Mixed signals, she said, make any effort to shape an adversary’s behavior “incredibly ineffective.”

This imposes a layer of confusion on the conflict, just as it enters a dangerous and volatile new chapter, inviting mixed messages and misread intentions.

It’s not that experts or foreign officials suspect a secret agenda, but that the administration’s action fit no clear pattern or long-term strategy, she said. “It just doesn’t add up.”

Without a clear understanding of what actions will lead the United States to ramp up or ramp down hostilities, she said, Iranian leaders are operating in the dark — and waiting to stumble past some unseen red line.“That’s what makes this a dangerous situation,” she said.

He has cycled between ambitions of withdrawing from the Middle East, positioning himself as a once-in-a-generation peacemaker and, more recently, promising to oppose Iran more forcefully than any recent president has.

He took the United States out of the nuclear agreement and imposed sanctions against Iran — which some see as setting off a crisis that continues today

Without a clear explanation for Mr. Trump’s behavior, anyone whose job requires forecasting the next American action — from foreign head of state to think tank analyst — was left guessing.

United States diplomacy has emphasized calls for peace but has conspicuously declined to offer what diplomats call “offramps” — easy, low-stakes opportunities for both sides to begin de-escalating, which are considered essential first steps.

has Trump considered next 15 moves on chessboard? How to protect our people? Line up allies to support us? Contain Iran but avoid wider war? My guess is he hasn’t.”

Ms. Geranmayeh stressed that the conflict between the United States and Iran also threatens to draw in a host of Middle Eastern and European countries.To navigate tensions and avoid worsening them, allies and adversaries alike must astutely judge American intentions and anticipate American actions.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had already been ramping down tensions with Iran, Ms. Geranmayeh said, “because they have no idea how Trump will behave from one week to the next” and fear getting caught in the middle.

“If Trump is not managing a consistent and clear message to the Iranians about what he wants,” she said, “then this opens up a lot of space for a lot of miscalculation.”

Ms. Kaye said Iran might conclude that it should tread with extreme caution. Or it might reason that the United States poses a threat that is both existential and unyielding, compelling Tehran to gamble on taking extreme measures.

“Planes just don’t blow up in mid air,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at Teal Group, an aviation consulting firm. “It doesn’t work like that.”

Iranian news organizations tied to the government referred to technical problems with the plane, but they did not elaborate or cite evidence.

After the crash, Ukraine’s embassy in Iran initially issued a statement ruling out terrorism or a rocket attack as a cause of the crash. But the statement was later removed from the embassy’s website and replaced by one saying it was too early to draw any conclusions.

An airliner should be able to fly even if one engine fails. An “uncontained” engine failure, in which parts of the engine disintegrate, can spray shrapnel that damages and even destroys the plane, but such events are rare.

After an accident, the “black boxes” are often sent to the plane’s maker for analysis, but Iran would not send the flight data recorders to Boeing, an American company, Mr. Abedzadeh said in an interview with Mehr. “We will not give the black box to the manufacturer and the Americans,” Mehr quoted him as saying.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said he had ordered the prosecutor general to open a criminal investigation into the crash and that the country’s entire civil aviation fleet would be checked.

On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration barred American airliners from flying over Iran, citing a risk that commercial planes would be mistaken for military aircraft. Several non-American carriers rerouted flights on Wednesday to avoid Iraq and Iran, according to Flightradar24.

The airline said it was canceling flights to Tehran indefinitely and promised a full investigation into the causes of the crash, involving officials from Ukraine, Iran and Boeing.

The airline began in the 1990s as newly independent Ukraine’s state flag carrier but was subsequently privatized. Its website calls the business a “public private entity.”

A Vietnamese smuggler, interviewed by a French paper several years ago, reportedly described three levels of package. The top level allowed migrants to ride in the lorry cab and sleep in hotels. The lowest level was nicknamed "air", or more cynically "CO2" - a reference to the lack of air in some trailers.

A local volunteer in the camp told us that they'd seen Vietnamese and British men visiting migrants here in a Mercedes. And that once migrants arrived in the UK, some went to work in cannabis farms, after which all communication stopped.

No one here had heard about the 39 people found dead this week.This journey is about freedom, one said.

"He did the same thing in China. And he tried to do it in Kazakhstan and in Russia," Mr Giuliani reportedly added.

Esper said that he thinks Turkey should be held accountable for alleged war crimes committed by Turkish-backed proxy forces against the Kurds in Syria, allegations that Esper said he assumes are accurate.

"I've seen the reports as well, we're trying to monitor them. They are horrible and if accurate and I assume that they are accurate, they would be war crimes," Esper said, adding, "I think all of those need to be followed up on. I think those responsible should be held accountable, in many cases it would be the government of Turkey

Strong unions are an essential element to building a strong middle class."

The 11-page proposal hits President Donald Trump as engaging in a "war on organizing, collective bargaining, unions, and workers" and seeks to "check the abuse of corporate power over labor." It calls for legislation enacting stricter penalties on corporations and holding corporate executives personally accountable for violating labor laws or interfering with organizing efforts.

Under his policy, Biden promises to enact legislation that would make classifying workers as independent contractors a violation of the law.

Biden would also bar employers who illegally oppose unions from bidding for federal contracts for a set period -- a policy enacted during the Obama administration.

Two of Biden's rivals, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have also presented themselves as champions of the working class. Biden's proposal mirrors those of his competitors to the left in many ways, including increasing the minimum wage to $15 and making it easier for workers to strike.

The expedited process is in line with the administration's efforts to curtail the flow of asylum seekers to the United States.

Officials are using the El Paso pilot, which began a couple of weeks ago, to determine how quickly the process can move,

Until recently, asylum seekers were generally given "48 hours from the time they received notice of their interview or from the time of arrival" to prepare for their interviews. That has been reduced to a "full calendar day," according to the lawsuit.

"Not only are families subject to inhumane conditions, CBP prohibits lawyers from entering its detention facilities. Without access to legal counsel or even a confidential space to share their traumatic stories with an asylum officer, asylum seekers are set up to fail," Beth Werlin, executive director of the American Immigration Council, said in a statement, referring to Customs and Border Protection.

But the context of that usage is important. "Mr. Trump in the call didn't mention a provision of U.S. aid to Ukraine, said this person, who didn't believe Mr. Trump offered the Ukrainian president any quid pro quo for his cooperation on any investigation," wrote the Journal's reporters.

But Trump actually had been using the term "no quid pro quo" with regard to Ukraine long before the whistleblower complaint was public and before any of the published reports about his phone call with Zelensky.

the idea of quid pro quo was coming exclusively from Trump's mouth, according to the accounts of Taylor and Sondland. He was very concerned that what would occur would not be a quid pro quo even as he was insisting on investigations in order to release the security funding.

quid pro quo has been manufactured into a key element of the story, dominating cable news discussions.

A former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who opposes Trump, Charlie Dent, said there's plenty of evidence of quid pro quo, no matter what you call it."They keep saying there's no quid pro quo," said Dent, who's now a CNN contributor. "And all I keep reading is if you do this for that. That's what they keep saying. The Latin was missing, apparently, but other than that all the elements are there."

"to further the Administration's policy of strengthening the economic consequences to the Cuban regime for its ongoing repression of the Cuban people and its support for Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela."

"In an effort to punish Cuba's unbreakable rebelliousness, imperialism takes aim at regular flight service to various Cuban cities," de Cossio tweeted. "They don't care if they impact family contacts, the limited means of Cubans in both countries or unjust inconveniences."

The exasperation is mutual. Many congressional Republicans are tired of seeing Trump tweet about everything except their agenda. Impeachment is consuming the political oxygen in Washington, and GOP leaders are concerned that the White House doesn’t know how to manage it, according to several high-level Republican aides.

Trump’s own aides aren’t helping. In a jaw-dropping press conference on Oct. 17, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney sought to rebut Democratic accusations that Trump had improperly pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch investigations that would benefit Trump politically. Instead, Mulvaney acknowledged that U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been held up to press the country to cooperate with one such probe. Mulvaney later reversed himself and denied there was a quid pro quo.

Democrats are hoping the ongoing inquiry, and Trump’s own missteps, will take him down, one way or another. “Most Americans would say, if you told a foreign leader to go investigate dirt on my opponent, that’s bad enough,” says Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat. But with a little more than a year before the 2020 election, voters, not Congress, may be the ones left to limit Trump’s power.

Similar issues have come up in other states in recent years. The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association voted last year to drop its waiver requirement after a high school basketball player in Philadelphia was forced to leave a game because she was wearing a hijab.

How many congressional leaders “have deigned to pay a visit to the kingdom?” Prince Turki said at the event. “Should they visit Riyadh they may learn something about universal health care, which the kingdom has provided for its citizens since its establishment” or “they may get an insight into our improving and evolving educational system.”

Saudi Arabia has been working hard to remake its image since the Khashoggi killing, marketing it as a tourist destination. It is building major tourism projects, transforming its Red Sea coastline to bring in holidaymakers and developing an entertainment city near the capital of Riyadh. The kingdom also said it plans to drop a requirement for men and women who visit to prove they’re related in order to share a hotel room.

Last month, Saudi Arabia announced it would drop its strict dress code for foreign women, who will no longer be required to wear an abaya, the flowing cloak that’s been mandatory attire for decades. “Modest clothing” will still be called upon, according to Ahmed Al-Khateeb, chairman of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage.

Now lawyers are taking on the challenge of locating the families using contact info provided by the government, though in many cases the affected parents may have already been deported (with or without their children). Lawyers say the contact information is old, making communication difficult.

An additional 1,090 families have been separated since the administration declared an end to family separations in June 2018.

a child is taken away because of a minor offense by the parent, including past traffic violations. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) maintains that it can separate a parent and child if the parent is referred for criminal prosecution.

irchner, currently a senator, is back to capitalize on Argentina’s dissatisfaction, this time as a vice-presidential candidate to Alberto Fernández (no relation), a little-known former adviser from the moderate wing of her Peronist Justicialist party. The pair promise to reverse Macri’s economic overhaul and restore standards of living for a suffering working class.

Macri says the solution to the country’s current economic crisis is not a return to protectionism, but more jobs. He wants to create a million and a half of them in the private sector by stimulating tourism, agriculture and the creative industries, as well as cutting taxes for younger workers and regulating more of the informal sector

Macri’s rival Alberto Fernández served as cabinet chief to his running mate’s husband, Néstor Kirchner (president from 2003 to 2007) and then in the early months of Cristina’s first term. Like the Kirchners, Fernández belongs to the Justicialist Party, the formal home of the ideologically complex Peronist movement.

Former President Juan Domingo Perón initiated the Peronist movement in the 1940’s. A populist, he built his support base among trade unions and the working class, advocating state intervention in the economy, strong labor rights and generous public welfare schemes for the poor. But his politics also incorporated elements like nationalism, and an authoritarian strain.

But just what Peronism stands for ideologically is extremely complicated. The movement today is sprawling and diverse, containing politicians on both the left and the right. During her two terms from 2008 to 2015, Kirchner pursued welfare programs and subsidies on services. But another nominally Peronist president, Carlos Menem, carried out large-scale privatizations of public assets and reduced budgetary spending during the 1990’s.

The pitfalls of Macri’s reform program has proved a defining factor in this election. In an effort to reduce public debt and make the country more appealing to foreign investors, the president has scrapped protectionist policies on industry, cut public spending and cancelled subsidies on gas, electricity and public transport.

He also floated the peso, which had been artificially over-valued during the Kirchner era, and removed currency controls that limited the amount of U.S. dollars and other foreign exchange businesses and individuals could buy.

Economic hardship under Macri has made it easy for Kirchner and Fernández to promise a return to the good days under Peronism. They did far better than predicted at a king of primary election in August, winning a 15 point lead over Macri.

The pair’s success, indicating a possible return to protectionist Peronist economics in Argentina, has spooked financial markets, accelerating the peso’s fall.

The United States entered its longest expansion on record in July and the jobless rate is at a 50-year low, yet the deficit has continued to widen.

The deficit is growing in large part because tax receipts are falling, as Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts continue to siphon revenue from the Treasury. The numbers reflect the fact that Mr. Trump’s most significant legislative achievement is not paying for itself, as Republicans have said it would.

“The biggest factor was the tax cuts, which gave a short-term sugar high but now are just contributing to a larger deficit,”

Fears of trillion-dollar deficits could renew the desire of Republicans in Congress to propose cuts to social programs, like food stamps, Social Security and other safety net benefits. Republicans have long pointed to swelling deficits as a reason to pursue their long-held vision of smaller government, including undoing many of the programs ushered in during the New Deal and Great Society to help the most disadvantaged Americans.

Senator Mike Enzi, a retiring Republican from Wyoming who leads the budget committee, called the country’s fiscal path unsustainable and said spending must come down.

Republicans, who have shut down the government in their quest to cut spending, have enabled the increases that are exacerbating the deficit.

With the deficit growing, it remains unclear how Mr. Trump and the Democrats will address the issue during the election. Democratic candidates such as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have introduced broad expansions of social safety net programs and have proposed paying for them with big tax increases on the rich.

On Friday, before the deficit figures were released, Mr. Trump remained focused on recent increases in the stock market and the low jobless rate. “The economy is booming,” he said.

Apart from offering a primer in Chinese political invective, Ms. Hua’s scornful response illustrated how brittle Chinese-American relations have become.

“A bunch of American politicians led by Pence have thrown into confusion right and wrong on these issues, made thoughtless remarks and concocted slanders,” Ms. Hua said. “Any schemes to dishonor China and pour filth on it are destined to be nothing more than vain delusions tossed aside by history.”

Mr. Pence’s speech “exuded sheer arrogance and hypocrisy, and was packed with political prejudice and lies,” Ms. Hua said. “China expresses its strong indignation and adamant disapproval.”

Beijing and Washington agreed this month to a partial truce in their trade war of tariffs and countertariffs. But distrust remains high, and tensions over technology, investment and economic ties have become increasingly entangled in ideological divisions.

“The potential pitfall for Republicans is that they stay so glued to the president that they alienate too many independent voters for their majority to survive,”

Campaign consultants have stressed to senators the importance of maintaining their own credibility, according to two senior Republican officials, especially given that new revelations may still emerge. They have instructed senators not to respond to every turn of the screw, one reason that most of them have dodged questions about Mr. Trump’s conduct or resorted to complaints about the process.

The resolution introduced on Thursday was in part an effort to allow Republicans to unite publicly behind a measure critical of the inquiry, a way to show the party base that they were behind Mr. Trump even as they refrained from defending his actions.

So far, Republicans’ strategy has been to keep attention on the secretive way in which Democrats have handled the inquiry.

For their part, Democratic candidates challenging incumbent senators have largely shied away from using their responses as a vein of attack, though some see the lackluster response and viral video clips as a way to tie incumbents even more directly to the president and sway independent voters.

Ukrainian soldiers here at the front line were jolted by the suspension, too. While the aid was restored in time to prevent any military setbacks, it took a heavy psychological toll, they said, striking at their confidence that their backers in Washington stood solidly behind their fight to keep Russia at bay.

Ukraine has fought back with repeated appeals for aid, diplomatic pressure, Western sanctions against Russia — and with an army that is holding on by its fingernails.

Both sides use heavy artillery, but the only piece of American military aid at the position was a much-prized infrared spotting scope for night fighting. Soldiers also carry American tourniquets in their medical kits, used to stanch bleeding.

“Our allies help us, but the hard and dirty work we do ourselves,” Lieutenant Molchanets said.Even the most sophisticated weapons the United States offers are of little use here — at least, not in the way they are intended.

In 2018, the Trump administration authorized sales to Ukraine of a shoulder-fired anti-tank missile called the Javelin, reversing an Obama administration policy of supplying only non-lethal aid.

The Trump administration provided the missiles on the condition that they not be used in the war, Ukrainian officials and American diplomats have said, lest they provoke Russia to slip more powerful weaponry to the separatists.

The American military aid suspension hurt Ukraine in another way as well, Ukrainian officials said: It signaled their weakness, just as they were trying to project strength in negotiations with the Russians and needed solid backing from Washington.Since taking office in May, Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has wanted the United States to take a more active role in pressuring Russia to withdraw its forces from eastern Ukraine — which the Kremlin does not even acknowledge are there — and accept a peace deal to end the conflict.

Mr. Trump has also showed a clear desire for a peace deal on Ukraine, part of his longstanding effort to remove an issue that has driven a wedge between Russia and the West, and has made his cozy relations with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin harder to defend.

But Mr. Trump has not pressed Russia and sided with Ukraine in the negotiations in the way Mr. Zelensky has urged. To the contrary, at a news conference in New York last month, Mr. Trump backed away from Mr. Zelensky and his troubles in the war, telling the Ukrainian leader, “I really hope you and President Putin get together and can solve your problem.”

Mr. Zelensky wants to move the Ukrainian front line back — from a few hundred yards away from the separatists to about 1,000 yards in several locations, including around the town of Zolote, the site of Lieutenant Molchanets’s position.Separatist forces are also supposed to pull back in these areas, to put both sides out of sniper range and reduce skirmishing, paving the way for settlement talks.The problem in the town Zolote — and what has set off protests here and in Kiev — is that pulling back will leave some neighborhoods in front of the army’s new trenches, exposing them to the enemy side.

House Democrats are examining in part whether his pressure on Ukraine to open investigations into theories about the 2016 election constituted an abuse of power.Sign Up for On Politics With Lisa LererA spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.Sign Up* Captcha is incomplete. Please try again.Thank you for subscribingYou can also view our other newsletters or visit your account to opt out or manage email preferences.An error has occurred. Please try again later.You are already subscribed to this email.View all New York Times newsletters.The move also creates an unusual situation in which the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into itself.

It was not clear what potential crime Mr. Durham is investigating, nor when the criminal investigation was prompted.

Mr. Trump is certain to see the criminal investigation as a vindication of the years he and his allies have spent trying to discredit the Russia investigation.

Federal investigators need only a “reasonable indication” that a crime has been committed to open an investigation, a much lower standard than the probable cause required to obtain search warrants.

However, “there must be an objective, factual basis for initiating the investigation; a mere hunch is insufficient,” according to Justice Department guidelines.

Mr. Barr expressed skepticism of the Russia investigation even before joining the Trump administration. Weeks after being sworn in this year, he said he intended to scrutinize how it started and used the term “spying” to describe investigators’ surveillance of Trump campaign advisers.

F.B.I. agents discovered the offer shortly after stolen Democratic emails were released, and the events, along with ties between other Trump advisers and Russia, set off fears that the Trump campaign was conspiring with Russia’s interference.

The C.I.A. did contribute heavily to the intelligence community’s assessment in early 2017 that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and tried to tip it in Mr. Trump’s favor, and law enforcement officials later used those findings to bolster their application for a wiretap on a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.

Mr. Mueller said that he had “insufficient evidence” to determine whether Mr. Trump or his aides engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians but that the campaign welcomed the sabotage and expected to benefit from it.

Law enforcement officials suspected Mr. Page was the target of recruitment by the Russian government, which he has denied.Mr. Durham has also asked whether C.I.A. officials might have somehow tricked the F.B.I. into opening the Russia investigation. Mr. Durham has indicated he wants to interview former officials who ran the C.I.A. in 2016 but has yet to question either Mr. Brennan or James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence. Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked them as part of a vast conspiracy by the so-called deep state to stop him from winning the presidency.

Mr. Durham has delved before into the secret world of intelligence gathering during the Bush and Obama administrations. He was asked in 2008 to investigate why the C.I.A. destroyed tapes depicting detainees being tortured. The next year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. appointed Mr. Durham to spearhead an investigation into the C.IA. abuses.

After nearly four years, Mr. Durham’s investigation ended with no charges against C.I.A. officers, including two directly involved in the deaths of two detainees, angering human rights activists.