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The notion that Iran supplies arms to Hamas is something that has become conventional wisdom in the mainstream media. I’ve been agnostic on this issue myself, although the logistical challenges of a direct Mediterranean route, given the presence of Israeli patrol boats that have besieged the territory in the last few years, have always seemed [...]
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Elliott Abrams just confirmed that he will be official mouthpiece of Bibi Netanyahu and his Likud Party at the Council on Foreign Relations and on the pages of The Weekly Standard (and probably in the Wall Street Journal, too).
In reading the article, ironically entitled “The Path of Realism or the Path to Failure: Laying a [...]
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Dennis Ross’ appointment was finally announced today. This appeared as a “press release” on the State Department’s website late this afternoon:
Appointment of Dennis Ross as Special Advisor for The Gulf and Southwest Asia
Robert Wood
Acting Department Spokesman
Washington, DC
February 23, 2009
The Secretary is pleased to announce the appointment of Dennis B. Ross to the position of Special [...]
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As first reported by Laura Rozen and subsequently confirmed by Chris Nelson, it appears that Chas Freeman has been appointed chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the body that is charged by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) with synthesizing the analyses of the entire U.S. intelligence community and producing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) [...]
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If you still hope for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and are worried that last week’s elections in Israel are putting it beyond reach, you should definitely read former Israeli peace envoy Daniel Levy’s detailed analysis of both the election results and the implications for the Obama administration. I know it is circulating [...]
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Just a brief note on Obama’s response to foreign-policy questions at his first press conference tonight.
Give that he has been focused almost exclusively over the past week on getting his stimulus package through Congress, I thought his extemporaneous answers to the few foreign-policy questions he was posed were pretty impressive.
After the ritual denunciations of [...]
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Michael Ledeen, who 25 months ago announced to the world that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had died — he got this from such an exclusive source that not even Amir Taheri, another neo-con fantasist, could confirm or deny the story — once again has his hand on the pulse of the Iranian people [...]
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I hate to agree with Bill Kristol, but he’s right about Vice President Joe Biden’s speech at the ongoing Munich security conference when he writes that “the administration chose not to use the occasion to say something interesting. One hopes the Obama administration is actually thinking more seriously than the Biden speech indicates.” I’m sure [...]
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As he makes clear in this post, The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan has finally come to the conclusion that the democracy claptrap that neo-conservatives have spouted since 9/11 has been a facade for their core foreign-policy worldview with Israel at its heart.
“I took neoconservatism seriously for a long time, because it offered an interesting critique [...]
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As pointed out in this post by Rasmus Christian Elling of the University of Copenhagen, the U.S. Treasury — notably Stuart Levey, whose zeal in trying to make it difficult for Iranian banking interests to do business outside their borders has been widely remarked — just designated the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK) a [...]
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