Middle East
October 13, 2025 — John Hinderaker
After his triumphant visit to Israel, President Trump continued on to Egypt, where representatives of the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and Turkey signed a joint statement on the future of the Middle East. President Trump had a 20-point peace plan that included the end of Hamas influence in Gaza, but this agreement was a different document that did not set out the Trump plan. This is what it says, per the
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June 23, 2025 — John Hinderaker
OK, that might be a little premature. But apparently the brief “war” we have been experiencing is about to end, for now: I confess that I am not ready for the 12-day war to be over. I want the mullahs destroyed and overthrown, and, preferably, the return of the Shah to lead a constitutional monarchy. But Trump’s announcement indicates, in essence, a surrender by Iran’s leadership–whoever that may be, at
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June 17, 2025 — John Hinderaker
There is worry in some quarters that the U.S. may become involved in a Middle Eastern war. I think there is nearly zero chance of that happening, but the motto of the Defense Department, like the Boy Scouts, is: be prepared. So the USS Nimitz is cruising toward the Persian Gulf. This article in the Telegraph by former Royal Navy officer Tom Sharpe is behind a paywall, but that link
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June 12, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Tonight Israel launched preemptive strikes against Iran, intended to destroy the mullahs’ nuclear capability. The Times of Israel reports: The IDF confirms it has launched an aerial campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. Dozens of targets across Iran related to the nuclear program and other military facilities are being struck by the Israeli Air Force, it says. *** The IDF says Iran has enough enriched uranium to build 15 nuclear bombs
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April 17, 2025 — John Hinderaker
That is what Beirut was called when I was in law school in the early 1970s. Some New York law firms had Beirut offices. It was considered a great posting for a young lawyer. These are scenes from the Beirut of those days: 50 years ago today, on April 13 1975, Palestinian terrorists opened fire on a church in Beirut, killing 4 Christians. It was the start of the Lebanese
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February 9, 2025 — Scott Johnson
On her last day in Australia yesterday, Melanie Phillips appeared with John Hinderaker’s friends on the Sky News Australia show Outsiders to discuss President Trump’s proposal for a Gaza “Riviera,” the Arab world’s current view of Israel and the western liberals’ love affair with Hamas. Phillips is the brilliant columnist and author, most recently, of The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West — and Why Only They
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November 2, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Joe Biden is conspicuously missing from the Harris-Walz campaign surrogate and celebrity blitz, unlike Barack Obama. There’s also Bill Clinton, who privately may not really want Kamala Harris to win because it would make Hillary’s reputation sink even further. But he’s clearly straying from preferred campaign talking points when he goes off about the Palestinians and Hamas. As has been reported in the past, the person in the world Clinton
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June 25, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Naftali Bennett, the once and future Prime Minister of Israel, was the keynote speaker at American Experiment’s Annual Dinner earlier this month. I was privileged to spend some time with Bennett, and found him deeply impressive. I will be surprised if he is not Israel’s Prime Minister within the next two years. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Bennett has an op-ed titled “The U.S. and Israel’s Common Fight.” Nothing in
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April 13, 2024 — Steven Hayward
It is hard to conclude from media accounts exactly what is up between Israel and Iran right now, because for all of the leaked and disclosed information, there is always more going on behind the scenes that we never find out about for a long time. But this news item just breaking a couple hours ago seems possibly significant: Biden Rushes Back to White House as Iran Weighs Attack on
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February 22, 2024 — Steven Hayward
More evidence that the Biden Administration is largely staffed by morons and ignoramuses. A couple days ago I drew a contrast between the late UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Biden’s UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who gives Kamala Harris a run for her money in the word-salad platitudes sweepstakes. Thomas-Greenfield outdid herself when, after the Algerian cease-fire resolution was defeated a few days ago, she concluded her statement as follows:
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February 13, 2024 — Scott Johnson
During the 2020 presidential campaign and first years of Biden’s presidency I repeatedly set the over/under on the decline of Biden’s mental faculties at 40 percent. In early 2021 we were asked by one of the organizations that rates sites for reliability on what basis we disparaged Biden’s capacity. They apparently didn’t want to consider the ocular proof. Now ABC News reports that the overwhelming majority of Americans think Biden
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November 15, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Clifford May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current is “Don’t know much about Middle Eastern history” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power Line.
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October 27, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Jeremy Stern is deputy editor of Tablet. He has written a stupendous account of the rise of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan headlined “The George Kennan who wasn’t.” It a long column that warrants a full reading. Here are a few paragraphs (links omitted) that are keyed to to Susan Glasser’s recent (laudatory, of course) New Yorker profile of Sullivan: As it happened, The New Yorker profile arrived just in
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October 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In the adjacent post, I quote President Biden regurgitating the shibboleths governing the administration’s Middle East foreign policy. To get a full view of the underlying idiocy that events have exposed, see Joe Simonson’s Free Beacon story “In Foreign Affairs Essay, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Said Biden Has ‘De-Escalated Crises in Gaza.’ Then He Erased the Evidence.” Subhead: “Foreign Affairs edited Sullivan’s piece after Hamas attacks.” Here is the
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October 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Liel Leibovitz is editor at large for Tablet. Having emigrated from Israel to New York, he draws on his experience to ask what accounts for the marches, riots, and demonstrations supporting Hamas in the urban centers of the United States. He calls it the banlieueization of American cities and college campuses in his City Journal column “American Banlieue.” As for the rioters, he observes: “Most are young, and most are
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October 19, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
Ammar Campa-Najjar, the self-described “Palestinian Mexican-American,” was previously known as Ammar Yasser Najjar after his father, an official with the Palestinian Authority in Gaza who supposedly “migrated to the United States on a student visa.” As outlined here previously, Ammar is also the grandson of Muhammad Abu Yousef al-Najjar, mastermind of the Palestinian terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The terrorists not only
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October 14, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Dan Senor’s Call Me Back podcast seeks to ascertain “What history can teach us about the current decade we’re in – the 2020s.” In the current episode with Elliott Abrams, they seek to “provide additional detail on the history of Israel-Gaza/Hamas — this time from a White House insider on U.S.-Middle East policy during a critical period in Hamas’s takeover of Gaza — what were leaders in Washington and Jerusalem
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