Haviv Rettig Gur is The Times of Israel s senior analyst.
Israeli model May Tager, right, holds Israel s blue-and-white flag bearing the Star of David, while next to her Anastasia Bandarenka, a Dubai-based model originally from Russia, waves the Emirati flag, during a photo shoot in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sept. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
“You think you have chutzpah?
We have chutzpah.”
It was an unexpected line from a senior Emirati official, delivered recently in an off-the-record video conference call between current and former Israeli and Emirati officials.
The conversation had turned to business ties, innovation and the cultural differences between the two countries. The official wanted to explain something important about the new Israeli-Arab normalization agreements that Abu Dhabi had helped start: not only why they are happening, but why they seem so inexplicably warm and genuine.
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America’s top diplomat Mike Pompeo is in quarantine after being exposed to a person who has tested positive for COVID-19, the State Department says.
The US secretary of state “has been tested and is negative. In accordance with CDC guidelines, he will be in quarantine. He is being closely monitored by the Department’s medical team,” a State Department spokesperson says, adding that for privacy reasons they could not identify the person he came into contact with.
AFP
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pats his head during a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu and Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Alzayani after their trilateral meeting in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020. (Menahem Kahana/Pool via AP)
Quixplained: Who was Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh? How was he assassinated?
Iran’s government-backed Mehr news agency last week reported that a satellite-controlled machine gun was used to assassinate Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Updated: December 14, 2020 10:32:37 am
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in a targeted attack in November.
Iran’s senior-most nuclear scientist
was assassinated near Tehran on November 27. There have been varying reports of how Fakhrizadeh was killed. Early reports had suggested that he was killed in the midst of a gunfight between his bodyguards. Subsequent reports said he was shot multiple times by a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a truck that was being operated by an individual who had fled Iran shortly after the killing.
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Military personnel stand near the flag-draped coffin of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an assassinated top nuclear scientist, during his funeral ceremony in Tehran, Iran, November 30, 2020. (Iranian Defense Ministry via AP)
TEHRAN, Iran Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday posthumously awarded a prestigious military decoration to top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated last month, state television reported.
Fakhrizadeh was killed on a major road outside Tehran in late November in a bomb and gun attack that the Islamic Republic has blamed on Israel.
The broadcaster said the first class Order of Nasr (“Victory” in Persian), bearing Khamenei’s signature, was handed to the scientist’s family by the armed forces chief of staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri.
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