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Aaron David Miller, who was Dennis Ross' top assistant, has told YNet that the United States 'always' tried to interfere in Israeli elections, but never succeeded (Hat Tip: Red Tulips) (link in Hebrew). According to Miller, the US gathered a lot of information about Prime Minister Netanyahu - including his activities while a student in the United States - but no one would listen. Miller admits that the George HW Bush administration influenced the outcome of the 1992 election to bring Yitzchak Rabin to power over Yitzchak Shamir, but he claims that's because the US set up the environment...

No devotee of Yes Minister, yesteryear’s BBC’s classic, can forget St. Edward’s Hospital – that spanking new cutting edge facility that had no patients or medical personnel. Nonetheless, St. Edward’s hustled and bustled, a veritable hive of activity and creative energy. For 15-months since its much-ballyhooed inauguration, an administrative staff of 500 bureaucrats filled the hospital’s offices, pushed papers and generated red tape. Sounds exaggerated? A bit over-the-top for real life? Not really. John Kerry’s peace project, for example, replicates the parody’s blueprints with mind-blowing precision. It is for diplomacy what St. Edward’s was for health care – an incredible...

U.S. Representative Dennis Ross, a Florida Republican, said he would support a broad spending deal that didn’t include changes to the health-care law, becoming the first Tea Party-backed House lawmaker to publicly back off the fight that has shut down the government for five days. Ross, ranked among the House’s most conservative members by both the Club for Growth and the American Conservative Union, said he shifted his position because the shutdown hasn’t resulted in changes to the Affordable Care Act, which started Oct. 1, the same day government funding ran out. The shutdown also could hurt the party, he...

..... In a remarkably contrived display of evenhandedness - 6 discussion points apiece... Israel six-point list is as follows: Only build new housing in settlement blocks and in areas west of the security barrier. This means that Israel would build only in about 8 percent of the West Bank and no longer in the remaining 92 percent. Offer compensation to any Jews to relocate to Israel or the designated blocks. Consent to begin construction of housing within Israel or the designated blocks for all those settlers ready to relocate. In “Area C,” which represents 60.1 percent of the West Bank’s...

What Is Samantha Power Thinking?The charismatic Obama adviser believes that stopping "genocide" is the United States' top foreign-policy priority. On March 18, President Obama explained his decision to mobilize the United States military for international intervention in Libya. “Left unchecked,” he said, “we have every reason to believe that Qaddafi would commit atrocities against his people. Many thousands could die. A humanitarian crisis would ensue. The entire region could be destabilized, endangering many of our allies and partners.” (As if it hasn’t been already?) That last sentence was a Realpolitik, national-interest justification for the U.S. intervention. But it rang hollow....

Americans are being played for fools by Iran—and fooling themselves. There is no case to be made that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons capability. There is no evidence that Iran's decision-makers are willing to stop the nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions or anything else. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Friday that it has made no progress in its negotiations with Iran and that Iran continues to accelerate its enrichment operations, which are in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and agreements with the IAEA. Yet the policy discussion in the U.S. is confused. Former...

Dennis Ross, President Barack Obama’s key Middle East advisor, said Thursday he would resign from his post, AFP reported. Ross, a veteran U.S. peace negotiator, said in a statement that he had made a promise to his wife to return to private life after two years in the administration and had outstayed that promise by a year. He added that he was returning to private life with “mixed feelings.” “It has been an honor to work in the Obama Administration and to serve this president, particularly during a period of unprecedented change in the broader Middle East,” Ross said. “Obviously,...

Obama’s Influential Mideast Envoy to Resign By MARK LANDLER Published: November 10, 2011 WASHINGTON — Dennis B. Ross, a seasoned diplomat who has been one of President Obama’s most influential advisers on Iran, the Middle East peace process and the political upheaval in the Arab world, will leave the White House in December, a senior administration official said on Thursday.

Armaros wrote, "This is it. As the evidence grew about Iran building bombs and warheads, Obama's team must have shown divisions. Thus he removes the eyes who saw, Ross, (who is a Clintonian) and replaces him with an Iran regime lobbyist. The Iran lobby, the NIAC, is a regime presence within the USA. Led by a famous Brzezinski-endorsed Iranian antisemite who blames Israel for Iran-US tensions and denies Ahmadinejad said "wipe off the map". Basically Obama has handed over the Iran negotiations to an Iranian regime agency. This is grotesque and shows Obama's determination to avoid confronting Iran at all...

Betting on Dennis Ross By: Daniel Mandel FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, July 30, 2009 One of the small, but interesting, indeed significant, things to have emerged from the Alan Dershowitz – Melanie Phillips FrontPage Magazine debate over the Obama Administration’s policies towards Israel is the manner in which Dershowitz seeks a security blanket in the existence of individual Obama Administration figures deemed pro-Israeli.  Yet, his is a curious argument: it tacitly concedes that the President’s background and the record of at least some of his relevant advisers and appointees – and thus the auguries regarding the likely direction of policy under...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama, facing a mounting political crisis in Iran, is increasingly relying on the counsel of a career diplomat who has been a staunch supporter of tough measures to curtail Tehran's nuclear program.The emergence of Middle East specialist Dennis Ross as a presidential confidant is being scrutinized in Washington for its potential impact on Mr. Obama's approach to Tehran, as the nuclear issue and electoral crisis play out.Mr. Obama has committed himself to direct talks with Tehran, but has said the U.S. should keep all options on the table to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. He also has...

Dennis Ross, who most recently served as a special State Department envoy to Iran, will abruptly be relieved of his duties, sources in Washington told Haaretz. An official announcement is expected in the coming days. The Obama administration will announce that Ross has been reassigned to another position in the White House. In his new post, the former Mideast peace envoy under President Bill Clinton will deal primarily with regional issues related to the peace process

Dennis Ross, Out As Special Envoy To Iran; Was He Ousted Because He's A Jew Or A Bit Hawkish On Nukes? The news that Dennis Ross, long time State Department strategist and peace processor, is being bounced as special envoy to Iran comes from an article by Barak Ravid in the reliable (at least on these matters) Ha'aretz. The story seems to assume that Ross was declared persona non grata by Tehran either because he was a Jew or because he believes that Iran should not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. If the Obama administration so readily capitulated to...

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1093058.html Dennis Ross, who most recently served as a special State Department envoy to Iran, will abruptly be relieved of his duties, sources in Washington told Haaretz. An official announcement is expected in the coming days. The Obama administration will announce that Ross has been reassigned to another position in the White House. In his new post, the former Mideast peace envoy under President Bill Clinton will deal primarily with regional issues related to the peace process. Washington insiders speculate that a number of reasons moved the administration to reassign Ross. One possibility is Iran's persistent refusal to accept Ross...

Dennis Ross, Special Advisor on Iran for the Secretary of State, has a book coming out next month that inconveniently takes issue with the Obama Administration’s thesis of “linkage.” “Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East,” Ross writes in a chapter titled “The Mother of All Myths,” “one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away.” Meanwhile, the Obama Administration – which Ross currently works for – is pressuring Israel in part because...

A secret American delegation was sent by US President Barack Obama this week to solicit Saudi Arabian and other Gulf rulers for hundreds of billions of petro-dollars for investment in US and global economic stimulus plans, exclusive Gulf sources report. They came away empty-handed. The chilly welcome received by the delegation, which met finance ministers and the heads of banks in Riyadh and the five emirates, was generated by wide disapproval of the US president's policy of engagement with Iran. Two other US missions had just been and gone, headed by defense secretary Robert Gates and special adviser to the...

Nuclear Terror: Some Obama advisers have a dubious strategy to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran: Present "a common front" including Russia and China and "demonstrate U.S. respect" for the Islamofascist regime.It may be judged the most astonishingly naive analysis of Tehran's nuclear ambitions ever unveiled. Last week, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) — a think tank founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and which should know better — released a report titled "Preventing a Cascade of Instability: U.S. Engagement to Check Iranian Nuclear Progress." Among the paper's signatories: Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind.; House Middle East...

President Obama is working against time to untangle 30 years of enmity and prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb, but even his own advisors know the chance of success is slim. So they also have been working on Plan B: What do we do if Iran gets the bomb? Today, the Obama administration is debating its Iran policy behind closed doors. Last year, however, four of its key appointees wrote about the issue as private citizens, and their writings suggest they are already planning for how to handle a nuclear Iran. Dennis Ross, the former Middle East peace negotiator...

What if you could protect America and our allies from nuclear weapons with your choice at the grocery store...the mall? Would you do it? What if you could make the world safer with the car you drive and the gas you put in it? Would you? United Against Nuclear Iran will make it easy with a website that lists all the international companies that do buisiness in Iran - businesses that are maiking it easier for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions. The Iran Business Registry is a compilation of those countries and corporations that continue to sustain the Iranian...

US President Barack Obama faced a host of personnel problems this week, as two top appointees bowed out because of unpaid income taxes and another pick distressed some in the Jewish community. Slideshow: Pictures of the week Samantha Power, a Harvard University genocide expert and former Obama campaign adviser, has been appointed to the the National Security Council's multilateral institutions office. She has been criticized in the past for making statements critical of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. In one clip making the rounds courtesy of YouTube, Power accuses Israel of "major human rights abuses," though she distinguishes...