2015’s Hits at DanielPipes.org

A survey of critical Middle East issues: the Iranian nuclear buildup, ISIS, Erdoğan’s Turkey, the Saudi monarchy, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Islamism, and Israel.

A critique of Fear, Inc. 2.0: The Islamophobia Network’s Efforts to Manufacture Hate in America, an 81-page report from the leftist Center for American Progress (CAP). It lists me as part of “a well-funded, well-organized” movement determined to “intentionally spread lies” about Muslims and “erode America’s core values of religious pluralism, civil rights, and social inclusion.” To which, I reply: thanks for the credit but Americans fear Islam and Muslims not because of us analysts but because of daily news about Islamist violence and cultural aggression.

The participants in President Obama’s closed-door February 4 meeting with a domestic group of Muslims are almost all “Islamists while not a single anti-Islamist made the cut,” suggesting the meeting’s real purpose was to “protect his standing among his Islamist constituency.”

Israeli forces can stop or slow the Iranian nuclear buildup in three different ways: conventional air attack, special ops, or nuclear attack. I predict that Jerusalem will try special ops first, then air attack, then (if all else fails) nuclear attack.

A transcript (with embedded video) of my in-depth interview at the Free Library of Philadelphia with Israel’s ambassador to the United States in 2009-13. Oren argues that two “pillars” of U.S.-Israeli relations have weakened dangerously under the Obama administration: “no surprises” (prior consultation before “major new policy position on issues related to the Middle East and Israel’s security”) and “no daylight” (keeping differences “behind closed doors, not display[ing] them in public”).

The statement by Steven Emerson that there are predominantly Muslim “no-go” zones in Europe where governments “don’t exercise any sovereignty ... where the police don’t go in” is incorrect. In fact, all West European states can intervene anywhere and at any time in their sovereign territory. The problem is that they “often choose not to impose their will on Muslim-majority areas.”

The political climate in Sweden has shifted as a result of Muslim immigration and attendant problems, most notably with the rise of the anti-establishment Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna or SD). Discussion of the hard-headed, flexible responses needed to cope with current problems the country now faces has gone mainstream.

The Obama administration’s foreign policy is guided by one overarching principle: “Warm relations with adversaries and cool them with friends.” This is premised on the belief that 1) the U.S. government must morally compensate for past mistakes, 2) being friendly to hostile states will inspire them to reciprocate, and 3) using force creates more problems than it solves.

The Middle East is going dry due to such maladies as population growth, short-sighted dictators, distorted economic incentives, and infrastructure-destroying warfare. Israel provides the sole exception to this tale of woe, thanks to a combination of conservation, recycling, innovative agricultural techniques, and high-tech desalination.

The murder of 127 Parisians four days earlier will have a limited impact on policy. While Islamist terror attacks prompt ordinary citizens to want tougher measures, “unrelenting violence has a contrary effect” on the four P’s of the Establishment – politicians, the police, the press, and the professors; they “feel compelled to pretend that Islam has no role in the violence, in part out of concern that to recognize it would cause even more problems.”

Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum.