Prime Minister Netanyahu has been more vocal than any of his predecessors about the ‘looming Iranian danger,’ insisting that any agreement to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons will amount to nothing more than a technical pause. He has been rallying members of Congress to impose additional crippling sanctions on Iran, hoping that the mounting…
The war between Hamas and Israel has exposed the folly of both sides. Hamas’ long-standing objective to destroy Israel has come back to haunt it, which may eventually spell its own demise. Conversely, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s unwillingness to end the occupation and the blockade has also shown the folly of his policy. The sad irony…
There are those who believe that given the sweeping turmoil in the Middle East, the two most powerful non-Arab countries other than Turkey – Israel and Iran – have common interests in forming a strategic alliance that would substantially strengthen their position and contribute to regional stability. They argue that such an alliance would create…
No one can accuse Secretary of State John Kerry of not doing his very best to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. His tenacity, commitment and perseverance are exemplary, and if anyone can remotely succeed in ending the conflict, Kerry unquestionably tops the list. Logically, if Kerry did not believe in the prospect of reaching an…
In my last article I surveyed as impartially as I could the position of the various countries that might be affected by the interim deal recently forged between Iran and the P5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany). In this article I venture to explain why I believe that Iran will not give…
In the wake of the interim nuclear deal with Iran, many questions have been raised by people from different backgrounds, government officials, and the media inside and outside the Middle East about the validity and importance of the agreement. Characterizing it as good or bad, however, provides only a shallow assessment of a deal that…
Whereas former President Bush and President Obama are ideologically a world apart, their policies toward Middle Eastern conflicts produced the same damning reaction. Bush’s misguided war in Iraq and its consequences, and Obama’s diffidence toward the slaughter in Syria and his excessively misplaced caution over US involvement in another Arab country, evoked similar waves of…
In his upcoming visit to Israel and Palestine, Secretary of State John Kerry will attempt a last-ditch effort to persuade Israel’s Prime Minster Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority’s President Abbas to resume peace negotiations. If there is, however, the slightest chance of getting the two sides to start talking it would require substantial American pressure…
The continuing carnage and atrocities sweeping across Syria and the savagery committed against innocent men, women and children defy the most nightmarish dehumanization committed by one against another. A government that slaughters its people and maims a whole generation is not a government with whom to negotiate. It is nothing short of travesty that the…