Iran’s ISIS Trap
Co-written with Ray Takeyh The choice seems simple. On one side are regally attired mullahs, the type that have protected Persia’s pre-Islamic treasures and even tweet in...
Mesopotamia
Transformational Diplomacy
Many supporters of an Iranian nuclear agreement believe that a deal could help to moderate, even democratize, Iranian society. Barack Obama’s constant allusions to the transformative potent...
Op-eds
Sandstorm
The great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun centered his understanding of history on asabiyya, which is perhaps best translated as esprit de corps mixed with the will to power. In his maste...
Op-eds
Fatal Procrastination
In his April 2012 speech at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., President Obama said: "We must tell our children about how this evil was allowed to happen — because so many people su...
Op-eds
A Baleful Peace Process
To be outrageously iconoclastic among the Washington foreign-policy crowd is easy: Just suggest that the Israeli-Arab peace process is not merely pointless but actually damaging to America’...
Op-eds
The End of Syria
Last week marked the second year anniversary of the popular uprising in Syria. On its current trajectory, Syria is headed toward geographical fragmentation. As the security situation deteriorates...
Op-eds
Strategic Geography and the End of Assad
The latest military developments in Syria are now generally understood as ushering in a new phase in the Syrian conflict. What’s less observed is that the minority Alawite regime’s ma...
Op-eds
Obama’s Way of War
Is Barack Obama a warrior president? Not in the British tradition, of course, which gave us Winston Churchill, with his crazy cavalry charge against Sudanese spears, or the more cerebral Harold M...
Op-eds
Eclipsed
Until January of this year, U.S. policymakers and American allies feared what Jordan’s King Abdullah II had dubbed the “Shia crescent.” The thinking was that as Iran’s pow...
Op-eds
Iraq Then and Now: May 2004 Better than February 2003
As the aircraft landed on the carrier last year, I was personally amused by the idea that a U.S. president would perform such a feat. Regardless of the ensuing brouhaha, an American president in...
Op-eds
The Nasrallah speech: Hezbollah ruled, the West is fooled
In the next days a major battle in the War of Ideas will be unfolding worldwide and particularly through the international media. We are now witnessing a massive campaign by Hezbollah's stra...
Op-eds
Are We Safer?
Yes, George W. Bush has made America more secure since 9/11.
Op-eds
The First Time
Desert Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia by Charles Townshend Belknap Press, 624 pp., $35 THIS BOOK IS an exquisite history of the excruciatingly diffi...
Op-eds
Iran’s Long-Term Security Interests-and Ours
Amitai Etzioni makes a compelling case for a "mutual security enhancement deal" with Iran, predicated on both an implicit deadline and a credible military threat in the absence of agreement. I ha...
Op-eds
Iraq’s Jihad Myths
Among Democrats and even many Republicans, it is by now accepted wisdom that the war in Iraq brought huge numbers of holy warriors to the anti-American cause. But is it true? I don't think s...
Op-eds
WikiLeaks, Iran, and Obama
The latest dump of classified WikiLeaks documents shows a few important facts: (1) The United States military unavoidably classifies a mountain of documents because of the easy loquacity of moder...
Op-eds
Iran’s Global Terrorist Reach
The United States became painfully aware of the threat posed by global jihadism after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Until that day, Iranian-backed terrorist networks, such as Hezbolla...
Op-eds
A Guide to Avoiding Disaster in Afghanistan
For those of us who can remember how lonely it was to be in favor of the Iraq war and the hoped-for surge in 2006, reflecting on America’s current travails in Afghanistan—a “foo...
Op-eds
A Syria in Minor Key
The strategic vacuum the United States is leaving in the Middle East is creating a dangerously unstable situation, arguably similar to the one immediately preceding the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Thi...
Op-eds
Al Qaeda beheaded in Iraq?
We should underline the following four points in our initial reaction to foreign reports, including a statement from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Maliki, that “Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayy...