Elliott Abrams

Some, very lamely, blame settlement activity by Israel as the justification for increased violence instead of putting the blame where it should be--with the Palestinian Authority, with Abu Mazen, with their longstanding practice of…

If our goal is to limit Iranian influence and defeat ISIS, strengthening the Peshmerga is the logical step, and we should take it.

One of the benefits of actually arming rebel forces is that we would greater influence over both those groups and others who are also arming them.

I believe American passivity regarding Syria is extremely dangerous.

Syria's civil war is now a proxy war, due to the introduction of Iranian and Hezbollah troops, and due to the massive refugee flows it is now a source of regional instability.

Should we prevail and the Assad regime be replaced by a Sunni regime oriented towards Syria's Sunni neighbors like Jordan and Turkey, it is a huge defeat for Iran and Hezbollah and Russia.

The continuation of the conflict is itself a threat to U.S. interests and U.S. allies.

In my view, the answer to those questions is yes because otherwise what we face in Syria is an Iranian victory.

I fear that we are lapsing back into the way we mostly over 30 years handled the Mubarak regime which was to go along with the occasional statement.

If we are silent about these issues, we weaken the side that really we are on in those debates in Egypt.

Freedom of assembly, I'll give another example, is very much under threat under new laws that have been proposed.

There are a lot of disturbing trends as several of you have mentioned. More charges have been filed for the crime of insulting the President in the less than 1 year of Mohammad Morsi's rule than since 1892.