Founder & CEO Mindwork Strategies. Foreign Policy|Middle East|Strategic Communications|Workplace Mental Health. Ex @DeptofDefense. MSFS @georgetown.
Dec 7 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at #Dohaforum2024 in response to @baysontheroad asking him whether he has spoken to his Syrian counterpart and whether the Syrian regime is worried: We are not in the business of checking on people to see who is worried and who is not 1/
Lavrov saying he is sad for the Syrian people for being pawns of geopolitical games.
James asks: Are you going to try to save Assad?
Lavrov: Militarily, Russia helps Syrian army with air force. Cannot guess/forecast. Not my job.
2/
Oct 9 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I’m going to go out on a limb here and post a rare personal, and very vulnerable, post.
I went out to dinner on my own after a late meeting, thinking it would be a break from the pain and heartache so many of us are feeling.
I ended up bursting into tears uncontrollably 1/
I was seated between two tables and the conversions were so mundane. One woman seated next to me appeared visibly upset looking at her phone, she appeared Middle Eastern, I asked her quietly “are you ok?” She replied, “ah yes my company was supposed to book a hotel for me!” 2/
Jul 31 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
One of Haniyeh's potential successors is intimately familiar with Israel's assassination attempts. In 1997, Netanyahu sent Mossad agents to Jordan to kill Khaled Meshaal. It did not, to put it mildly, go well. The story is straight out of a movie 🧵
timesofisrael.com/begging-royal-…
2/The Mossad agents flew to Amman under fake Canadian passports. Although they got close enough to Meshaal to spray his ear with the poison, his bodyguards acted fast. They ran after the agents, and caught them. King Hussein was furious.
Jul 30 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
When I was 24, I served as a translator on the administrative review boards in Guantanamo Bay, where I tried to ensure fair/accurate depictions of detainees' stories.
The stories coming out of Sde Teiman remind of what I learned at GTMO.
Short 🧵
2/First, that democracies are not infallible and that their conduct in times of war towards the "enemy" often exposes deep fissures and shortcomings in their own societies. Leadership in those times is crucial. Israelis' leaders, like Bush and co back then, have failed them.
Jan 3 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Watching #Nasrallah's speech today, after the Arouri assassination + attacks in Iran & South Lebanon today, I am more worried than ever about a swift and violent regional escalation.
US coming off as impotent; Israel as reckless 🧵
First, main takeaways from Nasrallah speech:
-Sought to proclaim the independence of Iranian-backed movements from Iran, absolving Iran/IRGC from culpability.
-Linked the different “axes of resistance” to one another in one shared, regional vision.
-Defended attacks on the northern border of Israel as a necessary deterrence.
-Stopped short of declaring an expansion of military attacks/all out war with Israel *unless* Israel starts one, but significantly more aggressive tone than in previous speeches and promised a retaliatory attack for last night’s assassination. 2/
Nov 22, 2023 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
I met numerous people with similar underlying racism/dehumanisation to Stuart Seldowitz during my time in US government & before that when I was a young translator in Iraq & GTMO.
Bear with me as I offer some thoughts as to why that is and what should be done to address it🧵
I was 20 yrs old when 9/11 happened. For many Arab and Muslim Americans, it was a scary time. We watched our identities and loyalties questioned and our religion and heritage securitised and militarised. That was the beginning 2/
I worked 8 years under Obama & was a volunteer on candidate Biden's ME policy team
🧵on the content of this letter and what the list of public signatories says about the climate of fear in Washington, DC right now. As in, who gets to speak out freely & who cannot. 1/
First off, the timing of this letter, which says "a ceasefire is not possible at this time" is shocking. To voluntarily & publicly state this at a time when 1/200 Gazans have been killed & we are seeing babies pulled out of their incubators and dying, is hard to believe 2/
Jul 26, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Been working on a long article about US Middle East policy for a while now, but in the meantime, some thoughts <thread>
1-The Middle East is a graveyard for “western” values. Democracy, accountability, transparency, human rights..it all falls by the wayside in this region. Why?
2-Why? Because not one Western country actually prioritises values over interests here. Equally importantly, the West doesn’t prioritise LONG-TERM interests over short-term interests. Elections + campaigns are good for democracy at home, bad for democracy activists in the ME.
