President-elect Barack Obama assembles his national security team at a time when responsibility for foreign policymaking has shifted increasingly to the White House, says Carnegie Endowment scholar D…

CFR’s Steven A. Cook says the decision to speak with Iran and Syria on Iraq, marks “a positive change in policy.”

Gary G. Sick says an “emerging strategy” is developing that brings the United States, Israel, and Sunni Arab states in an informal alliance against Iran.

David Makovsky, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says that, with the scheduled withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza, there is a “sense of a looming showdown” betwee…

Gary G. Sick, a prominent expert on Iran, worked with Robert M. Gates in the White House during the Ford and Carter administrations. He says the nomination of Gates to replace Donald M. Rumsfeld as s…