The Mideast Mess Obama Will Leave Behind
What a dismal week in the Middle East for the Obama administration. In the course of a couple of days, the partial ceasefire in Syria began to fray, the peace talks in Geneva turned stony, and the Saudis pointedly cold-shouldered…
Trump Is the Wrong Messenger, But He’s Raised Some of the Right Issues
Donald Trump is never short of controversial remarks and highly unlikely policy positions, but his recent ventures into foreign affairs have prompted unusually sharp reactions even by Trump’s standards. First came a scathing open letter from 120-odd Republican national security…
Iran Deal Meets First Major Hurdle, Marking a Win for Obama
We’ve just lived through a little bit of history. As of Saturday, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that the contentious-from-the-start deal between the U.S. and Iran has met its first and most important challenge under the accord governing its…
Obama Iran Doctrine: Get the Deal You Can, Not the Deal You Want
Amid all the questions already raised about the Obama administration’s deal governing Iran’s nuclear program, we know this much already: It won’t be as hard to sell this on Capitol Hill as it was getting Tehran to come to terms,…
Obama’s Good First Step in Iran Leaves More to be Done
Plenty of work remains, and there is plenty of arguing to do, before a final accord governing Iran’s nuclear program can be concluded by the June deadline diplomats have set. Let both proceed: This deal is as historic as the…
A Nuclear Deal with Iran Starts to Look Likely
Will we or won’t we have an international deal defining Iran’s nuclear programby the negotiators’ self-imposed deadline? There are two weeks left. This is now the kind of cliffhanger the London bookmakers usually offer odds on. My wager is that…
Iran’s Trade Deals: Will the US Miss the Boat?
It is hard to find anything Israelis and Iranians agree upon, but they now hold one truth in common: The sanctions imposed on Tehran in mid–2010 over its opaque nuclear program are crumbling. Executives and state-enterprise bureaucrats from Beijing to…
A U.S. Deal with Iran Could Reset the Balance of Mideast Power
Memo to Secretary of State Kerry: Mr. Secretary, When you arrived in Oman over the weekend to resume talks on Iran’s nuclear program, you must’ve known your pass-or-fail moment is on the line. The deadline for a deal is November…
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…
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