In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I found another Tablet piece from early 2021 trying to make sense of what might be the Biden foreign policy, this one by Martin Peretz, the controversial former publisher and sometime editor-in-chief of The New Republic . Peretz, a Zionist and something close to a neoconservative, saw a "Mideast blind spot" in Antony Blinken, of whose foreign policy vision he otherwise enthusiastically approved, and he raised the conundrum of Robert Malley: The twinned issues where Blinken has remained conspicuously reticent and indistinct are the Middle East and the elephant in the Middle East, Iran. In lieu of asserting himself, the secretary of state has approved the reopening of nuclear talks with Iran and outsourced them to Robert Malley, whom he appointed or allowed to be appointed U.S. special envoy to that country. Blinken’s reliance on Malley, and Malley’s own history of finding any opportunity to engage with groups and countries that demonstrably align themselves against Americ...