Articles

The Kremlin’s Selective Counterterrorism

January 26, 2016 Ilan I. Berman National Review Online

To hear President Vladimir Putin tell it, his government is the proverbial tip of the spear in the global war on terror.

For months, Kremlin officials have taken great pains to style their intervention in Syria in grandiose terms - not simply as a ploy to prop up a key strategic ally, but as a broader campaign against Islamic extremism. To hear them tell it, Russia has been forced to lead because of Western fecklessness in the face of gathering Islamic radicalism. Yet this bluster belies the fact that Moscow's counterterrorism policy is both flawed and selective in the extreme.

Iran’s Perilous Nuclear Lesson for North Korea

January 12, 2016 Ilan I. Berman The National Interest

North Korea made international news last week when it declared that it had successfully carried out an underground test of a hydrogen bomb. The announcement touched off fevered speculation in Washington about the nature of the test itself (among other things, the yield is believed to have been to small to have been a thermonuclear device), as well as its larger geopolitical significance.

Fallout Ploy: Iran’s Cyberwarfare Contingency Plan

January 11, 2016 Ilan I. Berman Foreign Affairs

Iran's cyberwarriors are back in action. Late last fall, The New York Times reported that Iranian hackers had carried out an extensive hack on U.S. State Department employees. Among the victims were U.S. diplomats working on the Middle East and on Iran specifically, who had their email compromised and their social media accounts infiltrated. The hack was the latest in what U.S. officials say are increasingly aggressive attempts to glean information about U.S. policies toward Iran in the wake of this summer's P5+1 nuclear deal.

A Much Needed Post-Obama Course Correction On Iran

December 14, 2015 Lawrence J. Haas U.S. News & World Report

With most Americans focused on the Islamic State terrorist group, Washington is poised to greatly expand the dangers to U.S. national security on another front - by proceeding to execute the Iran nuclear accord while Tehran ignores its obligations under it and related United Nations Security Council resolutions.