CrossTalk: Neocon Twilight? ~ Window Into Palestine

How can contact between the US and Iran change the geopolitics of the region? Has Washington's neoconservative project for the Middle East hit a brick wall?

Can anyone replace the American leadership role? And as the US pivots away from the Middle East, what kind of world does it leave behind there?

CrossTalking with Bruce Fein and Grant F Smith.

Bruce Fein and Grant F. Smith debate whether it is time to celebrate the demise of the neoconservative grip on U.S. Middle East policy. Fein reviews the overwhelming public refusal to approve the Obama administration plan to attack Syria over alleged chemical weapons use. Smith argues that despite that recent development, over 70 percent of the neocon policy manifesto (The Clean Break Plan) has already been implemented. Smith further details how even as the region becomes a tinderbox awaiting a spark to inflame U.S. involvement, none of the Israel lobby's capabilities to legally or illegally fan the U.S. into conflagration–which it usually does while nobody is looking–has been observably diminished.

Bruce Fein is a lawyer in the United States who specializes in constitutional and international law. Fein has written numerous articles on constitutional issues for The Washington Times, Slate.com, The New York Times, Legal Times, and is active on the issues of civil liberties. He has also worked for the American Enterprise Institute and theHeritage Foundation, both conservative think tanks, as an analyst and commentator. For more see: wiki.

Grant F. Smith is the author of Spy Trade: How Israel’s Lobby Undermines America’s Economy, America’s Defense Line: The Justice Department’s Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government and Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal.

He is currently director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.

For more from Grant F Smith, go to: Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy – IRmep