With Israel’s new “unity” government now set, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a decision in the coming weeks with huge consequences for Israel’s relations with America and the wider world: whether to begin the process of annexing major parts of the West Bank. That’s because an Israeli decision to pursue annexation would strike at the …
The current debate over whether the United States should ease sanctions against Iran in light of the latter’s struggles with COVID-19 reflects a broader reality: More than four decades after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, we still lack a consensus about the nature of the regime in Tehran and how to deal with it. For Iran, …
The latest U.S. offer of negotiations with Iran prompts the same question with which every administration of recent decades has grappled: Is behavioral change in Tehran possible without regime change? We Americans want to think so, but the evidence of four decades suggests otherwise. Consequently, President Donald Trump and his team may be headed toward …
Continue reading “More U.S. talks with Iran are doomed to fail”
U.S. foreign policy toward Iran is approaching a “back to the future” moment, with the Trump White House resurrecting the strategy pursued by President George W. Bush (and, for a while, President Barack Obama) of pressuring Iran economically into abandoning its nuclear pursuits. The question now is whether President Trump, or if necessary a successor, …
Continue reading “Can Iran Wait out Trump’s Pressure Campaign?”
An American president meets his Russian counterpart in Helsinki. Critics worry that he’ll validate Russia’s rule over its conquered neighbors, while human rights advocates fret that he won’t discuss their issue. Trump and Putin? Actually, it was President Gerald Ford and Leonid Brezhnev in Finland’s capital in 1975 — although, at the time, Russia was …
WASHINGTON – The Human Rights Council’s recent vote to investigate Israel for its response to “protests” on its Gaza border highlights everything that’s wrong with this hypocritical body, and why the United States was right to leave it. First, the vote reflects the council’s longstanding obsession with Israel, which has far more to do with …
Continue reading “UN’s Human Rights Council reeks of hypocrisy; US was right to leave”
When President Trump announced last month that America would leave the global nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose U.S. sanctions, Europe’s leaders vowed to create financial mechanisms that would enable their firms to do business with Tehran and protect them from U.S. financial retaliation. On the eve of Trump’s May 8 decision, for instance, senior …
Continue reading “When it comes to Iran, America is still running the show”