WASHINGTON—Last week’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran further refutes the conclusion of the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that Iran abandoned weaponization activities in 2003. The Annex to the report makes clear that although Iran temporarily halted weaponization activities in 2003 on the heels of the Iraq invasion, the activities resumed [...]

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WASHINGTON—Both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama have tried hard to prevent Iran from developing and deploying nuclear weapons. The preferred strategy for achieving this objective has been to work closely with key European allies and to put pressure on Russia and China to support tough UN sanctions against the Iranian regime, all [...]

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WASHINGTON — Last week in Baghdad, on his maiden overseas trip as U.S. Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta pressed Iraqi officials on whether they wanted American forces to remain in the country after 2011.  Until a few weeks ago, Iraq was largely out of the public spotlight and a low priority for most U.S. policymakers [...]

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WASHINGTON — The failure of the most recent round of talks between Iran and the “P5+1” in Istanbul was hardly a surprise. To date, negotiations with Iran have made no progress in halting Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program, or in changing the dynamics in a deteriorating relationship between Iran and the West. But the experience in [...]

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WASHINGTON — Reflecting on the past year in transatlantic relations, it is tempting to compose a scorecard of successes and failures, or a short list of critical events. Many of these items have been discussed in Transatlantic Take when they were front page news. In truth, 2010 is a hard year to rate in transatlantic [...]

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WASHINGTON — Two years into the Obama administration, initially high expectations about the future of the transatlantic relationship have given way to growing pessimism. NATO is part of this narrative.  There is a widespread consensus that the Nov. 19-20 NATO Lisbon Summit will leave many issues unresolved. Among other things, the shadow of Afghanistan is [...]

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WASHINGTON — As U.S. and European leaders gather for the NATO summit in Lisbon, their main focus will be the institution’s new strategic concept. But they cannot afford to ignore Turkey’s precipitous drift out of the NATO orbit and its implications for peace and stability in the Middle East and the West’s relations with Russia [...]

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WASHINGTON — American elections are largely driven by domestic concerns, but their outcomes have global ramifications. Never has this been more evident than in the wake of this year’s U.S. Congressional elections, which produced an overwhelming Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and returned a razor-thin Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate. The [...]

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BRUSSELS — Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee finally approved a resolution to ratify the New START treaty. But chances of its being debated in the full Senate before the U.S. mid-term elections on November 2 are looking slim, further delaying the treaty’s final ratification. These rather gloomy prospects stand in sharp contrast [...]

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According to this year’s Transatlantic Trends survey, Turkey can be seen as drifting away from the West. How do we know? After surveying approximately 1,000 people in Turkey (along with about 1,000 in the United States and each of 11 European Union countries) on a host of foreign policy and economic policy questions, we found [...]

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