Noah Pollak

"Without a deal, the international sanctions regime will unravel with little ability to reimpose them."

To cut through the rhetoric surrounding the Iran deal, and to better understand what the two sides conceded and gained, I’ve compiled a balance sheet on the Iran deal. It’s simple and non-technical; a basic list comparing what the U.S. gets versus what Iran gets. The reader is free to make up his…

In the coming weeks, President Obama may announce his support for—or at least his non-objection to—a U.N. Security Council resolution defining the terms of a Palestinian state. This would represent an unprecedented break with Israel and mark the culmination of the Obama administration’s six years…

Hillary Clinton is a ferocious critic of Israeli settlements. She took point on the Obama administration's demand for a settlement freeze. She regularly berated Prime Minister Netanyahu on the subject, including an infamous, expletive-laced 45-minute phone call in 2010. She calls settlements…

In the course of trying to explain to Tom Friedman why his diplomatic outreach to Iran is no threat to America or our allies, President Obama sounded for a brief moment like the kind of warmonger he is normally heard denouncing.

The prime minister of Israel delivered a speech announcing positions on the peace process and Palestinian statehood that contradicted the views of the U.S. president and the international community.

The new inquisitor has just been appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to “investigate” Israel’s conduct of Operation Protective Edge, following in the footsteps of Richard Goldstone, who famously, incompetently, and unjustly “investigated” Israel's 2009 Operation Cast Lead. The new Goldstone—an…

Yesterday, moments after Secretary of State John Kerry departed for the Middle East to attempt to broker a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war, the State Department issued a warning recommending that “U.S. citizens consider the deferral of non-essential travel to Israel” due to the threat from…

Something important is missing from the New York Times's coverage of the war in Gaza: photographs of terrorist attacks on Israel, and pictures of Hamas fighters, tunnels, weaponry, and use of human shields. 

Tel Aviv

In her new book, Hillary Clinton picks out a few foreign policy topics on which she thinks it now safe, even helpful, to express disagreement with the course taken by the Obama administration. She wanted to arm and train the Syria rebels, while Obama did not. She thought it unwise to call for Hosni…

It is a cliché at this point to remark that John Kerry is operating in a fantasy world. But sometimes there is no other word to describe the enormous distance between his perception of what is happening and what is actually happening.

President Obama yesterday uttered words about Iran we know come from the heart: “What we want to do is give diplomacy a chance, and give peace a chance.”

Sheera Frenkel, Buzzfeed’s recently-hired Middle East correspondent, should know the Israel beat better than most: She reported from the country for more than seven years, speaks Hebrew fluently, and knows Israeli society intimately.

Secretary of State John Kerry added to the already ample fanfare surrounding the launch of talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators by holding a press conference yesterday to introduce his new special envoy to the peace process, Martin Indyk.

The press is having fun today amplifying the complaint of Palestinian "negotiator" Saeb Ereikat that comments Mitt Romney made in Jerusalem yesterday are "racist." What was Romney's offense? In the course of expressing amazement at Israel's economic miracle, he merely pointed out that cultural…

Last Monday, two days before Mitt Romney departed for London, Israel, and Poland, the Obama campaign held a conference call with reporters in order to frame their opponent’s trip. “The bar really is whether or not Mitt Romney is finally ready to shed a little light on what appears to be the secrecy…