In November 2020, as dusk settled in on the Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Israel. His trip not only confirmed that the new Israel-Arab peace deals were never about new peace deals – they couldn’t be because they made no new peace –...
Attacks in Iran Have Israel’s Signature on Them
The country had become an existential threat to Israel. It was ruled by a megalomaniac who wanted Israel eliminated. And now he wanted a nuclear bomb. They claimed their nuclear program was purely a civilian program, but Israel knew that was not true. So, they set out...
Trump’s Peace Plan: How Far Would He Go?
Desperately chasing a single foreign policy accomplishment in the dying days before the election, Donald Trump is frantically pursuing a Middle East peace plan. Not the Israel/Palestine one he promised – in four years in office, that never came close – but the...
While No One Was Looking: America, Guyana, and Venezuela
On March 2, 2020, the people of Guyana went to the polls. According to the Carter Center, at first things went really well. And then they didn’t. At the close of the day, President David Granger had been re-elected. But, though nine of ten districts reported cleanly,...
Peace Plans That Have Nothing To Do With Peace
On September 11, 2020, Bahrain announced that it had agreed to normalize relations with Israel, following a similar agreement by the United Arab Emirate (UAE). Both agreements are being packaged and sold as historic peace plans. They’re Not Peace Plans When President...
What’s in the Israel/UAE Agreement? Here’s Five Things That Aren’t
The other day, a large box was delivered to my door. When I opened it, there was only a tiny item in the large box. Donald Trump called the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) a "HUGE breakthrough." But like the...
Donald Trump and the Art of Betrayal
Iran and the Nuclear Deal The betrayal began with Iran. The work had all been done by Obama and Secretary of State, John Kerry. Trump was the beneficiary of a historic treaty that made the world a safer place and that lifted trust between Iran and the US to a level it...
Seeing Events in Iran Through the Lens of Trump’s Polling Numbers
For nearly four years now, Donald Trump has been a blank check for Israel. That check may be about to expire. From recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel to plans to annex the West Bank to freedom to bomb in Syria, the Donald Trump blank check keeps on being...
The Coronavirus May be Novel, But It’s the Same Old Foreign Policy
U.S. foreign policy suffers from such tunnel vision that it is unable to change course even with the appearance of something as colossal as the COVID-19 pandemic. The American foreign policy response to the pandemic has ranged from the negative end of the spectrum...
Is Israel at War With Iran?
When Meir Dagan was appointed chief of the Israeli Mossad, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon assigned him the responsibility of disabling Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons program. It was Dagan’s belief – and he practiced it often – that the most effective and efficient way...


