a war fought in the shadows

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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | SATURDAY-SUNDAY, MARCH 27-28, 2021

‘I HAD TOPROVETHAT IEXIST’: ANEWSANCHORMAKESHISTORY

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MEN AREHELPINGMAKE THEBROOCHCOOLAGAIN

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SHIP STUCK IN THESUEZ CANAL SERVESAS A WARNING ABOUTGLOBALIZATION

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The sun was rising on the Mediterra-nean one recent morning when the crewof an Iranian cargo ship heard an explo-sion. The ship, the Shahr e Kord, wasabout 50 miles off the coast of Israel, andfrom the bridge they saw a plume ofsmoke rising from one of the hundreds

of containers stacked on deck.The state-run Iranian shipping com-

pany said the vessel had been headingto Spain and called the explosion a “ter-rorist act.”

The attack on the Shahr e Kord thismonth was just one of the latest salvos ina long-running covert conflict betweenIsrael and Iran. An Israeli official saidthe attack was retaliation for an Iranianassault on an Israeli cargo ship lastmonth.

Since 2019, Israel has been attackingships carrying Iranian oil and weaponsthrough the Mediterranean and RedSeas, opening a new maritime front in aregional shadow war that previouslyplayed out by land and in the air.

Iran appears to have quietly re-sponded with its own clandestine at-tacks. The latest came on Thursday,

when an Israeli-owned container ship,the Lori, was hit by an Iranian missile inthe Arabian Sea, an Israeli official said.No casualties or significant damagewere reported.

The Israeli campaign, confirmed byAmerican, Israeli and Iranian officials,has become a linchpin of Israel’s effortto curb Iran’s military influence in theMiddle East and stymie Iranian effortsto circumvent American sanctions on itsoil industry.

But the conflict’s expansion risks theescalation of what has been a relativelylimited tit-for-tat, and it further compli-cates efforts by the Biden administra-tion to persuade Iran to reintroduce lim-its on its nuclear program in exchangefor sanctions relief.

“This is a full-fledged cold war thatrisks turning hot with a single mistake,”

said Ali Vaez, Iran program director atthe International Crisis Group, a Brus-sels-based research organization.“We’re still in an escalatory spiral thatrisks getting out of control.”

Since 2019, Israeli commandos haveattacked at least 10 ships carrying Irani-an cargo, according to an American offi-cial and a former senior Israeli official.The real number of targeted ships maybe higher than 20, according to an Irani-an Oil Ministry official, an adviser to theministry and an oil trader.

The Israeli attacks were first reportedby The Wall Street Journal.

Most of the ships were carrying fuelfrom Iran to its ally Syria, and two car-ried military equipment, according to anAmerican official and two senior Israeliofficials. An American official and an Is-ISRAEL-IRAN, PAGE 4

A war fought in the shadowsJERUSALEM

Israel and Iran taketheir clandestine attacks on each other to the seas

BY PATRICK KINGSLEY,RONEN BERGMAN,FARNAZ FASSIHIAND ERIC SCHMITT

Demi Lovato woke up legally blind in anintensive care unit after the July 2018drug overdose that nearly killed her.

It took her about two months to re-cover enough sight to read a book, andshe passed the time catching up on 10years’ worth of sleep, playing boardgames or taking single laps around thehospital floor for exercise.

Blind spots made it nearly impossiblefor her to see head-on, so she peered ather phone through peripheral vision andtyped using voice notes.

“It was interesting how fast Iadapted,” she said in an interview. “Ididn’t leave myself time to really feel sadabout it. I just was like, how do I fix it?”

Lovato, a 28-year-old singer, song-writer, actress and budding activist whohas been in show business since she was6 and a household name since her teens,is not just adaptable — she is one of themost resilient pop cultural figures of hertime.

She got her start on children’s TV andmade the tricky leap to adult stardom,releasing six albums (two platinum,four gold), serving as a judge on “The XFactor,” acting on “Glee” and “Will &Grace” and amassing 100 million Insta-gram followers — all while managing aneating disorder since she was a child,drug addiction that started in her teens,coming out as queer and the constantpressure of being an exceptionally fa-mous person.

She recounts her relapse and over-dose unblinkingly in the documentary“Dancing With the Devil,” which pre-miered at the South by Southwest FilmFestival this month and is being re-LOVATO, PAGE 2

To reveal the truth,a pop star gets real

Demi Lovato, a singer, songwriter and actress, opened up about her drug relapse andoverdose in the documentary “Dancing With the Devil.” She is aiming for a comeback.

RYAN PFLUGER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Demi Lovato recounts her darkest moments,sharing details in new film

BY CARYN GANZ

The New York Times publishes opinionfrom a wide range of perspectives inhopes of promoting constructive debateabout consequential questions.

With its own battle against the coronavi-rus taking a sharp turn for the worse, In-dia has severely curtailed exports ofCovid-19 vaccine, causing setbacks forvaccination drives in many other coun-tries.

The government of India is holdingback nearly all of the 2.4 million dosesthat the Serum Institute of India, the pri-vate company that is one of the world’slargest producers of the AstraZenecavaccine, makes each day.

India is desperate for all the doses itcan get. Infections are soaring, topping50,000 per day, more than double thenumber of less than two weeks ago. Andthe Indian vaccine drive has been slug-gish, with fewer than 4 percent of India’snearly 1.4 billion people having receivedinoculations, far behind the rates of theUnited States, Britain and most Euro-pean countries.

Just a few weeks ago, India was a ma-jor exporter of the AstraZeneca vaccine,and it was using that to exert influencein South Asia and around the world.More than 70 countries, including Dji-bouti and Britain, received vaccinemade in India, a total of more than 60million doses. From mid-January intoMarch, not more than a few days passedbetween departures of major vaccineshipments from India.

But the size of its shipments abroadhas greatly diminished in the past twoweeks, according to data from India’sforeign ministry. And Covax, the pro-gram set up by donor agencies to pur-chase vaccine for poorer nations, said onThursday that it had told those coun-tries that nearly 100 million doses ex-pected in March and April would be de-layed because of “increased demand forCovid-19 vaccines in India.”

The Indian government has not pub-licly commented on what’s happeningand would not when reached by TheNew York Times for this article. Buthealth experts say the explanation is ob-vious: India is drawing up its gates as asecond wave of infections hits home,holding tight to a vaccine that it didn’t INDIA, PAGE 9

India cutsits vaccineexports asvirus surgesNEW DELHI

Restriction is a setbackin inoculation programsfor AstraZeneca shots

BY JEFFREY GETTLEMAN,EMILY SCHMALLAND MUJIB MASHAL

Ribbons mean a lot in military culture.Earlier this month, the Department ofDefense announced that NationalGuardsmen deployed to Washingtonafter the Jan. 6 riot would be awardeda newly created pair of ribbons to wearon their uniforms, a type of decorationtypically issued for participation inoverseas military campaigns.

Hearing the news, I recalled a de-bate among the Marines I served withabout another ribbon, the much-cov-eted Combat Action Ribbon, awardedto those who have “actively partici-

pated in ground orsurface combat.”That debate oc-curred in the sum-mer of 2005, duringan emergency de-ployment to Hurri-cane Katrina. Threedays after the stormhit, the Bush admin-istration ordered ourinfantry battalion,

which had only several months beforereturned from combat in Falluja, downto New Orleans as part of a patched-together federal response.

On our arrival, conditions werechaotic. The situation in New Orleanswas dire and, at times, violent. As wewalked across the tarmac at theairstrip where we’d landed, a CoastGuard crew chief pointed out one ofthe search-and-rescue helicopters onthe flight line; a scatter of pencil-widthholes riddled its tail section. “Gun-shots,” he’d explained. Enraged resi-dents, stranded on their rooftops fordays, had on occasion taken to shoot-ing at the helicopters that passed themby. The crew chief then asked if we’dbrought our rifles; he said we mightneed them.

We had brought our weapons, eventhough our commanders had orderedthem crated. The Posse Comitatus Act,passed during Reconstruction, limitsthe powers of the government whendeploying federal troops to enforcedomestic laws and does not permit“direct participation by a member ofthe Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine

Keep politicsfar from theU.S. militaryElliot AckermanContributing Writer

OPINION

Yes, NationalGuardsmendefended theCapitol onJan. 6. Butshould theybe decorated?

ACKERMAN, PAGE 12

A city ruptured New York City, the largest metropolis in the United States, is a canvas upon which nearly every element of the pandemic has played out. The NewYork Times spent months documenting the changing city as its economy frayed and split over the past year. PAGE 6

ASHLEY GILBERTSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

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