How to do really terrible Middle East analysis

Take a more belligerent posture on Iran and give up on Israeli-Palestinian peace. Those are the two policy prescriptions Ephraim Karsh gives us in a New York Times op-ed today called “Muslims won’t play together.” I’m not going to take the time to argue with his policy prescriptions (I argued here for continued engagement with Iran, and I believe the US has a fundamental role to play in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace). I do think the way in which Karsh arrived at his conclusions, though, gives us a great introduction to how to do bad Middle East analysis. Here are a few...