In the past month, Yemen has returned to the spotlight. The CIA now believes that the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is a larger security threat to the United States than al Qaeda Central in Pakistan. Since then, press accounts have stated that the United States government plans to carry out drone attacks in Yemen, and reported that U.S. Central Command plans to give $1.2 billion in aid to Yemen's military over a five-year period. But such policies, no matter how well-intentioned, are unlikely to solve the very real challenges posed by al Qaeda's presence in Yemen and may well make the situation worse.

It originally appeared that there was widespread consensus in the government on providing such military aid to Yemen. But a recent article in the New York Times highlights that there is a vigorous debate within the Obama administration about the efficacy of such aid. The Obama administration has been debating the legality of droning an American citizen (i.e. Anwar al-Awlaki). Before rushing into a major new program, it's worth recalling the reasons why past U.S.-backed efforts aimed at eliminating al Qaeda's presence in Yemen have failed.

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This morning, at a small meeting with various Washington-based analysts and European diplomats, I was asked to speculate on the future of Iran policy. While it's of course impossible to predict, I don't expect to see military action by the U.S. or by Israel. Nor do I expect to see any serious progress towards a political bargain, either a narrow one about the Iranian nuclear program nor an expansive one about Iran's place in the Middle East. Nor do I expect Iran to test a nuclear weapon.

More likely than either is a relentless slide towards a replay of the Iraq saga of the 1990's: a steady ratcheting-up of sanctions, which increasingly impact the Iranian people but fail to compel change in the regime's political behavior; episodic and frequent diplomatic crises which consume the world's diplomatic attention and resources; the growing militarization and polarization of the Gulf; ongoing uncertainty about Iranian intentions and capabilities. Eventually, as with Iraq, the choices may well narrow sufficiently and the perception of impending threat mount so that a President -- maybe Obama, maybe Palin, maybe anyone else -- finds him or herself faced with "no choice" but to move towards war. "Keeping Tehran in a Box" is not a pretty scenario, nor one which I think anyone especially wants, but it seems the most likely path unless better "off-ramps" are developed to avert it. And such "off-ramps" are the most glaring absence in the current Iran policy debate.  

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Mark Perry's article, "Red Team" (ForeignPolicy.com, June 30) argues that an intelligence unit inside the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) known as the "Red Team" is thinking outside the box about the Middle East and recommending strategies for Hezbollah and Hamas that are "at odds with current U.S. policy."

Perry's thesis is that there is an important divide in the U.S. government over how to deal with these militant groups, as evidenced by the apparent rift between "senior officers at CENTCOM headquarters" and everyone else. For Perry, a prominent advocate of negotiating with radical Islamist groups, this institutional discrepancy over Middle East policy proves that his ideas have achieved credibility at high levels within the U.S. policymaking community.

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While packaged as a triumph, the rollout of a new round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is in fact more of a relief, given the circuitous path required to arrive at the talks. Convinced of the need for a U.S. role that was at once more activist and yet more dispassionate, President Barack Obama's administration committed a series of early diplomatic miscues that strained U.S. relations with both Israelis and Palestinians, and likely delayed the onset of direct negotiations. The legacy of those early errors -- the Sept. 26 expiration (or perhaps extension) of Israel's settlement moratorium -- continues to hang as a dark cloud over the fledgling peace process.

In light of the experience of the last 18 months, therefore, it is prudent to use the commencement of "direct talks" not only to revisit the negotiating issues themselves, but also to reassess the U.S. role in the negotiations.

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In his Iraq speech tonight, President Obama has an opportunity to explain to Americans how the United States and Iraq got to the point where the combat mission had to end by a date certain and explain how his administration can apply these lessons to the ongoing struggle in Afghanistan.

Conventional wisdom among America's foreign policy establishment is that setting deadlines for troop withdrawals from war zones are detrimental for U.S. national security. But this foreign policy establishment is just as wrong about why America is leaving Iraq by a date certain as they were about why we had to go to war in Iraq in the first place.

The narrative constructed by those who advocated that the U.S. increase, or surge, of more troops into Iraq in 2007 goes something like this: President Bush's troop increase demonstrated that our commitment was open-ended and allowed the military to implement a real counterinsurgency strategy that paved the way to "victory." But a closer examination of the facts demonstrates that the opposite is true -- in Iraq, violence declined because more Iraqis perceived that U.S. troops were leaving and took appropriate action.

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In what is possibly a first for the mainstream U.S. media, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently noted some of the parallels between Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands and Morocco's attempted annexation of Western Sahara:

It's fair to acknowledge that there are double standards in the Middle East, with particular scrutiny on Israeli abuses. After all, the biggest theft of Arab land in the Middle East has nothing to do with Palestinians: It is Morocco's robbery of the resource-rich Western Sahara from the people who live there.

And just as one would expect, Morocco's ambassador to the United States, Aziz Mekouar, issued a prompt retort denying that Western Sahara was ever stolen. But the ambassador's logic was a bit fuzzy. "Far from stealing Western Sahara," Mekouar argued, "Morocco has offered the region autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty." Which is like saying that theft is not theft if you are willing to sell the stolen object back to the victims for a good price.

Eleven years ago, current king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, inherited one of the world's oldest thrones together with one of Africa's most intractable conflicts, the Western Sahara dispute. For his father, King Hassan II, the seizure of Western Sahara from Spain became a blessing and a curse. It was arguably Hassan's greatest achievement and yet Western Sahara soon became the greatest challenge to the consolidation of the post-colonial Moroccan state. Over a decade into his rule, Mohammed VI has yet to find a way to make good on his father's conquest and legacy in the contested Western Sahara.

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The view from the US embassy in Beirut overlooking the Mediterranean and Sanin Mountains will probably be the only tranquil picture that Washington's new Ambassador Maura Connelly will encounter as she readies for her new mission.

The latest border clash between the Lebanese army and the IDF, and the leaks of a possible involvement by Hezbollah in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, are driving tensions high in the country. As such, the current situation begs a vigorous US diplomatic push on several fronts in order to avert further escalation and a possibility of war that might spill beyond Lebanon's borders.

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Tuesday's flare-up on the Israel-Lebanon border continues to be analyzed from every angle. Thus far at least, the deaths of three Lebanese (two soldiers and a journalist) and one Israeli soldier have not spiraled into a broader escalation. The much-dreaded and talked about summer war is still a matter of speculation, albeit now heightened (all of this exactly on the fourth anniversary of the 2006 war).

The exact sequence of events is still unclear. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had informed the relevant UN officials of a planned tree clearance deployment in the border area. UNIFIL updated the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) as per protocol while apparently asking the IDF to postpone its activity. The Israelis undertook their somewhat python-esque mission (Israel has none-too-subtle surveillance cameras throughout its border area with Lebanon. The Lebanese don't like it, the trees get in the way, but until this week they were the only innocent victims). An Israeli soldier can be seen almost dangling from a crane to fell the tree - he is clearly over the border fence though the UN has clarified that this particular territory, while on the Lebanese side of the fence, is still on the Israeli side of the UN-demarcated blue line border. The Lebanese seem to be disputing this.

Here is where the respective versions of events go their separate ways. Seeing their side of the fence transgressed and having shouted for Israel to pull back, the LAF either fired warning shots or immediately responded with lethal fire at an IDF position. The IDF either responded with lethal fire of its own on LAF positions or escalated by taking this action. Initial investigations suggest that the Lebanese side escalated. A brief exchange between the LAF and IDF ensued, both sides took casualties, and UNIFIL together with Washington, Paris, and other capitols urgently intervened to prevent further escalation.

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While it is anathema to broach the subject of engaging militant groups like Hizballah and Hamas in official Washington circles (to say nothing of Israel), that is exactly what a team of senior intelligence officers at U.S. Central Command--CENTCOM--has been doing. In a "Red Team" report issued on May 7 and entitled "Managing Hizballah and Hamas," senior CENTCOM intelligence officers question the current U.S. policy of isolating and marginalizing the two movements. Instead, the Red Team recommends a mix of strategies that would integrate the two organizations into their respective political mainstreams. While a Red Team exercise is deliberately designed to provide senior commanders with briefings and assumptions that challenge accepted strategies, the report is at once provocative, controversial--and at odds with current U.S. policy.

Among its other findings, the five-page report calls for the integration of Hizballah into the Lebanese Armed Forces, and Hamas into the Palestinian security forces led by Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The Red Team's conclusion, expressed in the final sentence of the executive summary, is perhaps its most controversial finding: "The U.S. role of assistance to an integrated Lebanese defense force that includes Hizballah; and the continued training of Palestinian security forces in a Palestinian entity that includes Hamas in its government, would be more effective than providing assistance to entities--the government of Lebanon and Fatah--that represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian populace respectively" (emphasis in the original). The report goes on to note that while Hizballah and Hamas "embrace staunch anti-Israel rejectionist policies," the two groups are "pragmatic and opportunistic."

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On Monday, the latest version of Congress's sanctions bill was unveiled just in time to be passed and sent to the president's desk by July 4. The new sanctions bill comes on the heels of the one-year anniversary of the Iranian election that sparked a massive protest movement and brutal government reprisals. But while lawmakers have attempted to reconcile the pain that these new sanctions will impose on ordinary Iranians with Congress's claims of support for the people of Iran, this bill remains a blunt instrument that perpetuates the sanctions-only framework that has dominated the United States' Iran policy for decades.

The sanctions bill is officially titled the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 (H.R. 2194), but it is better known by its shorthand moniker--"crippling sanctions." This was the term popularized by Senator Hillary Clinton when she was campaigning for president, but which fell out of vogue in Secretary Clinton's State Department following the violence and suffering that occurred in Iran over the last year.

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A massive, burgundy-colored banner hung in the arched main drag of Damascus's Souq al-Hamidieh on June 7, lauding the Turkish NGO that was a key participant in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that just one week earlier had been lethally attacked by Israeli commandos in international waters. The banner also thanked Turkey's government and people for their support of the 1.5 million people of besieged Gaza.

This spot is the premier messaging real estate for the big trading houses of Damascus and their allies in the Syrian government. The Syrian government's warm relationship with Turkey is not, of course, new. It is one that President Bashar al-Asad and Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem have worked on for many years now. From 2003 to 2008, when the Bush White House was working hard to encircle and isolate Syria, with a definite view to overthrowing the Asad regime, Damascus's strengthening tie to NATO member Turkey provided what regime insiders have described as "almost literally, a lifeline for us."

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One year ago today, President Barack Obama delivered an historic speech at Cairo University calling for a "new beginning" between America and the Muslim communities of the world. How has this ambitious effort fared over the last year? Has Obama fulfilled his promises? How have the Muslim communities of the world responded? Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics, the author of several authoritative books about al-Qaeda and Islamism, argues that Muslims are deeply frustrated by what they consider the failure to match words with deeds--but that Muslims themselves need to do more if progress is to be made. Peter Mandaville of George Mason University asks whether the whole premise of "Muslim engagement" may be entrenching the very problem it is meant to address. And Middle East Channel editor Marc Lynch and Kristin Lord, who recently co-authored a widely-discussed report on the administration's engagement strategy for the Center for a New American Security entitled ‘America's Extended Hand', point out that the administration has kept more of the promises made in Cairo than is generally recognized, but warn that the efforts may not survive Muslim fury over the American response thus far to Israel's attack on the Turkish aid flotilla to Gaza.

One year ago today, President Obama delivered a much anticipated speech in Cairo, Egypt in which he pledged "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect." That new beginning seemed a long time ago this week, as Muslims expressed outrage over America's seeming support for Israel's naval commando attack on an aid convoy headed towards Gaza. It is no accident that the anniversary of Obama's speech has gone virtually unremarked in the Arab media this week, except for a few comments about unmet promises and some juxtaposition of that glorious moment with America's anemic response to Gaza. 

The President's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told a press conference that he did not believe that the American position would have a great impact on Obama's relations with the Muslim communities of the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the Obama administration does not change its cautious approach quickly and forcefully address the blockade of Gaza which is the real heart of this week's scandal, it will confirm the crystallizing narrative of a President which either can not deliver on its promises or did not mean what he said. This would be a sad epitaph for the President's  carefully nurtured outreach to the Muslim world.

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George Mitchell, the Obama administration's special envoy for Middle East peace, plans to set a deadline for an Israel-Palestinian agreement, applying lessons learned from his successful mediation in a previous conflict.

Mitchell, delivering the keynote address Monday night to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Institute of Peace, said that "no two conflicts are the same." But he noted that he had "established a deadline" that led to the Good Friday agreement of April 10, 1998, that ended the bloody, decades-long conflict between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Asked after the speech whether he intended to set a similar deadline for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Mitchell said that he would do so after indirect talks between the two sides progress to direct negotiations.

"We will [have a deadline] once we do" make that transition, he said. He did not say how much time he would give the parties to agree.

In his speech, Mitchell, who last week concluded two rounds of indirect talks in the Middle East, said he will move "as soon as possible" to direct negotiations.

In his public remarks, the former Senate majority leader acknowledged widespread skepticism both in the region and in Washington that he can broker a deal between the center-right government of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas.

So far, the skeptics would seem to have the better of the argument, with little discernible narrowing of the gaps between the two sides since Mitchell was first appointed to his role -- on the second day of President Obama's term.

But Mitchell said there had been significant progress since the Obama administration took office. He noted that the Netanyahu government has endorsed the concept of an independent Palestinian state and agreed to freeze new housing construction on the West Bank for 10 months. The Palestinians, the envoy said, are working to stop attacks on Israel and have made "substantial improvements in law and order and economic development" in the West Bank. The Arab League has also endorsed the indirect negotiations, known as "proximity talks," he added.

Mitchell said that the proximity talks "are serious and wide-ranging, with both sides trying to move forward under difficult circumstances." All sides, he said, "know more or less what a solution looks like." He repeated what, since the latter part of the George W. Bush administration, has become a mantra for framing the dispute: an end to the occupation that began in 1967, a "viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent" Palestinian state, and "secure, recognized and defensible borders" for Israel.

Mitchell omitted mention of the toughest issues impeding Israeli-Palestinian peace: the fate of Jerusalem and of Palestinian refugees. But he insisted that the situation "is not hopeless" and promised that he will "persevere" in his efforts to end the conflict.

"The tragedies of the past need not determine the opportunities of the future," he said. "There is no such thing as a conflict that can't be ended" if leaders demonstrate courage and political will.

The audience of several hundred at the Four Seasons Hotel responded to Mitchell's remarks with a standing ovation.

Barbara Slavin, a former diplomatic correspondent for USA Today and assistant managing editor of the Washington Times, is the author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation.