#Foreign Policy Association

Many of the diplomats interviewed seem to feel they do a better job of representing America abroad than they do of representing the diplomatic profession to their fellow Americans back home.

Hosted by Sarwar Kashmeri, the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions podcast series will headline issues together with the leaders whose decisions today will mold the foreign policy of tomorrow. Each podcast will tackle a different Great Decisions topic in the 2014 series, a list of which can be found here. The Great Decisions podcasts can also […]

Farideh Farhi on Iran’s Power Dynamics  Farideh Farhi is an Independent Scholar and Affiliate Graduate Faculty at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Dr. Farhi is a regular contributor to Lobe Log Foreign Policy, the U.S. foreign policy blog of the Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS News), writing on U.S. and Iranian foreign policies and Iran’s internal […]

Anniversaries are dangerous days.  There is often a flash of attention, lots of words and supposedly deep thought and meaningful promises. Then the sun goes down, and life goes on as before. The world often notes an anniversary without real thought or determination on how to take the steps needed to make it meaningful. As […]

Last week the Foreign Policy Association released its annual National Opinion Ballot Report regarding several topics within the realm of U.S. foreign policy. One subject that received much attention surrounded the United States’ role and responsibility when it came to promoting democracy globally. When the participants were asked if “The United States should actively promote democracy around […]

“In the words of my mom, ‘Go vote.’ It makes you feel big and strong.” With this inspiring statement from moderator Bob Schieffer, the final presidential debate concluded, leaving two weeks left until November 6. The third debate, on foreign policy, reinforced the major theme of this election: job creation. Throughout the debates, several foreign […]

It’s that time of year again, the Foreign Policy Association (FPA) has released its “National Opinion Ballot Report” for 2012. The report presents the results of the FPA’s National Opinion Survey, in which 20,623 ballots were returned, the majority of these ballots emanating from Florida, California, New York, Colorado and Arizona. Needless to say, these […]

Thanks to the hard work of several of our bloggers, Foreign Policy Association’s election guide and candidate selector is up! Focusing on the foreign policy views of incumbent President Barack Obama and the opposition challenger, Mitt Romney, the Foreign Policy Association’s bloggers provide readers with background and analysis on the five most-debated topics facing American […]

After a run of over five years and 750+ posts, it’s time for me to move on from the Foreign Policy Association blog “Climate Change.”  In this time, I’ve tried to bring you some perspective on one of the most important issues of our age.  I am a proud tree hugger, certainly, but I believe […]

  Today the Foreign Policy Association hosted a conference on “The Future of Energy“. I had the pleasure of attending and, given that I am writing on energy, I also have some interesting insights to share. Especially interesting was the panel discussion “The Energy Picture, Redrawn.” The key insight is that energy is crucial for […]

Suffice to say, the Foreign Policy Association’s National Opinion Ballot confirmed an attitude that’s prevalent in the foreign policy community. Key findings suggest that some defense budget cuts are necessary, global financial regulatory regimes are welcome and opposition to military adventurism is robust. Perhaps most importantly, disillusionment with the huge costs and uncertain outcomes of […]

It’s called a ‘murder-for-hire’ sting, a standard law enforcement ploy designed to help the criminal find the very worst in his nature and act on it. But sting operations come with their own risks as well as rewards—and attorneys know that ‘entrapment’ can be a strong defense. . .

Informants are like sharks, scouring the underworld for opportunities and targets the feds can use as springboards to career-making cases. It’s the informant’s job to find two sticks (agent and opportunity), to rub them together vigorously, and to blow gently on the sparks of criminal enterprise.

Think about this as well….the ‘downpayment’ for the ‘hit,’ the100k wired to the US undercover bank account is enough to trigger a case for conspiracy, but it still doesn’t prove that the Iranian government was driving the bus. To do that, US authorities must establish a link between the owner of the account in the UAE — or the owner/s of an account held by an international financial institution with correspondent branches/banks around the world — and the government of Iran.

This is a critical point–one that could defuse the Obama Administration’s claim that ‘senior officials at the highest levels of the Iranian government’ were tied to the assassination plot and challenge the call of senior US officials for alterations to current foreign policy, in the US and abroad, toward Iran. If US authorities cannot prove that this was something more than a plot formulated by a small group of non-state actors, the President, the Secretary of State, DEA and the FBI have some explaining to do. . .