Admiral Michael Mullen appears to concur with General David Petraeus’ and the administration’s views on “linkage” in a document released in the “Palestine Papers” (h/t Alex Kane at Mondoweiss).
Notes from a June 16, 2009 meeting show the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, quoting what Mullen told Mahmoud Abbas:
I have [...]
We here at LobeLog have been critical of The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin for her use of negative labels to describe her political opponents (e.g. complaining that American Jews have a “sick addiction” to the Democratic party), her factual distortions about HSBC’s advertisement which included a factoid about the number of female film [...]
The Economist, in its latest cover editorial, appears to be solidly behind the concept of “linkage” in its call for greater U.S. leadership in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Linkage—a concept endorsed by the top levels of the U.S. military and the Obama administration–is a position that holds that ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will [...]
In their zeal to undermine or discredit Obama in any way they can, the neo-conservative Weekly Standard and former top Bush adviser Karl Rove have been indirectly making the case that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the single, most important recruitment tool of Al Qaeda and presumably other violent Islamist groups based in the borderlands of [...]
News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for December 17, 2010:
Weekly Standard: Michael Weiss attacks the concept of ‘linkage‘ in a long, convoluted piece on the Standard‘s blog. Leading off with an overstatement explanation of linkage (“by resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict most other problems will be resolved”), Weiss goes on to [...]
The Center for American Progress’ Matt Duss has a piece up on Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel. He points to the ample evidence in the WikiLeaks cables that Arab leaders see the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a serious impediment to containing and deterring an increasingly powerful Iran.
It’s worth noting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Middle East policy address on Friday contained yet another explicit endorsement of the concept of ‘linkage‘ between resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the long-term strategic interests of the United States in the Middle East.
… Iran and its proxies are not the [...]
The reliably hawkish Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs‘ (JINSA) Friday report argues that following the Obama administration’s failed attempt to convince Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a settlement freeze, it’s time to “end the ‘peace process’ and move on.”
From here, JINSA goes on to seriously distort the messages consistently delivered [...]
News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for December 11-13, 2010:
The Wall Street Journal: Ronen Bergman, a military analyst for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, opines that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has barely been able to contain his satisfaction over WikiLeaks cables showing Arab leaders so afraid of Iran that “they even appear [...]
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News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for November 27-29, 2010:
The Wall Street Journal: Harvard professor and Project for the New American Century signatory Stephen Peter Rosen writes that while the United States promotes the elimination of nuclear weapons, Iran and North Korea have made the acquisition of nuclear weapons their high priority. [...]