U.S. Policy

Secretary of State Rice is again shuttling back and forth to the Middle East, with plans to convene an international meeting in Annapolis later this month with the Israelis, Palestinians and leaders from a number of Arab countries. Her aim is to have the participants endorse a joint statement on

The U.S. ratcheted up the financial pressure against Tehran last week, unilaterally slapping sanctions on Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp, three state-owned banks, and a number of key officials for their involvement in the regime's terrorist financing and WMD-related activities. Realizing the leverage that American financial markets give Washington

The FBI recently announced that it is engaged in a comprehensive realignment of its counterterrorism division -- the largest such reorganization since the September 11 attacks. Although the proposed reorganization is unlikely to achieve the desired fundamental transformation, it should improve the bureau's ability to combat the increasingly complex threat

A map of PKK positions in the western portion of northern Iraq. Copyright 2007 The Washington Institute

On October 21, Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) operatives carried out an attack from northern Iraq into Turkey, killing twelve Turkish soldiers. This incident followed the killing of more than thirty people in recent weeks, including an incident in which the PKK pulled a dozen civilians off a public bus and

On October 21, 2007, David Makovsky, Daniel Kurtzer, Jim Hoagland, and Dennis Ross addressed The Washington Institute's Weinberg Founders Conference. The following is a summary of their remarks. In a spirited discussion moderated by Dennis Ross and David Makovsky of The Washington Insitute, former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Israel

On October 21, 2007, J.D. Crouch and Antony Blinken addressed The Washington Institute's Weinberg Founders Conference. Mr. Crouch formerly served as assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor. Mr. Blinken is a majority staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and senior foreign policy advisor to the

On October 3, 2007, J. Scott Carpenter addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute marking the launch of Project Fikra, a new Washington Institute program focused on empowering Arab moderates and liberals in their struggles against extremism. Mr. Carpenter is a Keston Family fellow at the Institute and former

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in the Middle East on a trip designed to help prepare for the meeting she intends to convene with Israelis, Palestinians and Arab states at the end of November. She has a great deal of work to do and not a lot of time