Writing for Foreign Policy, John Judis discusses AIPAC's recent failure to push the Iran sanctions bill through Congress, describing the history of AIPAC and the lobby's growing weaknesses, which runs deeper than the mere shortcomings of its ground game.

Jonathan Cohen takes a look at the decade-old Center for American Progress, discussing its blend policy and politics, its institutional leverage, what it's done for American progressives. 

Trita Parsi argues in Foreign Affairs that Iran’s position on Israel is far more likely to change in the direction Israel desires if U.S.-Iranian relations improve and the first tangible steps are taken to rehabilitate Iran into the region’s political and economic structures.

Daniel Byman and Khaled Elgind exhaustively outline the history of lawlessness and current issues surrounding the Sinai. Their recommendations to the US include encouraging Israel to explore options with Hamas that fall short of an all-out deal and an eventual policy that supports Egyptian development initiatives in the Sinai.

In signaling that he’s likely to select Chuck Hagel as his secretary of defense, Barack Obama is sending a message about his second term. Peter Beinart argues argues for, and outlines Hagel's war-averse vision in the tradition if Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

Blogger Shalom Bogoslovsky takes apart Naftali Bennett's "Stability Initiative", a political plan for the future of the West Bank.  Bogoslovsk refutes the assumptions one by one and shows why each is either outdated, unreasonable or simply wrong, and why implementating such a plan would lead to exactly a binational state. [HEBREW]

Dov Friedman, a Turkey specialist, argues that, while there is a great temptation to see the actions of political Islamists in the Middle East as solely driven by religion, their motivations are likely more complicated. Such a one-dimensional view actually makes it more difficult to explain some of Turkey and Egypt's actions. Freiedman suggests that sometimes tyranny is just tyranny, even if the tyrant is an Islamist, and we should avoid the temptations of simplified analysis.

Truman National Security Project, an American national security leadership institute, has produced an online war game that allows users to stand in the President of the United States's shoes on the day s/he is asked to make a decision on attack on Iran. The choose-your-own adventure model gives players the opportunity to take a number of factors into account, including Middle East regional stability, oil prices, and spreading the U.S. military too thin.

iVote Israel is an organization that heps register Israelis with American citizenship to vote in U.S. elections. Although the organization claims to be nonpartisan and to have no connection with any candidate or party, a series of investigations make it increasingly clear that the organization has closed ties to the Republican Party.