Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, spoke about Syria on Tuesday, and it is fair to say that he is not intimidated by American policy. The Nasrallah speech is a reminder that use of chemical weapons is not the only issue we face in Syria; the intervention of Iranian IRGC and Hezbollah troops is another. Read more »

Lady Catherine Ashton, the EU’s top foreign policy official, has received a remarkable letter from the “European Eminent Persons Group on the Middle East Peace Process.” This self-selected collectivity might more accurately be called the “Formerly Eminent Persons Group,” inasmuch as the first word describing each one of its members is “Former,” but I suppose that these Formerly Eminent Persons do indeed also represent the views of Currently Eminent European Persons. The letter and its list of signatories are copied below. Read more »

That Egypt is encountering economic problems is no secret, but the gravity of the situation is being underestimated.

We know that the IMF negotiations with Egypt for a loan of $4.8 billion have dragged on month after month, and that the IMF team that was sent to conclude the deal left Egypt without doing so. On the other hand, Qatar and Libya agreed last week to increase aid to Egypt by $5 billion. And officially, Egypt claims to have about $16 billion in reserves. Read more »

When I began this blog a little more than two years ago, one of the early posts was entitled “Free Sandmonkey.” Sandmonkey is the “nom de blog” of Mahmoud Salem, then Egypt’s most famous blogger, and he had that day in 2011 been “ambushed & beaten by the police, my phone confiscated, my car ripped apar& supplies taken,” as he informed his readers. He continues to be one of the most interesting and persuasive commentators on events in Egypt. Read more »

Reuters reports that “Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad offered his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday following a rift between the two men over government policy….” Read more »

Last Saturday (March 30) Israel took a large step toward energy independence, as natural gas from the smaller of its newly discovered Mediterranean gas fields began to flow.

By the end of this decade Israel will not only be supplying its own needs fully, but exporting natural gas to the world market. It will be able to supply itself for at least 50 years and perhaps three times as long–reducing its energy costs, improving its environment, making the cost of production lower, and increasing prosperity and state revenues. This natural gas supply more than replaces what Israel used to receive from Egypt, but Egypt has become an unreliable supplier for Israel (and for Jordan as well). Read more »

The continuing, and worsening, crisis in Syria leaves some analysts confused and their writing not very useful. The best guide to what is happening, and what the United States should do, is the writing of Fred Hof of the Atlantic Council. Hof was until last year a key figure in the making of American policy toward Syria, though we can see from his analyses that all too often his excellent advice was rejected by the Obama Administration. Read more »

In remarks he made just before leaving for Israel yesterday, our new Secretary of State indulged in some “old-think” and some outdated language about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Speaking at the State Department, he said this in answer to a question: Read more »

The President leaves for Israel tomorrow. Here are eight suggestions for what he should say when there. No doubt his speechwriters could improve on the language, but these are thoughts it would be very useful for him to express. Such statements would have a serious impact in Israel and in the entire Middle East. Of course, it would be even better if these thoughts really reflected the President’s views and policies. Read more »