The short-term goal of halting Iran’s nuclear program can and should be coupled with the long term goal of fostering a more democratic, open Iran, if only because the sanctions that target those worth targeting and a diplomacy that offers Iran a path to legitimacy are ultimately the solutions to both these issues.
Read MoreReworking the Strategy towards Iran. Netanyahu is becoming infamously impatient, and the reactors keep spinning (despite false claims to the contrary last week; I doubt we’ll ever really know what is actually going on in those nuclear plants). The current strategy cannot continue.
Read MoreFor those dying daily in Syria, all of our talk of bringing freedom to the world is illusory. The rhetoric only works if we act exceptionally, and right now America has a long way to climb.
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Within the story of the MEK lies the greater story of the ways in which the ideology and activity of a given entity can change, sometimes for worse and sometimes for better.
Read MoreThis aloofness is not reserved for Israel alone; the cold, piercing analysis with which Obama approaches every issue is evidence that this aloofness and sternness is very much the Obama style.
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After the Arab Spring, Middle Eastern countries that have undergone tumultuous revolutions are now under the scrutiny of the rest of the world ... But the many newly minted leaders are trying daily to make things better.
Read MoreWith Israelis and Egyptians still not trusting each other, the treaty needs to be made relevant for the 21st century. This month’s security problems prove that Israeli-Egyptian cooperation is a strategic necessity; the Sinai should therefore become a model of collaboration, not of confrontation
Read MoreImpotent or not, Orwell teaches me, it is writing about the hard topics, speaking out on Syria, that automatically breathes life into my words. Political purpose, it turns out, is nothing less than a writer’s very oxygen.
Read MoreThese “smart” sanctions have, in fact, done much to starve the very people they were supposed to protect.
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This report seems to think—or wish—that legalizing the settlements makes them morally correct, too. But while land can be politicized and subjected to legal dispute, the Palestinian people should not be politicized and subjected to hardship because of legal minutia. And the hardships that Palestinians have to live through daily in the West Bank outweigh any legal conclusions. The law becomes less interesting when people are suffering.
Read MoreWe may be collectively worried about the stability of Egypt’s fledgling democracy, but this is a normal and expected concern. It is part of the process of democratization. But it is a mistake to confuse our anxiety with a suggestion that the Egyptian revolution has failed.
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