Geopolitics of Energy Initiative: Latest Articles

What Serious Diplomacy Looks Like -- in Turkey

Erin Drankoski — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:38:00 -0400

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was expected to come to the White House on Thursday for a meeting with President Barack Obama. Erdogan's visit has now been postponed, and the decision to postpone comes on the heels of the Turkish leader's high-profile visit to Iran this week.

Obama's Iranian Lifeline

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:48:00 -0400

Tehran threw President Barack Obama a badly needed "lifeline" for his Iran policy at last week's nuclear discussions in Geneva: It promised U.N. access to a recently declared nuclear site and committed "in principle" to ship low-enriched uranium, or LEU, abroad to make fuel rods for producing medical isotopes. If Geneva had been a "bust," Obama would have been committed to mustering international endorsement for what his secretary of state calls "crippling" sanctions against Iran -- even though no

How to Press the Advantage With Iran

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:20:00 -0400

Tehran's disclosure that it is building a second uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qum has derailed the Obama administration's already faltering efforts to engage with Iran. The United States will now cling even more tightly to the futile hope that international pressure and domestic instability will induce major changes in Iranian decision-making.

A Road Map to Nowhere

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:08:00 -0400

This week, Barack Obama's Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell met in New York with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to begin discussing a potential "compromise" regarding the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. Israel's continued settlement expansion has been at the top of America's Middle East agenda since Obama's Cairo speech in June, when he declared that "the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

'Extraordinary Amount of Wishful Thinking' by US

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:23:00 -0400

Many in Iran and the West assume that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election was the product of fraud. American Iran expert Flynt Leverett told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the irregularities likely weren't as bad as in Florida in 2000. Now, the US has to make the regime an offer.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad scored an overwhelming victory in the Iranian presidential elections held on Friday. Are you surprised?