The Art of No Mideast Deal
Donald Trump once advertised an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan as his greatest achievement-in-the-making, but like many of the president’s negotiations, the Kushner-Greenblatt strategy is a one-sided bargain, writes Patrick Lawrence. Whatever happened to President Trump’s “Deal of the Century”—his promise to…
Bibi’s downfall: Is the most dangerous man in the Middle East done for?
Benjamin Netanyahu has set Israel, and the entire Middle East, on a path toward doomsday. Will his fall matter? The political future of Benjamin Netanyahu is at last in doubt. With the Israeli police report recommending criminal charges against the…
A Conversation With Richard Falk, Part 2
On Israel, Palestine, and his work as a UN special rapporteur. When I met Richard Falk shortly before the turn of 2017 into 2018, I found the scholar, lawyer, activist, advocate, adviser, and writer as kinetically thoughtful and plugged-in as…
Trump’s Jerusalem fumble: If the U.S. is out as a Mideast broker, who’s in?
If the White House hoped to coerce Palestinians (and the world) into a peace settlement, it faces a rude awakening Considering President Trump’s sales pitch when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — “nothing more or less than a recognition…
Suddenly, Trump Has Three Middle East Crises on His Hands
President-elect Trump, a novice in foreign affairs, was destined to confront reality. Who would have guessed that the Middle East is the first place he’ll have to get down to his first serious policy decisions? Even a week ago it…
4 More Foreign Policy Challenges that Clinton Could Botch
Hillary Clinton threw down a gauntlet worthy of a medieval knight when she attacked Donald Trump’s foreign policy competence in her much-noted speech in San Diego a couple of months ago. She bragged that she was the voice of experience…
“This will stop only when the American people get fed up”: American exceptionalism, the New York Times, and our foreign policy after Barack Obama
Our smartest modern military historian explains to Salon what’s wrong about our adventures in the Middle East Part one of my interview with Andrew Bacevich, the soldier-turned-scholar who has just published “America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military…
How the Iran Deal Alters Ties That Bind
Whatever one thinks of the accord governing Iran’s nuclear program, Iran and the six nations that sat across from it for 18 tough months of negotiation—the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China—will begin this autumn to implement the deal…
Let’s all pity Netanyahu and the GOP: Israel, Iran, irrational thinking — and Thomas Friedman’s usual muddled nonsense
A reactionary leader addressing a reactionary legislature will expose the creeping irrelevance of them both Many readers will have seen Benjamin Netanyahu’s sentimentally charged but otherwise empty speech to Congress on Tuesday. If you missed it, you can watch it…
Five Reasons to Listen to Hassan Rouhani
Why should the watching world, and especially we wary Americans, trust Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s charismatic new reformist, now that he has completed what the more suspicious among us call his “charm attack” at the United Nations? There are answers, even…
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