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…
An Obama Failure with Iran Seems Inevitable
A year ago, under skies as sunny as we’ve had lately, Iran’s just-elected president, Hassan Rouhani, had his premiere at the United Nations and popped open the door to a settlement on his nation’s nuclear program and a cooperative relationship…
Obama Makes the Middle East Our New ‘Quagmire’
Quagmire” is a term commonly associated with Vietnam, but we need to haul it out of storage. There is no other way to describe the mess the Obama administration has led us into in the Middle East. President Obama and…
For Israel, a Victory That Will Prove Short-Lived
The Mideast peace talks Secretary of State Kerry staked his tenure upon have crashed; and to state the instantly obvious: Israel emerges from this debacle in a position of strength. Does a near-term tactical advantage assure strategic success in the…
How the White House Is Blowing Off Europe
The Obama administration needs to declare a “pivot to Europe” policy, and quickly. Not that the famous pivot to Asia has amounted to much: It drifts somewhere in the Pacific like a dead fish. But relations between the U.S. and…
Why Iran Is Now Obama’s Best Middle East Bet
“What are we supposed to do now?” pundits and policymakers ask these days. The full question being, “What now that the Middle East spins like a dervish and the Obama administration has lost its grip on every major issue in…
Saudis in a Snit over Obama’s Mideast Policies
What is happening between Saudi Arabia and the U.S.—the very fastest of friends since American geologists first caught the whiff of petroleum in the early 1930s? And how much should anyone worry about a rift between Washington and Riyadh? The…
Are Things Actually Looking Up in the Middle East?
It is only a faint outline—call it a pencil sketch—but the lines of a significantly remade Middle East are suddenly falling into place. We have to wait for the region’s leaders and the diplomats asserting the influence of interested outsiders…
Obama’s Gambit on Syria Belies a Clear Mideast Policy
President Obama surprised allies and enemies alike when he stepped back over the weekend from plans to bombard Syria in response to Bashar al–Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons. Taking policy toward errant regimes in the Islamic world off autopilot—attack…
Syrian Crisis Exposes Obama’s Failed Mideast Policy
The U.S. response to the escalating Syria crisis requires more thought than emotion, and it has to reach across the board—to Egypt, to Iran, to the friendly, repressive Saudis and the friendly, repressive emirates, to the antagonizing Russians. In a word,…
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