In an exchange yesterday at a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham asked Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter if he thought that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would remain in power after President Barack Obama leaves office, Foreign Policy reported. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — who is also running...

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Citing comments made by White House officials as well as actions taken by the United States, Tony Badran, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, concluded that the administration has “recogniz[ed] Iranian zones in the Levant as legitimate spheres of influence” in an analysis published today in Lebanon’s...

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The $150 billion “signing bonus” in unfrozen funds that Iran would receive in a nuclear deal will strengthen the hold that its proxy terrorist group Hezbollah has over Lebanon, Lebanese politician Ahmad el-Assaad wrote Monday in an op-ed (Google link) for The Wall Street Journal. El-Assaad noted that Iran is stretched thin due to its support of the...

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The desperation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could prompt him to increase the regime’s use of chemical weapons, The Wall Street Journal reported (Google link) yesterday, citing sources in the American government. Last year, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad let international inspectors oversee the removal of what President Barack Obama called the regime’s...

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The Israeli navy intercepted and boarded the last remaining vessel of a flotilla headed towards Gaza without incident, NBC News reported today. The boat — the Marianne av Göteborg, one of four in a convoy called Freedom Flotilla III carrying pro-Palestinian activists — was boarded and redirected to the port of...

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Thousands of people attended funerals on Thursday of eight Iranian citizens killed in clashes in Syria, calling into question the government’s claim that it has not sent any combatants to support the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Iranian officials claim that those who died were “volunteers” rather than government-backed soldiers, and...

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An open letter to the White House signed by a bipartisan group of experts, including five former Obama administration officials, called on the United States to strengthen the emerging nuclear agreement with Iran, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The letter enumerated five elements that need to be strengthened to prevent Iran...

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The emerging deal with Iran will likely have the opposite effect of what President Barack Obama intended, spurring nuclear proliferation in the Middle East rather than curtailing it, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen told Bloomberg reporters on Wednesday. “The administration’s intent was to have a counter-proliferation program. And the...

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The State Department’s 2014 Country Reports on Terrorism (.pdf) once again listed Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and called the Islamic Republic a “proliferation concern,” according to an analysis of the report written by Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall and published today by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). Chapter...

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The effectiveness of a nuclear deal with Iran could be undercut by “bureaucratic neglect—or a political desire to look the other way,” argued an editorial (Google link) in The Wall Street Journal published today. The piece was commenting on a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that found that the State Department “had failed to provide...

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