My Blog Posts

• Get Them on the Phone
  04/02/2009 04:17:14 PM EST
  The spat between the United States and China over the recent naval incident in the South China Sea recalls another standoff involving the U.S. Navy a year ago. On January 6, 2008, five Iranian speed boats circled three U.S. Navy warships. Before they turned away, one of the U.S. ships was reportedly on the verge of firing at the Iranian vessels. “I do not have a direct link with my counterpart in the Iranian Navy,” Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, told reporters in the aftermath of the incident. That could change soon. Congress is crafting a proposal to set up a hotline between Iranian and U.S. naval officials operating in the Persian Gulf.
• Syria’s Assad: Obama “A Man of His Words"
  03/19/2009 04:57:19 PM EST
  NOTE: TRANSLATION AFTER JUMP President Obama “has shown himself to be a man of his words,” Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad told the Italian center-left newspaper La Repubblica. Syria is open to mediate between the West and Iran, he added.   Earlier this month the Obama administration sent a senior diplomatic envoy to Damascus, hoping to find common ground on “a number of issues,” which probably included Syria’s diplomacy with Israel, its role in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, and its relationship with Iran.   The United Sates has long tried to increase Iran’s political isolation in the region by driving a wedge between Damascus and Tehran. Assad, though, is playing his cards carefully.
• What Washington Can Learn from Baghdad
  03/19/2009 04:40:49 PM EST
  On November 27, 2008, the Iraqi parliament approved a landmark security agreement with the United States. More than half of the parliament voted for the agreement, which now must be approved by the Iraqi people in a nationwide referendum to be held by July 30. In Washington, however, neither a “yea” nor a “nay” has been heard from Congress on the agreement. Insisting it had the authority to negotiate unilaterally, the Bush administration engaged Congress only symbolically (briefings, etc.) while working out the details with Iraq.
• Are They? Or Are They Not?
  03/17/2009 12:35:17 PM EST
  The U.S. government should be more cautious in its statements about Iran’s nuclear intentions. If we want the Iranians to sit at the negotiating table, we need to stop faulting them for things we are not sure about. As our executive director John Isaacs said last month, “Negotiations with Iran are more likely to bear fruit if Iranians don’t feel like the United States is officially accusing them of being dead-set on going nuclear.”