In his memoir, Michael Morell, a veteran CIA officer who spent part of the 1990s serving in the unit tasked with monitoring al-Qaeda, describes his experience of America’s war on terror. In his review, Gabriel Schoenfeld describes the book as both compelling and informative, but suggests that it does not hold the agency to sufficient scrutiny:

Neither the twin embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 nor the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 prompted [the then-CIA director George] Tenet to return to the problem [of the threat of al-Qaeda]. Only after 9/11 did the CIA issue a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on terrorism. Tenet was not exactly shaking the trees on this critical subject. . . .

But beyond [the frequent] superficiality [of CIA analysis that Morell himself admits], there was the long and familiar record of CIA analytical and collection failures. Among other things, the agency missed the first Soviet atomic-bomb test in 1949, the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950, the first Soviet H-bomb in 1953, the outbreak of the Suez war in 1956, the Soviet placement of missiles in Cuba in 1962, the Egyptian attack that started the Yom Kippur war in 1973, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the Iranian revolution that same year. Understanding secretive adversaries is a very difficult challenge, and even the best spy agencies in the world regularly get even the most important questions wrong. In the wake of the 9/11 lapse and all previous lapses, President George W. Bush and his men would have been irresponsible if they did not look at CIA judgments sideways and upside down.

While casting aspersions on agency outsiders, Morell conspicuously elides those episodes where insiders themselves appear to politicize intelligence. The most notorious recent example is the declaration in the unclassified summary of the 2007 NIE that “we judge with high confidence that, in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear-weapons program.” This startling finding was reached, as a footnote reveals, by excluding from consideration “Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.” In other words, relying on a preposterously narrow definition of a “nuclear-weapons program,” the NIE injected a profoundly misleading assertion into the bloodstream of national debate, thereby altering the direction of American policy.

Last week, the Lebanese parliament chose Joseph Aoun to be the country’s next president, filling a position that has been vacant since 2022. Aoun, currently commander of the military—and reportedly supported by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia—edged out Suleiman Frangiyeh, Hizballah’s preferred candidate. But while Aoun’s victory is a step in the right direction, David Daoud sounds a cautionary note:

Lebanon’s president lacks the constitutional authority to order Hizballah’s disarmament, and Aoun was elected as another “consensus president” with Hizballah’s votes. They wouldn’t vote for a man who would set in motion a process leading to their disarmament.

Habib Malik agrees that hoping for too much to come out of the election could constitute “daydreaming,” but he nonetheless believes the Lebanese have a chance to win their country back from Hizballah and, ultimately, make peace with Israel:

Lebanon’s 2019 economic collapse and the 2020 massive explosion at the Beirut Port were perpetrated by the ruling mafia, protected ever since by Hizballah. [But] Lebanon’s anti-Iran/Hizballah communities constitute a reliable partner for both the U.S. and Israel. The Lebanese are desperate to be rid of Iranian influence in order to pursue regional peace and prosperity with their neighbors. Suddenly, a unique opportunity for peace breaking out between Israel and Lebanon could be upon us, particularly given President Trump’s recent reelection with a landslide mandate. It was under Trump’s first term that the Abraham Accords came into being and so under his second term they could certainly be expanded.

As matters stand, Lebanon has very few major contentious issues with Israel. The precisely targeted and methodical nature of Israel’s war in Lebanon against Hizballah and what has unfolded in Syria make this outcome a far more attainable goal.