President Trump hopes to use a second summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un in the coming weeks to jumpstart progress on dismantling the North’s nuclear program, but Kim’s recent statements and Pyongyang’s clandestine work on its program raise serious questions about the President’s approach. To be sure, Kim has maintained his freeze on nuclear or …
Continue reading “Second Trump-Kim summit risks US credibility”
U.S. foreign policy toward Iran is approaching a “back to the future” moment, with the Trump White House resurrecting the strategy pursued by President George W. Bush (and, for a while, President Barack Obama) of pressuring Iran economically into abandoning its nuclear pursuits. The question now is whether President Trump, or if necessary a successor, …
Continue reading “Can Iran Wait out Trump’s Pressure Campaign?”
When President Trump announced last month that America would leave the global nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose U.S. sanctions, Europe’s leaders vowed to create financial mechanisms that would enable their firms to do business with Tehran and protect them from U.S. financial retaliation. On the eve of Trump’s May 8 decision, for instance, senior …
Continue reading “When it comes to Iran, America is still running the show”
With more freedom to maneuver on foreign than domestic affairs, and with their eyes focused squarely on their legacies, all modern U.S. presidents have sought to craft the elusive deal that will solve a protracted global conflict. So, with dismal prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace, we shouldn’t be surprised that President Trump is now pursuing a …
Continue reading “North Korean summit calls for a hard line from Trump”
With President Trump’s pick of John Bolton as National Security Advisor raising the chances of a U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Washington must be ready in its aftermath to pursue a bold, broad, and effective strategy to restrain Tehran’s nuclear dreams and hegemonic ambitions. That’s because a withdrawal, which would probably come …
Continue reading “America has a plan to dismantle the Iran Deal; now it needs one for the aftermath”
MILITARY SKIRMISHES AND escalating threats between Iran and Israel of late are raising the risks of a catastrophic regional war, prompting questions about what the United States should do to prevent it. To date, President Donald Trump has focused more attention on defeating the Islamic State group in Syria than on preventing Iran from filling …
Like an all-too-proud father rejecting a teacher’s legitimate criticism of his child, former Secretary of State John Kerry is defending the U.S.-led global nuclear agreement with Iran that he engineered from the legitimate concerns of Iran-watchers in the Trump administration, Congress and the private sector. President Donald Trump and his top foreign policy advisers are …