In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

And by old-style, I think of, say, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and the Bushes père et fils . Joe's performance in Tel Aviv. which begins at about 4:05 in the video, is none of the above. He's looking down, reading very deliberately from notecards in an affectless tone, barely avoiding slurring. "They're committed evils that uh, and atrocities that, uh, make ISIS, uh, look uh somewhat more rational. Y'know uh -- Americans are grieving with you. They really are. And Americans are worried. Americans are worried because they know there's uh this is not an easy field'a navigate whatcha havta do." At about 5:58, he threatens to veer into another trademark self-serving account of days gone by: "Y'know, uh, years ago I asked the Secretary of State when we were serving in the Senate [presumably John Kerry] to write something for a man -- said, uh, you know a line that I think is appropriate, he said, uh, we need, uh, not just uh -- ...

Antony Blinken hasn't been having a good tour of the Middle East : Secretary of State Antony Blinken received a cold reception from Egyptian and Saudi leaders during meetings about support for Israel on Sunday, according to The Washington Post. Egypt’s Abdel Fatah El-Sisi and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) rejected Blinken’s call for support of Israel’s counteroffensive in the Gaza Strip, the Post reported on Sunday. El-Sisi and Salman made it clear that they stood with Palestinians and called for Israel to end its “siege” in Gaza. “I heard a lot of good ideas about some of the things we need to do moving forward,” Blinken told reporters on Sunday following his meeting. MBS kept Blinken waiting for hours before their expected discussion on Saturday, instead choosing to show up to the meeting the next morning, according to the Post. When the two eventually met, MBS “stressed” that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) should halt its counter-offensive “that [h...

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...

I ran into this short piece at Tablet , one of the sites that broke the Malley-Tabatabai story the week before the Hamas invasion of Israel, which points out that they'd been contrarian over US policy over Israel and Iran all along, with links to prove it. One of those links, from May 2021, is The Realignment: In the Middle East, Biden is finishing what Obama started. And his top advisers are all on board. A little searching indicates that this was re-linked frequently at the time, but it's gone dormant until the new questions have come up about Blinken and Malley. Is the new president [Biden] forging his own path in the Middle East, or is he following in the footsteps of Obama? Until now, those who feared that his presidency might become the third term of Obama fixed their wary eyes on Robert Malley, the president’s choice as Iran envoy. When serving in the Obama White House, Malley helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, which sought accommodations with Tehran that...

I'm deeply skeptical of this week's news. Israel, as it has every right to do, has carefully controlled news from its war in Gaza to the point that anything we hear is days old at best, and it reveals almost nothing. So naturally, across the board, legacy media and Conservative Inc lead with Israel-Hamas non-news or the sideshow of pro-Hamas demonstrations elsewhere. There are occasional notes that Joe Biden hasn't been very visible for much of the week -- his big event was tripping on some steps in Philadelphia yesterday. But enough other news still dribbles out to convince me there's stuff we aren't being told. For instance, it sounds as if, instead of being in the White House Situation Room being briefed with his cabinet on the Hamas war, Joe spent Sunday and Monday of the holiday weekend in an interview with Robert Hur, the special counsel for his own classified document investigation: Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office...

Just poking around the web for information on the on again-off again $6 billion payment to Iran, I found this as of June 16 : U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected reports Friday that Washington and Tehran were close to deals on limiting Iran's nuclear program and releasing U.S. citizens detained in the country. "With regard to Iran, some of the reports that we've seen about an agreement on nuclear matters or, for that matter, on detainees, are simply not accurate and not true," Blinken said when asked about indirect talks via Oman. As of August 10, we heard this : The United States and Iran reached a deal on August 10 for Tehran’s release of five Iranian-American dual nationals to house arrest in exchange for Washington’s release of several jailed Iranians and the unfreezing of about $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue. . . . The latest prisoner release is not the first time Iran has demanded ransom payments in exchange for releasing hostage...

Recent developments have focused attention on Ariane Tabatabai, in particular that she is currently Chief of Staff for the US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. On the other hand, a web search brings up what almost looks like too much information. She appears on web sites as adjunct professor at Goergetown University , Middle East Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and an adjunct senior research scholar at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) , and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which says of her Ariane M. Tabatabai is an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation. Prior to joining RAND, she served as the director of curriculum and a visiting assistant professor of security studies at the Georgetown University Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and an international civilian consultant for NATO. Previously, Tabatabai ...