US Ambassador to Israel James Cunningham spoke at the third Annual International Conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. The focus of this year's conference was "The International Vision and the Middle East Realities."

Cunningham related to the policies of the Obama administration and the will to "focus more on diplomacy and engagement and less on military conflict."

The US Ambassador explained that despite this shift in US policy, President Obama is well aware of the regional threats; "what we've seen in the [first] year of the Obama administration is, I think, a definite evolution in the world and in the issues that we have been grappling with, not always the way we'd like, not always as rapidly as we'd like – but the ties are changing here."