What a week for anniversaries! Thursday we’ll be celebrating the first year of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It’s Barack Obama’s major foreign policy initiative, which ostensibly prevents Iran from a nuclear breakout, but in reality paves the way for the White House’s realignment with the Islamic Republic. Who knows if the deal will survive Obama’s term in office, but, as I’ll detail more in a few days, the White House is doing everything it can to protect the deal.
In the meantime, this Tuesday I’m thinking about waking up in Beirut ten years ago when my friend Elie Fawaz called from his home in the mountains over the city to say that Hezbollah had ambushed an Israeli patrol, killing three IDF troops on the spot and taking hostage two others. Shortly after Fawaz and I agreed that trouble was coming, I heard the bombs that the Israeli air force was dropping on the airport only a few miles away. What the Lebanese call the July War, and Israelis call the Second Lebanon War, was underway, and it would last 34 days.
