ABSTRACT
More than almost any other region of the world, the Middle East has consistently competed for top priority on the American foreign policy agenda. This chapter discusses the prominence of Middle East issues in American policy circles in recent decades. It describes the ways in which perceived national interests have interacted with domestic political considerations to ensure that Arab-Israeli peacemaking, along with recent crises in Iran, Iraq, and Syria, have become the province of the US president and his closest advisers. The making of foreign policy seems to involve an interplay among the initial predispositions of top policymakers, information about the specific issues being considered, the pull of bureaucratic groupings, the weight of domestic political considerations, the management of transitions from one presidency to the next, and the impact of events in the region of concern.
