Obama Administration

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington today for a series of meetings at the White House. He'll hold one-on-one talks with US president Barack Obama before a "working lunch" with Obama, vice president Joseph Biden, and several other officials.

Obama's top priority during these talks will almost certainly be pushing for an extension to Israel's temporary West Bank settlement freeze, which is due to expire in September. The end of the freeze would forestall any possibility of direct talks between the Israelis ri the Palestinians.

"There has been a distinct improvement in the White House relationship with Israel since the last meeting" between Obama and Netanyahu on March 23, said Jonathan Spyer, a political scientist at Israel's Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. "Obama will be looking for a payback," perhaps in the form of an extension to the settlement freeze, Spyer said.

But from Netanyahu's perspective, the domestic politics of extending the freeze are... difficult, to say the least. His administration has nothing to show for the current freeze: Israeli-Palestinian "proximity talks" have yielded little concrete progress, save for a rumored land swap proposal offered by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

This post will be about yesterday's decision to revive the "King's Garden" plan in East Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood, which would demolish 22 Palestinian homes to make way for a tourist center. First, though, a bit of media criticism.

The Israeli security cabinet met earlier today and announced (some of) the details of its plan to ease the Gaza blockade.

Today's announcement from the cabinet was more detailed than last week's, which merely declared Israel's intent to loosen the blockade. But it still doesn't say exactly which goods will be barred from Gaza; whether businesses in Gaza will be allowed to resume exports; or whether the looser blockade will include looser rules on the movement of people.

It's a small step, but nonetheless it's objectively a good thing. After the jump: A statement from the White House, issued a few minutes after the Israeli decision.

Pew released its latest global survey a few hours ago, and it shows a clear drop in public support in Muslim countries for US policies and for Barack Obama.

Not too surprising, right? Many of Obama's policies are proving deeply unpopular in the Muslim world. But what's striking to me is how his personal support is falling much faster than perceptions of official US policy.

My personal take on the new package of Iran sanctions approved this week is that they won't accomplish anything -- anything good, at least.

The Iranian regime has already warned that the sanctions will preclude further negotiations over its nuclear program. Officials have also warned that the sanctions might scrap last month's so-called "Tehran declaration," the tripartite deal negotiated by Turkey and Brazil. (That might be a bluff -- it would sour relations with both countries, and Iran does need at least a few allies.)

The predicted Security Council vote on new sanctions against Iran came Tuesday, with predictable results: Slight additions to previous sanctions, opposition from Brazil and Turkey and an abstention from Lebanon, and an outburst from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Some commentators, including the Leveretts, lack faith that this fourth round of sanctions will have any serious effect on Iran's behavior, but the White House, armed with a list of 14 "new" measures imposed by Tuesday's resolution, argues otherwise.

The United Nations Security Council says it could vote on a new package of Iran sanctions this week.

Claude Heller, Mexico's ambassador to the UN (and the current Security Council president), said the vote could come as early as tomorrow. UN envoys are scheduled to meet on Tuesday morning to discuss the latest sanctions package, which bars Iran from "any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons," and prohibits Iran from buying several types of heavy weapons (these types of sanctions have been quite difficult to enforce).

Philip Alston's report on targeted killings, delivered to the United Nations' Human Rights Council this week, has received a lot of attention for being the first big takedown of the United States' clandestine drone program.

Alston makes a measured and reasoned legal attack on the general use of targeted killings by governments against non-state actors, but he specifically criticizes the American drone campaign in the Middle East, expressing doubt that the U.S. can claim to be in an armed conflict with Al-Qaeda and concluding that, "[o]utside the context of armed conflict, the use of drones for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal." 

But Howard Koh, the top Obama administration official to attempt a public legal defense of the use of drones, has invoked America's "armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces" as a justification for taking out individual fighters and leaders. So who's right when everybody's wrong?

One year ago today, Barack Obama went to Cairo University and delivered this optimistic speech. He vowed to "seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." The speech was certainly received with some skepticism, but coverage in the Arabic press was generally positive and sympathetic.

Today, the top story on Al-Jazeera's Web site (عربي) is headlined "Obama: Israel's concerns are legitimate." Obama and vice president Joe Biden call the Gaza flotilla raid "tragic" -- but both  defend Israel's actions, actions which have been condemned by virtually every other world leader on the planet. (Even the New York Times editorial board, hardly a staunch critic of Israel, seems puzzled by Obama's "tepid response.")

I've been doing largely non-stop flotilla coverage at Al-Jazeera for the last three days (including live blogs on Monday and Tuesday), so you'll forgive me for not writing too much about the subject tonight; I need a break. (Issandr El Amrani has a good roundup of flotilla commentary, if you're looking for broad analysis.)

But I do want to quickly comment on the American reaction -- or, rather, the lack thereof -- to the flotilla attack. During the White House press briefing yesterday, press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked (repeatedly) about Obama's refusal to condemn Israel's actions -- something dozens of other world leaders had already done.

Updated: It's been a day since the deadly raid on the so-called "Freedom Flotilla," and the fallout for Israel continues.

Although initial reports said that as many as 19 activists on board the Mavi Mamara had been killed during a nighttime Israeli Navy commando raid early on Monday morning, that toll has since been revised by both the Israeli government and the organizing groups to either nine or 10. Israeli has not released the identities of the flotilla passengers, despite facing a court challenge to do so.

Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, will ask the Obama administration next week to stop the CIA's clandestine drone strike program, according to the New York Times.

Alston... said Thursday that he would deliver a report on June 3 to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva declaring that the "life and death power" of drones should be entrusted to regular armed forces, not intelligence agencies.

The rest of the NYT article lays out the rather convoluted legal justification for running the drone program out of the CIA (it's quite a stretch). The UN makes a compelling case that the CIA officers running the program aren't entitled to the same sort of "battlefield immunity" as uniformed soldiers.

File this one under "highly unlikely": Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and one of the most powerful men in southern Afghanistan, has reportedly agreed with NATO to "play a less important role" and cede power to other officials.

For basically as long as Lebanon has existed as a modern nation, foreign forces have found the country a useful proxy to assert their regional interests in the Middle East, so it's not exactly breaking from script for the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress to assert an extremely self-interested agenda during Prime Minister Saad Hariri's first visit to Washington since coming to power last summer. (Nor is it strange for America to be self-interested, but I digress.)

Hariri met with Obama on Monday; he spent Tuesday with Vice President Joe Biden and members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Looking at the reporting that has emerged in the past two days, those meetings have been dominated by topics of American concern: the alleged transfer of Scud missiles from Syria to Hizballah, the disarming of Hizballah, and Lebanon's role in the U.S.-led effort to sanction Iran. Shelved, for the most part: Discussion of America's mired attempt to kick-start Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Tuesday's big announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- that the United States had reached agreement with the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to table a new Iran sanctions resolution -- was clearly meant to upstage what had already begun to be perceived as the previous day's diplomatic coup by Iran: a nuclear fuel swap deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey.

Washington's immediate pushback has left international diplomats and American pundits confused and angry. Brazilian and Turkish officials are reportedly "outraged"; Gary Sick called the U.S. announcement a "gratuitous insult"; and Marc Lynch tweeted that "trashing the Turkish deal was a mistake."

But let's take a clear-eyed look at what's really happening.

John Brennan, Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser, thinks the U.S. government needs to strengthen what he calls "moderate" elements within Hizballah.

"Hezbollah is a very interesting organization," Brennan told a Washington conference. "There is certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they're doing. And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements," Brennan said.

The White House denied just last month that it was planning to engage Hizballah, and you might remember the absurd flap earlier this year over Rob Malley (a former U.S. official) holding low-level talks with Hamas.

Update 5/18/10 4:07 p.m.: In opening remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States, Russia and China had agreed on a draft United Nations Security Council resolution that would impose sanctions on Iran. Clinton said that the United States and the rest of the P5+1 would "rally the international community on behalf of a strong sanctions resolution that will, in our view, send an unmistakable message about what is expected from Iran."

Original post: In the wake of Monday's announcement that Turkey and Brazil have convinced Iran to ship around half or more of its low-enriched uranium out of the country, the media has been quick to proclaim winners and losers.

On the wires this afternoon, the kind of news from Afghanistan that has become all too familiar: A prominent cleric who had called for "peace and stability" was shot to death along with two members of his family on Sunday.

The White House just e-mailed reporters a statement on the Iranian-Brazilian-Turkish nuclear fuel swap agreement announced earlier today. We've posted a full copy of the statement after the jump. It calls the agreement a positive step, but highlights a number of concerns, including the question of whether Iran will continue to enrich its uranium up to 20 percent.

As U.S. policymakers debate whether to hand Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a "stunningly deferential," nearly strings-free endowment to be used over the next five to ten years -- an endowment that Cairo has proposed should reach a whopping $4 billion -- it might be useful to remind ourselves about the reality of life in America's ahwa-sipping, shisha-smoking Arab best friend in the Middle East.