by Michael Doran May 2023 Pity Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The Turkish opposition candidate faced an impossible challenge: running for president with American lipstick on his cheek. Call it the kiss of Biden. In 2020, when Joe Biden was a candidate for president, he told the editorial board of the New York Times that he favored working with “elements …
“The Kiss of Biden” and Foreign Policy in Erdoğan’s Re-Election Read More »
Time is Ripe for Snap Back Sanctions on the Iranian Regime, the Weakest Link in the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran Alliance By Dr. Samir Altaqi After establishing their quasi-total hegemony over the power centers in Iran, the hardliner leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is sinking into a multilayered crisis. Facing tremendous hardships, the Iranian people seem far …
Big things are shaping up in the Middle East as the Biden administration appears to be rethinking its get-tough policy on Saudi Arabia, even as it continues to hold out hope for a revived nuclear deal with Iran. Meanwhile, Russia looks poised to shut down a key humanitarian aid corridor in Syria, while the West …
“Is the Russian Military a Paper Tiger?” by Isaac Chotiner In The New Yorker, April 6, 2022 This week, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, announced the onset of what he called a new phase in his country’s war on Ukraine, which appears to consist of a focus on Ukraine’s east and a more gradual speed …
The disastrous Russian invasion of Ukraine will have major consequences for Putin’s allies across the world. Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad will be among the first to experience the negative fallout from Russia’s strategic blunder, as his regime’s reckoning may finally be approaching. Several former senior officers from Syria’s main intelligence and security agencies are facing …
Trouble For Putin’s Arab Client: Bashar Al-Assad’s Inevitable Reckoning Read More »
Syria as a Continuing Danger We ignore Syria at our peril. After almost eleven years, the Syrian conflict is as acutely dangerous an international security problem as ever. What began in 2011 as a popular revolt against Bashar al-Assad’s rule quickly expanded into a regional conflict that has no end in sight. With five external …
The October 13 agreement by Lebanon and Israel to delineate the maritime boundary between the two countries was not an easy task to accomplish. Anybody who followed the process remembers U.S. envoy Frederick Hof’s efforts starting in 2011 and the subsequent “Hof line,” and many other such episodes before U.S. energy envoy Amos Hochstein’s successful …
The False Promise of a Gas Paradise: The Israel-Lebanon Maritime Deal Read More »
As a Syrian, I could not hide my anger and disappointment despite my great sympathy for the Ukrainian people and enthusiasm for the historical stance that President Joe Biden took against Russian aggression in Ukraine. Where were you when those monstrous crimes were committed in Syria? We can accept the pragmatic point that in foreign …
U.S. Policy in Syria: Letting Syrians Go to (Putin’s) Hell Read More »
Commentators in the United States and Israel have hailed the agreement on the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon, which the Biden administration recently brokered, as a great success. They liken it to the Abraham Accords and claim that it is a major step toward normalizing relations between the Jewish State and a historic Arab …
Seven Myths about the “Historic” Israel-Lebanon Maritime Border Agreement Read More »
More than a year and a half into their tenure, the Biden administration studiously avoids having a Syria policy.
