Syria
“For The First Time I’ve Not Been Asked About Human Rights:” Auguries From Obama’s Egypt.
A vivid report by Ashraf Khalil in Friday’s Wall Street Journal and an AP dispatch on the same day evoke a moribund Egyptian politics coming to life because of the death of a 28-year old in Alexandria. The murder—and it was a murder!—was committed by the police. Out in the open or, to be precise, down the alley from an internet cafe out of which Khaled Saieed was dragged. READ MORE >>
Move Assad
The Obama administration has signaled in word and deed that a policy change is in the offing, a change that would accommodate the Syrian regime and normalize relations with it. The notion of autocracy as a guarantor of stability is back in vogue after the Bush years, and so the policy is being bolstered by a chorus of analysts and academics. The Syrian regime, the thinking goes, is as good as it gets for helping to keep simmering regional tensions under a tight lid. READ MORE >>
Turkey Is Now The Key To Arab Politics. Beware: Built Up By Obama, Erdogan Is Playing The Wild Card
From the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Executive Director Robert Satloff comes this analysis: The Gaza Flotilla Incident: Impact on Three Key Arab Actors READ MORE >>
They're in Damascus, two State Department techies, at the head of a delegation of commercial techies representing American computer combines (Microsoft, Cisco, Dell and some others) in an effort to lure the ophthalmologist Dr. Assad away from the Islamist camp. You see: Bashar al-Assad loves computer games (sort of like my grandson) and the idea is to entice him into playing with our software and networking eqiupment which he can't have unless he behaves. READ MORE >>
Better A Bad Press Than A Good Epitaph
Actually, the hysteria about the Israeli encounter with the Turkish goons has abated. And it has probably come to the attention of some reasonable people that Recep Tayyip Erdogan is working the seas not exactly for the interests of the Turks but for the Islamic crusade being led by the Iranian clerisy and secret police. READ MORE >>
Bennett Ramberg is one of those (few) nuclear strategists who does not shy from telling the truth. He's been telling the truth, the difficult truth, about what will not stop Tehran from pursuing nukes...and what will. Here he confronts Iran's little partner, Syria, and tells us what Dr. Assad--welcomed as a rational scientist upon his ascent to power after the death of his tyrant father--plans. READ MORE >>
A seven-member United Nations panel—yes, even a U.N. panel—without stammer and without dodging yesterday accused North Korea of providing banned nuclear and ballistic missile technology to Iran and Syria. READ MORE >>
The dispatch is from Reuters. And the dateline is Wonderland. Flush with success in turning Iran away from nukes and Syria away from Tehran, the administration seems to be setting its sights on turning Hezbollah away from Hezbollah. READ MORE >>
More On Syria, If You Can Stand It
This is real inside stuff. No commentary from me. Except to say that this is more proof that American diplomacy is going nowhere. Or maybe worse. Internal report on Syria says embassy lacks clear guidance on sanctions Posted By Josh Rogin Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - 12:55 PM READ MORE >>
