Cross-posted at Foreign Policy Watch. The Pentagon is buying 172 million bullets for Iraq’s security forces. That’s roughly 500 bullets per soldier. They’ve also put in an order for twenty thousand grenades to arm the Iraqis’ supply of RPG Launchers. All of this military aid raises an important question: given the sectarian and disloyal nature of many of Iraq’s security units, is this really a good call? Of course, ensuring that Iraq’s security forces are strong...

…The Bush administration is not enforcing its own sanctions against Iran.

In 1979, as part of the Camp David Accords, the United States agreed to provide Egypt with roughly 2 billion dollars a year in economic and military assistance. The money, although not publicly acknowledged as such, was something of a bribe. Indeed, for Egypt’s decision to remain neutral in the Cold War, for its agreement to maintain peace with Israel, and for its support of US policies in the region, two billion dollars a year seemed like a pretty fair deal. But now, nearly three decades...

In the past few months, two Congressional delegations have met with members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. American policy towards the Muslim Brotherhood (a popular, Egyptian-based Islamic organization that has been officially banned since 1954) has traditionally been one of non-engagement. But with democracy now being talked about as a remedy to many of the problems plaguing the Middle East, many Congressmen are beginning to realize that it’s important to start talking with the Brotherhood....

Al-Hurra, the American-sponsored Arabic television network, has been embroiled in controversy in recent weeks. The controversy has gained center attention through the writings of Joel Mowbray in The Wall Street Journal who has lashed out at high-ranking members of the network’s current leadership. He suggests that al-Hurra is so badly run that they’ve allowed active support for terrorism and a sympathetic view towards Arab autocrats to become an evident part of their news coverage. This...

Our policy towards Iran needs to be quite delicate. I’ve discussed the country’s fragile political situation before and I’ve mentioned that there is currently a major power struggle between more moderate elements of the government and hard-liners. We need to carefully take note of these political developments because they must factor into our decisions about how to engage with Tehran. Continued at Foreign Policy Watch.

…concludes that the practice is ineffective and often counterproductive. But is there an alternative?

The recent meeting between American and Iranian officials in Baghdad effectively brings to an end the Bush administration’s use of ‘enforced isolation’ as a strategy of its foreign policy. Although American officials have publicly emphasized that the talks were limited in scope and that our approach towards Iran has not changed, the reality is quite different. With Rice’s trip to Damascus recently and our current attempts at diplomacy with Tehran, there seems to be a growing...

How can we undermine Hamas and bolster Palestinian moderates? I discuss this question in a post at Foreign Policy Watch.

Take a look at this clip from Al Jazeera: Despite all the criticism that it gets, only on Al Jazeera do you have such open, intense forums for debate where secular activists like Wafa Sultan can have their voices heard. This video, for instance, is a segment of a program with Faisal al-Qasim, the host of the political debate show, The Opposite Direction. On his show, Qasim regularly puts forward a highly controversial question (”Why are Muslims attracted to terrorism?” or “Will...

In Lebanon, there’s been an upsurge in fighting in the past few days. In Beirut, there have been several major bomb attacks and, in the northern part of the country (near Tripoli), the Lebanese army has been openly fighting Palestinian militants. Nearly all of this violence can, reportedly, be traced back to a group known as Fatah al-Islam, led by a Palestinian man named Shakir al-Abssi. Continued at Foreign Policy Watch.

Soap operas in Ukraine must have terrible ratings. That is to say, not even the wrangling between evil twins fighting for an heiress’s fortune could compete with the drama of the country’s deadlocked government. Via Foreign Policy Watch.

Dave Dryer, my new co-blogger at Foreign Policy Watch, has written an in-depth analysis of the state of Iran’s nuclear program. Arms control wonks and other TMV readers should definitely check it out.

Two former military commanders wrote a blazing op-ed in The Washington Post recently laying out the dangers of engaging in torture. Here’s an excerpt: As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture — only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works — the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real “ticking time bomb”...

It’s been a tough week for the United Nations.

During the Cold War the West supported various pro-democracy and anti-Communist voices throughout the world, and the same can be done today. Why not empower moderates within the Muslim world? Why not intervene in what is often defined as a civil war for the soul of Islam in support of those who espouse positions that are compatible with our national interest? - Lorenzo Vidino, author of Al Qaeda in Europe, writing in The Boston Globe It’s an argument that we are hearing a lot lately: the best...

Ahmadinejad’s popularity and the Iranian economy are both on the decline. Is there an opening here that might lead to an end to the nuclear standoff? I think so.

On Thursday night, a somewhat unusual incident occurred at the regional conference in Sharm el-Sheikh. At the conference, which was convened to discuss stabilization efforts in Iraq, much of the international focus has centered on whether or not Condoleezza Rice would speak with her Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki. Reportedly, they had exchanged “pleasantries” earlier that evening and Rice was planning on speaking with him in more detail at the end of a diplomatic dinner. But...

Joschka Fischer, over at The Guardian’s blog, has written a good — if slightly dull — post calling for the EU to take more aggressive action against the Sudanese government. …measures should target the Sudanese government where it hurts most: revenue and foreign investment inflows into Sudan’s petroleum sector, and supply of goods and services to that and associated sectors. The EU and its member states’ governments must enact legislation to ban companies based...

Democracy promotion, once the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, has now almost completely been forgotten. It’s been interesting to watch how this has happened. Just two years ago, in the summer of 2005, Condoleezza Rice made a major speech at the American University of Cairo calling for economic and political reform throughout the Arab world. At the time, there was a sense that all this talk of reform by the Bush administration was actually having an effect. Saudi...

The ongoing conflict in Somalia is being portrayed in very black-and-white terms in both the American and much of the international press. The media really seems to be parroting the line of the Bush administration by painting it as a fight of good vs. evil, stability vs. chaos, moderates vs. radicals, etc.. The Islamists, cobbled together in an organization called the “Union of Islamic Courts,” have been criticized for their desire to establish an Islamic state, for their alleged links...

I recently went to hear a speech by Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American and the founder of the website The Electronic Intifada. Abunimah’s argument, which he outlines in a book that was published last year, is that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a unified, binational state. I discuss this idea in a recent post at Foreign Policy Watch.

Why does Europe oppose the Bush administration’s plan to develop such a system? I analyze this question in a new post at Foreign Policy Watch.

An article that I read recently has begun to change my mind…

There are a number of lessons to be learned from the recent British hostage crisis: most importantly, bilateral talks combined with face-saving measures is the best way to deal with Iran. This dispute says a lot about the Iranians and about how we should be engaging with them. First, this crisis has made it quite clear that threatening the Iranian regime will not work. When Blair threatened to take this issue to “the next phase” if the hostages were not released, he only worsened the...