There is a renewed round of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The Israelis have launched air strikes against members of Hamas and the Palestinians have responded with rocket attacks. At this point, it could simply be the standard tit-for-tat between Israelis and Palestinians, or it could be a testing of defenses prior to an attack on Iran. Reports are that some of the rockets from the Gaza–the longer range Grad rockets–have been shot down by the Israeli missile defense system, Iron Dome. The Israelis could be trying to determine whether they could hold off a counterattack from Hamas in the event of an attack on Iran. We shall see how this round of violence evolves.
The Associated Press has published a very good fact sheet on the Iranian nuclear program. It is a substantive piece with the most authoritative information now available and worthy of your attention. Obviously it relies on published, verifiable information so it cannot reflect the secret intelligence that may or may not be available to governments.
Stephen Walt has published an interesting guest blog by a Chinese scholar on how to think about Chinese foreign policy. It raises some interesting parallels with American foreign policy.
For those of you very interested in the Greek debt crisis, John Mauldin has written a very substantive essay on where we stand now that Greece has defaulted. Because it is so detailed, I will not ask any quiz questions on it. But it is worth a close read.
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