Months of rocket and drone attacks against Americans in Iraq are being blamed on Iran-backed militias. Team Biden has no realistic plan to make the attacks stop.
Seth J. Frantzman is the author of After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East (Gefen Publishing House, 2019). Executive Director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis (MECRA), he covers Middle East affairs for The Jerusalem Post and is a contributor to Defense News.
Killer-drone swarms and innovative missiles mean every country on earth is scrambling to improve its aerial defenses.
The government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken on highly destabilizing roles in almost all the region’s conflicts, and that’s the last thing this part of the world needs.
Counter-terror on a shoestring will empower Washington’s major adversaries.
He sees every foreign-policy relationship as a transaction: How much does the U.S. pay, and what does it get in return? Don’t think he won’t do the same with Israel.
Trump and Netanyahu have found common cause attacking an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, but Tehran's long game, expelling the U.S. from the region, is prospering.
Israel’s relations in the region are now the opposite of what they were in the 1950s. It has some Arab friends, but the most powerful emerging countries are hostile.
Russia’s real goal is not to end the war in Syria, but to sustain low-level confrontations where all sides become dependent on Moscow. It’s doing much the same in east Ukraine.
In the new international norm, assertions of “security concerns” mean strong countries can take over weaker neighbors and redraw ethnic and demographic boundaries.
Partly by accident and partly by mission creep, the U.S. has found itself sitting astride the most important real estate in the Middle East.