The foreign politics of diasporas plays an important role in shaping U.S. foreign policy.

Traditional analysis of U.S. foreign policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Middle East in general, is either confined to the limits of local actors in the Middle East, or, when it takes into account domestic actors in the U.S., focuses almost exclusively on the Israeli lobby. Cynthia Salloum argues that foreign policy analysis needs to take more account of the variety of non-state actors and the non-official political scene – among policy stakeholders and within general public opinion – and its future effects on foreign policy making.