite. None are particularly large; Dhi Qar is probably the only one with a population larger than one million.
Supporters of a "special relationship" between America and Israel -- Aaron David Miller, for example -- often cite two justifications for these close ties: shared values and strategic interests.
The former claim is hard to assess, because it's so subjective. I have Israeli friends who share my personal values, but I'm an agnostic liberal from New York; I wouldn't claim my values are perfectly representative of "American values." I've met other Israelis, those who seem to prefer an elected theocracy to a liberal democracy, whose values I find repellent -- but perhaps other Americans find more common ground with those Israelis.
How about the other question, then? Does America's "special relationship" with Israel serve its strategic interests? Consider a few areas of foreign policy.
Gregg and I have been wondering for a couple of days how the United States would respond to being publicly embarrassed by an Israeli government that seems bent on continuing with the expansion of illegal settlements even as the West tries to organize highly sensitive negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
We didn't have to wait that long: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a 43-minute phone conversation on Friday morning to rebuke the Israeli leader about the "deeply negative signal" his government sent by approving more settler homes in East Jerusalem. Could this be the first sign of a tougher Obama administration approach toward Israel?
I thought about writing a long rebuttal to these two Aaron David Miller pieces, but after keeping up with a week of tiresome news from Israel I just don't have the energy.
Suffice it to say that his argument -- Obama shouldn't pick a fight with Israel over East Jerusalem settlements, and instead should focus on restarting proximity talks -- is the triumph of process over peace. Miller literally encourages both sides to "continue the dance," to perpetuate the untenable status quo.
We've heard a lot of talk about voter fraud in the days since the election -- but how much of it is legitimate, and how much is simply political parties trying to sow doubts about the election to discredit the winner?
In the wake of Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, a Knesset committee on Thursday endorsed a change to the country's planning procedures aimed at preventing a similarly embarrassing episode of bad timing from occurring again, the AP reports.
Within 24 hours of Biden's arrival, shortly after the Palestinians had agreed to so-called "proximity talks," Israel approved the construction of some 1,600 illegal homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
But the proposed change in the Knesset isn't meant to give greater scrutiny to settlement decisions; it's supposed to ensure that the timing of such announcements isn't as embarrassing in the future.
Update, 12:58 p.m.: IHEC released data for Misan province, too, which we've added to the table.
Original post: IHEC released another batch of preliminary results -- for Erbil, Diyala and Salaheddin provinces -- which also updates yesterday's numbers from Babel and Najaf. A cautionary note: These are not final numbers; only between 18 and 35 percent of the vote in each province has been counted.
Iraqiyya was the big winner in Diyala and Salaheddin provinces. State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance posted similar results in both provinces; interior minister Jawad al-Bolani's Iraqi Unity alliance did fairly well in Salaheddin, placing second.
In Erbil, the Kurdistan Alliance currently has a clear majority, with more than 90,000 votes. The Gorran movement placed second; two Islamic Kurdish parties followed.
Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission released preliminary results today from two provinces, Babel and Najaf, both predominantly Shi'ite.
Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition has a modest lead over the Iraqi National Alliance, the Shi'ite coalition between the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Sadrist movement. Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyya coalition placed a distant third in both provinces. Maliki doesn't have a majority in either province: He won about 47 percent of the vote in Najaf, and 42 percent in Babel.
No surprises here, really, and this first batch of results basically correspondents with the rumors we've heard in the Iraqi press. The numbers are after the jump.
We'd like to blog about Joe Biden's Tel Aviv speech, but the White House still hasn't e-mailed a transcript to reporters (perhaps because it was undergoing some last-minute revisions?).
News reports say Biden urged Israel and the Palestinians to begin proximity talks without delay. But they're already in doubt: The Arab League held an emergency meeting in Cairo last night (عربي), and decided to withdraw its support for the talks because of the new construction in Ramot Shlomo.
When the U.S. Transportation Security Administration in January instituted mandatory airport pat-downs and bag searches for citizens of 14 countries -- all but two of them in the Middle East and all but one majority Muslim -- you knew it was just a matter of time before the institutionalized racial profiling caused an outcry.
On Sunday, a group of Pakistani lawmakers who had been invited to visit the United States and meet with Obama administration bigwigs refused to go through the additional screening in Ronald Reagan National Airport on their way to a flight to New Orleans, according to the New York Times. Pakistan is on the of the 14 countries whose citizens have been selected for more scrutiny. The legislators returned to Pakistan, where they've been hailed for their actions.
Thought the de-Ba'athification controversy would end with the election? Think again:
Ahmed Chalabi and Ali al Lami, the men responsible for the purge of hundreds of candidates with Baathist links from the Iraqi elections, said they are taking the country's Independent Higher Electoral Commission to court in a bid to have votes for 55 candidates voided.
These 55 candidates are replacements for 55 other candidates who were already barred by the Justice and Accountability Commission. Chalabi and Lami say the replacements are Ba'athists, too. The fun never stops! Their names and the provinces they hail from haven't been released yet (at least, I can't seem to find them).
We've pulled together the preliminary province-by-province voter turnout numbers from Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (no turnout data for Karbala province yet, for some reason). They're in a table after the jump, along with data from the December 2005 parliamentary elections (pdf), also from IHEC.
Every province reported a lower turnout in 2010 than in 2005. Misan province had the lowest turnout, with 50 percent; Dahuk had the highest, at 80 percent. Turnout was generally highest in northern Iraq, and gets lower as you head further south.
IHEC says preliminary results will be released tomorrow morning (Baghdad time), so we hope to have some details later tonight (there's a lot of perhaps-not-very-well-informed speculation in the Iraqi press, if you need something to hold you over). Relatedly: Michael Hanna has some good points, as usual, on the turnout numbers.
Israel's interior minister, Eli Yishai, has apologized for the announcement of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem's Ramot Shlomo neighborhood while U.S. vice president Joe Biden is in Israel -- though not for the decision itself.
So much for the velvet glove. The White House -- which obviously recognizes that the latest new construction in East Jerusalem has the potential to overshadow vice president Joe Biden's entire trip -- put out a harsh statement on the Israeli decision.
It's just a statement, of course, and not backed by any real consequences, but by diplomatic standards -- and the standards of Washington's recent statements on Israeli settlements -- it's rather strong. Full statement is after the jump.
The Israeli government continues to roll out the red carpet for U.S. vice president Joe Biden: Israel's interior ministry just announced the approval of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem's largely-haredi Ramot Shlomo neighborhood. (The neighborhood is actually north of Jerusalem proper, but it's on the Palestinian side of the Green Line.)
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office hasn't said anything yet about the new construction, nor has Biden.
But the decision will clearly be a big story in Arabic-language media, and it will figure prominently in any coverage of Biden's visit. Al-Jazeera is treating it as a breaking news item, and it's already catching on (عربي) in Palestinian sources. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, called it a "disaster" that will undermine proximity talks.
Evan added some details overnight to my post on Israel's latest West Bank settlement construction, including a statement from State Department spokesman PJ Crowley. State belatedly sent reporters a full transcript of Crowley's remarks -- and, as Evan said, it's pretty lukewarm stuff.
