foreignpolicy
Donald Trump oversaw some scary moments in international politics. The former president seriously escalated tensions with North Korea and Iran, leading to several war scares. But he pulled back from the brink, sometimes against the wishes of his more hawkish advisers. He avoided a direct U.S.-Iranian war and opened a direct line of communication with North Korea. Democrats seem to wish he'd gone to war instead. The Democratic National Committee's 2024 platform, approved in a symbolic vote on Monday night, tries to outhawk Trump, denouncing his "fecklessness" on Iran and his "love letters" to N...
Reason
It's been a good week for the weapons industry. President Joe Biden signed off on order after order allowing American weapons to flow to Middle Eastern regimes. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration will sell shipments of bombs worth $750 million to Saudi Arabia, breaking its ban on selling "offensive weapons" to the kingdom. On the same day, the State Department announced over $20 billion in new arms sales to Israel, including fighter jets, armored vehicles, and ammunition. And the Friday before, the administration removed several major barriers to arming ...
Reason
Assassination is on a lot of people's minds. Last month, Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr in Lebanon and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, raising the specter of war with both countries. In an article about these incidents, Foreign Policy magazine hinted that killing Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of and potential successor to Iran's supreme leader, could also be a silver bullet to take down the Iranian government. "The complete unraveling of [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei's succession plans—and a major danger to the survival of the regime—is only one assassination away," the artic...
Reason
In February, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that declared a "national emergency" in response to "high levels of extremist settler violence" in the West Bank and imposed economic sanctions on "persons undermining peace, security, and stability" there. Although he emphasized the threat posed by attacks on Palestinian civilians, his order extended much further, encompassing "any foreign person" whom the secretary of state or the secretary of the treasury deems "complicit" in actions that "threaten the peace, security, or stability of the West Bank." Because the order prohibits "the...
Reason
With NATO's 75th anniversary summit concluded, it's worth taking stock of Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's comment about an "irreversible path to NATO membership" for Ukraine. It was a bad idea two years ago for Ukraine to seek the NATO mantle for its own sake, which played directly into the Russian narrative of an external threat—a narrative critical for Russian President Vladimir Putin to maintain internal stability and his grip on power—and it's a bad idea now. Ukraine should stay out of NATO, not only because Ukraine is better off independent but also because a formal alliance will onl...
Reason
Disturbing talk from Tehran: "The Zionist regime [Israel] will soon receive a strong and definite response, and there is no doubt about it," said Abdolrahim Mousavi, the chief commander of Iran's army, on Wednesday. "It is clear that they themselves have realized the speed of their own destruction, and by doing so, they want to save themselves from the quagmire, but they definitely cannot save themselves from annihilation." Iranian officials said similar things back in April, before Israel and Iran exchanged strikes which did little damage and seemed more symbolic than designed to spiral into ...
Reason
The year was 2007, the Iraq War was in full swing, and Congress was struggling to exercise its oversight. Despite a Democratic blowout in the midterm elections driven by public opposition to the war, then-president George W. Bush wanted to "surge" thousands more U.S. troops into Iraq. Democrats proposed a resolution condemning the plan. A freshman representative from Minnesota, a retired Army master sergeant named Tim Walz, stood up in support of the resolution. "Some have said that this debate sends a message to our enemies, and I would agree. The message our enemies are hearing this week is ...
Reason
Despite an authoritarian regime's efforts to obstruct free and fair elections, Venezuelans turned out in large numbers to vote for their president last Sunday, hoping for change amid widespread political repression and a humanitarian crisis. The U.S. is deeply implicated in this turmoil, as the disputed election results underscore significant geopolitical stakes and can have a significant impact on American interests. A government-controlled electoral commission declared Nicolás Maduro the winner of the election, claiming he received 51 percent of the votes. Yet exit polls and tallies by the o...
Reason
Israeli victories: Yesterday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its airstrikes in mid-July killed Mohammed Deif, a key Hamas operative and one of the masterminds behind the October 7 attacks. On Wednesday, Ismail Haniyeh, another senior Hamas official, was killed by a bomb smuggled into a guesthouse in Tehran, Iran. Israel has claimed responsibility for the attack. "The bomb had been hidden approximately two months ago in the guesthouse, according to five of the Middle Eastern officials," reports The New York Times, also noting that it was detonated remotely. "The guesthouse is run and prot...
Reason
This week has been especially chaotic for the Middle East. On Saturday, a Lebanese rocket killed 12 children and youth at a soccer game in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. (The victims were Syrian citizens with Israeli residency.) On Tuesday night, Israel took revenge for the rocket by killing Fuad Shukr, a commander in the pro-Iranian militia Hezbollah, along with two children. A few hours later, a bomb killed Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas' political bureau and the lead negotiator with Israel, while he was visiting Tehran for the Iranian president's inauguration. Israel is widely bel...
Reason
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