by Paul R. Pillar Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been visiting Iraq this week—a friendly, extended visit that has yielded several bilateral agreements on trade and transportation. Such an event causes heartburn, of course, within the Trump administration and for… Continue Reading
by Shireen T. Hunter In Iran, President Hassan Rouhani’s recent visit to Iraq has been hailed as a great victory. In particular, Iranian officials and media have portrayed the visit as demonstrating the inability of the United States as… Continue Reading
by Joe Macaron In the past two months, US officials have been baffled by how to spin President Donald Trump’s hasty decision last December to withdraw US forces from Syria. Once again, they were unable to come up with an… Continue Reading
by Joe Stork When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Cairo on January 10, he commended President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi for his “leadership” in combating “the ongoing threat of terrorism as well as the radical Islamism that fuels it.” In fact,… Continue Reading
by Alia Ahmed In an about-turn of its two decades-old policy on Afghanistan, President Donald Trump tweeted in mid-December his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan (and Syria). Until September last year, the United States had held firmly to… Continue Reading