Briefing in a Minute: The Middle East Right Now

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
24 July '10


Snippets on the latest developments and themes in the region:

--Israel will deploy Iron Dome defense against rockets, mainly from the Gaza Strip, in November.

--EU "foreign minister" Ashton and--separately--Turkey and Syria--call for complete end of any blockade on the Gaza Strip. Ha! Great minds think alike. Why shouldn't Hamas have all the weapons it wants?

--Syria bans face veils in universities. Promoting revolutionary Islamism is fine as a foreign policy campaign but we wouldn't want them to take over our country and shoot the rulers, right?

--U.S.-Israel relations are quite good, the best at any time during the current presidency, and this could be expected to continue into early 2011 at least.

--The U.S. government has upgraded the Palestinian Authority representatives in the United States to the level of a general delegation, allowing them to fly the Palestinian flag in Washington DC. If this had come after the PA accepted direct negotiations with Israel that might have been understood. But once again we see the fatal pattern: first give a unilateral concession in hope that the other side will reciprocate. Shall I list the occasions on which that approach has failed during the last 18 months? You can develop your own list. That's not the way to do foreign policy.

--The new sanctions against Iran are definitely causing some pressure on and within the country though short of stopping the nuclear campaign it should weaken Tehran's ability to carry out its policies to build up militarily and advance further in regional influence.

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