Ilan Berman
Ilan Berman
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Pundicity: Informed Opinion and Review
 

Latest Articles

Trump Needs A New 'Maximum Pressure' Policy ... Against Russia

February 5, 2025  •  Newsweek

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his war of aggression against neighboring Ukraine in February 2022, it set off an unprecedented wave of Western economic pressure. That "shock and awe" campaign, orchestrated by the Biden administration and U.S. allies in Europe, was designed to ratchet up the costs of the war for the Kremlin via a raft of sanctions and other restrictions designed to isolate Russia from global markets. So far, though, Western pressure has proved to be less than meets the eye. For all of its public rhetoric to the contrary, Europe has failed to meaningfully wean itself off Russian energy, a key strategic vulnerability. In fact, the continent's dependence on Moscow has grown, as European imports of Russian natural gas actually rose from 2023 to 2024. And, despite early optimism about a mass exodus of commercial activity as a result of the war, hundreds of Western businesses (including prominent American firms like Guess, TGI Friday's, and Tupperware) still retain sizable stakes in the Russian market. As a result, although it definitely hasn't thrived, Russia's economy has managed to survive, even growing modestly over the past calendar year. For instance, wages for workers, especially those in the defense sector, have increased, while overall unemployment has decreased. This and other trends have fed official Russian triumphalism that the country will ultimately outlast the West, at least in economic terms. Yet, as the Ukraine conflict nears its third anniversary, evidence is mounting that the bill for the Kremlin's war of choice is finally coming due.

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'Biden Doctrine': A Chronicle Of Missed Foreign Policy Opportunities

January 22, 2025  •  The Washington Times

When scholars look back at the foreign policy of the last administration, they're liable to conclude that the "Biden Doctrine," to the extent that there was one, wasn't an elaborate, ambitious and well-thought-out affair, the way some pundits have suggested. Rather, it was a series of tactical responses to world events — responses that were ultimately undermined by the White House's fear of adverse consequences.

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Are The Abraham Accords Coming Back To Life?
As strife abates, countries are remembering why ties to Israel are a good bet.

Winter 2025  •  Moment Magazine

Over the past year, Israel's war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip has fundamentally upended the Jewish state's regional relationships—and brought down the curtain, at least temporarily, on Jerusalem's previously vibrant ties to the countries of the Abraham Accords. That, however, appears to be changing. This past November, the Kingdom of Morocco became the first Abraham Accords country to officially reaffirm its diplomatic ties with Israel, citing its Jewish heritage as justification. The announcement was a hopeful sign that the wave of normalization between Israel and the Muslim world, officially kicked off in 2020, has begun to show new signs of life.

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Israel Faces A Reshuffled Strategic Deck In Syria

January 1, 2025  •  Newsweek

Suddenly, Israel has a Syria problem. For years, officials in Jerusalem had banked on a relatively predictable balance of power with the neighboring regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Despite Assad's enduring hostility toward the Jewish state and the inherent weakness of his regime, a tenuous status quo had been struck between the two countries, making it generally possible to anticipate how the Syrian dictator would behave. This has served as a perverse source of comfort over the past 14 months, as Israel has found itself preoccupied with the threat of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and more recently, that of Hezbollah in Lebanon. But no longer. The rapid December collapse of the Assad regime in the face of reinvigorated domestic opposition has demolished the old status quo in the Levant.

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Rethinking Iran's Future

Winter 2025  •  inFOCUS Quarterly

When might meaningful change come to Iran, and how? Nearly 50 years after the country's last major political transformation – the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's radical Islamist revolt against the monarchy of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi – that question continues to bedevil policymakers, both in Washington and far beyond the Capital Beltway. There are no definitive answers. History has shown all too clearly that revolutions are notoriously hard to predict. Almost without exception, the significant political upheavals of the 20th century were not reliably anticipated, either by informed observers or by much better-resourced (and presumably more competent) intelligence agencies. Even Iran's own Islamic Revolution caught the US government by near-total surprise when it erupted in February 1979. There is therefore significant hazard in trying to predict when, how, and in what way political change might come to Iran.  Even so, it is apparent that Iran is fast approaching an inflection point of some sort. Nearly a half century after the Islamic Revolution fundamentally altered the complexion of the country, virtually every objective measure suggests that it is once again ripe for change.

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Books by Ilan Berman

Cover of Iran's Deadly Ambition Cover of Implosion Cover of Winning the Long War Cover of Tehran Rising

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