Iraqi Kurdistan will always be weaker than Turkey and, to officials in Washington, it will always be less important than Turkey so long as Turkey remains in NATO. Still, the Kurdistan Regional Government can seize diplomatic initiative and perhaps protect its own people and force Turkey to moderate its actions, if only Kurdish leaders would play their hand more skillfully.

Syria has always been among the Middle East's most repressive regimes. Any hope that Bashar al-Assad would usher in reform were naïve to begin with, the stuff of diplomats' fantasies. The question of what might come after Assad is a difficult one for American diplomats who have spent far more time trying to engage Assad and his functionaries than in reaching out to the Syrian opposition.

Sanctions will not persuade the Assad regime to surrender power, and talk about an embargo on luxury goods is a cruel joke.

A review of Kevin McKiernan's The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland.

In The Kurds and the State, political scientist Natali explores how Kurdish nationalism developed in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq.

Review of The Kurds in Iraq, by Kerim Yildiz.

If Iraqi Kurdish leaders had the power to prevent the Turks from acquiring the tools of massacre but did not, they should be willing to explain why, or be forced to acknowledge they use the rhetoric of Kurdish empowerment insincerely.

Iraqi Kurds and Iraqis more broadly can argue about whether Western concerns about Iran’s nuclear program are justified and they can also debate responsibility for the recent tension between Tehran and Washington. Analysts—whether they are in Washington, Jerusalem, or Tehran—largely agree, however, that the Middle East is closer to a major war now than at any time since 2003.