“We’re at an inflection point,” Ben Rhodes observed about the United States’ global outlook, a year and a half into the Obama presidency.
Rhodes speaks from a unique vantage point. He’s the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, a title that obscures his importance as one of President Obama’s More…
Building on his previous noncommittal statement about Iran’s declared deal to send most of its uranium to Turkey for enrichment, Robert Gibbs was a human dose of Ativan during his press briefing this afternoon when asked if the move scuttles the United States’ delicately cobbled sanctions effort at the United More…
There’s one up high in this morning’s New York Times piece on the Iran/Turkey/Brazil uranium enrichment deal:
According to a Western diplomat who spoke in return for anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters, the amount of low-enriched uranium that Iran was prepared to ship to
Laura Rozen takes a crack at it.
In other words, be willing to try to get back to diplomatic negotiations with Iran, slow down their program, protect regional allies, and pursue targeted sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard.
The New York Times reported on a memo written by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in January about a paucity of U.S. policy options toward Iran if it continued with illicit uranium enrichment but stopped short of possessing a bomb. It’s a real problem — the proliferation More…
As he attempts to take control of a crucial election-monitoring body ahead of this fall’s parliamentary contest, Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave a blustery statement accusing his longtime Western allies and sponsors of trying to prevent the vote by insisting it should be free and fair. Karzai said the More…
Sarah Palin may think an Iran sanctions package is off the Obama administration’s agenda, but — quelle surprise — it appears that the opposite is occurring. Both before and after yesterday’s Obama-Sarkozy meeting at the White House, sources close to the diplomatic effort indicated that President Obama wants to see More…
If Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s message to the AIPAC conference was one of reconciliation with Israel while nudging it toward the peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s was one of praise for the U.S.-Israel relationship while embracing the peace process in only the vaguest terms.
After More…
The Quartet of major international players attempting to broker an Israeli-Palestinian negotiated settlement — the European Union, the U.S., Russia, and the United Nations — have issued a new statement lauding George Mitchell’s brokered “proximity talks” between the two parties, and calling for those talks to yield direct negotiations More…
Quietly, free of headlines and fanfare, the Obama White House is toning down the bellicose “war-on-drugs” position that’s defined the country’s narcotics policy for the last 25 years.
Appearing in Vienna last week for the 53rd annual United Nations meeting on global drug policy, administration officials shifted away from the More…
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