Lee Smith

The Red Sox and Yankees survived on Sunday, setting up a Columbus Day quadruple-header. Were they lucky or just timely? And what’s in store now?

The New York Times last week broke the story of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s long record of sexual harassment. Actresses including Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd came forward to detail Weinstein’s depredations, and so did former employees of the man who founded one of the most important…

With the Oct. 15 deadline for certifying to Congress that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Donald Trump is set to deliver a speech next week regarding his intentions. According to a report this afternoon from Adam Kredo at the…

Election officials from the Kurdistan Regional Government announced Wednesay that last weekend’s referendum on independence passed, overwhelmingly. With a turnout of 72 percent of more than 4.5 million eligible voters, nearly 93 percent voted in favor of realizing the Iraqi Kurds’ longstanding…

The Trump White House has yet to roll out its much-anticipated, comprehensive, government-wide Iran policy review, but administration principals have met over the last few weeks to iron out details regarding the nuclear deal with Iran, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. On…

Saturday night’s middleweight fight between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin perhaps exceeded expectations. The showdown pitting two of the sport’s top pound-for-pound fighters, the undefeated 35-year-old fighter from Kazakhstan known as Triple-G, and the man who is now, after Floyd…

Beirut

The Trump White House has yet to roll out its much-anticipated, comprehensive, government-wide Iran policy review, but administration principals have met over the last few weeks to iron out details regarding the nuclear deal with Iran, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. On…

Last month the Village Voice announced it was ending its print edition, a 62-year run of muckraking reporting, cultural criticism, opinion, advocacy, and opposition—opposition to authority, to anything, sometimes to everything. Founded in 1955, by Norman Mailer among others, the Voice was America’s…

"I think we gave the fans what they wanted to see," Floyd Mayweather said after his ten-round technical knockout of Conor McGregor Saturday night. Indeed the fight, pitting an undefeated boxer with 49 wins going into the bout, against a mixed martial artist who’d never boxed professionally,…

Floyd Mayweather says he’s in for the fight of his life with Irish mixed martial arts champion Conor McGregor in their much-anticipated Las Vegas bout on August 26. “He's a lot younger,” Mayweather told ESPN last week. “When you look at myself and Conor McGregor on paper, he's taller, has a longer…

Recently the New York Times ran an op-ed from a columnist for the Times of London lamenting the timing of the release of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.

Lawrence Osborne’s Beautiful Animals is the novel of the summer—which will outlast the season a long time. Well reviewed in the New York Times, and acclaimed by fellow novelist Lionel Shriver in the Washington Post as a “great book,” Beautiful Animals is the story of a great crime. It is an account…

New York Yankees’ rookie sensation Aaron Judge hit nearly four miles’ worth of homers Monday night in Miami to become Major League Baseball’s 2017 Home Run Derby champion. The 25-year old right fielder hit a total of 47 home runs, including 11 in the last round to beat Minnesota Twins’ third…

Yesterday I spoke with the painter Trevor Winkfield about his early years as an artist—and his first experience of surrealism as a young boy in post WWII Great Britain, studying heraldry. (You can read the first part of our interview here.)

The painter Trevor Winkfield was born in 1944 in Leeds, England, and moved in 1969 to New York City. There he became involved with writers, poets, and other painters from the New York School, including John Ashbery and James Schuyler. Winkfield’s paintings are in the collections of the Museum of…

Nathan Thrall is a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, where he focuses on the Arab-Israeli conflict. A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, Thrall has also written for Commentary, which is to say he’s a writer who specializes in…

More than eight years after they finished the new Yankee Stadium, I still get confused when I climb out of the subway at 161st and River Ave. Whoa—where did it go? The lot that used to hold the ballpark is empty. The stadium, I forget every time I visit the Bronx, is across the street. It's like a…

"The fight is on," tweeted Conor McGregor, the Irish mixed martial arts fighter, Wednesday, confirming that he and Floyd Mayweather are squaring off Aug. 26 in Las Vegas. The 40-year-old Mayweather is coming out of retirement for a pay-per-view windfall that many believe may exceed the $250 million…

More than eight years after they finished the new Yankee Stadium, I still get confused when I climb out of the subway at 161st and River Ave. Whoa—where did it go? The lot that used to hold the ballpark is empty. The stadium, I forget every time I visit the Bronx, is across the street. It's like a…

The intra-Arab rift that has set Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt against Qatar is now in its second week. A feud that seemed to begin as a principled stand against Doha's support for terrorism—one flash point was Qatar's recent payment of nearly $1 billion to Iran and to…

Last week, several Arab states, including Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, put Qatar on notice. They removed their diplomats from Doha, closed airspace and ports to Qatari vessels, expelled Qatari nationals, and prohibited their own nationals from visiting the country.…

Last week, several Arab states, including Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, put Qatar on notice. They removed their diplomats from Doha, closed airspace and ports to Qatari vessels, expelled Qatari nationals, and prohibited their own nationals from visiting the country.…

Edward Said saved my life. And I don't mean that the work of the late American intellectual and Palestinian activist rescued me when I needed intellectual or emotional or moral sustenance. Sure, at one point in my political odyssey, Said's work was important to me. Even now, though my ideas about…

Edward Said saved my life. And I don't mean that the work of the late American intellectual and Palestinian activist rescued me when I needed intellectual or emotional or moral sustenance. Sure, at one point in my political odyssey, Said's work was important to me. Even now, though my ideas about…

Wallingford, Conn.

Wallingford, Conn.

Jean Stein, author and editor, took her own life earlier this week when she leapt from the balcony of her Upper East Side apartment. Friends described her as depressed. She was 83, and leaves behind her two daughters, Wendy vanden Heuvel, an actress and producer, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor…

Last week the Trump administration sent a letter to House speaker Paul Ryan to certify that the Islamic Republic of Iran is in compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump had called it the "worst deal…

Last week the Trump administration sent a letter to House speaker Paul Ryan to certify that the Islamic Republic of Iran is in compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump had called it the "worst deal…

Social media seethed with outrage earlier this week after the American president made a phone call to congratulate the head of a NATO member on an important vote. On Monday Donald Trump reached out to speak with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the referendum that exchanges Turkey's…

Up until opening day, I was wondering what to do with all the extra time that Major League Baseball’s new "Pace of Play" rules were supposed to free up. The commissioner's office and the rules committee wanted to move the game along faster, presumably to appeal to baseball fans with lots of other…

After the Trump administration's strike on the Shayrat airfield Thursday, lawmakers, analysts, and the press are asking if the White House has a next move. Certainly it was important to signal that the use of chemical weapons is something the United States could not tolerate. As President Trump…

Up until opening day, I was wondering what to do with all the extra time that Major League Baseball’s new "Pace of Play" rules were supposed to free up. The commissioner's office and the rules committee wanted to move the game along faster, presumably to appeal to baseball fans with lots of other…

"Degradation of ISIS is not the end goal," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week. In what appeared to be a criticism of the Obama White House's ineffective campaign against the Islamic State, the Trump administration's top diplomat insisted, "We must defeat ISIS." At a two-day summit…

Elliott Green's "Human Nature" is one of the early hits of the 2017 art scene. Showing at the Pierogi Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (it closes March 26), Green's show won praise from critics across the spectrum, including the New York Times, and the more specialized art press. His…

"Degradation of ISIS is not the end goal,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week. In what appeared to be a criticism of the Obama White House's ineffective campaign against the Islamic State, the Trump administration's top diplomat insisted, "We must defeat ISIS." At a two-day summit…

The recently released Lost in Florence is a movie about a young American man who, like the city's greatest poet, recognizes that he has fallen off the straight path and, now lost, must find his way again. Heartbroken and healing from an injury that derailed his professional football career, Eric…

Los Angeles

Michael Tolkin is one of America's greatest living novelists—and way too underappreciated, perhaps because of his successes in other genres. He's directed movies, including the 1991 film The Rapture, starring David Duchovny and Mimi Rogers; written screenplays, including The Player, based on his…

After going 3-0 in the first round of the World Baseball Classic, Israel moves on to the second round of pool play this weekend in Tokyo when it squares off against international powerhouse Cuba Saturday (10 p.m. EST). The other two teams in Pool E are the Netherlands, whom Israel defeated…

Founded in 1947, the Hudson Review is one of America's most esteemed literary journals. Three young men started the magazine, William Arrowsmith, a poet and translator, Joseph Bennett, and Frederick Morgan, a poet and the longtime editor of the Hudson Review, from 1948-1998, when he was succeeded…

Please see the editor's note at the bottom of this piece.

In the wake of national security adviser Michael Flynn's resignation Monday night, lawmakers from both parties are calling for an investigation into his and other Trump aides' possible ties to Russia. Flynn famously, and foolishly, accepted a paid trip to Moscow in 2015 to speak at a banquet for…

Since President Trump's election, American allies and other foreign policy observers have been curious to know how the new White House intends to resolve an apparent contradiction. How is it possible that Trump seems keen to make some sort of deal with Vladimir Putin while expressing belligerent…

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld a nationwide temporary injunction on President Trump's executive order relating to refugees and visas from seven Muslim-majority countries. The White House says it will not take the case to the Supreme Court, but is rather drafting a…

Since President Trump’s election, American allies and other foreign policy observers have been curious to know how the new White House intends to resolve an apparent contradiction. How is it possible that Trump seems keen to make some sort of deal with Vladimir Putin while expressing belligerent…

During a White House briefing Wednesday afternoon, spokesman Sean Spicer brought National Security Adviser Mike Flynn to the podium to deliver a prepared statement offering more detail on Iran's recent "destabilizing behavior" in the region.

The White House seems to be backing away from aspects of President Trump's executive order on immigration. Chief of staff Reince Priebus explained Sunday morning that green card holders from the seven countries specified in the order—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen—would not be…

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii, admitted to CNN that she met Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on her recent secret 4-day "fact-finding" trip to Damascus. "I did so because I felt that it's important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering," then…

John Brennan says he didn't leak the dossier that connected Donald Trump to Russia. As the outgoing CIA director told the Wall Street Journal, "First of all, this is not intelligence community information." Brennan noted, the Journal reported, "that the dossier had been circulating "many months"…

Nat Hentoff—columnist, music critic, jazz lover, civil libertarian, atheist, pro-life intellectual opposed to abortion and the death penalty—was prolific and productive up until the end of his life. He died last week of natural causes at the age of 91. He was so expansive in his interests and…

On Thursday, President Obama announced an end to the "wet foot, dry foot" policy that allowed most Cuban migrants who reach the United States to become legal permanent residents after one year.

Nat Hentoff—columnist, music critic, jazz lover, civil libertarian, atheist, pro-life intellectual opposed to abortion and the death penalty—was prolific and productive up until the end of his life. He died last week of natural causes at the age of 91. He was so expansive in his interests and…

In his first press conference since being elected president, Donald Trump thanked the media. He praised news outfits that didn't publish a story about a document that describes alleged Russian efforts to compromise him, even though many of those news organizations had the story for months and held…

The Obama chapter in American foreign policy ends like the climax of an action movie—with a fireball growing in the distance and filling the screen as a man in silhouette approaches in slow motion and then veers off camera. Barack Obama has set the Middle East on fire, and now it's spreading.

Is the CIA, or some part of it, angry with Donald Trump? Even before the president-elect perhaps unwisely insulted the agency by citing its failures to assess correctly the status of Saddam Hussein's WMD program, someone high up at the CIA seemed to have it in for the incoming commander-in-chief.

Reports Friday that U.S. intelligence agencies believe Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign to tilt the election in favor of Donald Trump have sown precisely the kind of confusion that American adversaries must have hoped for with their actions. In an effort to reach some sort of…

Upon the death of Fidel Castro last month, President Obama remarked, "History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him." The statement was cowardly in striving for judicious balance to describe the legacy of a dictator who jailed and…

Upon the death of Fidel Castro last month, President Obama remarked, “History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him." The statement was cowardly in striving for judicious balance to describe the legacy of a dictator who jailed and…

I called my mother on her 80th birthday last month. My brothers and sister and I were emailing each other as we've done every birthday of hers since she died more than six years ago. One of them remarked, "You know her phone is still working, right? You can hear her voice on her outgoing message."

I called my mother on her 80th birthday last month. My brothers and sister and I were emailing each other as we’ve done every birthday of hers since she died more than six years ago. One of them remarked, "You know her phone is still working, right? You can hear her voice on her outgoing message."

Perhaps the most cheering aspect of our American democracy is the optimism meeting a new president and his administration. In two months, Donald Trump will move into the White House and bring with him a host of ideas and people to implement them in order to advance the interests of American…

Will President-elect Donald Trump crash the Iran deal on day one, as he said on the campaign trail? If so, Barack Obama's signature foreign policy initiative, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), will melt into air. Obama allies and Iran deal supporters at home and abroad are already…

Will President-elect Donald Trump crash the Iran deal on day one, as he said on the campaign trail? If so, Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy initiative, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), will melt into air. Obama allies and Iran deal supporters at home and abroad are already…

The election of Donald Trump signals bad news for the Iran nuclear deal, Barack Obama's signature foreign policy initiative. Calling it "the worst deal ever negotiated," the author of The Art of the Deal has threatened to tear up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on day one of his presidency.

Over the weekend, pictures of a Hezbollah parade in the Syrian city of Qusayr showed Hezbollah fighters using American-made M113 armored personnel carriers (APCs). If the vehicles were transferred by the Lebanese Armed Forces, a recipient of U.S. aid and equipment, to Hezbollah, as some analysts…

The election of Donald Trump signals bad news for the Iran nuclear deal, Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy initiative. Calling it "the worst deal ever negotiated," the author of The Art of the Deal has threatened to tear up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on day one of his presidency.

Martin Kramer is the founding president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, where he also chairs the department of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. He is the author of several books, including Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle East Studies in America, and The War on Error: Israel, Islam,…

On October 31, the Lebanese parliament elected Michel Aoun president, ending a two-and-a-half-year stalemate during which the country had no head of state. The presidency is reserved for the country’s Maronite Christian sect, so Christians there are celebrating the election of the controversial…

Florence, Italy

The Cleveland Indians pitching staff was masterful Tuesday night, but they had an awful lot of help from the Cubs, who struck out 15 times. Starter Corey Kluber had nine in six innings, stud reliever Andrew Miller had three over two innings, and closer Cody Allen struck out the side in the ninth.

The World Series this year feels a little like Noah's Ark, or John Woo's Face Off—lots of stuff in twos. Like Theo and Terry. The Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein built the long suffering NL franchise into a winner, just like he did with the Boston Red Sox, which won the…

Over the weekend the Washington Post published a review of Jay Solomon's book, The Iran Wars, written by New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino. That one of America's top three remaining newspapers assigned a review of a book written by a reporter from another of the big three (Solomon is a…

Olivier Roy is one of France's most distinguished scholars of Islam, and author of, among many other books, Globalized Islam, Holy Ignorance, and The Failure of Political Islam. Joint-chair of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and Political and Social Sciences department at the…

The Nobel Prize committee awarded Bob Dylan with the prize for literature Thursday, which will no doubt prove to be a controversial selection. The issue is not that Dylan is yet another obscure figure the committee named apparently to score political points, nor that he writes in a language little…

The next round of October baseball is underway Thursday afternoon with the Texas Rangers hosting the Toronto Blue Jays (the Boston Red Sox are in Cleveland to play the Indians Thursday), but for some people that's not enough. Instead of enjoying the baseball, some folks are sweating the…

Barack Obama wants options on Syria. "The president has asked all of the agencies to put forward options—some familiar, some new—that we are very actively reviewing," said Anthony Blinken, deputy secretary of state. But force is not an option, since according to the White House there is no military…

What a strange season. Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium a man intended to propose marriage to his girlfriend. But he fumbled the ring like a knuckleball, with no one knowing where the thing would end up. The whole section looked for it. Fans used their cell phones as flashlights, parents sent their…

Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez was killed in a boating accident Sunday morning. The 24-year-old right-hander was 16-8, with an ERA of 2.86, and he had the second-most strikeouts, 253 in 182.1 innings, in the major leagues. On Wednesday, he pitched 8 innings of shutout baseball against the…

Jerusalem

As we go to press, the White House has reportedly offered Iran a deal regarding its nuclear program, a framework agreement with details to be worked out in the coming months. However, even as the interim agreement is set to expire November 24, it seems the Iranians have not responded to the Obama…

As we go to press, the White House has reportedly offered Iran a deal regarding its nuclear program, a framework agreement with details to be worked out in the coming months. However, even as the interim agreement is set to expire November 24, it seems the Iranians have not responded to the Obama…

"Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth,” said Mike Tyson famously. Many choose to understand the former heavyweight champion's one-liner metaphorically, as an American rendition of the Prussian military strategist Helmuth von Moltke's observation that no battle plan survives…

Uri Bar-Joseph is a professor of political science at the University of Haifa and a former intelligence analyst in the Israel Defense Forces. His just published book, The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel, is the remarkable story of how Cairo playboy Ashraf Marwan betrayed his father-in-law,…

Jay Solomon, one of America's top national security journalists, has covered Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Over the last few years, he has focused especially on Iran, its larger regional project, and U.S.-Iran relations, including the deal over the regime's nuclear program, also known as the…

It's always fun when you're winning. It seems like everything is going your way. If you're Nationals ace Max Scherzer going against the local rival Orioles, you get a groundball hit back at you on the mound and you field it between your legs. With your back facing the hitter. Here he is pulling off…

In an interview last week for his new book The Iran Wars, Jay Solomon of the Wall Street Journal told Andrea Mitchell that Iran in 2013 had threatened to pull out of nuclear talks if the United States hit Bashar al-Assad’s forces over the Syrian dictator's use of chemical weapons. The Obama…

The novelist Roger L. Simon is the author of, among other works, the Moses Wine crime novel series, and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter for his screenplay of Enemies: A Love Story, the 1989 movie based on an Isaac Bashevis Singer novel. Simon was formerly the CEO of Pajama Media and now serves as…

In an article Monday in the New York Sun, Claudia Rosett may have found one of the missing links in the Obama administration's Iran ransom story.

Puerto Rico won its first Olympic gold medal Saturday when Monica Puig defeated Angelique Kerber to take the top prize in women's singles in tennis. Puerto Ricans on the island and off were ecstatic—like Hamilton author Lin-Manuel Miranda, who celebrated in a series of tweets—as Puig joined Puerto…

It can hardly be a coincidence that just as the emperor of Japan hinted at abdicating his throne this past weekend, the island nation’s greatest baseball player ascended to a kind of diamond royalty. Ichiro Suzuki, a 42-year-old outfielder with 16 major league seasons under his belt (Seattle…

A day after the deal with Iran over its nuclear program was implemented in January, the Obama administration paid $1.7 billion to Iran to settle an old Iranian claim (unfinished business from the 1970s). At the same time, the Islamic Republic released four Americans it held in prison. The timing…

Someone has played a rotten trick on the late Scoop Jackson. The legendary senator from the great state of Washington was a committed cold warrior who saw the Soviet Union for the evil empire it was, and until his death in 1983 used all his powers of persuasion to drag the McGovernized Democratic…

The American foreign policy community is up in arms because Donald Trump told the New York Times he is disdainful of NATO. They’re right to be upset, but where were they when Barack Obama helped put Russia on NATO's Turkish border with his Syria policy?

The coup against the Turkish government has reportedly been put down. It's almost a day after a faction of the Turkish military attempted to topple the government by closing bridges, sending tanks out in to the street, firing missiles at protestors from helicopters, and arresting a number of…

Thursday night NBC Nightly News aired Bill Neely's "exclusive" interview with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. As Neely later explained, he's been angling for an interview with Assad for 5 years, and finally it came through.

What a week for anniversaries! Thursday we'll be celebrating the first year of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It's Barack Obama's major foreign policy initiative, which ostensibly prevents Iran from a nuclear breakout, but in reality paves the way for the White House's realignment with the…

Last week the Associated Press announced that it will begin using automated writing for its coverage of minor league baseball. The AP has reported minor league game recaps before, but didn't have enough manpower for the full schedule, which comprises 142 ball clubs across 13 leagues. But now,…

Lawrence Osborne's 2014 novel The Ballad of a Small Player is a perfectly structured book about an English lawyer on the run who spends his life playing baccarat in Macau casinos and hits a streak of luck so remarkable that he nearly falls in love. It's something like a combination of a ghost story…

Paris

Last week, an internal State Department memo criticizing the administration's Syria policy was leaked to the press. Fifty-one American officials variously involved with Middle East policy signed a letter calling for military action against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. "A judicious use of…

If you’re in the Northeast, it's a pretty good day for a late-afternoon nap, and not just because of the daunting heat on this first day of summer. You're going to want to rest up so you can catch the match-up of the week tonight with a 10 p.m. EST first pitch, when the Los Angeles Dodgers host the…

Barack Obama is confused. After 49 people were murdered last week in a gay nightclub in Orlando, in the most deadly Islamist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, the president turned his wrath on domestic opponents.

Klaus Wivel is a reporter writing for the Danish weekly Weekendavisen. His book about Middle Eastern Christians, The Last Supper: The Plight of Christians in Arab Lands, was just published in the United States. Wivel sat down with me recently to discuss his book, the Christian community in the…

Will Smith was asked to serve as one of the pallbearers at Muhammad Ali's funeral Friday. Smith and Ali became close when the former portrayed the boxer in the 2001 biopic, Ali. It'd be worth asking if he was thinking of Ali when he made his most recent picture, Concussion, playing Bennet Omalu,…

With nearly a third of the schedule already over, baseball is rushing toward the long grind. It’s these three months, June, July, and August, where seasons are built or squandered, with September a berserkers' challenge to what's been earned here. Fans and scribes are right to romanticize the…

Thursday morning Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's political and media adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban, spoke via Skype to an audience at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Her webcast speech was part of an event hosted by an organization called the Global Alliance for Terminating al…

Last week pictures of Qassem Suleimani started to circulate on social media, which is always a pretty sure sign that an Iranian military campaign is about to kick off somewhere in the Middle East. And indeed not long after, Iranian-backed Shiite militias, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps units,…

You don't want to miss the long Memorial Day weekend's big matchup Sunday night, when Dodgers' ace Clayton Kershaw is scheduled to take the mound in Queens, N.Y. to duel with Mets' ageless wonder Bartolo Colon, aka "Big Sexy." Kershaw's coming off his third shutout of the year, a two-hitter against…

Guess who's not part of the White House's Iran deal "echo chamber"? Yep, Qassem Suleimani. The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force thinks Iran and America aren't poised for realignment, but rather are at war. And Iran, he says, is thrashing the great Satan. "Iran relied on…

Yesterday, Texas Rangers’ pitcher Matt Bush hit Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista with a pitch. Running from first on a groundball to third, Bautista slid hard, late, and illegally into Rangers' second baseman Rougned Odor. The infielder threw wildly on the double play, but didn't miss…

Today Iranian foreign minister Mohamed Javad Zarif sent his condolences to Hezbollah general secretary Hassan Nasrallah on the day the party is burying Mustafa Badreddine. As one of Hezbollah’s top military commanders, Badreddine is believed to have played a role in the 1983 Marine barracks…

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the document that shaped the modern Middle East. Known officially as the Asia Minor Agreement, it was authored by the British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart François Georges-Picot. They were charged with the task of…

Man, Ben Rhodes had an excellent weekend. The 38-year-old Mets' fan who serves as President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic communications got to watch the press tear itself apart in rabid confusion, which proves one of his essential points—the U.S. media is a pile of…

It’s hardly any wonder that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has a "mind meld" with his boss, the president. According to a David Samuels New York Times Magazine article to be published Sunday and already posted to the website, Rhodes, like Barack Obama, is contemptuous of "the American…

A man recently killed his friend for picking up the check at an Istanbul restaurant. Anyone who's familiar with the sport of Middle East check wrestling cannot be surprised. Dining companions can go at it for half an hour arguing over who gets to pay the check and thereby prove one's magnificent…

Thanks again, Rick Monday, forty years on! It was exactly four decades ago today, when playing centerfield for the Cubs Monday executed what many think of as one of the greatest plays in baseball history: He saved the American flag from being burned. Just as the bottom of the 4th inning was…

On the eve of President Obama’s final state visit to Saudi Arabia, 60 Minutes produced a story suggesting that 28 classified pages from the 9/11 Commission report point to direct Saudi government involvement in the attacks. There has been a lively debate over those pages since the report was first…

On the eve of President Obama’s final state visit to Saudi Arabia, 60 Minutes produced a story suggesting that 28 classified pages from the 9/11 Commission report point to direct Saudi government involvement in the attacks. There has been a lively debate over those pages since the report was first…

Yesterday Sen. Tom Cotton moved to block confirmation of an Obama nominee for an important post at the Department of Treasury. Adam Szubin was nominated last year to fill the position of Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Crimes, and when the Democratic Senator from Ohio Sherrod Brown…

Why is John Kerry eager to provide Iran with more economic benefits by publicly declaring the Iranians may actually deserve more relief? Why did the secretary of state tell Charlie Rose that the United States and Iran want the same thing when it comes to ending the war in Syria? Why does America’s…

Last week the mayor of London heaped praise on the president of Syria for liberating Palmyra, and thereby saving its prized antiquities from ISIS. In his column for the Telegraph, Boris Johnson wrote that he knows “Assad is a monster, a dictator. He barrel-bombs his own people. His jails are full…

Last week marked the fifth anniversary of what started as a peaceful uprising in Syria. A bunch of teenagers scrawled on a wall in their hometown of Deraa the slogan of the Arab spring: “The people," they wrote, "want to topple the regime."

They're not saying "Gooooose"—they're booing. Yes, baseball fans are booing Hall of Fame reliever Rich "Goose" Gossage for his crazy broadside on sports talk radio last week against the game he loves. He ripped ballplayers and management in what can only be considered a rearguard action in…

Last week, Iran tested ballistic missiles capable of striking American allies in the Middle East. As the Islamic Republic is eager to make clear, Israel is the primary target. The second launch featured the Qadr H, a precision-guided missile with a range of roughly 1,250 miles. The clerical regime…

Israel's defense minister Moshe Yaalon said Tuesday that Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons against civilians since the U.S.-Russia sponsored "cessation of hostilities" began. "The Syrians used military grade chemical weapons and lately have been using materials, chlorine, against civilians,…

No one really believes that the Syria truce scheduled to begin February 26—to bring a "cessation of hostilities" to the nearly five-year-old conflict—is going to hold. And nearly everyone, at home and abroad, agrees that the problem with the agreement John Kerry worked out with his Russian…

Lebanese media reports that the man who hit the late Christopher Hitchens in an altercation in Beirut in 2009 has been killed in Syria, fighting alongside forces allied with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Adonis Nasr, an information officer with the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), often…

Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul

Even before Vice President Joe Biden met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara last week, the Turks were displeased. The day before, Biden had granted interviews only to opposition media and slammed the government for stepping on freedom of speech. “That's not the kind of example that needs…

Istanbul

Istanbul

Early last Wednesday, Iran released the ten American sailors it had detained to coincide with President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. The administration understood clearly that the Iranians were both trying to ruin Obama's victory lap and sending a message—on the eve of…

Ken Griffey, Jr. and Mike Piazza were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. With his first time on the ballot, Griffey made history, named on 437 of 440 ballots (99.3 percent)—which has baseball left fans wondering how three journalists whose expertise is clearly European Handball got into the…

The attacks on Saudi Arabia’s two diplomatic missions in Iran—which came in response to Riyadh's execution of a Saudi Shiite cleric—are perhaps best understood as yet another skirmish in the Islamic Republic's long war against the regional order and the international order, both underwritten by the…

On Monday, thousands of Iraqi Shiites took to the streets of Baghdad to protest Saudi Arabia's execution of Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr. "We demand that the government close the Saudi embassy, kick out the ambassador and boycott all Saudi products," said one protestor, a sentiment echoed by many.…

Saturday the French ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud downplayed the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic facilities in Iran. Following the execution of controversial Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, Iranian mobs surely backed by the clerical regime set fire to the Saudi embassy in…

It was a great year for the Obama administration’s foreign policy .  .  . says the Obama administration. The State Department even created a new hashtag to celebrate the White House's annus mirabilis—#2015in5Words. "Protecting Arctic Climate and Communities" and "Protecting Health of Our Ocean" are…

"The United States and our partners are not seeking regime change in Syria," John Kerry said in Moscow this week. The announcement that the White House is fully in line with the position of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's Russian and Iranian sponsors caught some by surprise. Others argue that…

Ourzazate

Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz delivered a foreign policy speech that was meant to carve out a position between the interventionist and isolationist wings of the Republican party. Instead, the candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States showed that his ship of state would…

Marrakesh

Marrakesh

In his interview with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, New Jersey governor Chris Christie explains that the Obama administration has got it wrong. "Iran is a greater threat than ISIS. If you're prioritizing the threats, which a president has to do, then I think that Iran is a greater threat than…

In July the Obama administration and its European and Russian partners met with Iran in Vienna to sign the so-called nuclear deal. The general idea was to at least delay nuclear proliferation in an already volatile part of the world. No doubt the White House was hoping for much more—that the…

Sources in Beirut are confirming reports from various Middle East media outfits that Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ expeditionary unit, was wounded in the fighting in the Syrian city of Aleppo recently. Fighters from Hezbollah, according to sources close to…

Yesterday, members of Congress observed a moment of silence to commemorate casualties suffered by a community aligned with Bashar al-Assad in his exterminationist war against Syria’s Sunni Arab population. Last Thursday, two suicide bombers killed 46 people in Burj a-Burajneh, a Beirut neighborhood…

Since the terrorist attacks in Paris Friday that killed more than 120 people and injured hundreds more, world leaders from President Barack Obama to newly elected Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, and from U.K. prime minister David Cameron to German chancellor Angela Merkel, have expressed…

Last week, the Obama White House moved to ensure Hezbollah’s ability to point 100,000 missiles at Israel. That’s not how they would describe it, of course. But it was the Obama administration—as U.S. officials are quietly letting on—and not Russia that invited Iran to participate in talks in Vienna…

On Thursday, Dusty Baker was introduced as the Washington Nationals' new manager. The 66-year-old former all-star outfielder was named manager of the year three times (1993, 1997, and 2000) with the San Francisco Giants (1993-2002), and then went on to lead the Chicago Cubs (2003-2006), and the…

Last week, Senate and House Democrats threw a party to celebrate the adoption day of Obama’s Iran deal. Ninety days after the White House signed the deal in Vienna, Obama directed the United States government to lift sanctions on Iran, the Democrats listened to a string ensemble in Washington, and…

The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Michael McCaul (R., TX), is trying to get the White House to pay attention to what Iran is doing around the Middle East. Earlier in the week, McCaul wrote a letter to Obama arguing that the clerical regime “has demonstrated hostility…

Now that playoff baseball has returned with the onset of autumn, and baseball becomes more intense, more excellent, and more precious, I’m thinking again about Harvey Dorfman. Little known to most casual fans, he was one of the great men of baseball, for he taught his students and friends and all…

It will be some time before it’s clear whether the story of Ahmed Muhammad, aka “clock boy,” has a happy ending. After being arrested last month under suspicion of bringing a bomb disguised as a clock to his Texas high school, the 14-year-old won the world’s sympathy, a scholarship fund, gifts,…

Last week an Obama administration official bragged that the White House’s Syria policy is working out just as planned. Special envoy for Syria Michael Ratney said that the “Russians wouldn’t have to help [Bashar al-]Assad if we didn’t weaken him.”

Last night Major League Baseball’s chief baseball officer, Joe Torre announced that Dodgers infielder Chase Utley was suspended for game three and four of the National League Division Series. In the seventh inning of Saturday night’s game, Utley went hard into second base to break up a double play,…

The United States, President Obama said at the U.N. General Assembly last week, “worked with many nations in this assembly to prevent a third world war—by forging alliances with old adversaries.” Presumably, the president was not referring to his deeply flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,…

The United States, President Obama said at the U.N. General Assembly last week, “worked with many nations in this assembly to prevent a third world war—by forging alliances with old adversaries.” Presumably, the president was not referring to his deeply flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,…

Today, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed that Russia has violated Turkish airspace for a second time. On Saturday, a Russian plane crossed into Turkish airspace near the Syrian border, and in response the Turks scrambled two F-16s. In a subsequent incident, Ankara said that a…

The Washington Nationals ended the home campaign of their 2015 season on a high-note Monday with Max Scherzer taking a no-hitter into the 8th inning before giving up a single. Manager Matt Williams pulled Scherzer soon after, with the right-hander striking out ten and getting credit for the 5-1 win…

Even now with the Russians on the verge of combat operations in Syria, the White House still says it believes that they’re there to fight ISIS. John Kerry says that his Russian counterpart told him that the Russians are “only interested in fighting” the Islamic State. Other administration officials…

Baseball fans continue to pay their respects to Lawrence Peter Berra, aka “Yogi,” the legendary Yankees catcher, big league manager and coach, and homespun philosopher, who died Tuesday at age 90. “What I really liked about him is that he was such a stand-up guy,” one mourner standing outside the…

In his testimony on Capitol Hill Tuesday, former CIA director (ret.) General David Petraeus argued that the Obama administration can and should be doing more in Syria. Petraeus proposed “the establishment of enclaves in Syria protected by coalition air power where a moderate Sunni force could be…

A photograph of a drowned 3-year-old boy washed up on a Turkish beach after his family failed to find refuge from the war in Syria seems to have finally gotten the world’s attention. The conflict has been an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe for more than four years. A quarter of a million are…

The White House seems to think that Vladimir Putin’s Syria policy is a blunder of the first order. Recently, the Russians have deployed combat planes, tanks, ships, engineers, technicians, as well as special forces units to help sustain Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But that’s a bad idea, President…

Last week the White House puffed its feathers when Barbara Mikulski became the 34th Democratic senator to come out in favor of the nuclear deal with Iran. Mikulski’s support ensures enough votes in Obama’s pocket to sustain a presidential veto on a resolution of disapproval, but it’s still not…

Over the weekend, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt argued that Syria may be “the most surprising of President Obama’s foreign-policy legacies: not just that he presided over a humanitarian and cultural disaster of epochal proportions, but that he soothed the American people…

Last Friday, I moderated a panel at Hudson Institute titled, “Why is Qassem Suleimani Smiling? The Iran Deal and Sanctions Relief for Terrorists.” (See video of the event here.) The panel’s focus was not speculative—for instance, how the regime might spend the signing bonus promised by the Joint…

Over the weekend, thousands of Lebanese took to the streets to protest against their country’s corrupt political culture. The immediate cause of their concern, and anger, is that the country’s garbage has not been collected for a month and has come to pose, as Lebanon’s health minister warned, a…

War, President Obama says, is the only alternative to his deal with Iran. But if the president’s overriding goal is to avoid bloody conflict, why is he arming the Middle East for a shootout that may lead to Armageddon?

A new Gallup poll shows that 55% of Americans disapprove of President Obama’s handling of Iran compared to 33% who approve. This seems to support other recent polls that show the public doesn’t like the administration’s Iran policy. A Quinnipiac poll shows that voters disapprove of the Iran nuclear…

It’s either the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, says President Obama, or it’s another Middle East war. Opponents of the Iran nuclear agreement argue that this is simply a scare tactic the White House is using to get Congress to sign off on a lousy deal. 

President Obama has decided to double down on his claim that Iranian hardliners “are making common cause with the Republican caucus.” In an interview with Fareed Zakaria that aired on Sunday, Obama insisted, “What I said is absolutely true factually. The truth of the matter is, inside of Iran, the…

John Kerry is bullish on the Middle East. He believes that the Iran deal will make it possible for the White House and Tehran to tamp down wars in places like Syria and Yemen. And—who knows?—maybe even solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In his speech today at American University on the Iran nuclear arms deal, President Obama asked for critics to evaluate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on its own merits. “Unfortunately,” said Obama, “we're living through a time in American politics where every foreign policy decision is…

According to Iranian-based media, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif appeared on a panel today at Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations where he spoke about the nuclear agreement he negotiated with the P5+1 last month in Vienna. Zarif explained that the so-called snap-back sanctions…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on the Iran Deal, how the voters are reacting to it, and why GOP candidates should own opposition to it in Thursday's debates.

When the secretary of state says, as John Kerry did last week in his Senate testimony, that the Obama White House is “guaranteeing” Iran won’t have the bomb, you can be sure that—well, you can be pretty confident that he doesn’t mean it. And that someday soon he’ll pretend he never said it.

Israeli media is reporting that an IAF strike on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights border killed several pro-Assad fighters today. One of them is believed to be Samir Kuntar. Many are hoping that it is.

At the end of an exchange between Sen. Tom Cotton and Gen. Martin Dempsey regarding the number of American servicemen killed by the Iranians, Cotton asks if Quds Force chief Qassem Suleimani was responsible for the explosively formed penetrators that took the lives of several hundred Americans.…

This week, the Wall Street Journal wrote that in a report to Capitol Hill last week, the Obama administration said “it was unlikely Iran would admit to having pursued a covert nuclear weapons program, and that such an acknowledgment wasn’t critical to verifying Iranian commitments in the future.”

The following is an excerpt from a fact sheet prepared by Omri Ceren of the Israel Project that explains the significance of the Obama administration’s latest concession to Tehran—the reported collapse on the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program.

It's not hard to figure out why the Obama administration is lashing out at critics of the deal it signed with Iran last week. The White House has been pretending it’s a nuclear deal but knows that it really isn’t. Everyone from the president to the secretary of state and his negotiating team is…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on the Iran deal, and why we can't trust the White House to be honest about it.

A fact sheet that Omri Ceren at the Israel Project prepared details why the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’s inspection and verification regime is unlikely to stop Iran from a nuclear breakout.

One of the new talking points for defenders of the Obama White House’s Iran deal is that lifting sanctions will hurt the regime’s hardliners, in particular the Revolutionary Guard. It may be true, the argument goes, that some of the $150 billion “signing bonus” in immediate sanctions relief will…

Vienna

According to the terms of the Iran deal announced in Vienna on Tuesday, U.N. Security Council sanctions regarding nuclear-related issues will be lifted on a number of entities and individuals—from Iranian banks to Lebanese assassins, like Anis Nacacche. The name that most sticks out is IRGC-Quds…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on the Iran deal, and whether the country will achieve full nuclear breakout before the end of Obama's second term.

Omar Sharif died Friday at the age of 83. He starred in a number of major films, like “Doctor Zhivago,” and was a fixture in Hollywood and what used to be the Hollywood of the Middle East, Cairo. It was in Egypt where Sharif, born Michel Shalhoub to a Lebanese Christian family, first made his…

Vienna

Vienna

The Obama White House thinks that when it comes to the Iranian nuclear program, we ought to let bygones be bygones. What’s past is past, and now it’s time to focus on the future. Sure, the administration once thought it was a problem that the Iranians refused to disclose their past nuclear…

Vienna

A bipartisan group convened under the auspices of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy released a “Public Statement on U.S. Policy Toward the Iran Nuclear Negotiations.” The group—comprising former Obama administration officials like David Petraeus, Robert Einhorn, Dennis Ross, Gary…

In response to yesterday’s Bloomberg View report that Iran’s forces and the United States share bases in Iraq, Senator Tom Cotton has issued a strong statement against the administration’s partnership with the Islamic Republic.

A year ago the Islamic State first made headlines around the world by storming Mosul and conquering Iraq’s second-largest city. President Obama pledged to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the organization. Here we are a year later, and with ISIS now holding more territory—including other Iraqi…