Journal of International Studies

The recent intensive negotiations in Geneva between Iran and P5+1—the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany—over Iran’s nuclear program did not result in an interim agreement. The negotiations are to be resumed in Geneva on November 20. One of the thorniest issues is Iran’s claim that, as a signatory of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has, under Article IV of NPT, a fundamental right to accessing all aspects of nuclear technology for peaceful uses, including uranium enrichment on its soil. So far the United States has refused to explicitly recognize Iran’s right to uranium enrichment. In her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October 3, Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, who leads the U.S. delegation in the Geneva negotiations, made the following  statement : it has always been the U.S. position that that article IV of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty does not speak about the right of enrichment ...

It is no secret that the Arab Gulf States have a problem with the style and substance of the US diplomatic approach toward Iran (or rapprochement, as viewed from Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and other Arab Gulf capitals). As allies, they feel they should have been consulted prior to Washington “opening up” to a historical foe such as Tehran, and their primary concern is that talks could amount to a nuclear deal that would threaten their security and sanction the emergence of Iran as power broker and policeman of the region. But Arab Gulf concerns are not limited to the Iran issue, they are rooted in the belief that the Obama administration “simply doesn’t get it and is jeopardizing the alliance,” as one senior Saudi diplomat recently told me. A profound lack of trust currently characterizes relations between the United States and its regional allies. “The gulf is there, whether we like it or not,” one UAE former senior official said to me last summer. Many in the US policymaking communit...

Author:  Elliott Abrams , Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 19, No. 09

Moroccan King Mohammed VI will meet with President Barack Obama in Washington on November 22, amid cascading conflict in the Arab world and new challenges in Arab-American relations. The possibility of US-Iranian detente has stirred hopes among many in the West that a peaceful resolution of the nuclear standoff is possible—but Gulf states and others in the region have voiced concerns about the new initiative. The same may be said of Washington’s UN-brokered accord with Moscow and Damascus calling for the peaceful destruction of the Syrian regime’s chemical-weapons stockpiles: Americans weary of war are relieved by the avoidance of a new military entanglement, whereas the Saudi government has dubbed the agreement “blatantly perfidious”—a sentiment shared by others in the region. Midway into the cloistered US-backed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, fears abound that the process will come to naught and lead to a new Intifada. Meanwhile, Iraqi streets bleed. Tunisians polarize and ra...

Put in context, the simultaneous raids in Libya and Somalia last month, targeting an alleged al-Qaeda fugitive and an alleged kingpin of the al-Shabab Islamist movement, were less a sign of America's awesome might than two minor exceptions that proved an emerging rule: namely, that the power, prestige, and influence of the United States in the broader Middle East and its ability to shape events there is in a death spiral.  Twelve years after the US invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and a decade after the misguided invasion of Iraq - both designed to consolidate and expand America's regional clout by removing adversaries - Washington's actual standing in country  after country, including its chief allies in the region, has never been weaker.   Though President Obama can order raids virtually anywhere using Special Operations forces, and though he can strike willy-nilly in targeted killing actions by calling in the Predator and Reaper drones, he has become the Rodn...