Benny Gantz was in Washington this week. His mission was to get as much as he could form the Trump administration to compensate for the sale of advanced military equipment to the United Arab Emirates as part of the normalization agreement signed between Israel and the UAE last week. In my latest piece for Responsible Statecraft, I look at some of the particular items he might be asking for. But…
In the latest episode of the ReThinking Foreign Policy podcast, I argue that the deals struck between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain this week in Washington not only are mislabeled as “peace agreements,” but are actually a recipe for greater conflict and hold no hope for real peace in the region. Next, I discuss a story published this weekend about a possible Iranian plot to kill a US ambassador…
Over the weekend a stunning bit of news came out. Apparently, U.S. intelligence is claiming that there is a specific threat from Iran against the American Ambassador to South Africa, Lana Marks. If true, this could represent a serious risk of escalation between the U.S. and Iran. The risk of a military confrontation, even war, is magnified if Trump believes that it would help his re-election chances. The timing of…
Israel did not sign “peace deals” with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain today. You can’t make peace between countries who have never been at war. And the notion that they are only now establishing a relationship is laughable. Clandestine relationships between Israel and the Gulf states have existed for a long time, in some cases, not even all that clandestine. But while the pomp and circumstance around these agreements…
Whatever becomes of the empty deals Serbia and Kosovo signed with the Trump administration (and they are falling apart quickly), involving Israel was aimed at pleasing Trump’s evangelical Christian base. Israel itself may not even have had a deep involvement with this move, but it still demonstrates something about Israel’s strategy. Some call it Israel’s “outside-in” strategy, the idea being that Israel is reversing long-held ideas about needing to make…
