Latest Articles

Why Najaf matters in post-war Iraq

August 27, 2010  •  The Washington Post

The last U.S. brigade combat team departed Iraq on Aug. 18. While President Obama says 50,000 U.S. troops will remain there through December 2011 to train the Iraqi army, in reality the U.S. units are focused more on packing up tons of equipment. This is so, as one colonel explained to me this month, "we can shut the lights out and close the door behind us."

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How nukes will transform Iran

August 15, 2010  •  New York Daily News

President Obama says Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons is "unacceptable," but he appears resigned to the eventuality that the Islamic Republic will build a bomb. Iranian leaders are defiant in the face of sanctions. On Aug. 8, for example, the Kayhan newspaper, mouthpiece for the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, declared, "Iran does not consider any cost higher than the loss of prestige of capitulating to the West and does not consider any benefit higher than the benefit of becoming nuclear."

Arab and Israeli newspapers both report that visiting U.S. officials suggest they could extend a nuclear umbrella should Iran develop a bomb, de facto acknowledgment that Obama favors containment over military force.

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Turkey, from Ally to Enemy

July/August 2010  •  Commentary

Traveling abroad on his first trip as president, Barack Obama tacked a visit to Turkey onto the tail end of a trip to Europe. "Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul to send a message," he told the Turkish Parliament. "My answer is simple: Evet [yes]. Turkey is a critical ally." On the same visit, however, the president showed that he considered Turkey more firmly part of the Islamic world than of Europe. "I want to make sure that we end before the call to prayer, so we have about half an hour," Obama told a town hall in Istanbul. Obama was not simply demonstrating cultural sensitivity. The fact is that Turkey has changed. Gone, and gone permanently, is secular Turkey, a unique Muslim country that straddled East and West and that even maintained a cooperative relationship with Israel. Today Turkey is an Islamic republic whose government saw fit to facilitate the May 31 flotilla raid on Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey is now more aligned to Iran than to the democracies of Europe. Whereas Iran's Islamic revolution shocked the world with its suddenness in 1979, Turkey's Islamic revolution has been so slow and deliberate as to pass almost unnoticed. Nevertheless, the Islamic Republic of Turkey is a reality—and a danger.

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Iran 2025

June 22, 2010  •  International Future Operational Environment Seminar

The Iranian military will remain a pivotal force in 2025, even as it undergoes a significant change in its force posture and strategy. Engrained in Iranian identity is a self-perception of Iran as inheritor to a grand civilization and as a regional power. Iranians root their special status in a near contiguous history dating back more than two millennia and Iran's status as a successor to a great pre-Islamic Empire. While Iran's neighbors fell victim to colonialism and conquest, Nasir al-Din Shah (r. 1848-1896) and his successors managed to play the Great Powers off each other and thereby preserve Iran's independence.

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Containment won't work

June 11, 2010  •  USA Today

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shrugged off Wednesday's U.N. Security Council resolutions, saying they "resemble used napkins that need to be thrown to the garbage can." Diplomacy has hit a dead end: President Obama bargained away everything just to win watered down sanctions.

Spinning centrifuges run down the clock. When Obama asked Iran to unclench its fist, it lacked the uranium to build a bomb. Today, it has enough for two.

If President Obama does not act quickly and unilaterally to paralyze Iran's banking sector and stop the gasoline imports the Islamic Republic needs to survive, he will be left with a stark choice: Launch a military strike or let Iran get the bomb.

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Books by Michael Rubin