Middle East

President Obama is laboring to defend not just the merits of a nuclear framework with Iran but how the finalization of such a pact would affect his ability to confront Tehran's growing influence.

Read the full Washington Examiner article After nuclear framework, will Obama be able to confront Iran?

Relations between Israel and the US are at their most strained in years, following comments by newly-re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there wouldn't be a Palestinian state on “his watch.”

Read the full Voice of America article Palestinians Consider UN Options

The Republican majority in the U.S. Congress led by House Speaker John Boehner, along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama are engaged in a vital debate on how to deal with the Iranian nuclear program.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least among American political analysts, that the struggle against violent Islamist extremism is back in play as an organizing principle in international affairs.

Read the full World Politics Review article U.N. Trapped on Front Lines of New Struggle With Violent Islamists

Last week’s top-level session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York offered three basic lessons. The first is that the United States can still dominate the U.N. when it wants to. The second is that a clear majority of other countries’ leaders are quite relieved to follow an American lead. But the third is that the U.N. is only really still relevant in two—admittedly sensitive—regions: Africa and the Middle East.