Sunday Reads: The Iranian elections, Israel & the Gaza tunnels, On ‘Polish death camps’

US

Perry Cammack tries to list a number of lessons America needs to internalize following 25 unsuccessful years of activity in Iraq:

the global policy community desperately needs tools to address the profound institutional deficiencies of the broader Arab world. The U.S. military has solutions that are often quite effective in addressing security threats and challenges. Unlike in 1991, however, the fundamental challenges in the Middle East today are primarily political in nature. The Islamic State’s terrifying emergence is rooted in decades of catastrophic governance failures in Syria and Iraq, which cannot be bombed away. Yet, after twenty-five years of near-continuous U.S. military engagement, Washington is no more competent today in supporting better governance, suggesting that the United States is likely to remain marginal to such efforts going forward.

James Jeffrey discusses John Kerry’s remarks on the possibility of US-led safe zone in Syria:

And when pressed on the possibility of a no-fly or safe zone as a component of a Plan B, Kerry argued that to be a “safe zone” it had to be “safe,” asserting that this could require taking out Assad regime and presumably Russian air defenses, patrolling the zone with a combat air patrol (CAP), and deploying some ground force to drive out the Islamic State (IS) and then defend the zone. Thereafter, he said that the Pentagon believes this would require “up to” 15,000 or 30,000 troops. He ended the discussion by asking rhetorically whether Congress would be willing to authorize such a U.S. presence.

Israel

Ruth Margalit writes about the action Israel is taking against the Gaza tunnel threat:

In the wake of the war in Gaza, I sat down in Tel Aviv with Danny Gold, the retired general who is credited with having invented the Iron Dome. Gold took the tunnel threat seriously. “It’s not a simple ‘event,’ technologically speaking,” he told me. “Since the Vietnam War it hasn’t been solved. Between Mexico and the United States it isn’t solved. Sometimes it’s even harder than finding oil in the ground.” Still, he added with a smirk, “I think rockets are harder to defend against—and we did it.”

Dennis Ross and David Makovsky are still advocating for getting back to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process:

For the past five months, there have been more than 100 individual Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis. As the risk of escalation grows, both sides are becoming even more doubtful that there will ever be peace. With Palestinians divided and their leaders increasingly discredited, and a right-­wing government in Israel, the conflict is not about to be resolved. But that is all the more reason to think about what can be done to preserve the possibility of a two-state outcome, particularly with the Palestinians entering a period of uncertain succession.

Middle East

Aaron David Miller explains why no one should get any hopes up about moderation in Iran:

Reality, not idealized hopes or fantasies, needs to guide our view of what's possible when it comes to liberalizing and democratizing authoritarian societies. And that goes double when it comes to thinking that external factors, such as the nuclear agreement Iran and world powers completed last year, will produce significant internal change in the Islamic Republic. Indeed, for the foreseeable future, that accord may have the opposite effect.

Here's why: America may have gotten what it needed with the nuclear accord, but Iran got what it wanted — an accord that would consolidate the government's power, not undermine it.

Steven Cook tries to explain who “the Kurds” are:

Are the Kurds terrorists, allies in the war against the Islamic State, or a nation in need of a state? The answer is yes to all of these, which makes things extraordinarily difficult for American policymakers and underlines why observers cannot just invoke “the Kurds.”

Jewish World

Matt Lebovich writes about Poland’s fight to get the words ‘Polish Death Camp’ out of the world’s vocabulary:

Whether or not the law is voted into effect, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum recently launched an app to “correct” journalists and social media users who type the words, “Polish death camp.” The word processing add-on, called “Remember,” deploys 16 languages to identify the term’s use and underline it in red, as well as offer replacement suggestions.

The Forward's Seth Rogovoy offers a secret Jewish History of the Academy Awards:

In 1968, Bob Hope, a longtime host of the Academy Awards ceremony, opened his monologue saying, “Welcome to the Academy Awards, or, as it’s known at my house, Passover.” The joke, which got a laugh or two, requires a bit of unpacking these days. Mostly — and you can tell this from his understated delivery — it was a self-effacing comment on being “passed over” by the Academy Awards his entire career without even a nomination, much less a win. It was also a knowing, friendly commentary on the makeup of the ceremony’s audience.