[This piece originally appeared at Huffington Post.] Istanbul, Turkey — I just experienced the blessing of visiting Iran for the first time. Here are some things I learned. 1. If you are visiting someone’s office and you appear very sleepy, you may be asked if you want to take a nap. If you say yes,…
[In what follows, I have redacted email addresses, phone numbers, and the names of people who were copied in the exchange but did not participate in it. These are replaced by “X.” When the identity of a participant in the exchange was identified by their email address, the name follows the redacted email address in…
In the wake of the Israeli election — in which now re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spectacularly unmasked himself and his supporters as diehard opponents of a diplomatic resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and in which Netanyahu engaged, as the New York Times put it, in a "racist rant" against the Palestinian citizens of Israel — the Obama Administration…
Congressional Republicans who are trying to blow up U.S.-European diplomacy with Iran would desperately like Americans to believe that they have some alternative besides war to the administration’s multilateral efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement with Iran. If any fair-minded man or woman who reads newspapers retains any doubt that this claim is fraudulent, let…
Latest Update: March 3 12:30 AM If your rep is undeclared or on the fence, give them a call at 1-202-224-3121. When you reach a staffer, you can say something like: I urge Rep./Sen. ___________ to join 60 other Democrats in skipping Netanyahu’s March 3 speech. Please stand with Democrats who support President Obama’s Iran…
A recent CNN poll found that four out of five Democratic voters oppose the Israeli Prime Minister’s planned March 3 tirade to Congress against diplomacy. Thursday morning, twenty-three House Democrats did something about it. They sent a lettercalling on House Speaker John Boehner to postpone Netanyahu’s scheduled March 3 address until after the Israeli elections two weeks later…
When the 1% were plotting to overthrow the Roman republic, the great democratic orator Cicero gave a series of speeches in the Roman Senate, exposing the conspiracy. These speeches came to be known as the "Catilinarians" or the "Catiline Orations," after the principal target of the speeches, Lucius Sergius Catilina. For two thousand years, these…
A proposed New Year’s Resolution: in 2015, let’s not punish the Palestinians for joining the International Criminal Court. No doubt some Members of Congress – presumably, the ones who aren’t busy resigning for felony tax evasion or defending themselves for schmoozing with white supremacists – will try to gin up an outrage festival and demand sanctions on the Palestinians for…
A left-right coalition, supported by the president and public opinion, could successfully push Congress to end the Cuba embargo. Can Republicans nostalgic for the Cold War block President Obama from taking executive actions to improve US diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba? Could a Republican-led Congress vote to end the US embargo? Some Republican leaders…
At long last, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to vote this week on an authorization for the use of force for the war against ISIS that started in early August. There is little doubt that a majority of the committee supports the use of force against ISIS. What will be revealed this week…