Some thoughts on recent developments . . . Elite persuasion and its limits News reports suggest that President Biden got Speaker Mike Johnson to put a Ukraine aid bill on the floor of the House through good, old-fashioned persuasion: Biden and his team convinced Johnson it was the right thing to do by sharing intelligence […]
The useful content of this post on a topic where I have no expertise is this link to a Twitter thread by Gen Mark Hertling (retired) who has a whole lot of expertise and is also very smart and reasonable. The thread is brief. I suggest reading it. I also quote one tweet here: “There […]
It is easy to think that those of us who favor a two-state solution are utopian dreamers. The mantle of realism seems to rest naturally on those who insist on standing tough against a Palestinian state. But this simple dichotomy has never been accurate, and the realist case for a renewed effort to achieve a […]
For the past few days I have been wondering if Netanyahu has a plan for responding to the Hamas terror killings, or if he’s just temporizing. More and more, it seems like he is just skating in front of the breaking ice. If this is right, it’s one more misdeed for which he and his […]
Israel Pays For Bibi’s Successful Campaign Against The JCPOA Iran Nuclear Agreement In the last few days for the first time in many years, northern Israel has been on the receiving end of rockets fired out of southern Lebanon, the territory under the control of the Shia Hezbollah group long supported by Iranian interests, although […]
Nothing could be more predictable than this headline from CNN today: Does Israel have a military option vs. Iran nuclear program? (CNN)The Iran nuclear negotiations in Lausanne, Switzerland, reportedly have made substantive progress, inching closer toward a provisional agreement between the P5+1 and Iran. While the talks continued to unfold this week, Israeli Prime Minister […]
Preliminary election results from the Israeli elections are due in a couple of hours and no one who follows this even a little bit imagines that the path going forward is anything but fraught with uncertainty. Indeed it is not clear that given the polling that any stable government can be formed. But what is […]
Back in 2009 I put up a post with the title Joe Biden? The Map Office is Calling! after Joe had apparently given a green light to Israel to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. In it I pointed to a study by Toukan and Cordesman Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Development Facilities […]
JERUSALEM — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney angered Palestinian leaders on Monday when he suggested here that the Israeli economy had outpaced the economy of the Palestinian territories in part because of advantages of “culture.” … Romney said he had studied a book called “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” searching for an answer about […]
Which though not stated so baldly is the clear conclusion of the following: Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman:Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Development. The authors outline three different attack routes the Israelis could use, each having its own set of political and military problems, but the real missing piece is the […]