After President Obama’s congratulatory call to Egypt’s president-elect Morsi, it seems the administration seeks further contact in the coming days. On June 25 the Washington Post reported this:

U.S. officials hope to make a strong impression on Morsi, 60, during an upcoming visit by a senior American official to Cairo, said another senior administration official, who was not authorized to speak for the record.

“Senior official” is an elastic term, but let us hope it does not refer to Secretary of State Clinton. Read more »

Why is it significant that the vice president of Iran has used a United Nations forum to deliver an appalling anti-Semitic speech?

This happened yesterday in Geneva, as the New York Times reported. Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi blamed “Zionists” for the world’s drug trade, citing the Talmud and leaving his audience at the anti-drug conference in shock. Read more »

In a very interesting column entitled “Who Lost Egypt?” in today’s Wall Street Journal, my friend Bret Stephens proposes three answers: “the Egyptians, obviously;” the Obama and Bush administrations; and “liberal abdicators.” The article is well worth reading.

But it errs in overlooking someone who should be at the top of the list, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak, after all, ruled Egypt for 30 years. During all that period he warned against the possibility of a Muslim Brotherhood take-over, yet somehow he managed to deliver Egypt to exactly that fate. How did that happen? Read more »

The death of Saudi crown prince Nayef came as no surprise, for he had been seriously ill for several years. He spent much of the past year outside the Kingdom, for medical treatment in the United States and then recuperation. Since the death in 2011 of the then third in line for the throne, long-time Minister of Defense Prince Sultan, and his replacement at Defense by Riyadh’s long-serving governor Prince Salman, it has been thought that Prince Salman would become crown prince next. That change should come in the next few days, after Nayef’s burial. Read more »

I am in Jerusalem, where the State Comptroller has just issued a lengthy report blaming Prime Minister Netanyahu for his handling of the Mavi Marmara affair.

The BBC summarized the report this way:

Israel’s state watchdog has criticised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the navy’s interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla which left nine Turkish activists dead and commandos injured. In a report, the State Comptroller identified “serious shortcomings” in the way decisions were taken by Mr Netanyahu before the May 2010 incident….
“The process of decision-making was done without orderly, agreed-upon, co-ordinated and documented staff work, despite the recognition of the senior political echelon and IDF (Israel Defence Forces) chiefs, intelligence bodies and the National Security Council on the exceptional nature of the Turkish flotilla compared to previous flotillas,” the reports said.

I don’t buy it. Read more »

Egypt’s political crisis is getting the attention it merits as the presidential election approaches.  But the economic crisis is not getting enough.

The financial commentator David Goldman wrote in April that “Last week, Egypt’s central bank reported that total reserves had fallen to $15 billion, but – more importantly – liquid foreign exchange reserves had fallen to only $9 billion, equivalent to just two months’ imports. Foreign exchange futures markets expect the Egyptian pound to lose half its value during the next year….” Read more »

Today UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon told the Security Council that “Heavy weapons, armor-piercing bullets and surveillance drones have been used against UN observers in Syria to hamper their efforts to monitor the worsening conflict….” Ban condemned the most recent massacre as ”an unspeakable barbarity” and called for implementation of the Kofi Annan peace plan. Read more »

This week the House Foreign Affairs Committee will consider the so-called “Magnitsky Bill.” The Hill describes the bill this way: Read more »