A former Obama administration official has asserted that the Iranian nuclear deal marks a radical break with past U.S. policy, contradicting the official White House stance that the agreement is not leading to a new U.S.-Iran relationship. John Limbert, a...
The gradual erosion of the cease-fire in Syria over the past month is the result of multiple factors shaping the conflict, but one of the underlying reasons is the Obama administration's failure to carry out its commitment to Russia to get US-supported opposition...
The controversy surrounding the infamous “28 pages” on the possible Saudi connection with the terrorists that were excised from the joint Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks is at fever pitch. But that controversy is a distraction from the real problems that...
When Russian President Vladimir Putin had a substantive meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry last week, it was an extremely rare departure from normal protocol. There was some political logic to the meeting, however, because Putin and Kerry have clearly been...
A crucial problem in news media coverage of the Syrian civil war has been how to characterize the relationship between the so-called “moderate” opposition forces armed by the CIA, on one hand, and the Al Qaeda franchise Al Nusra Front (and its close ally...
The biggest story in Jeffrey Goldberg’s 20,000-word report on “The Obama Doctrine” is President Barack Obama’s open break with the foreign policy establishment. The critique of orthodox national security policy thinking that Obama outlined in interviews with Goldberg...
Jeffrey Goldberg’s newly published book-length article on Barack Obama and the Middle East includes a major revelation that brings US Secretary of State John Kerry’s Syrian diplomacy into sharper focus: it reports that Kerry has sought on several occasions without...
US Secretary of State John Kerry provoked widespread speculation when he referred in testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee last week to “significant discussions” within US President Barack Obama's administration about a “Plan B” in Syria. The...
Secretary of State John Kerry insisted at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that the agreement with Russia on a temporary halt in the war in Syria can only be carried out if Russia stops its airstrikes against what Kerry is now calling “legitimate...
The major developments on the Syrian battlefield in recent months have brought a corresponding shift in the Obama administration's Syrian policy. Since the Russian military intervention in Syria upended the military balance created by the victories of the al-Qaeda...
