Let's start with red lines. Here it is, Washington’s ultimate red line, straight from the lion’s mouth.  Only last week Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said of the Iranians, “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us.”

How strange, the way those red lines continue to retreat.  Once upon a time, the red line for Washington was “enrichment” of uranium. Now, it’s evidently an actual nuclear weapon that can be brandished. Keep in mind that, since 2005, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has stressed that his country is not seeking to build a nuclear weapon. The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran from the U.S. Intelligence Community has similarly stressed that Iran is not, in fact, developing a nuclear weapon (as opposed to the breakout capacity to build one someday).

What if, however, there is no “red line,” but something completely different? Call it the ...

According to a report in Foreign Policy, agents with Israel’s Mossad spy agency posed as CIA operatives as they tried to recruit members of the Pakistan-based Sunni terrorist network Jundallah to launch attacks against Iran. The alleged revelations come at the tail end of a week where an apparent covert war against Iran’s nuclear program made headlines when a bombing in Tehran killed an Iranian nuclear scientist, the fourth such assassination in two years.

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Turkey has over the past few weeks become the spearhead of a joint Western-Arab-Turkish policy aimed at forcing President Bashar al-Assad to cede power in Syria. This is quite a turnaround in Turkish policy, because over the past two years the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had gone out of its way to cultivate good relations with neighboring Syria, with whom it shares a long land border.

This change of course on Syria has also cost Turkey a great deal in terms of its relations with Iran, the principal supporter of Assad’s regime, which Turkey had also cultivated as part of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s “zero problems with neighbors” policy.

Given these new strains, it is worth recalling that a only few months ago many American leaders were livid at what they perceived to be Turkey’s betrayal. In their view, Turkey had re-oriented its foreign policy toward the Muslim Middle East and away from the West – a shift supposedly reflected in the country’s deteriorating relations with Israel and improving ties with Iran and Syria.

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Many American policymakers and publicists, unable or unwilling to distinguish Turkish-Israeli relations from Turkish-American relations, interpreted Erdoğan’s condemnation of Israel’s blockade of Gaza as a bid to cozy up to his Arab neighbors at the expense of Turkey’s relations with not only Israel but with the West in general. Turkey’s attempt to mediate between the major Western powers and Iran concerning the Islamic Republic’s uranium stockpile went ...

A deadline the Arab League had set for Syria to sign a deal allowing observers into the country to monitor whether the government was adhering to a peace plan expired Friday without any Syrian response, setting the stage for the league to impose sanctions on the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Turkey's foreign minister said his country would coordinate with the Arab League on imposing sanctions, an indication of the extent to which the international community has lined up to force Assad to end his bloody crackdown on anti-government demonstrators, which has taken the lives of an estimated 3,500 people. Turkey once was considered a close Assad ally.

"There is excellent coordination between Turkey and the Arab League," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said at a news conference he held with Jordan's foreign minister. "We share every step we make and every position we develop."

Davutoglu said Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan would attend a meeting of Arab League finance ministers Saturday to decide what to do next and that he himself would participate in a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers tentatively set for Sunday. He said he was continuing to consult with the European Union, NATO and U.N. Security Council members on what next steps should be taken to increase pressure on Assad's regime. He met Friday with Italy's foreign minister as well.

Davutoglu warned that Syria would be isolated by Turkey, Arab countries and the entire international community if it ...

The United States, castigated by its critics as recently as a decade ago as a “hyper-power,” is now so weak and isolated on the world stage that it may cast an embarrassing and self-defeating veto of Palestinian membership in the United Nations. Beset by debt, mired in economic doldrums provoked by the cupidity and corruption of its business classes, and on the verge of withdrawing from Iraq and ultimately Afghanistan in defeat, the U.S. needs all the friends it can get. If he were the visionary we thought we elected in 2008, President Obama would surprise everyone by rethinking the issue and coming out in favor of a U.N. membership for Palestine. In so doing, he would help the U.S. recover some of its tarnished prestige and avoid a further descent into global isolation and opprobrium.

It is often the little things that trip up empires and send them spiraling into geopolitical feebleness. France’s decision to react brutally to the Algerian independence movement from 1954 arguably helped send its West African subjects running for the exits, much to the surprise and dismay of a puzzled Gen. Charles de Gaulle. Empires are always constructed out of a combination of coercion and loyalty, and post-colonial historians often would prefer not to remember the loyalty of compradors and collaborators. But arguably it is the desertion of the latter that contributes most decisively to imperial collapse.

Thus, it is highly significant that an influential Saudi prince warned the United States that a veto of Palestine at the U.N. could well cost the latter its alliance with Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is the world’s swing petroleum producer and has done Washington many favors in the oil markets, and although such ...

In the wake of the dubious UN investigatory report which all but exonerated Israel for its May 31, 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara–an attack that killed 8 Turkish citizens and 1 Turkish-America–Turkey has downgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel and suspended all military cooperation. Ankara had little choice in this matter. The Israeli attack was egregious. It took place in international waters against an unarmed civilian vessel and was carried out in defense of a barbaric and illegal policy of collective punishment against one million Palestinians bottled up in Gaza by an Israeli blockade.

For their part, the Israelis claim that they murdered the Mavi Marmara Turks in self-defense. I juxtapose the words self defense and murder quite purposefully, for the Turkish passengers were in the process of defending themselves from a violent assault when they were gunned down by Israeli soldiers who now describe their actions as self-defense. This scenario is a tragic parody of a hundred years of Zionist action in the Middle East. Having come to the region in the baggage train of an imperial occupying power (Great Britain) and successfully establishing themselves by evicting the native population (a process that is on-going), the Israelis define all acts of resistence to their aggression as attacks which require their defending themselves. The Mavi Marmara action fits neatly into this Zionist world of peculiar logic. In this sense, they turn the world upside down.

The Turkish government will have none of this and demanded the minimum of decency from the Israelis–an apology and compensation. In so doing they stand for civilized behavior. The ...