Hard as I try, my mouth is fixed in an unattractive gape -- unable, it seems, to correct itself. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in his usual clumsy attempts to suggest liberal sympathy while in fact propagating many, many Mideast myths, has caused this unfortunate disfigurement.

In his most...

Face this fact. If Iran tomorrow announced a complete halt of its uranium enrichment program and ordered an immediate dismantling of its nuclear facilities under the full supervision of an IAEA safeguards army of inspectors ... we would still not cut the Islamic Republic any slack.

We would likely move...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared to break with US policy on Tuesday when she discussed Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah on the Charlie Rose show, identifying only the organization's "military wing" as a terrorist concern.

Discussing the recent negotiations between the five UN Security Council nations plus Germany --...

In early August and late October, I met with Hamas' Usama Hamdan and Hezbollah's Ammar Mousawi, chiefs of their respective organizations' foreign relations portfolios. The two groups are vastly different in structure, level of development and historical experiences, but share much in common too. Each can credit its origin to...

Almost a week after the UN General Assembly speeches by various heads of state, where one statement after another was dissected and laid bare by the thousands of reporters and analysts covering the annual plenary session, one speech has almost universally been ignored. And something rankles.

"Have you no...

The news cycle on the Iran nuclear story never seems to end. It is one sound bite after another. On Friday, we had to endure a pre-announcement (read drum-roll) that there would be a formal announcement by US President Barak Obama, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and British Prime Minster Gordon...

While the US media fixed its sights once again on Bin Laden's latest platitudes, a far more critical statement of intent was being delivered in Beirut simultaneously. Druze patriarch Walid Jumblatt -- until just last month a firm member of the pro-US March 14 coalition which won a majority in...