Elliott Abrams

5 days ago | cfr.org | Elliott Abrams

For Israel, as for Ukraine, defending against drones has been a difficult and expensive endeavor. Drones are cheap and lethal. Air defense systems are expensive. Each of Israel’s Iron Dome batteries costs about $100 million, and interceptors can cost over $40,000. In the Ukraine war, it is estimated that the Shahed attack drones used by Russia coast about $35,000 each—while a PAC-3 Patriot interceptor costs about $3 million and an AIM 9-X variant called the NASAM costs about $1 million each.

2 weeks ago | cfr.org | Elliott Abrams

During his trip to the Gulf last week, President Trump went out of his way to abandon what he described as intrusive, ignorant, and much resented U.S. lectures to Gulf nations about their internal affairs. Here is an excerpt from his remarks in Riyadh on May 13:This great transformation has not come from Western interventionalists or flying people in beautiful planes, giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs.

1 month ago | fathomjournal.org | Elliott Abrams |Dennis Ross |Gidi Grinstein |Yair Hirschfeld

Attorney Gilead Sher is a former Israeli senior peace negotiator and Chief of Staff to PM Ehud Barak. Formerly a peace negotiator under PM Rabin, he is a Rice University’s Baker Institute fellow and a former senior fellow at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Studies INSS. In 2023, Sher co-founded the Central Resistance Headquarters for the pro-democracy struggle.

1 month ago | nationalreview.com | Elliott Abrams

1 month ago | foreignaffairs.com | Ray Takeyh |Elliott Abrams |Rose Gottemoeller |Lynn Kuok

Nearly every week since taking office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump has had something to say about controlling nuclear weapons. In comments to Fox News in March, for example, he referred to these weapons as “big monsters” and the world’s “greatest existential threat,” lamenting that the United States spends “all this money on something that, if it’s used, it’s probably the end of the world.” The president’s interest is fortuitous.