Stories by Reuel Marc Gerecht
'Principled Realism'
Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Trump
Jun 12, 2017
Donald Trump's recent sojourn in the Middle East leaves the United States where it was before the president departed: His administration remains committed to containing Iran while philosophically adopting a pre-9/11 approach to combating Sunni Islamic militancy. Sunni Arab leaders have reason to be content. However much Candidate Trump wanted to avoid wars and costly alliances, President Trump clearly isn't going to abandon the southern Middle East to Iranian aggression. His Riyadh "Islam speech Read more
The Face-Off
President Trump's Iran dilemma
Feb 27, 2017
Donald Trump has promised a foreign policy of muscular retrenchment, in which a better-resourced U.S. military intimidates our enemies without serving as a global cop. More than any president since Richard Nixon, our new commander in chief sees virtue in brutal authoritarians, especially if they are fighting radical Islam. He has passionately belittled the idea of nation-building, freedom agendas, and protracted conflicts in Muslim lands. Trump’s foreign-policy coherence and mettle will soon b Read more
Protecting Palestine
Israel's unacknowledged role on the West Bank
Jan 16, 2017
Not long ago, I was talking to a Fatah official about Palestinian aspirations, especially his party’s sharp emotions about Hamas, the Palestinian fundamentalist movement that rules Gaza and would gladly overthrow the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. Fear, loathing, secular outrage (which may have been amplified to please Western ears), and a certain sadness about unrequited Palestinian fraternity in the face of Israeli oppression punctuated our conversation. When I finally tired Read more
The CIA, Post-Obama
What we don't know can hurt us
Dec 19, 2016
When the new casts out the old, an incoming administration has the opportunity to review its predecessor’s approach to the Central Intelligence Agency. When this is done, the focus is usually on the ethics of Langley and politically disturbing covert action. The Obama administration was prototypical in this regard: In conjunction with Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the president went after the most controversial parts of his predecessor's war on al Qaeda. He accused Ge Read more
The State of Muslims in America
From the November 7, 2016, issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
9:48 AM, Nov 02, 2016
One of the most striking features of the British cemetery at Gallipoli is the attention given to honoring the diversity of the dead. Final farewells from loved ones carved upon stone plaques line the footpaths up the hillsides where the Ottomans rained down machine-gun and artillery fire. Fallen Muslim soldiers, children of the Raj, lie side by side with Christians who died for king and country. Arabic and Persian inscriptions often immortalize the grief and love of the Muslim families; Persian Read more
Muslims in America
We underestimate the ability of our civilization to transform them
Nov 07, 2016
One of the most striking features of the British cemetery at Gallipoli is the attention given to honoring the diversity of the dead. Final farewells from loved ones carved upon stone plaques line the footpaths up the hillsides where the Ottomans rained down machine-gun and artillery fire. Fallen Muslim soldiers, children of the Raj, lie side by side with Christians who died for king and country. Arabic and Persian inscriptions often immortalize the grief and love of the Muslim families; Persian Read more
The Chilcot Report
A very long crucifixion of Tony Blair.
Jul 25, 2016
The Chilcot report on the Iraq war ought to elicit two emotions: sympathy and pity for former British prime minister Tony Blair. As was evident by late 2002, when Europeans saw the frightful resolve of George W. Bush and began earnestly debating how evil Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was and what threat he posed, Blair was a brave politician and an exceptionally good ally of the United States. The English political elite has never been a fountainhead of pro-American sentiment, despite the close, Read more
What's in a Name?
Jul 04, 2016
Barack Obama’s habit of avoiding Islamic nomenclature and highlighting American gun violence whenever Muslim terrorists strike is surely, in part, a product of his fear of anti-Muslim xenophobia in the United States. Before the rise of Donald Trump, Americans on the right might have scoffed at that concern as an expression of left-wing anti-conservative bigotry. That isn't as easy to do now: Understandable anxiety about Islamic militancy—how a small number of American and European Muslims can go Read more
A Historian Turns 100
Reuel Marc Gerecht on Bernard Lewis, centenarian
Jun 06, 2016
Twenty years ago, Bernard Lewis and I were walking along the Thames. We’d just seen a dreary English take on naughty French theater, which provoked remembrances of Paris in the 1930s when Lewis was a student of Louis Massignon, the great Catholic orientalist born in 1883, 33 years before my friend and teacher. A thoroughly secular English Jew, Lewis wryly remembered Massignon, a serious antisemite for whom Lewis could nevertheless express considerable scholarly admiration. Cataloging Massigno Read more
Done Deal?
Barack Obama's disastrous Iran legacy
May 23, 2016
All administrations are short-sighted. Even the brightest, most reflective people can develop acute tunnel vision when they join the paper-pushing, crisis-a-minute senior ranks of the National Security Council and the State Department. When the president becomes obsessed with one issue, as Barack Obama was with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, he and his advisers are less likely to appreciate the possible unintended consequences of their actions. Of course, with a president at odds with s Read more
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
A response to Foreign Minister Zarif.
3:19 PM, Apr 20, 2016
As has been obvious since his time as the Islamic Republic’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Javad Zarif is capable of creating a distortion field around him that often renders Americans somewhat giddy. The Iranian foreign minister's amiableness and wit have earned him many admirers in the West, including within the Obama administration. But details have always been Zarif's undoing, and his most recent Washington Post op-ed is another example of his skillful indirection camouflaging Read more
Iran's Make-Believe Moderates
Looking in vain for glasnost in Tehran.
Mar 14, 2016
Barack Obama and his tireless secretary of state sold the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in part as a means to reinforce Iranian “reformers," "moderates," and "pragmatists." They were always quick to add that the atomic accord stood on its own technical merits. Yet the non-nuclear dimension of the deal was no small part of the sugar that made the JCPOA more appealing. A more temperate Islamic regime, which gave first priority to the well-being of its people, would be less likely to abuse the Read more
Propitiating Iran
A recipe for bad deals.
Feb 01, 2016
American presidents are always emotionally and politically drawn to the plight of American hostages overseas. In his sympathy and paternalism, Barack Obama seems just like Ronald Reagan, who traded Hawk missiles to Iran for the release of Americans held by the Lebanese Hezbollah, the clerical regime’s most successful and obedient kidnapping offspring. Through President Obama's diplomacy, five Americans who were languishing in Iran's prisons can come home. The deal's shortcomings, however, ought Read more
End of the West?
Syria, the Islamic State, and Europe.
Dec 21, 2015
Should the United States militarily defeat jihadist outfits in the Middle East? After 9/11 the answer seemed easy, but after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Barack Obama is not alone in arguing that large-scale offensive campaigns against radical Muslim movements aren't worth the cost. Even if the president's go-slow approach is actually more likely to provoke more terrorism, is it the sensible policy for America? And can Western governments actually defeat the Muslim radicals who live in the Read more
An Iraqi Abroad
Ahmad Chalabi, 1944-2015.
Nov 16, 2015
Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, my friend Ahmad Chalabi would often carry fat tomes about America’s occupations of Germany and Japan. An Iraqi exile after 1958 who lived mainly in London and Georgetown and maintained an off-and-on, love-hate relationship with Western intelligence agencies, he was blessed with a voracious, curious, and sensitive mind. He had a prodigious memory, too, and was well-schooled beyond mathematics, in which he held a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. But knowle Read more
Victory Without Soldiers?
The futility of soft power in defeating militant jihadists
Oct 26, 2015
With the war in Syria becoming ever more complex and murderous, it’s worthwhile to revisit a guiding principle of Barack Obama: The use of American military power is likely to do more harm than good in the Middle East, and even in the region’s violent struggles, soft power is important, if not decisive, in resolving conflicts. If Islamic militancy is to be defeated, better ideas, advanced by Muslims, backed up if necessary by Muslim soldiers, must be the principal means. We do not know wheth Read more
Our Iranian Interlocutor
Ali Khamenei’s dark obsession with Jews and Israel
Sep 28, 2015
Antisemitism has never been an easy subject for America’s foreign-policy establishment. Read through State Department telegrams and Central Intelligence Agency operational and intelligence cables on the Middle East and you will seldom find it discussed, even though Jew-hatred—not just anti-Zionism—has been a significant aspect, if not a core component, of modern Arab nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, and what usually passes for critical thought among sophisticated Arab elites. Western sch Read more
How Will We Know?
The coming Iran intelligence failure
Jul 27, 2015
One might think that after the last Iraq war Democrats would be wary of allowing intelligence to dictate policy. Yet that is effectively what Barack Obama has done with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed in Vienna on July 14. The agreement with Iran is strategically premised on the notion that greater commerce will transform the virulently anti-American, antisemitic, terrorism-fond, increasingly imperial Islamic Republic into something more pleasant. Tactically, the agreement depends Read more
Transformational Diplomacy
Can a nuclear deal change Iran?
Jun 08, 2015
Many supporters of an Iranian nuclear agreement believe that a deal could help to moderate, even democratize, Iranian society. Barack Obama’s constant allusions to the transformative potential of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for U.S.-Iranian relations suggest that he believes an agreement, which would quickly release tens of billions of dollars to the Islamic Republic and reintegrate it into the global financial system, would improve the clerical regime’s behavior. Democrats and Republ Read more
Violent Extremist vs. Holy Warrior
The consequences of the president’s linguistic dodge
Mar 09, 2015
Is Barack Hussein Obama wrong to avoid appending “Islamic,” “Muslim,” “Islamist,” or even “jihadist” to the terrorism that has struck the West with increasing ferocity since the 1990s? This question has at least two parts: Is the president historically correct to do this? And is he politically smart to do it? The president could be a historical ignoramus and yet be strategically right to use the linguistic dodge. If Islam really is a faith that lends itself to hideous violence, does it do an Read more
Iran’s Supreme Censor
The evolution of Ali Khamenei from sensitive lover of Western literature to enforcer of Islamic revolutionary orthodoxy
Dec 22, 2014
The Blind Man’s friend: Don’t suffer because of the past. You censored books for the sake of God. . . . What is it you are taking? The Blind Man: Valium. I’m taking it to forget everything, even God. Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s 2003 movie script Faramoushi ( Dementia ) never passed the censors at Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the clerical regime’s gateway for all films, books, magazines, and newspapers. Makhmalbaf’s sarcasm and searing allusions often got him into Read more
Extending Extensions
The ‘complex’ negotiations with Iran.
Dec 08, 2014
Predictably, President Barack Obama and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have decided to extend again the Joint Plan of Action, the interim nuclear deal they concluded in November 2013. Unlike the last extension, which was for four months, this one is for seven months; the “political” parts of the deal, Secretary of State John Kerry assures us, should be done by March, while further “technical and drafting” details may take until July. This is an odd situation: Obama agreed to the first, shorter Read more
Sandstorm
The Middle East in chaos
Oct 13, 2014
The great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun centered his understanding of history on asabiyya , which is perhaps best translated as esprit de corps mixed with the will to power. In his masterpiece, the Muqaddima , or Prolegomena , the Arab historian saw as the primary locus of asabiyya the tribe—a smaller unit than the ethnic group, and the most powerful military unit in Islamic history until the Mameluks perfected the use of slave soldiers. The concept of asabiyya is helpful in trying to un Read more
A Muslim Identity Crisis
Rotherham and the failure of multiculturalism
Sep 15, 2014
The massive sexual abuse case in Rotherham, England, has revealed again how awkward and self-defeating the Western response often is to matters that touch on religious identity. Although the independent inquiry led by Professor Alexis Jay is tersely graphic about the 1,400-plus girls, some as young as 11 years old, who were sexually assaulted over several years by organized gangs of mostly Pakistani men, it isn’t detailed about the male predators. The report strongly suggests that all of the r Read more
A Bad Deal
Aug 04, 2014
We are in an odd situation. President Barack Obama is trying to coerce and cajole Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to compromise on his nuclear quest without using America’s only possible trumps: more sanctions and a serious threat of force. These negotiations are unlikely to end well, unless one deems any deal better than the possibility of American preemptive strikes. It’s certainly possible that neither more sanctions nor the threat of preemptive attacks will now work with Khamenei, w Read more
The Man and the Myth
The many faces of Hassan Rouhani
Jul 14, 2014
Urbi et Orbi, the city and the world, Tehran and the globe. In his turban and clerical robe, softly speaking of peace, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, resembles a spiritual guide more than a modern politician. Western statesmen, scholars, and journalists have been impressed by the differences between the cleric and his predecessor: Rouhani is everything Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was not—intelligent, eloquent, elegant, sophisticated. Perhaps as a result, the White House has premised success in the c Read more
The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Enemy
No one should mistake Iran for a friend.
Jun 30, 2014
When Ottoman armies marched into Europe in the mid-14th century, Europeans started looking hopefully eastward for enemies of the Turks. Spanish and French kings sent ambassadors to Tamerlane when the last great Muslim Mongol conqueror started marching west. Europeans and Byzantines rejoiced when the Central Asian obliterated the hitherto invincible legions of the Ottoman sultan, Beyazid the Lightning Bolt, at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. When the Persian Safavid shah Abbas I started gaining Read more
Scare Tehran, Please
Apr 21, 2014
Is Barack Obama’s threat of preventive military action against the Iranian regime’s nuclear program credible? Would a one-year, six-month, or even three-month nuclear breakout capacity at the known nuclear sites be acceptable to him? Is he prepared to attack if Tehran denies the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, entry into undeclared facilities that may be hiding nuclear-weapons research or centrifuge production? Is he prepared to strike if the regime denies inspec Read more