Arab leaders love the idea that President Trump is ready to give Iran a punch in the nose. But is this White House truly serious about challenging Iranian power in the Middle East? The evidence is mixed, at best. I heard passionate enthusiasm for Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal from prominent Arabs gathered here last weekend for a conference sponsored by the Beirut Institute. They know that scuttling the nuclear deal could be dangerous, and that the region is already a po

So what’s next with Iran? Even if you think President Trump has made a big mistake in withdrawing from the nuclear agreement, as I do, that’s not the end of the story. Where does this bumpy road lead in the future?What’s distressing about the Iran question is that nobody in this administration seems to have a good answer. Trump’s move was a chest-thumping political decision, but not a clearly articulated strategy. As unwise as Trump’s action was, it was probably inevitable, given his overblown r

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed a treasure trove of secrets on Monday about Iran’s hidden nuclear activities. But it would be a waste of this extraordinary intelligence to use it as a pretext for American withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. Much better to use it as a pressure tool to squeeze Tehran.The Israeli intelligence coup should open the way for a much smarter US campaign to isolate Iran and tighten the deal -- and bring Europe, Russia and China along in a common push

Sitting at the controls of a Boeing space-flight simulator, “docking” the company’s planned “Starliner” craft with an imaginary space station, you begin to understand why the Pentagon is so focused on such advanced systems. Space is the new frontier of warfare. That was the theme of a “Space Symposium” here this week that gathered thousands of military and corporate experts from around the globe. A version of the Boeing simulator may someday be training the 21st-century version of fighter pilots

A word of advice for Congress as it ponders new schemes for internet regulation after the “perp walk” this week of Facebook tycoon Mark Zuckerberg: Don’t do it. Zuckerberg is a very tempting target. His serial apologies show how Facebook became so entangled in its corporate mission to “bring the world closer together” that it stopped putting the customer first. Facebook is paying for its mistakes in loss of customer trust -- its main asset -- and this market punishment has only just begun. It’s

One face of the war in Syria that Americans don’t often see is the US Army trauma surgeon, standing in the midday sun on the outskirts of Raqqa, taking a brief break from her near-constant duty in the operating room treating Syrians whose limbs have been shattered by bombs and booby traps.The doctor is a lieutenant colonel serving with US special operations forces, and under the ground rules for my four-day trip to Syria in February, I’m not allowed to use her name. She’s a trim, clear-eyed woma

Donald Trump made the case in “The Art of the Deal” for “winging it” on big negotiations. “I never get too attached to one deal or one approach,” he wrote. “I keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first.”Trump is now about to wing it on an epic, global stage in his planned face-to-face meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Nobody in Washington or abroad seems to know just what Trump wants to accomplish in the meeting -- an ambig

In his chilling account of the Romanov dynasty, the British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore quoted Peter Stolypin, who was interior minister for Nicholas II, the last of the tsars: “In Russia, nothing is more dangerous than the appearance of weakness.”Montefiore explained that in the 300-plus years of Romanov rule, power had been an instrument not simply of governing, but of survival. He cited the aphorism of the French writer Madame de Stael: “In Russia, the government is autocracy tempered by

In a wide-ranging late-night interview at his palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia‘s young crown prince Mohammed bin Salman described a new wave of reforms as part of the “shock” therapy needed to modernize the kingdom’s cultural and political life.“MBS,” as the headstrong 32-year-old crown prince is known, began the conversation just before midnight Monday, at the end of a day that had brought new royal decrees shaking up the Saudi military and government bureaucracy and appointing a woman to a cabin

Every good spy story needs a shadowy operative who does the dirty work for the boss, and thanks to the indictment issued Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller, we now have a nominee for that role in the Russia investigation. He’s a billionaire oligarch named Yevgeniy Prigozhin, and based on Russian and other accounts, he sounds like a real-life version of a James Bond villain. Prigozhin’s fingerprints appear to be on three of the most sensitive operations launched by Russian President Vladimi

If the Trump administration is really thinking about trying to give North Korea a “bloody nose” with a limited military attack, it should look carefully at Israel’s experience -- which shows the possible benefits of a quick strike, but also the difficulty of keeping a lid on a conflict once it starts.　Discussions with Israelis at a conference here reinforced the value of deterrence, but also offered some basic lessons: If you’re going to try a quick hit, don’t talk about it; don’t strike unless

Richard Helms, the godfather of modern CIA directors, prided himself on keeping his mouth shut in public. He was delighted that his 1979 biography had the starchy title “The Man Who Kept the Secrets.”　But that was then. In today’s media-driven world, former intelligence chiefs appear so regularly on cable television they probably need agents (not the trench-coated variety) to negotiate their contracts. Five recent directors or acting directors -- John McLaughlin, Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta, Mi

Talking with Gen. Joseph Votel, the commander of American troops in the Middle East, is a paradoxical reminder of the limits of US military power to determine political outcomes. American bombs helped destroy the Islamic State group in Syria, but they can’t stitch the rag doll of the Syrian nation back together.Syria’s plight actually got a bit worse this week, as Turkey invaded the border region known as Afrin. Turkey says it’s protecting itself against the Syrian Kurdish organization known as

In training exercises in a mock Afghan village constructed here on a base amid swampland, the US Army is applying the military lesson of the war against the Islamic State group: Help your partners beat the enemy, but don’t try to do the fighting yourself.　Letting others fight the battle hasn’t been the American way in modern times, to our immense national frustration. The US military became bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, much as it had a generation earlier in Vietnam, by trying to reshape

“Does this concern you at all?” asks a tart email message from a Trump supporter who wonders why the mainstream media doesn’t take a closer look at allegations that the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election has been tainted by bias.　It’s a fair question. President Trump has made very serious charges, tweeting in December that the FBI’s “reputation is in Tatters -- worst in History!” And Republicans in Congress have claimed that the bureau was manipulated by

Sometimes diplomacy is the art of going in two directions at once, and the Trump administration seems to have chosen that sweet spot of ambiguity, for now, in managing its continuing confrontation with North Korea. President Trump has paused his “Little Rocket Man” rhetoric and boasts about the size of his own nuclear button. He's insisting this week that talk of a US military strike (which he had encouraged) is “completely wrong,” and calling for discussions with North Korea “under the right ci

After visiting Tehran in 2013, I wrote that the Iranian capital seemed suspended somewhere between Pyongyang and Los Angeles. We’ve seen this past week how passionately Iranians want the latter, not the former -- as they denounced their impoverished garrison state and demanded a prosperous, modern future.Asking whether Iran’s demonstrations create a “pre-revolutionary” situation may miss the larger point. The process of change has already begun. The regime will use its instruments of repression,

When it comes to cyberweapons, America is an elephant and Iran is a flea. Still, a flea can be a persistent nuisance, especially for the unprotected.Iran‘s cyber capability is the focus of a detailed new study called “Iran’s Cyber Threat,” to be published soon by Collin Anderson and Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It describes a country that, although “third tier” on the cyberthreat matrix, can still do considerable damage.The disclosures about Iran‘s cyberatt

Of all the follies of 2017, the most tawdry may be the GOP’s headlong rush to pass a tax bill that even its proponents don’t understand. What’s especially sad is that otherwise sensible Republicans seem to be capitulating to the tax-cut frenzy.　Political desperation is the mother of this legislation. Despite Republican control of both houses of Congress, the Trump administration has failed in its first year to enact legislation that deals with major problems, such as health care and immigration.

The US-North Korea confrontation is nearing another tense inflection point, with North Korea signaling that it could be ready for negotiations with Washington soon, even as it moves toward becoming a full nuclear-weapons power.When such diplomatic standoffs get resolved, it‘s often by allowing each country to claim it’s entering negotiations on its own terms. In this case, North Korea would assert its status as a nuclear-weapons state, while the US would insist the dialogue is about eventual den