By Barry Rubin

The story of the U.S. engagement with Syria and the sanctions issue regarding Iran’s nuclear program are fascinating. Each day there’s some new development showing how the Obama Administration is acting like a deer standing in the middle of a busy highway admiring the pretty automobile headlights.

Or to put it a different way, it is like watching the monster sneak up behind someone. Even though you know he’s not going to turn around, you can’t help but watch in fascinated horror and yelling out: “Look out!” But he pays no attention.

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

International relations isn’t a popularity contest. But public opinion polls can be useful in countering myths and examining the impact of policymaker, elite, and media campaigns on the masses.

Which brings us to Gallup’s latest poll measuring how Americans feel about different countries. The more one examines the results, the more amazing they are. Americans two favorites are, not surprisingly, fellow English-speakers Canada and the United Kingdom. Then come–Americans are very forgiving–two former enemies, Germany and Japan.

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

If–and I repeat, if–this story is true it is going to be a very big development that may, as they like to see in the television promos, change the Obama administration forever. According to Thomas Ricks, the former Washington Post military correspondent, General Raymond Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is asking for an additional combat brigade to be put into Kirkuk and to stay beyond Obama’s August 2010 withdrawal deadline for all combat forces.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

All you Jew-haters and Israel-haters (same thing) think you know what’s best for the rest of us, just like Hitler and Stalin did. The problem is that you’re completely out of step with the collective intelligence of the greatest nation in the world, the U.S.:

… The findings of the February 19, 2010 Gallup poll put President Barack Obama at odds with the US public, when it comes to attitudes toward the Jewish state, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Arabs, Muslims and Islamic terrorism.

For example, Israel maintains its traditional spot among the five most favored nations by 67 percent of the US public, despite Obama’s “even-handed” approach toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, in spite of his attempts to force Israel into sweeping concessions, and in defiance of the US “elite” media and academia.

On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority is ranked — along with Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan — at the bottom of the list, favored by only 20% of the US public.

According to an August 10, 2009 Rasmussen poll, Israel is ranked as the third most favorable ally (70%), preceded only by Canada and Britain. The low regard toward Egypt (39%) and Saudi Arabia (23%) demonstrates that Americans remain skeptical — at least since 9/11 — of Arabs and Muslims, even as these countries are portrayed by the media and the administration as supposedly moderate and pro-American.

Moreover, only 21% of adult Americans expect that the US relationship with the Muslim world will improve in a year, while 25% expect that it will get worse. …

by Daniel Pipes*

Rashad Hussain, Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has run into a problem: He appears to be an Islamist. The evidence largely concerns a public statement he made six years ago, as Josh Gerstein reports in Politico:

(more…)

by Steven J. Rosen*

Anxiety about Barack Obama has afflicted Israelis since his meteoric rise to the White House. Here was an untested president, one whose agenda in the Middle East could only be imagined. Would Obama’s America be Israel’s lifeline in a dangerous and often hostile world? Or would this American president experiment with mistaken or even unfriendly ideas that could wreak havoc for Israeli security?

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

The Department of Defense has just released its new Quadrennial Defense Review Report for 2010. What does it say about the Middle East? Far less than you’d expect in terms of space but still some extremely important points about what might involve the United States in future wars there.

Aside from some scattered references on the need for more civilian nation-building experts, funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and energy conservation efforts (that’s an area, no doubt, where money could be saved), that region takes up less than two pages, about two percent, of the 97-page report.

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

Significantly, President Barack Obama’s discussion of foreign policy came only at the end of his State of the Union message. Obviously, domestic matters and especially the economy come first. Yet international affairs are not only vital but often have been the issues on which administrations are judged, no matter how unlikely that seemed at the time.

It is apparently considered impolite to point out that Obama has no previous experience and little knowledge of international affairs. And yet that fact affects the fate of the globe every day. The really interesting question is whether the State of the Union message showed any growth in his ability after one year in office.

Sadly, the answer is “no.”

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

In contrast to its refusal to change course on Iran, the Obama administration has learned something about Israel-Palestinian peacemaking, conclusions clearly expressed in the government’s new talking points.

First, President Barack Obama stated recently that his administration had overestimated its ability to get the two sides into meaningful peace talks. Blaming both parties equally, Obama said the problem is that neither Israel nor the Palestinians were ready to take the bold steps necessary to succeed.

(more…)

by Patrick Knapp*

The Obama administration is caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, it has welcomed the Gulf Security Dialogue (GSD) as a chance to further “mutual interests” with Persian Gulf states, but, on the other, it has sought pragmatic engagement with the Islamic Republic–the greatest threat to gulf security. Michael Knights, a Persian Gulf expert at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, noted in September that the “rapid advances” of the military forces of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were the result of the dialogue. He predicts that they “may eclipse Iranian capabilities in the gulf within ten years.”[1] Yet the GSD’s initiatives are inadequate and need a foreign policy that stresses relationships and ideals. If policy within the gulf is to be dominated by short-term pragmatic demands, it may turn out to have unwanted consequences for other alliances in the region. That in turn could well have a negative impact on the United States.

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

There is an iron rule in modern democratic politics that parties periodically ignore to their peril: if a party goes too far to an extreme–to the left, the right, or any other far-out viewpoint–the voters reject it. This is what’s now happening in the United States. One wonders whether, or when, it will happen in a number of European countries.

In the United States, the most obvious examples is when the Democrats went too far to the left with George McGovern and the Republicans went too far to the right with Barry Goldwater they suffered tremendous defeats. Many other examples can be cited from Europe, Israel, and other countries.

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

The Swiss Islamist Tariq Ramadan was about to take up a position at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana in 2004 when the U.S. government prevented him from entering the country on the grounds that he had funded two Hamas-related groups. For five years, his exclusion has been debated and tried. Finally, it was reversed today. The Associated Press explains:

(more…)

by Matthew Levitt*

It costs a lot of money to run an insurgency. There are arms to buy, attacks to launch, bribes to pay. The local population has to be won over, and extensive networks have to be actively maintained, often involving members of various groups, criminal syndicates, corrupt officials, and independent operators such as local smugglers. Explosive devices have to be made, guns have to be brought in from abroad, volunteers have to be indoctrinated and trained.

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

We now have Mahmoud Abbas’s answer regarding short-term Palestinian Authority (PA) strategy. He says that if Israel stops all construction now-in Jerusalem and the 3000 apartments being completed-and accepts in advance the 1967 borders and there will be peace within six months. This is the basic story we’ve been hearing since around 1988: one or more Israeli concessions and everyone will live happily ever after.

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

The near-success of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, to set off an explosive on Christmas Day should open the American public’s eyes to the sad state of counterterrorism eight years after 9/11.

The incident involved a Nigerian national in Seat 19A — ideally placed over the fuel tanks, atop the wing, and next to the exterior of the aircraft — of Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. As summarized by the Wall Street Journal, it:

(more…)