Other Hoover Iran Content

Why Iran unrest is not revolution re-run
As the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution approaches this week, with the promise of mass protests from Iran's growing opposition movement, it's tempting to compare the upheaval with unrest that ultimately toppled the shah of Iran. . . .

Iranians Prepare for Risky Clashes
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticized protesters as agents of foreign powers ahead of antigovernment demonstrations planned for Thursday, setting the stage for clashes that analysts say pose big risks for both sides. . . .

Sarah Palin Endorses 'Bomb Iran'
My National Review Online column last week carried the provocative title, “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran,” and provoke it surely did. . . .

Russia and U.S. Lead Calls to Reduce Nuclear Arsenals
For many years, the Munich Security Conference has been dominated by rivalry and suspicion between Russia and the United States. . . .

America Rides Off Into the Sunset
Thousands in Tokyo have been echoing Barack Obama's signature call for "change" -- but as in "Change! Japanese-U.S. relations." . . .

Disarmament Summit Focuses on Russia, Middle East
Disagreements on Russia's tactical nuclear arsenal and questions over how to deal with Middle Eastern nations with suspected nuclear weapons programs hampered discussions yesterday at a global nuclear disarmament conference in Paris, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 2). . . .

Banished from his homeland, the 'Iranian Bob Dylan' wants nothing more than to write and perform freely back home
When singer-songwriter Mohsen Namjoo takes the stage at Stanford University on Friday and Sunday, he will be doing what he was never able to do in his homeland of Iran: perform in public. . . .

Nuclear arms will soon proliferate. So here's a plan to scrap them all
The tipping point is close when every country will want to be another nuclear France. . . .

Mr. President, Words Matter
Obama, the rhetorician, forgot that people might actually take seriously what he said. . . .

City's 'genius' key to U.S. defense
Abizaid praises level of cooperation among entities here . . . .

Disarmament talks strained over Mideast, Russia
Tensions over nuclear weapons in the Middle East and over Russia's tactical arsenal tangled talks Tuesday aimed at pushing for global nuclear disarmament. . . .

How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran
Circumstances are propitious, and the American people would support it. . . .

Can we stop the global cyber arms race?
In a speech this month on "Internet freedom," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decried the cyberattacks that threaten U.S. economic and national security interests. . . .

Keith Knutson: 65 years of the nuclear threat
The hope that the conclusion of World War II would usher humankind into a peaceful and rational world was exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945 - along with, of course, the first two nuclear bombs. . . .

The President's Nuclear Vision
We will spend what is necessary to maintain the safety, security and effectiveness of our weapons. . . .

The Obamarang
Whereas past executives shaded the truth, Barack Obama trumps that: on almost every key issue, what Obama says he will do, and what he says is true, is a clear guide to what he will not do, and what is not true. . . .

Google D.C. Talk Feb. 8 - Democracy Online: Can the Internet Bring Change?
Last summer a chilling 40-second video clip, recorded on a cell phone, went viral and caught the attention of the world. . . .

Documentary Advances Nuclear Free Movement
The documentary Nuclear Tipping Point features interviews with four former U.S. government officials — all dedicated Cold War warriors when they were in office — who now advocate the elimination of nuclear weapons. . . .

The Usual Straw Men, &c.
Cap and trade, statist health care, and an end to “don’t ask, don’t tell” for thee. . . .

We Googlistas want a global debate on information freedom.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that everyone has the right "to seek, receive and impart ­information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers". . . .

Preventing Armageddon: 2010 Drell Lecture examines the road to nuclear arms elimination
What would a world without nuclear weapons look like, and how might it be achieved when Iran and North Korea are seeking the Bomb? . . .

As Predictable as Clockwork — the Obama three-step
This presidency has about as much subtlety as a grade-B western, soap opera, or teen-age tantrum. . . .

Letter: Providing for the Common Defense: A Call to Restore Funding to U.S. Missile Defense
Editor’s note: The following is the text of a letter sent by the Committee on the Present Danger to President Obama, members of the Senate and members of the House regarding critical changes to America’s missile defense that will likely threaten American safety and security. . . .

Speakers push end of nuclear era
Former Secretary of State George Shultz calls for ‘hard-boiled democracy’ toward Iran . . . .

Analysis: Turning Israel, Diaspora Jewry into a punching bag
The result of the Jewish Agency's report released on Sunday showing global anti-Semitism spiraling out of control recalls the memorable line in the film Casablanca, in which police Captain Renault announces that Rick's Cafe must be closed because of illegal activity. . . .

Goodbye to oil that: the excesses of today's quest for crude
In 1998, with the international oil business in the midst of one of its recurrent doldrums – prices had slumped to $10 a barrel, a 50-year low – executives at the company then still known as British Petroleum braced for a test supremely laden with significance for the company, and, as it would turn out, for the industry, too. . . .

For Iran's leaders, cold, hard cash rules
The last week was quiet in Iran, comparatively speaking. . . .

Why the Great and Growing Backlash?
What Scott Brown’s election portends for the Obama agenda. . . .

Ten Obama Promises – Which Ones Came True?
One year after the inauguration of Barack Obama, face the United States changes according to the reforms initiated by his government. Launched, but not necessarily succeeded . . . .

From Birmingham to Tehran
Reflections on Dr. King's Influence on the Pro-Democracy Movement in Iran . . . .

Recalling Cell Block Number One: Abbas Milani’s path from Tehran to Stanford
After last summer’s anti-government protests following the disputed presidential election in Iran, authorities set up show trials of over 100 alleged opposition leaders. . . .

Are Republicans "Due"?
After the Republicans went from being the dominant party, at both the state and national levels, just a few years ago. . . .

“Let Me Be Perfectly Not Clear” and “Make Lots of Mistakes About It”
“Lie” is a rather harsh word; the noun and its verb form leave little to context or extenuating circumstances. . . .

It’s Declinin’ Time Again
The doomsayers are back. Regardless of what they say, the United States remains first on any scale of power that matters—economic, military, diplomatic, or cultural. By Josef Joffe.

Visited by Furies
Since 9/11, Americans have relaxed. The terrorists haven’t. By Fouad Ajami.

Energy Extortionists
Why do the dictators rage? Because, thanks to oil, they can. By Victor Davis Hanson.

Why Pakistan Must Succeed
The war in Afghanistan, a primitive land of 28 million, now threatens Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 180 million. The collapse of Pakistan would place in danger a third nation: ours. By Thomas H. Henriksen.

Iran’s Most Wanted
The new defense chief in Tehran is wanted by Interpol. He’s hardly the only criminal working there. By Christopher Hitchens.

Tattered Road Map
Even in a land divided so bitterly and so long, modest hopes persist. By Robert Zelnick.

Why the Peace Process Is Stalled
The Obama administration is acting—publicly, at least—as if Israeli settlements were the only obstacle to Mideast peace. It will never be that simple. By Peter Berkowitz.

Where the Autocrats Rule On
Now that the U.S. freedom agenda has quietly been shelved, Arab lands can only reflect on what might have been. By Fouad Ajami.

Truths We Dare Not Speak
There are a number of things we simply no longer talk about. . . .

The State of the Opposition is Strong
A response to the most infuriating op-ed of the new year. . . .

Bad News for Hillary Mann Leverett
Bad news for Hillary Mann Leverett, but potentially good news, I think, for the people of Iran. . . .

The Meat Market
In a race to prevent thousands of needless deaths a year, countries from Singapore to Israel are launching innovative new programs to boost organ donation. . . .

US moving to support Iranian opposition
As the opposition Green Movement in Iran has shown unexpected resiliance over the last six months, in spite of an ongoing government crackdown, the Obama administration is now increasingly questioning the long-term stability of Tehran's government. . . .

These protests should shame the west into a change of policy on Iran
While the west has been on holiday, Iranians have again risked their lives to protest against an increasingly desperate, oppressive regime. . . .

Steady Drip of Leaks Corrodes the Core of the Iranian Regime
Beatings, arrests, show trials and even killings have failed to discourage Iranians from taking to the streets in protest. . . .

Our Year of Decision
Sometimes long-festering problems collide — and explode — in a single memorable year. . . .

Stanford University added to Iran's 'enemies' list
Following last week's violent protests in Iran, the government there is striking out at its critics both in and outside of the country. . . .

New Year’s resolutions for the president
Somehow, I fear the Obama administration might still be too busy labeling as "unprecedented" their activity from 2009 for the task of inventorying areas for self-improvement, so here are two suggestions for their consideration: . . . .

Obama as Greek Tragedy—Part One
The blueprint of a Sophoclean or even Euripidean tragedy is pretty straightforward. . . .

Iran Charges 12 at Prison Over Death of Protesters
The Iranian authorities acknowledged Saturday for the first time that at least three protesters had been beaten to death in prison after the disputed presidential election in June, as a military court announced that 12 prison officials had been charged with murder and other crimes. . . .

Our 2009 Chickens and Their 2010 Roost
A quiet year laid the groundwork for a troublesome one. . . .

The Tipping Point in Iran
When millions of peaceful demonstrators took to the streets of big Iranian cities in June to protest what was widely assumed to be a stolen election, many in the West wondered whether the movement had the will and vision to sustain itself. . . .

A Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy
No despot fears the president, and no demonstrator in Tehran expects him to ride to the rescue. . . .

Iran Gives West One-Month ‘Ultimatum’ to Accept Nuclear Counterproposal
Iran’s foreign minister warned the West on Saturday that it had one month to accept Iran’s counterproposal to a deal brokered by the United Nations aimed at slowing the Iranian nuclear program, or else Iran would begin further enriching its nuclear fuel stockpile on its own. . . .

The Inertia Option
I hope Iran policy makers in Washington and Europe are reading histories of that world-changing year, 1989. . . .

Our flip-flopping wars
We don't hear all that much about Iraq these days, do we? . . . .

Behind the headlines
Timothy Garton Ash, Oxford and Stanford don and veteran practitioner of what he describes as the "mongrel craft" of scholarship and journalism, has spent a lifetime in pursuit of the "subversive" truth behind the significant geopolitical developments - and inflated political rhetoric - of our times. . . .

Reading File
Our Decade of Deluded Thinking . . . .

Analysis: A year on, Iran, NKorea threats worsen
Another year has passed in the world's standoff with Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons, and the situation has only gotten worse. . . .

Is America a Deer in the Headlights?
No one quite knows what is going on. . . .

Speech Writers Grade Obama's Oslo Address
Two former White House speech writers assess the president's address. . . .

Obama’s Wheel of Fortune
The president’s luck has changed — and he doesn’t seem to have noticed. . . .

Why Are We Tiring of Obama?
The China Presidency . . . .

California Insurance Companies Urged to Divest from Iran
California's Insurance Commissioner wants insurance money out of Iran, and one Iran expert believes economic pressure on the regime in Iran could be more effective now with a deteriorating economy. . . .

The ‘Great Satan’ Myth
In the New Republic, Abbas Milani, an Iran expert at Stanford, challenges the enduring “Great Satan” myth — that the C.I.A. “deposed a democratically elected Iranian leader back in 1953, and then spent 26 years propping up a despotic Shah while he mercilessly abused his people.” . . .

The Great Satan Myth
Everything you know about U.S. involvement in Iran is wrong. . . .

Israel fears Turkey's changing stance
If Ankara drops Tel Aviv in favour of Syria and Iran, Israel's worst nightmare would have come true. . . .

The Obama administration's 'reset button' for Russia
The interests of the Obama administration in improving ties with Russia, a policy metaphorically first described by Vice President Biden in February 2009 as ‘pressing the reset button,’ are principally driven by three goals. . . .

Israel shopping issue of Iran among world powers
Israel, through Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman's current travels, is shopping the issue of Iran among the world powers, trying to obtain action on the surging effort in the Muslim nation to obtain nuclear power. . . .

Our Present Anxieties
These guys are really sensitive, aren’t they? . . .

Resetting the Reset Button
Obama wanted to set our diplomacy on a new track. . . .

Voting Present on Iran
Obama’s serial deadlines and hope-and-change rhetoric have not affected the Iranians. . . .

Game theorists hope to solve world’s crises
North Korea will mothball its nuclear weapons for a billion dollars a year, Iran will not build nukes at all and Middle East peace is just round the corner, at least according to one game theorist courted by the CIA. . . .

Hoover scholar predicts U.N. climate conference failure
President Obama and other world leaders will soon gather in Copenhagen to consider yet another global treaty on climate change. . . .

Analysts Say Ahmadinejad Is Bluffing About New Enrichment Sites
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad left no doubt about Iran's ambitions. . . .

Punishing Allies . . .
The view of Obama from Central Europe. . . .

The Arabs Have Stopped Applauding Obama
A foreign policy of penance has won America no friends. . . .

Riding the Back of the Tiger
What Causes Wars?. . .

Lion's Den: Islamism 2.0 - an even greater threat
To borrow a computer term, if Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, and Nidal Hasan represent Islamism 1.0, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (the prime minister of Turkey), Tariq Ramadan (a Swiss intellectual), and Keith Ellison (a US congressman) represent Islamism 2.0. . . .

What Niall Ferguson thinks now
There's nothing like a long-running equity rally, a return to something resembling normalcy in the credit world and fresh signs of economic recovery to lift the gloom of a dreary late November day. . . .

Going Backwards in Beirut
Hezbollah still holds power despite losing the election. . . .

Cleric Wields Religion to Challenge Iran’s Theocracy
For years, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri criticized Iran’s supreme leader and argued that the country was not the Islamic democracy it claimed to be, but his words seemed to fall on deaf ears. . . .

Iranian art offers window to changing world
In Iran, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, though it brought to power a fundamentalist regime, also spawned new art from dissidents and from those inspired by the revolutionary cause. . . .

Where Has the Thrill Gone?
Who appointed over 40 ambassadors on the sole basis of campaign contributions, or has as many lobbyists in government as did any President in memory? . . .

When Reality Catches up to Rhetoric
The growing problem for the Obama administration is that the public has finally caught on that the president's tough rhetoric and soaring oratory don't match reality. . . .

Circling sharks smell American blood
On his recent trip to Asia, President Obama found China, Japan and South Korea -- like many nations these days -- in no mood to hear more American lectures. . . .

Obama’s Prissy America
Why does Obama’s tolerant, apologetic America seem so very self-centered? . . .

Headliner: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a political scientist and professor at New York University, headlined the PODER Magazine | Americas Business Council Foundation (abc*) 2009 Business Awards at the Viceroy on Monday evening. . . .

Havel warns against new faces of totalitarianism
Former Czech president Vaclav Havel warned against new forms of totalitarianism in his speech that he ended by the exclamation "People, Look Out," at Charles University's Faculty of Arts Saturday. . . .

U.S., Russia stand together on Iran
Presenting a united front on Iran's nuclear energy program, President Barack Obama and Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev warned Sunday that they were losing patience with Tehran and wouldn't wait much longer for it to accept a proposal to resolve the dispute. . . .

What Bush Inherited, and What He Left Left Behind
George W. Bush inherited a recession. . . .

European Intellectuals Warn Of Democracy Crisis 20 Years After Berlin Wall's Fall
Public cynicism and corruption in politics are threatening democracy in Europe. . . .

US-Russian Negotiators Likely to Miss December 5 Deadline for New Nuclear Treaty
After months of insisting negotiators would make the December 5, 2009, deadline, President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev acknowledged today that they were now attempting to have a re-negotiated START nuclear disarmament treaty ready to sign by the end of the year instead of by December 5 when the old START treaty expires. . . .

Obama Says Time Running Out for Iran in Negotiations
President Barack Obama said time is running short for Iran to accept terms of a deal offered by international negotiators seeking to prevent the Islamic republic from building a nuclear weapon. . . .

Americans Charged with Espionage
Three American graduates of UC Berkeley stand accused of espionage by Iranian authorities who have held them since July 31st. . . .

To See The Future, Use The Logic Of Self-Interest
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita knows what will happen in the future on a host of critical questions. . . .

Iran Charges American Hikers with Espionage
It has been 101 days since 3 American hikers were captured and imprisoned by Iranian guards after they reportedly wandered across an unmarked border while touring a remote mountainous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. . . .

Mathematics can predict Iran’s nuclear strategy, says scientist
As Iran and the international community try to negotiate an agreement on the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme, analysts are busy examining speeches and news reports and scouring documents in their efforts to predict the outcome. . . .

Velvet Revolution: The Prospects
In the autumn of 1989, the term "velvet revolution" was coined to describe a peaceful, theatrical, negotiated regime change in a small Central European state that no longer exists. . . .

‘With Them or With Us’
The regime’s commemoration of the Iranian hostage crisis didn’t quite go according to plan. . . .

Iran's 'Great Satan' addiction
It has been more than a month since what was touted as a breakthrough meeting with the Iranians in Geneva over their nuclear program. . . .

Iran at 30: Domestic, International Hurdles
Top Iran experts from across the United States will convene for this symposium to assess Iran's position domestically and internationally following the tumult of elections, suppression of the Green Movement and the Geneva meeting on nuclear development. . . .

Thinking the Unthinkable on Nuclear Policy
Abolition of nuclear weapons has indeed been an elusive dream ever since the birth of the atomic age in 1945. . . .

Obama’s “Bush Did It” Narrative
I’d like to talk to you today about radical Islam and the Obama administration’s ability and inclination, or lack thereof, to confront it...

On Iran and North Korea, Obama's nuclear-free vision is at stake
One year after his election, Barack Obama appears no closer to his big hope for a legacy as US president: A determined global effort for a world with zero atomic weapons...

America The Indispensable
The Berlin Wall collapsed amid a failed faith in communism and exalted hopes for a world free of rivalries and conflicts...

How to Ratify the Test Ban Treaty
Ten years ago last month, the U.S. Senate failed to approve the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty...

The Iran problem with Hanson and Baer
Does Iran possess the ability to produce nuclear weapons? Both Bob Baer and Victor Hanson agree that it does. On the questions that flow from this assertion, agreement is more difficult to find.

A Very Interesting Next Three Years
If one were to collate the public statements and actions of many in the Obama administration, one would conclude that the most conciliatory past language masks the most divisive, polarizing administration in recent history–a fact born out by most polls...

Talking with Iran -- and sending a message
Iran's rejection last week of the Obama administration's proposal for a deal over uranium wasn't the end of nuclear negotiations with Tehran...

The Iran Problem with Hanson & Baer: Chapter 5 of 5
How should Obama deal with both Iran and Israel?...

Dismantling America: Part II
Many years ago, at a certain academic institution, there was an experimental program that the faculty had to vote on as to whether or not it should be made permanent...

Bibi's Choice
Don't be misled by how little was said about Iran in the major speeches recently delivered by President Barack Obama at Cairo University and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University...

Salon Luncheon with Former Secretary of State George Shultz
From foreign challenges like the war in Afghanistan and nuclear proliferation in Iran to domestic challenges like the economy and healthcare, the United States is facing a particularly tumultuous moment in its history...

Karzai’s Brother and Washington’s Kept Politicians
Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the Afghan president, “a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban,” and “a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade,” the New York Times informs us, “gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years.”...

Truman and the Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy
Upon entering office, Barack Obama knew little about foreign policy...

The Iran Problem with Hanson & Baer: Chapter 4 of 5
Will Israel strike first against Iran?...

Analysis: US Making Plans For Iran Nuke Strategy
The Obama administration is quietly laying the groundwork for long-range strategy that could be used to contain a nuclear-equipped Iran and deter its leaders from using atomic weapons...

Lion's Den: Turkey: An ally no more
"There is no doubt he is our friend," Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as he accuses Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Gaza...

The Iran Problem with Hanson & Baer: Chapter 3 of 5
What can the U.S. do about Iran?...

All Falling Down . . .
Obama’s mega-borrowing is predicated on a rather thin margin of safety...

The Iran Problem with Hanson & Baer: Chapter 2 of 5
Victor Davis Hanson and Robert Baer describe the motivations and goals of the regime in Tehran...

Whom is Barack Obama Afraid of?—Another Barack Obama
One of the reasons why President Obama may be hesitating to commit fully to a renewed Afghan front is that he is worried that political opportunists might seek to gain advantage by loud rhetoric that unfairly simplifies the bad and worse choices, that he, like all other presidents in time of war, are confronted with...

The Iran Problem with Hanson & Baer: Chapter 1 of 5
Is the Iranian nuclear threat real?...

America’s Obama Obsession
For 30 months the nation has been in the grip of a certain Obama obsession, immune to countervailing facts, unwilling to face reality, and loath to break the spell...

Nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament commission: key facts
The International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), which is said to have hosted an unprecedented meeting of Iranian and Israeli officials last month, is a joint Australian-Japanese initiative...

Predicting the future with the New Nostradamus
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita’s work as a consultant with the CIA has earned him the name ‘The New Nostradamus’...

Armageddon Time
Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian; Robert Baer a former CIA field officer...

The kitty-cat who roared
President Obama keeps roaring out deadlines like a lion -- only later to meow like a little kitty...

Obamanoia
Consider: The 120,000 troops in “the surge is not working” Iraq are now complaining of ennui —while the White House is paralyzed over whether to send more troops to the new escalating front in Afghanistan...

Misunderstanding Iran
With the first international dialogue in years about the Iranian uranium enrichment program opening next week, the troubled relationship between Iran and the West is at an important crossroads...

Ambush in Baluchistan
Iran's ruling clique is blaming the US and Britain for having a hand in the assassination of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG) deputy commander, his provincial deputy and up to 40 others in two coordinated bomb attacks Sunday...

Former U.S. commander: Fixing Middle East will take years
Gen. John Abizaid, former commander of the U.S. Central Command in the Middle East, told a Carson City Lion's Club dinner Thursday it will be years before the situation in that part of the world is stable...

Recipe for Failure
Want to know what's going to happen with climate change?...

Iran's Openness to Nuclear Compromise Debated
The dramatic expansion of Iran's uranium enrichment program over the last decade has led some analysts to speculate that Tehran could accept measures aimed at preventing it from building bombs in exchange for greater international acceptance of its nuclear work, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Oct. 14)...

Obama’s Theorems
Part of the problem with the president’s agenda is that it is predicated on a number of radical ideas that are asserted, rather than proven...

Some See Iran as Ready for Nuclear Deal
Iran says it has no plans to build nuclear weapons...

Confusions of the Age
I get confused by the news quite often...

Nobelitics
Norway is a tiny country that was born lucky...

Ahmadinejad’s Apocalyptic Ambitions
During an interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently, msnbc’s Ann Curry confronted the Iranian president with a provocative question about his spiritual beliefs...

Bueno de Mesquita on a Media Roll
This past Monday, the Daily Show did an interview with Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Bruce Bueno de Mesquita...

Guru America
President Obama last week flew to Copenhagen to persuade the International Olympic Committee to award the 2016 games to Chicago, his hometown...

The US has lost its focus on Europe. It's up to us to get our act together
Barack Obama is the most European president of the United States that there has ever been...

Voices against the Mullahs
Maybe democracy never had a chance in the Iranian presidential elections, but the people of Iran still do. By Abbas Milani.

This Familiar Battleground
Policy makers, in their haste to forget the Vietnam War, also forgot to learn from it. By H. R. McMaster.

Middle East News Roundup
We look at the latest diplomatic and political developments in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan...

The Buck Passes Here
Meet the Obama whiners...

GPS
UN investigator Richard Goldstone on his controversial Gaza report, Colombian President Uribe, and a global panel on Iran...

U.S. Wonders if Iran Is Playing for Time
President Obama got what he said he wanted when United States negotiators met with their Iranian counterparts this week in Geneva: direct engagement, without preconditions, with Iran...

Change and Hope
I think most Americans were rooting for Chicago...

The Age of Nice, or Politics as Psychiatry
Will Obama's administration end up as a remake of Jimmy Carter’s?...

Iran Open to Wider Nuke Talks as Powers Await Action
Iran opened the way to wider talks on its disputed nuclear work as U.S. and European officials said they awaited follow-through on allowing international inspections and limiting uranium enrichment...

Three Dangerous Stooges
Last week, three dictators — from Iran, Libya, and Venezuela — delivered lunatic hate-speeches at the General Assembly of the United Nations...

Worldview: The West's leverage in Iran
The United States and five other major powers will begin direct talks with Iran today in Geneva, but the agenda still isn't settled...

Expert: No division between rationalist theories and constructivism
Political theoretician Bruce Bueno de Mesquita believes there is no “division between rationalist theories and constructivism.”...

Iran: Saber-Rattling or Bigger Threat?
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards wrapped up three days of war games with a big bang, test-firing the longest range missiles in its arsenal...

Europe must decide if it wants to be more than Greater Switzerland
Once upon a time, and a very bad time it was, the world trembled when Germany spoke...

Some Signs of the Times
How to distill the news?...

The New Mask of Terrorism
Some one-third of all international terrorist attacks between 1968 and September 10, 2001, involved American targets.

Lion's Den: Netanyahu's quiet success
Almost unnoticed, Binyamin Netanyahu won a major victory last week when Barack Obama backed down on a signature policy initiative...

Hezbollah Prepared to Hold the U.S. Hostage
A Middle East terrorism expert has warned that Iran may use a terrorist group to strike the United States if it becomes threatened...

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predicts the future of Iran's nuclear program with his computer models...

Experts divided on how to handle Iran (Video)
Iran raised international tensions Monday by test firing missiles that have the capability of reaching U.S. military bases in the Middle East, as well as Israel and parts of Europe...

An instructive contrast
"Watching the UN watch Ahmadinejad," writes Victor Davis Hanson, "I was reminded of Europe circa July 1941."...

Worldview: Obama faces a huge task in rallying global power
It was a week of stunning contradictions for Barack Obama...

It Would Have Been Easier Just to Tell the Truth
Given the recent arrests of several jihadist plotters, we can be thankful that Obama did not, as once promised in various early manifestations, end renditions, wiretaps, intercepts, and the Patriot Act ("shoddy and dangerous")...

World leaders vow to seek nuclear-free world
World leaders Thursday vowed to work to stop the spread of atomic weapons and rid the planet of nuclear arms at an unprecedented Security Council summit hosted by US President Barack Obama...

A World With No Nukes
Obama speaks to the U.N. Security Council about a world without nuclear weapons...

The No Nukes Dream
President Obama today became the first U.S. president to ever chair a meeting of the UN Security Council...

Security Council backs abolishing nuclear arms
World leaders agreed Thursday on the sweeping goal of a planet free of atomic weapons, but faced continued divisions over details of one of their thorniest challenges, Iran's nuclear program...

U.N. Passes Nuclear-Safeguards Plan
The United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously approved a nuclear-safeguards resolution drafted by the Obama administration to lay the legal framework for military and diplomatic action against nations that use civilian nuclear technology for military purposes...

Obama-led UN council backs broad nuclear agenda
With President Barack Obama presiding, the U.N. Security Council on Thursday unanimously endorsed a sweeping strategy aimed at halting the spread of nuclear weapons and ultimately eliminating them, to usher in a world with "undiminished security for all."...

The nuclear tipping point
The potential spread of nuclear weapons to states and terrorists, the spread of nuclear technology and know-how and the residual nuclear threat from the cold war have brought us to the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era...

Iran hit with new demand as U.N. meets
The United States and other major powers on Wednesday told Iran to prepare a "serious response" by October 1 to demands it halt its nuclear program or risk the consequences...

We can't decide Iran's struggle. But we can avoid backing the wrong side
Let's get this straight: the people who will change Iran for the better are the Iranians...

A Clear Path Forward For the UN on Nuclear Disarmament
This week, President Obama will chair a UN Security Council meeting on nuclear nonproliferation...

Fate of Imprisoned Iran Hikers in Question (Text)
The fate of three UC Berkeley graduates who are imprisoned in Iran will soon take center stage as that country's President gets set to address the United Nations later this week...

Fate of Imprisoned Hikers in Iran in Question
KCBS' Mark Seelig reports on this week's visit to the US by Iran's president and how it could affect the three Cal graduates...

Obama and Ahmadinejad: The Politics of Face Time
It was just over two years ago that Barack Obama, then the junior senator from Illinois with aspirations to the presidency, famously pronounced during a Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C., that he would be willing to hold direct talks, without preconditions, with the president of Iran...

Letters: Undercutting Reformers
Regarding Chester Crocker’s “Terms of Engagement” (Views, Sept. 14): Mr. Crocker’s endorsement of engagement with adversaries builds a strong case for talking with rogue states...

A New Nuclear-Arms Race
Call it a shot heard round the world...

New Missile Shield Strategy Scales Back Reagan’s Vision
The new plan that President Obama laid out for a missile shield against Iran on Thursday turns Ronald Reagan’s vision of a Star Wars system on its head: Rather than focusing first on protecting the continental United States, it shifts the immediate effort to defending Europe and the Middle East...

Obama won't stay the course in Afghanistan -- then what?
Skepticism grows in President Obama's party about his presumed endorsement of General Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the strategy and resources required to succeed in Afghanistan...

Peninsula Chapter -- The Fate of Global Democracy in Hard Times (Fall Kickoff Event)
How are democracies faring around the world in the midst of the worst global economic recession since the Great Depression?...

This way for the gas
The road to Sangachal is a Potemkin motorway: four to six lanes, neatly demarcated and newly paved, with panoramic views of the Caspian Sea, the hills that rise above Baku and the Bibi Heybat Mosque, which was built in 1257, destroyed by Stalin in 1934 and rebuilt in 1998...

9/11 and the 'Good War'
The road that led to 9/11 was never a defining concern of President Barack Obama...

A runaway deficit may soon test Obama’s luck
President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat...

Nuclear-free world ultimate aim of new cross-party pressure group
A cross-party group of ex-ministers and former generals will be launched next month to push for global nuclear disarmament...

Iran disqualifies itself
US President Barack Obama has said he wants "the Islamic Republic of Iran" to be welcomed back into the "community of nations"...

Iran cannot return to status quo
Let's face it: Iran is the nation Americans love to despise, and these days the mullahs are making it so easy, even satisfying, to indulge in profound disapproval...

What is Ahmadinejad up to?
The President begs to differ with the Ayatollah:...

Worldview: With strife in Iran, U.S. should put brakes on applying pressure
The September deadline set by President Obama for Iran to restart talks about its nuclear program is rapidly approaching...

Ahmadinejad's Power May Be Slipping
A local expert said Saturday that he believes remarks made this week by the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad show that the Iranian president's grip on power may be rapidly slipping...

Ahmadinejad Urges Prosecution of Political Rivals
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lashed out at his chief political rivals on Friday, calling on judiciary officials to “decisively” and “mercilessly” prosecute them for challenging the legitimacy of his electoral victory and tarnishing the image of the state...

Iran's Supreme Leader Says No Foreign Link To Leaders Of Unrest
Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has played down hard-line accusations that the leaders of the huge opposition protests that followed the disputed presidential election in June were working for foreign powers...

Iran’s Supreme Leader Softens Tone
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appears to have undercut President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s attempt to convict dozens of former government officials, journalists and academics of collaborating with the West to overthrow the government, saying a connection had not been proved...

Releasing Al-Megrahi Bodes Ill
At every turn, Libya has probed the weakness of the West...

An Evening in Support of the Baha’is of Iran
On August 12, 2009, an event was held in San Francisco’s historic Herbst Theater, entitled “An Evening in Support of the Baha’is of Iran”, to raise awareness about the persecution of the Baha’i community in Iran...

An Evening in Support of the Bahais of Iran
This Tuesday, seven leaders of Iran's Bahai movement will go on trial on capital charges of espionage and threatening national security...

Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb?
Many people wonder, but Bruce Bueno de Mesquita claims to have the answer...

Professor found on list of Iranian dissidents
Director of Iranian Studies Abbas Milani has found himself personally embroiled in the current conflict taking place in Iran...

Glamorous Muslim Political Women
In a blog, "Hijabs on Western Political Women," I displayed a brood of queens, princesses, first ladies, members of congress, foreign ministers, journalists, and even movie stars looking anywhere from faintly ridiculous to outlandishly bad as they wear some variant of a hijab...

U.S. Seeks Release Of 3 American Hikers In Iran
Amid increasing concern about the fate of three American citizens being held by the Iranian government, the U.S. and its allies have stepped up efforts to secure their release...

San Francisco: Evening in Support of Human Rights
The Bay Area event will take place on Wednesday, August 12, at 8 PM, at the Herbst Theater (http://www.sfwmpac.org/herbst/ht_index.html) in San Francisco...

The Orange Grove: Why did North Korea release the two journalists?
I have questions about the release of two of Al Gore's employees by the North Koreans and about the three persons still in custody in Iran...

Autocracy and the Decline of the Arabs
‘It made me feel so jealous,” said Abdulmonem Ibrahim, a young Egyptian political activist, of the recent upheaval in Iran...

Huge risks in Iran sanctions
In a recent congressional hearing, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman called the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act "a sword of Damocles over the Iranians" that will soon come down if President Obama's diplomatic overture did not show signs of success by the fall...

Fate of Detained Journalists in Question
The status of three Americans reportedly arrested by Iranian border guards last weekend remains in question...

Owning Up to Israel’s Bomb
President Barack Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons, and the recent agreement he signed with Russia aimed at cutting back the nuclear stockpiles of both countries, enhances his moral and political leadership...

Trial of Protesters Proceeds as Ahmadinejad Endorsed in Iran
Political unrest continued in Iran Monday as the government pressed ahead with a mass trial of opposition supporters and President Ahmadinejad was endorsed by the supreme leader...

Khamenei gives Ahmadinejad a cool shoulder
In the process leading up to his being formally sworn in for a second term as Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was officially endorsed by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday as demonstrators once again took to the streets of Tehran...

China dips its toe in the Black Sea
Like the star gazers who last week watched the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, diplomatic observers had a field day watching the penumbra of big power politics involving the United States, Russia and China, which constitutes one of the crucial phenomena of 21st-century world politics...

Internal Combustion
Ever since the June 12 election, the world has seen signs of serious rifts in the ranks of the Islamic regime in Iran...

Exiled Iranian Baha'i members pay tribute to executed friends
Hesam Sabetian and dozens of other Baha'i immigrants from Iran took a tearful trip down memory lane at the Arcade Learning Library in Carmichael this week...

Iran: Recent Developments and Implications for U.S. Policy
Webcast: IRAN: Recent Developments and Implications for U.S. Policy

Disarmament Movement Needs Youth Involvement to Counter Cynicism
President Barack Obama's lofty pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons is off to a peculiar start...

Iran Protests Subside, but Internal Squabbles Continue
The street protests in Iran have faded in the face of the government's security crackdown...

Iran's clerical divide undermines Khamenei power
The power of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei looks genuinely under threat amid open confrontation between religious factions and clerics including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, several US analysts said...

New Sanctions a “Sword of Damocles” over Iran
“I view the [Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act] as a sword of Damocles over the Iranians,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman...

US-IRAN: Waiting for the Dust to Settle
The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is stuck between a rock and a hard place in its Iran policy...

Musavi Says Green Movement Charter In The Works
Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Musavi has said he is working on the charter of a new political front that would lay the groundwork for a large-scale social movement...

US lawmaker says “clock ticking” on Iran fuel sanctions bill
The clock is ticking on the Iran gasoline sanctions resolution, Congressman Howard Berman warned today, during a hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs [HCFA] in Washington, adding that he is prepared to push forward the bill this fall if US engagement with Iran fails to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment program...

Iran Is In Purgatory, Says Foreign Policy Expert
Abbas Milani, Co-Director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution, believes that Iran is in the most serious political crisis it’s regime has ever faced...

Neda Agha-Sultan And Iran’s Opposition
This week marks the 40-day anniversary of Neda Agha-Sultan’s murder during an anti-regime protest in Iran on June 20...

Rafsanjani's Day of Reckoning
Tomorrow, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani will deliver the Friday sermon in Tehran--the most important pulpit for policy and polemic in Iran...

Analysis: Iran’s Current Turmoil Has Deep Roots
The turbulent internal politics of Iran following the June 12 election have been most often portrayed as a clash between secularizing reform forces and entrenched religious forces...

“Reset” has uncertain future
The results of the Medvedev-Obama summit, which took place last week in Moscow, are at the same time encouraging and alarming...

He who pays for the pipelines calls the tune
TRAGEDY and farce have too often been the hallmarks of European efforts to improve energy security...

Iranian Election Seen Undermining U.S. Attempts at Outreach
Independent analysts believe the aftermath of Iran's disputed June presidential election has dealt significant damage to Obama administration attempts to engage the Middle Eastern state in talks aimed at ending its disputed nuclear work, Bloomberg reported today (see GSN, July 15)...

Iran Spurns Engagement on Nuclear Drive, Thwarting Obama Effort
Iranian leaders are turning inward and rejecting engagement with the West as they blame outsiders for street protests, even as President Barack Obama’s administration pushes for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program...

Ahmadinejad II
It is becoming increasingly clear that the opposition protests that have rocked Iran over the past month have seriously undermined the credibility of the regime...

Toppling Saddam set an example for Iranian rebellion
THE most exciting and under-reported news of the past few weeks in Iran has been that the emerging challenger to the increasingly frantic and isolated "supreme leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani...

Barack, Dmitry—and (offstage) Vladimir
THE body language said it all...

Iranian Shiism's two faces
There is a pamphlet that was published by Iran's Ministry of Education...

U.S. to Israel: You Decide Nukes in Iran, We Decide Bedrooms in Jerusalem
Am I the only one to note a smidgen of inconsistency in U.S. policy toward Israel?...

The Savior of Nuclear Disarmament
The financial crisis that has wreaked havoc across the country has given plenty of ammunition to detractors of Ronald Reagan’s economic plans, drawing a critical eye toward the former president’s policy decisions and potentially tarnishing the Gipper’s legacy...

Is Khamenei's son leading Iran crackdowns?
As protesters return to the streets in Iran to demonstrate against Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the results of the recent election, a new report says that Mr. Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, is leading the government's anti-protest militias...

Talking to Iran AND Supporting Democracy
I've argued strongly for engagement with Iran as a game-changer...

Back To The Wall, Bibi Mulls Options
With his back to the wall in his dealings with Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly weighing the possibility of broadening his government to give him more flexibility in anticipation of meeting American demands...

Iran clerics defy election results
IRAN'S most important group of religious leaders has called the disputed presidential election and new government illegitimate, an act of defiance against the country's supreme leader and a public sign of a split in the country's clerical authorities...

Leading clerics condemn Iranian election
A powerful group of clerics is publicly supporting Iranians who believe their nation's presidential election was rigged, political observers said...

Iran Gets Spotlight at U.S.-Russian Summit
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian Dmitry Medvedev focused largely on Iran during their summit in Moscow this week, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, July 6)...

NIGHTLY NEWS for July 6, 2009, NBC
Can President Obama take the chill out of relations with Russia?...

Obama Team Mulls Dumping Bush Missile Defense Plan
Media sources are reporting that the White House is examining options for a missile defense system for Europe, with some indications that the Obama Administration may drop the previous Administration's plans...

Mixed results for Obama's first Moscow summit
For two days, President Barack Obama pressed the reset button with Russia...

Economy On Back Burner On Day One Of Obama-Medvedev Summit
Looking to pull the U.S.'s relationship with Russia out of its "sense of drift," President Barack Obama said his administration will cooperate with the Kremlin on a series of matters, from transporting soldiers to Afghanistan to intensifying communication on health matters...

The Storm Ahead
The Iranian tyrant, Ali Khamenei, told his cluster of top advisers two days ago that it was time to totally shut down the protests, and he ordered that any and all demonstrators, regardless of their status, be arrested (although there is no longer room for new prisoners in Tehran’s jails; they are now using sports arenas as holding areas)...

Mullahs on My Mind
The New York Times's Saturday story about Qom's Association of Religious Scholars' call for new elections is worth further commentary...

Let's Hear the Democracies
Notices of the demise of Iran’s Green Revolution are premature...

Iran Unrest Shifts Power Dynamics
The large-scale protests in Iran since its hotly disputed June 12 presidential election have shaken the Islamic republic's long-standing balance of political power...

Clerical Leaders Defy Ayatollah on Iran Election
An important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment...

Tyranny Loses In Iran
A tyrannical triumvirate, one that is led by Ayatollah Khamenei and supported by the military might of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the street presence of gangs with ranks numbering at least a few million, seems hell-bent on forcing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the reluctant and still-resisting people of Iran...

The facts of the election are disputed. Iranians can make the next one better
So it's official...

Opposition movement in Iran not over, experts say
The chants, the clashes, the outrage, the blood -- for more than two weeks, the world watched as the fallout from Iran's presidential elections unraveled from peaceful demonstrations to government-led crackdowns on city streets...

Missing Our Moment in Iran
Last month, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest a rigged presidential election...

Intelligence Design
Terrorists are getting very good at covering their tracks. Their pursuers must become even better at uncovering them. By Katya Drozdova.

Land of the Clenched Fist
With Hamas in charge, Gaza will never escape its ideological prison. By Amichai Magen.

Changing the Game
A game theorist looks at Iran’s intentions—and where its nuclear program is heading. By Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.

Iran Blames U.S., Others For Post Election Protests
A large police force continues to patrol key points in Tehran...

The New Democrats
What we are witnessing right now in the streets of Tehran is, first and foremost, a political battle for the future of the Iranian state...

Resilient Force
General Jack Keane, who helped create the surge, says the war in Iraq was well worth it. By Peter Robinson.

Iranian theocracy is on threshold of change: program director at Stanford University
Trend News interview with the director of Iranian studies program at Stanford University, co-director of Iranian democracy development project, writer Abbas Milani...

After the Iranian Uprising
In the aftermath of the June contested presidential election, Iranian society has been in a state of unexpected flux...

Iran's rogue regime
A.D. 2009 in the Islamic calendar is 1430 A.H. (Anno Hegirae, which began with the prophet's flight from Medina to Mecca)...

Unveiling the revolution
The women of Iran have jolted me awake from my cable news coma...

Events which shaped a nation: reality of Iran’s hardline stance
REVOLUTION IS not an unnatural state of affairs in Iran...

Our Decaying Nuclear Deterrent
A bipartisan congressional commission, headed by some of our most experienced national security practitioners, recently concluded that a nuclear deterrent is essential to our defense for the foreseeable future...

Iran Crackdown Secures Streets But Internal Splits Remain
The large numbers of demonstrators first seen on the streets of Tehran to protest the outcome of the presidential election have dwindled in the face of a massive security crackdown as the government maintains its hardline stance against the opposition...

More Bruce BDM on Iran
His TED talk is here...

Bruce Bueno De Mesquita on Iran
Back in February, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a professor of political science at New York University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, made some interesting predictions about Iran that, in the light of recent events, bear examining...

Iran's Clenched Fist Election: What's Next for U.S. Policy (Transcript)
Three weeks ago when Iranians were just preparing to go to the polls, Karim Sadjadpour, one of our speakers today, wrote that they would surely be unfree, unfair and unpredictable...

Iran’s Clenched Fist Election: What Next for U.S. Policy? (Video)
Three weeks ago when Iranians were just preparing to go to the polls, Karim Sadjadpour, one of our speakers today, wrote that they would surely be unfree, unfair and unpredictable...

A Realistic Postmortem on China’s Tiananmen
Some pundits have taken to calling the violent military repression of post-election protesters in Iran a “Tehran Tiananmen.”...

Seamus Heaney has raised the debate on the Lisbon treaty. A yes vote would be good for Ireland and the EU – and Iran, too
“It was the bard wot won it.”...

1979: The Great Backlash
If you want to understand the surge of politicized religion, post-communist globalization, and laissez-faire economics that has defined our modern era, forget 1968...

Iranian women stand up in defiance, flout rules
A young Iranian woman named Neda is gunned down in one of the most iconic images of the last week...

Iran’s Clenched Fist Election: What Next for U.S. Policy?
President Obama provided his strongest condemnation of the violence in Iran at his White House press briefing on Tuesday...

Experts Support Obama’s Response to Contested Iranian Election
Nick Burns, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, countered critics who have described Obama’s response to the allegedly fraudulent election in Iran as overly passive...

Khomeini’s Power Is Weakening, Says Expert
Ayatollah Khomeini will “not be able to regain the mantle of authority that he once had,” said Abbas Milani, Stanford University’s Director of Iranian Studies...

Neda - the face of the Iranian uprising
If history can be distilled in a fleeting moment which then electronically ricochets around the globe, this is what happened when one joyful life, tragically and brutally cut short became the icon of a quest for political empowerment...

Lion's Den: A call for American boldness in Iran
In a striking coincidence, two very different expressions of Iranian dissent took place simultaneously on two continents on Saturday, June 20...

Mousavi Grows Under Protest; Plus: Where’s Islam?
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and fellow at the Hoover Institution...

The Social Cost of the Decline of Newspapers?
According to data compiled by my colleagues Matt Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro, the number of daily newspapers in the United States has been declining for more than 90 years, from a peak of about 2200 to its present level of about 1400...

Iran's Revolutionary Guards
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was founded in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution to defend the regime against internal and external threats, but has since expanded far beyond its original mandate...

Obama Draws Criticism For Iran Response
As rallies continue on the streets of Tehran, the Obama administration is under pressure to side more openly with demonstrators who are protesting against the results of Iran's presidential election...

The Quiet American: William Perry's unfinished business
Turning up to hear former US Secretary of State for Defense William Perry address a meeting of the Henry Jackson Society at the House of Commons the other day, I had it mind to investigate the following:...

Obama’s Arms Control Ideas Unrealistic
President Obama must heed the advice of a new congressional commission which warns against bargaining away our nuclear deterrent at the upcoming Moscow summit...

Obama is right: this is no time for posturing on Iran
The Iran crisis has presented President Barack Obama with a very difficult problem - and the first real test of his new policy of engagement with the Muslim world...

Republicans in the Wilderness
A Gallup poll last week showed that far more Americans describe themselves as "conservatives" than as "liberals."...

Ahmadinejad or Mousavi?
A throwaway line of mine at the Heritage Foundation on June 3 has turned into a minor internet sensation...

Is Iran Collapsing?; America's High: The Case For and Against Pot
Tonight, breaking news and a big question: Is Iran collapsing?...

Will Musavi Challenge Iran's Supreme Leader?
In a nationwide address, Iran's supreme leader appears to have thrown down the gauntlet, calling for an end to mass street demonstrations and declaring the June 12 vote a "definitive victory" for President Mahmud Ahmadinejad...

SF Rally Held In Support Of Iranian Protesters
Bay Area demonstrators rallied Saturday at San Francisco’s U.N. Plaza to show support for those protesting on the streets of Iranian cities and to call for an end to the bloodshed...

Worldview: Without U.S. help, Iranians learn to stand on their own
The ongoing drama in Iran marks a turning point in Middle East history - precisely because the United States has chosen, so far, not to intervene...

ANALYSIS / Even the CIA gets its Iran updates via Twitter
1. The Israeli perspective...

Pressure on Obama to Act Forcefully Is Growing
The uncompromising stance taken by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Friday ordered an end to protests, ratcheted up pressure on the Obama administration to take a forceful line against the Iranian regime...

Khamenei’s Strong Will Challenged as Protests in Iran Continue
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been the ultimate civil and religious ruler of the country of Iran for 20 years...

In Iran, Disputed Election Fuels Ongoing Political Unrest
With election protests continuing in Iran, the nation's 12-member Guardian Council has agreed to hear the grievances of Mir Hussein Mousavi and other candidates...

Fragile at the Core
Most of the time, foreign relations are kind of boring — negotiations, communiqués, soporific speeches...

Assessing the Iranian Election
Better put, the Iranian "selection," as the exercise yesterday appears to have been window dressing for Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i, the real power in Iran, to re-appoint Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president...

Pipes sees regime power play in Iranian '(S)election'
Mideast analyst Daniel Pipes finds much unexpected good news in the outcome of the Iranian "(s)election," as he refers to it, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the declared winner...

Experts: Iranian Revolution Unlikely
The political turmoil in Iran has been referred to casually by American observers as a revolution, and there's a hope among some that it will result in dramatic regime change in Iran...

Iran’s Internet battle hits new heights
As international media outlets are being pushed off the streets of Tehran, the burden of reporting on Iran's post-election crisis is falling increasingly on online channels ranging from blogs and video sites to Twitter and Facebook...

Bay Area Iranians protest against the disputed presidential election
As tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the Iranian capital Wednesday to protest the results of last week's presidential election, Iranian-Americans in the Bay Area ensured that they, too, had their voices heard...

Clerics May Be Key to Outcome of Unrest
With Iran’s political establishment at war with itself, a central question lurking behind the postelection tumult is which side the country’s highly influential clerics will back...

Clerical Error
The Iranian regime is currently facing one of the greatest challenges of its 30-year history...

Lion's Den: The Middle Eastern cold war
A cold war is "the key to understanding the Middle East in the 21st century."...

Iranian Election Results
Iranian Election Results with Nicholas Burns, Flynt Leverett, Abbas Milani and Hooman Majd...

S.F. techie helps stir Iranian protests
Little about Austin Heap's first online venture, a site hosting free episodes of the cartoon "South Park," suggested he would one day use his computer skills to challenge a government...

N-disarmament impossible in today's world
When Ronald Reagan was president he scheduled a weekly one-on-one meeting in the White House with Secretary of State George Shultz...

In Iran, an Iron Cleric, Now Blinking
For two decades, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has remained a shadowy presence at the pinnacle of power in Iran, sparing in his public appearances and comments...

Iran: A Coup In Three Steps
What happened in Iran last Friday was a fully planned but clumsily executed coup, intended to obliterate the last vestiges of democracy in the country...

Iran's unlikely embrace of Bolivia builds influence in U.S. backyard
The government of Iran is following the lead of new ally Venezuela by taking its anti-American message to Bolivia, an impoverished but strategically positioned country in the heart of South America...

The Empire Burden
When George Orwell was a young man in the 1920s, he served as a British policeman in the colony of Burma...

Rooting for Ahmadinejad
The heart and the head sometimes go in different directions, and they do for me today as Iranians go to the polls to vote in their country's semi-legitimate presidential elections...

Ahmadinejad Declared Winner--What Does It Mean?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared a decisive winner in Friday's election--65 percent to challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi's 32 percent, according to Iran's state news agency--though Mousavi protested the results, alleging manipulation and fraud...

Eminent Persians, a talk by the director of Iranian Studies
Berkeley Lecture Series, whose “mission is to facilitate dialogue on issues of interest to the Iranian-American community in the Bay Area,” will be holding its next monthly meeting on Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 126 Barrows Hall of UC Berkeley...

United Nations makes doing nothing an art
Doing nothing might seem to be simple and easy...

Criticism and Conciliation
After listening to the president’s speech in Egypt this morning, National Review Online asked: Did the president do any good?...

Floor Statement by Senator John McCain a World Without Nuclear Weapons
Mr. President, today we celebrate the unveiling in the Capitol of a statue of Ronald Reagan, one of our country’s great presidents and a personal hero to me throughout my political life...

Experts sober on nuclear risks
It will be 64 years, in August, since that sunny morning when the Enola Gay dropped a small and crude atomic device, the "Little Boy," on Hiroshima...

Case for ratifying Nuclear Test Ban
On June 10, 1963, in a commencement address at American University, President John F. Kennedy announced the launch of high-level talks in Moscow with the aim of reaching early agreement on a treaty first proposed by President Eisenhower to ban all nuclear explosions for all time...

Obama will speak to the Muslim world
President Barack Obama is on his way to Egypt to deliver a much anticipated speech to the Muslim world...

Road To Zero Nukes Remains Fraught
On May 19, President Obama and his top national security advisers huddled in the Oval Office with an unlikely collection of Cold Warriors...

A nation up for grabs
Pakistan is in political and military play. And the stakes in its struggle against Islamic extremism could not be higher for the South Asian country or the United States...

Introducing The New Nuclear Pandemic
Americans should be more concerned by the proliferation of nuclear weapons from North Korea to other states or non-state actors, rather than focus on a direct N.Korean nuclear attack on the Western World...

Israel fears a nuclear Iran
Why would the Iranian government spend billions of dollars trying to develop a few first-generation nuclear bombs (as nearly everyone believes is the case) when the country is so poor that it has to ration gasoline?...

How to Reduce the Nuclear Threat
Monday's North Korean nuclear test was a dramatic reminder of the challenges to eliminating nuclear weapons world-wide...

What to Do About North Korea
The North Korean launch of its Taeopodong-2 missile and its second nuclear test have laid bare the paucity of President Obama's policy options...

Obama Seeks Advice on Nuclear Weapons
President Obama pledged on Tuesday to make nuclear nonproliferation one of his highest priorities, saying he would work with Russia and other countries to “lock down loose nuclear weapons that could fall into the hands of terrorists.’’...

Pres. Obama Oval Office Meeting on Nonproliferation Policy
President Obama met with Fmr. Sec. of State Henry Kissinger, Fmr. Sec. of State George Schultz, Fmr. Senator and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn, and Fmr. Sec. of Defense William Perry to discuss key priorities in U.S. nonproliferation policy in the Oval Office...

Remarks by the President After Meeting with Former Secretary of State George Shultz, Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Former Senator and Chairman of the Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn, and Former Secretary of Defense William Perry ...
THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody. I just had a wonderful discussion with four of the most preeminent national security thinkers that we have -- a bipartisan group of George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Bill Perry, and Sam Nunn -- all who've come together and helped inspire policies of this administration in a speech that I gave to Prague, which set forward a long-term vision of a world without nuclear weapons...

Obama meets on nuclear weapons
President Obama brought in some old foreign policy hands -- both Democrats and Republicans -- for some counsel today on how to fulfill his long-term vision of ridding the world of nuclear weapons...

Senior Foreign Policy Figures Endorse Obama Vision for Nuclear-Free World
President Obama held an Oval Office meeting today with four of the nation's foreign policy wise men, who endorsed his administration's vision for a world free of nuclear weapons. Obama, who laid his vision out in a speech in Prague early last month, embraced the endorsement after meeting with former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George P. Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.)...

Obama: Reducing spread of nukes a high priority
Preparing for a July summit on the issue with his Russian counterpart, President Barack Obama on Tuesday said it is "absolutely imperative" that the United States take the lead in reducing the spread of nuclear weapons...

FACTS ON POLICY: U.S. Treasuries
Did you know? . . . China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasuries...

Ahmadinejad Can Speak on a US Campus, But Netanyahu Cannot
Imagine it's 1940, and picture Adolf Hitler speaking at a US university, receiving a polite reception, while Winston Churchill is barred from speaking because his safety cannot be guaranteed...

Obama and Netanyahu Meet - What's Next?
The meeting on May 18 of two newly elected leaders, Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu, raise a basic question about US-Israel relations: Will this long-standing alliance survive its 62nd year?...

Exclusive: Authors of Commission Report on Nuclear Deterrence Should Be Commended – And Heeded
Government sponsored Commissions are frequently created...

George Shultz reflects on a meaningful life, whether he wants to or not
After a career that included service to three universities, two presidential Cabinets and one of the largest companies in the country, it seems natural that George Shultz would take the time to reflect on the influences and decisions that guided him during his 88 years...

A Good Time to Stop Butting Heads
There has always been an acute shortage of optimism in Russia...

In Turnabout, Iran Releases U.S. Journalist
An Iranian-American journalist sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of spying for the United States was released Monday, a legal turnabout that removes an obstacle to President Obama’s opening to Iran but illustrates the volatility of the Iranian government...

Strategic Posture Panel Reveals Split Over Nuclear Test Pact Ratification
A congressionally mandated expert panel yesterday reported that its members were divided over whether the U.S. Senate should ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but it unanimously advised the White House to clarify specific activities banned by the accord (see GSN, April 22)...

Commission Recommends Renewed US Leadership on Nuclear Arms Reduction
A report released in Washington on Wednesday recommends strengthened U.S. leadership in global efforts to prevent further nuclear weapons proliferation...

Expert Groups Largely Back Obama's Nuclear Stance
Two bipartisan panels of nuclear weapons experts are endorsing much of President Obama's ambitious arms-control effort in advance of next week's nonproliferation talks here between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton...

Ferguson-Scowcroft Conference Call
CHARLES FERGUSON: Good morning, everyone. This is Charles Ferguson. I'm the Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations, based in Washington, D.C. And it's my pleasure to release the Independent Task Force on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy report...

World Unprepared for Nuclear Disarmament, Report Says
While the Obama administration can take steps to reduce threats of nuclear proliferation and conflict, it is not yet possible to rid the world of nuclear weapons, says a report released yesterday by the Council on Foreign Relations (see GSN, April 6)...

N. Korea has small nuclear arsenal but lacks deployment ability: U.S. report
North Korea possesses “a small nuclear arsenal” but may have the capability to deploy it, according to a recent U.S. report...

Zero nuclear weapons still a distant dream
In early May, representatives from 191 countries will assemble in New York to discuss the fate of one of the most popular international treaties: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Only four countries—Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea—will not be present; the first three because they are not parties to the NPT and the last one because it is deemed to have withdrawn from it...

Kafka meets Orwell
I am writing on the long flight back to Los Angeles from Geneva, where I have just attended the so-called Durban Review Conference of the United Nations, aka Durban II...

The U.N.'s Durban II Debacle
As I write this, the United Nations Durban Review Conference on "racism" is still officially in session, stumbling toward the close, on Friday, of its five-day run at the U.N.'s palatial offices on the shores of Lake Geneva...

Islamists and the Left Working Together in Muslim-majority Countries?
The Iranian revolution of 1978-79 influenced relations between Islamists and the Left in two ways:...

Zionism and Racism, Again: Durban II
It took the Obama administration some time to get the full picture...

Shultz Calls on Republicans to Support CTBT Ratification
A new generation of nuclear detonation sensors should convince Senate Republicans to endorse the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz said Friday (see GSN, March 30)...

Iran Sentences U.S. Journalist to 8 Years
Iran has sentenced an Iranian-American journalist, Roxana Saberi, to eight years in prison after convicting her of spying for the United States, her lawyer said Saturday...

Creating a New Reset Button
This year is the 100th anniversary of Russia's parliamentary diplomacy...

At War with Gen. Jack Keane: Chapter 5 of 5
Jack Keane discusses the multiple challenges facing the U.S. military, the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, and more...

At War with Gen. Jack Keane: Chapter 4 of 5
Can the U.S. military win in Afghanistan, just as it is winning in Iraq?...

Piracy: We Saved a Man, but Solved Nothing
Obviously everyone is happy to have rescued the captain and killed the bad guys...

Where Israel Never Wins

Asymmetrical warfare has a twisted meaning in Gaza, where Israel is always considered the aggressor, even in self-defense. By Victor Davis Hanson.

Rice, on the Record

"The world is tough, but it’s no tougher now than when we came, and some pockets of it are a lot, lot better." A talk with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. By Kimberley A. Strassel.

Obama aiming for a nuclear-weapons-free world
In a speech held in Prague, US President Barack Obama became the first president in more than 20 years to publicly state that the US should aim for a world free of nuclear weapons...

How Obama can start closing the growing partisan chasm
A recently released Pew Poll suggests that Barack Obama is experiencing the widest partisan divide in approval of any President in the last four decades...

Piratical Thoughts
Pirates (the word peiraô is Greek for ‘to try’ or ‘make the attempt’) were common in the ancient world...

The Human Element: When Gadgetry Becomes Strategy
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the political debates concerning the nature and scope of U.S. involvement in those countries, have resurrected the “lessons” of Vietnam once again...

The Good and Bad of Gates's Agenda
I haven't commented yet on Bob Gates's new defense agenda because I've been ambivalent about it...

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita: Three predictions on the future of Iran, and the math to back it up
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses mathematical analysis to predict (very often correctly) such messy human events as war, political power shifts, Intifada ...

U.S. to Join Iran Talks Over Nuclear Program
The Obama administration said Wednesday that the United States would start participating regularly with other major powers in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program...

Advisor: Obama's Europe trip 'productive'
The president's top political advisor is calling the eight-day trip enormously productive, even though the president didn't get much of what he asked for...

World approaching new nuclear tipping point
With the world standing on what some experts fear is the beginning of a dangerous new nuclear age, U.S. President Barack Obama received thunderous applause on Friday when he told a European audience one of his goals was “a world without nuclear weapons.”...

Are U.S. officials potential Spanish prisoners?
Just when former Bush administration officials thought they could relax and perhaps travel a bit comes the disconcerting news that a Spanish court is considering charges against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five other former government officials for the design of alleged torture at Guantánamo Bay...

President 50/50
The most successful practitioner of community organizing looks around for what he thinks is a problem, chastises both sides and allots absolutely equal blame, gives exalted moral lectures about compromise and understanding, and then waltzes away well paid, praised for his moderation, but having accomplished nothing...

G-20 could help US, Russia “reset” ties
Among the many great expectations being loaded onto this week’s G-20 summit in London is the hope that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his US counterpart, Barack Obama, will decisively push the “reset” button to reverse the nearly decade-long downward spiral in Washington-Moscow ties...

A Rookie President
Someone once said that, for every rookie you have on your starting team in the National Football League, you will lose a game...

The Good—Part III
Ok—after those depressing six “bad” and “ugly” trends, here are three things that bring at least some optimism in otherwise trying times...

The Obama–Medvedev G-20 Meeting: The Agenda for the First Encounter
On April 1, President Barack Obama will meet for the first time with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the G-20 summit in London...

Towards zero: Obama grasps the nuclear nettle
Fixing the economy, withdrawing from Iraq, overtures to Iran, a plan for Afghanistan, a thaw with Moscow and a bargain with Beijing ... I could go on...

Condemned to Failure
Recently Gooya News published an article by Naser Mostashar...

Gorbachev upbeat on U.S.-Russia ties after Obama visit
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said on Thursday he was more optimistic about the prospect of improving U.S.-Russian relations after meeting U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this month...

The G20 summit in London will be missing one great power. Guess who?
When President Barack Obama comes to London next week, he will find one great power missing at the world's summit table: Europe...

How to spread democracy in Iran
Not even the unchecked power of a tyrannical theocracy - which jails Iranian citizens for treason for promoting freedom and civil rights, and ceaselessly disseminates agitprop depicting the U.S. as the Great Satan - has been able to extirpate the desire for democracy rooted deep within the hearts of Iran’s next generation...

Experts weigh in on Obama's Iran message
President Obama delivered a message to the Iranian government and its people offering a new beginning...

Kissinger, Baker Visit Moscow as Obama Resets Ties
Henry Kissinger and James Baker, two former U.S. secretaries of state, will fly to Moscow for talks with Russian officials after President Barack Obama pledged to “reset” relations with Russia...

Former MI chief: Fear Pakistan not Iran
Ex-Israeli military intelligence chief Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash says Pakistan poses a much greater threat to Tel Aviv's existence than Iran...

SF attorney searches for Iranian money
The 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon killed more than 200 marines...

Stage Set For A Collision: Lieberman, Netanyahu and Barack Obama
With the expected designation of Avigdor Lieberman as Israel’s next foreign minister in a narrow, right-wing coalition led by Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, the stage seems set for a political collision course between Jerusalem and the rest of the world, including the U.S...

Expert: Nuke issue off public radar
Bill Wickersham knows the look well...

Netanyahu as Prime Minister
With Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, head of the Likud Party, about to become Israel's next prime minister, one wonders whether he will stick to his more controversial campaign promises – not that of confronting the Iranian threat, which is widely backed, but such as ending Hamas control of Gaza or keeping the Golan Heights...

U.S. Eyes Iran for Resupply of Afghan Forces
The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is mulling a plan that would use Iranian territory to rescue the deteriorating logistics network currently used to supply U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, administration officials said...

Liberal derangement
There has never been a situation like this...

Quiet choice of envoy raises questions on Iran
Dennis Ross spent only a couple of years in Bay Area academia, but he left a lasting impression on his colleagues...

The World According to John Bolton: Chapter 4 of 5
According to John Bolton, if Iran gets nuclear weapons, the power-shift in the region will be fundamental, calamitous, and “irreversible.”...

The $900 million US gift to Hamas
Could someone please pinch the US officials who attended the Gaza Reconstruction Conference?...

Lessons from History: The Twentieth Anniversary of the Soviet Withdrawal From Afghanistan
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December of 1979...

That Surreal Gaza Reconstruction Conference
Was I the only one rubbing my eyes in disbelief yesterday, as the Egyptian government hosted an “International Conference for the Reconstruction of Gaza”?...

Nuclear is going worldwide, but U.S. is not in the game
Nuclear power plants, already more popular outside the United States than stateside, are popping up all over the developing world...

Peter Foster: America needs China
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came under attack last week for soft-peddling human rights during her visit to China...

Iran has had no talks with any U.S. officials: FM
Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said here on Monday that Iran had not talked with any U.S. officials, the official IRNA news agency reported...

A Fatal Trajectory
An increasing number of recent letters and e-mails from readers strike a note, not only of unhappiness with the way things are going in our society, but a note of despair...

Our Battered American
I am meeting a few battered Americans these days...

US-RUSSIA: Kinder, Gentler Tone, Same Policy Tradeoffs
The relationship between the U.S. and Russia, which reached a nadir this past August during the war in Georgia, appears to have experienced a slight thaw during the first month of the Barack Obama administration...

Learning Not to Love the Bomb
THE Obama administration seems ready to resuscitate relations with Russia, including by renewing nuclear-arms-reduction talks...

Nominating America To Be The World's Designated Driver
Obama's first foreign policy decisions bode well for establishing America's role as a global "designated driver" in the 21st Century, when the world is drunk on unprecedented trends in finance, governance, geopolitics, religion, war, weather and more...

New route links Afghanistan to sea, via Iran
As President Obama's foreign policy team tries to make lemonade out of the diplomatic lemons it has inherited around the world, one region could represent low-hanging fruit: the Khyber Pass linking Pakistan with Afghanistan...

How Ian McEwan hid Rushdie after fatwa
It is well-known that Ian McEwan (pictured) is a close friend of Salman Rushdie, but in the March issue of the New Yorker he shows the extent of this friendship, revealing that it was to his house in the Cotswolds that the author fled the day the fatwa was pronounced upon him 20 years ago by the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini for his book The Satanic Verses...

The fog lifts a little in Israel
As we noted yesterday, the Israeli election has left Benjamin Netanyahu pretty well-positioned to form a new government in which he will be the Prime Minister...

US- Iran: Dialogue of the deaf?
President Barack Obama offered to "extend a hand" of diplomacy if the Islamic Republic's leaders would "unclench their fist."...

Containing the fire of the gods
Over 200 years ago, the philosopher Immanuel Kant defined the ultimate choice before mankind: World history would ultimately culminate in universal peace either by moral insight or by catastrophe of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice...

Not Exactly Rocket Science
When Iran launched a satellite into low-earth orbit this week, it was taken by many in the West as a not-so-subtle reminder that the country is defiantly working to produce missiles that one day could be used to deliver nuclear warheads...

Asia's Nonproliferation Laggards
The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction ranks as one of the biggest challenges facing the Obama administration...

Our Brave New World
Be careful when one uses the superlative case—best, most, -est, etc.—or evokes end-of-the-world imagery...

Campaign promises: nuclear arms control
It's been more than 20 years since Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan stunned the planet by proposing that the U.S. and the Soviet Union embark on a quest to free the world of nuclear weapons...

Iran's unlikely embrace of Bolivia builds influence in U.S. backyard
The government of Iran is following the lead of new ally Venezuela by taking its anti-American message to Bolivia, an impoverished but strategically positioned country in the heart of South America...

Retired general offers Mideast view
U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell has what many people would consider a thankless task: taking on a panoply of complex antagonisms that are steeped in history and agitated by religious tensions, ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction, disputed land, war, competition for resources, statelessness, ethnic rivalries, terrorism and ideological jockeying for influence...

Been There, Done That in the Middle East
With much fanfare, President Barack Obama announced a new effort to end the endless Israeli-Palestinian struggle—by naming a brand-new Mideast envoy, former senator George Mitchell...

Unofficial US-Iran Talks Lay Groundwork For Possible Direct Contacts
President Barack Obama has made clear his intention to open some kind of dialogue with Iran if the circumstances are right...

White House distances itself from discreet talks with Iran, Syria
The White House on Sunday sought to distance itself from advisers to Barack Obama who reportedly met with Syrian and Iranian officials during Obama's transition to power...

30 Years Of Tragedies And Triumphs
It has been 30 years of transformation, of good times and troubled times...

Explaining Israel’s Strategic Mistakes
In an article earlier this month , “Israel's Strategic Incompetence in Gaza,” I made three points: that the Israeli leadership unilaterally created its current problems in Gaza, that the war against Hamas meant ignoring the much larger threat of Iranian nuclear weapons, and that the goal of empowering Al-Fatah makes no sense...

Iran Would Need One Year to Produce Bomb-Grade Uranium, Expert Says
Iran would need at least a year to produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a nuclear-weapon from its existing stocks of low-enriched material, the London Telegraph reported today (see GSN, Jan. 27)...

Abbas Milani HISTORY FORUM
An Interesting conversation with Historian Abbas Milani conducted by Firouzeh Khatibi on the Methodology in Historic Research in Iranian Studies and particularly Historical Biographies with An Introduction to his latest Biographical work on the Shah of Iran...

Clinton Sees an Opportunity for Iran to Return to Diplomacy
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that Iran had a “clear opportunity” to engage with the international community, amplifying the conciliatory tone struck a day earlier by President Obama toward Iran and the rest of the Muslim world...

Oil prices expose a chink in armour
Not too long ago, Iran’s ruling mullahs appeared unstoppable...

Heard In Iran: Bulldozer Destroys Graves of Political Prisoners
Noted Iran expert Abbas Milani of Stanford University tells Radio Farda that it would be a huge mistake for Iran's rulers to use Obama's call for engagement as an excuse to buy time for its nuclear program...

I Knew The Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's biographer, Abbas Milani, shares his memories of a conflicted and controversial figure...

Negotiate with Iran?

Good faith is not in Tehran’s vocabulary. By Fouad Ajami.

A Threat in Any Language

The leader of Iran wants to “wipe Israel off the map.” Was he misquoted? Not by a long shot. By Joshua Teitelbaum.

American Power: Past Is Prologue

Memo to the new leadership: don’t just charge ahead, think ahead. By Thomas H. Henriksen.

An Uneasy Feeling
All Americans must appreciate the outpouring of good will, unity, and hope for a successful Obama administration...

Obama Promises the World a Renewed America
President Obama used his Inaugural Address to promise the regeneration of an America many in recent years had feared lost...

Defense Policy Advice To Obama--From The Other Team
The Obama administration is trending toward several mistakes in defense policy...

Obama inherits a world of troubles
President Barack Hussein Obama will arrive at the White House on Tuesday and inherit a world of troubles weighty enough to make Atlas groan...

North Korean, Iranian Nuclear Efforts Pose Early Test for Obama
Arms control specialists from the Bush and Clinton eras warn that the most pressing problem for the new Obama administration will be finding a way to halt the nuclear weapons programs of Iran and North Korea...

In this war, Islamists have found a shared strategy. We haven't
The inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday will be a festival of hope, generational change and soaring rhetoric...

"Insurmountable Opportunity"
One of the biggest and most fateful choices Barack Obama will make as president will be the shape of the nearly $1 trillion economic stimulus package that Congress will likely pass within the next two months...

Nuclear Weapons for All? The Risks of a New Scramble for the Bomb
The global financial order has been shaken...

Obama And The Russians Need Each Other To Solve Key Problems
The day after Barack Obama's electoral victory last autumn, most world leaders were falling over themselves to congratulate the new U.S. leader...

Obama must step up fight against secret nuclear trade, experts say
Incoming President Barack Obama must step up ways to stop secret nuclear trade involving Pakistan, Iran and North Korea that goes far beyond an AQ Khan network that may still be active, experts say...

A call to revise the Geneva Conventions
As the Israeli operation in Gaza moves toward the end of its third week, voices of criticism are echoing among the international media...

If Obama and Khamenei want to get along, they should start watching TV
At five minutes to five yesterday afternoon, Tehran time, Iranian television viewers finally got the channel they have been asking for...

The Time Clock Has Run Out: Israel Ready to Strike Iran
Informed sources in Washington tell Newsmax that Israel indeed will launch a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities soon – possibly in just days as President George W. Bush prepares to leave office...

Towards a Biden-Putin Commission
When Senators Obama and Biden are sworn in next week, they will face immediate challenges ranging from the need to pass a new economic stimulus plan, responding to the Gaza war, implementing a new Iraq/Afghanistan policy, etc., with perhaps the most important being to lower the public's expectations for a quick turnaround...

Clinton faces touch challenges in new role
Senator Hillary Clinton looks to be headed to an easy confirmation as secretary of state...

From Gaza to Guantanamo
If one can endure the creepy, multifarious Hamas recruiting videos of Gazan children with suicide belts, camouflage uniforms, and toy AK-47s shouting to “kill the Jews”, and then collates all that with the images of young Hamas males with hoods and masks, RPGs and rocket launchers, screaming about the death to come to Israel with the now boilerplate “Day of Death” and “Day of Punishment”—with all the bizarre use of the vocative (“O Israel, you will see your rivers of blood” or “O Olmert, we will cut your head off!”)—then it is hard to comprehend the switch to a sudden victimization mode, in which weeping Hamas operatives appeal to Europeans, the news agencies, and other Arabs for relief from the suddenly militarily competent and fierce Jews...

Obama vows to tackle Middle East 'on day one'
US president-elect Barack Obama on Sunday vowed to take swift action on the Middle East peace process and Iran's nuclear ambitions but played for time to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp...

Prospects for peace in the Middle East
Operation "Cast Lead" is a defensive military operation within an ongoing war imposed on Israel by an enemy entity headed by the elected Hamas terrorists...

Obama: The Great American Hope?
There is great hope that President-elect Obama will change the course of U.S. foreign policy, create far greater goodwill toward America, and thereby ease world tensions...

'Israel may target Iran next'
William Perry, the US Secretary of Defense under president Bill Clinton, said Thursday a conflict between Israel and Iran is highly likely to happen during US President-elect Barack Obama's first year in office...

Toward a nuclear-free world: a German view
In 2007 Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn issued an appeal for a world free of nuclear weapons...

Former Pentagon Chief: Obama Certain to 'Face Serious Crisis With Iran'
William Perry, who headed the Pentagon during a 1994 nuclear standoff with North Korea, predicted on Thursday that President-elect Barack Obama will soon face a nuclear crisis with Iran...

Former Pentagon chief predicts Iran crisis soon
William Perry, who headed the Pentagon during a 1994 nuclear standoff with North Korea, predicted on Thursday that President-elect Barack Obama will soon face a nuclear crisis with Iran...

Getting to Zero
Proliferation -- from Russia, North Korea, Iran and the freelance efforts of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan -- is at "a tipping point" that will be "irreversible, and dangerous beyond the imagination of most people," [Former Defense Secretary William] Perry says...

Gaza Baptist Church's building sustains damage in Israeli air strike
An Israeli air strike at Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip seriously damaged Gaza Baptist Church on New Year's Day...

Annus horribilis: Two futuristic looks at the crash of 2009
In 2005's fictional "Countdown to a Meltdown," The Atlantic magazine's James Fallows describes America's coming economic crisis by looking back from the election of 2016 -- when the 46th president of the United States will be the first since before the Civil War to be neither Democrat nor Republican...

Five Reasons Why India Can't 'Do A Gaza' On Pakistan
Over the last week, many Americans (and Indians) have asked me why India does not "do a Gaza" on Pakistan, referring, of course, to an emulation of Israel's punitive use of force against Hamas-run Palestine, a territory from which rockets rain down on Israeli soil with reliable frequency (if not reliable destructiveness ... but that is not for want of Hamas intent)...

Surreal Gaza
I spent today reading accounts of Gaza—NY Times, AP, Reuters, etc...

Iraq exit most pressing military test
Barack Obama, the Democratic president-elect, will enter the White House in January facing a daunting array of military challenges, including most pressingly, when and how to withdraw the roughly 140,000 US troops in Iraq...

What a “Change Candidate” . . . Can’t

Our new president will face familiar friends and even more familiar foes. By Victor Davis Hanson.

What Neoconservatism Is—and Isn’t

Where neoconservatism came from, what it stands for, and how it became associated with the war in Iraq. An intellectual movement considered. By Peter Berkowitz.

Memo to the Next President

Soft power in the war on terror needs to be much more effective. How to sharpen one of the most important soft weapons: the law. By Jack Goldsmith.

Fear as a Tax

How an overconcern with security can distort the face America shows the world. By Josef Joffe.

Suppose We Caught Bin Laden . . . Then What?

Seven years after 9/11, the legal aspects of the war on terrorism remain a mess. The next commander in chief must clean it up quickly. By Benjamin Wittes.

Who Will Stand Up to the Tanks?

Hoover senior fellow Larry Diamond looks for places where democracy can still arise, and may yet flourish. By Janine di Giovanni.

A ticking time bomb
Albert Einstein, one of the most instrumental scientists in making nuclear weaponry a reality, once said, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."...

The Real Issues": Part IV
Barack Obama's supporters often try to sidestep questions about his character and judgment by saying that we should stick to what they arbitrarily define as "the real issues."...

Bay Area's Brain Trust
From smashing fundraising records to prepping for debates to flying East to advise on the country's financial meltdown, Bay Area residents are among John McCain's and Barack Obama's very top counselors and fundraisers...

Finding Common Ground
The crisis over Georgia raises an issue familiar from history: In 1914, an essentially local issue was seen by so many nations in terms of established fears and frustrations that it became global in scope and led to the First World War...

Gen. John Abizaid Discusses Foreign Policy Challenges Facing Next President
General John Abizaid, the longest serving leader of U.S. Central Command in Iraq and Afghanistan, knows firsthand the challenges the next President will face in the Middle East...

America’s Nervous Breakdown
Ancient thinkers from Thucydides to Cicero insisted that money was the real source of military power and national influence...

What price peace?
Conventional wisdom holds that battles are bad for bourses...

CBI: Adding liquidity not inflationary
The new governor of the Central Bank of Iran says providing needed liquidity to producers will lead to greater output and lower prices...

Beyond Ideology, a Generational Clash
One candidate cited Churchill and Eisenhower, and described George Shultz, who served in Ronald Reagan’s cabinet, as a “great secretary of state.”...

Axis of rejection? U.S., Iran, North Korea snub nuclear test ban pact
There is a saying in English that people are judged by the company they keep...

Ban urges US, Iran, others to join nuclear test ban pact
The United States, Iran, China and other countries that have not yet signed or ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), should submit to the global pact banning nuclear tests, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday...

Ban appeals for further ratifications of key nuclear treaty
Despite its ratification by nearly 150 nations, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) still has yet to go into force, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lamented today, calling on countries to take urgent action to promote global peace and security...

War Puts Russia on U.S. Vote Agenda
When U.S. Senators Barak Obama and John McCain go live on air to battle over foreign policy in their first presidential debate Friday, last month's conflict with Georgia might mean that Russia will feature more prominently, the candidates' top advisers said...

The Limits of Obamamania in Europe
I recently returned from a trip this summer to the battlefields of Europe’s past—among them Waterloo, Verdun, and Normandy—and had a number of discussions with Europeans of all sorts...

Appeasing Iran, A Disastrous Policy
After Hitler, the policy of appeasing dictators - ridiculed by Winston Churchill as feeding a crocodile, hoping it will eat one last - appeared to be permanently discredited...

Don't sell America's economy short
Avisiting Israeli Cabinet minister made two interesting points at a conference in Washington over the weekend...

'Israel can't destroy Iran N-facilities'
A retired senior US military commander has rejected the notion that Israel is capable of seriously damaging Iran's nuclear program...

Abizaid: Israel No Threat To Iran's Nukes
Newsweek reports that former CENTCOM commander retired Gen. John Abizaid's "remarks at a Marine Corps University conference last week appeared to echo the thinking of at least some in the upper echelons of the U.S. military: Israel is incapable of seriously damaging Iran's nuclear program."...

Fossilized Foreign Policy
Much of what Barack Obama has said about the world beyond our shores is about five years out of date...

We're On Top
Starting today, the United Nations' headquarters in New York turns into a caravanserai for the world's presidents, prime ministers and panjandrums...

Israel cannot damage Iran's N-sites: Abizaid
Israel is incapable of seriously damaging Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to a retired US general who oversaw military operations in the Middle East as head of US Central Command until 18 months ago...

Rice Tries Taming Putin While Still Engaging Him
President George H.W. Bush once introduced Condoleezza Rice to his Soviet counterpart as the aide ``who tells me everything I know about the Soviet Union.''...

Obama Proves All Too Human
Many of the things that Barack Obama did to soar past Hillary Clinton during the primaries are now causing him problems as the general-election race tightens...

Idols of Crowds
"A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence."...

Abu Musa: island in the spotlight
Barely four kilometres in diameter, if it could be overlain onto Abu Dhabi the island of Abu Musa would fit comfortably between the Corniche and 15th Street...

Obamania—as in craziness, not craze
The contention is not that the media shouldn’t investigate Palin, but whether they are doing it in the manner, spirit, and level of intensity that they likewise explore Biden (and Obama)...

Questions of Security
JOHN McCAIN and Barack Obama are two of the most remarkable Americans to enter public life...

Russian Peace Deal Would Reassure Investors: Michael R. Sesit
It sure feels like it's time to hold cash, buy gold, invest in Swiss francs and be wary of stocks, as the standoff between Russia and its former Cold War foes persists over the country's attack on Georgia...

Iran's arrest of doctors jeopardizes US program
Two celebrated Iranian doctors who participated in a US-funded exchange program have been arrested in Iran and accused of using their global AIDS work to destabilize the Iranian government, according to State Department officials and former students at Harvard's School of Public Health who are seeking their release...

Georgian strife causes political rifts
The fallout from Russia’s conflict with Georgia is producing an unusual split in American politics — not between the parties so much as between the presidential candidates and their colleagues in Congress...

The Foreign Policy Difference
The candidacy of Barack Obama seems to have lost some of its luster of late, and I suspect this has something to do with large questions many Americans still harbor about his view of the dangerous world around us...

U.N. Roots for Obama, but Should Give McCain's Ideas a Chance
Foreign diplomats and most U.N. officials are rooting for Senator Obama to win the White House in November, though they have wisely avoided thinly disguised interference in the American presidential election...

Leading historian issues warning of a new cold war
THE SCOTTISH historian Niall Ferguson has warned that the strategic alliance between China and Russia is more of a threat to the West than the credit crunch...

'No One's Naked Anymore'
I knew Paul Theroux could turn a phrase, but I hadn't realized that he could turn heads, too...

The Race Tightens Up (Again and Again)
It is interesting how Obama has been evolving toward McCain’s positions rather than vice versa...

Monetary genius
Usually totalitarian regimes lop off heads, but Iran is considering lopping off zeros (HT: Ewin Barnett):...

Why McCain Still Has a Chance to Win
With Barack Obama already established as a skillful rhetorician, people keep asking me, a former White House speechwriter, about John McCain...

Changes in Politics
One of the few political cliches that makes sense is that "In politics, overnight is a lifetime."...

Russia Deal May Fall, a Casualty of Conflict
Just three months ago, President Bush reached a long-sought agreement with Russia intended to open a new era of civilian nuclear cooperation and sent it to Congress for review...

How the Reagan Doctrine Once Again Defeated the Russians
Today, in 2018, as we look back at the first Russian-Georgian War of the 21st century, which erupted 10 years ago, we can recall the extreme pessimism that many felt at the time...

Reinventing the Evil Empire
For the West, everything changed but stayed the same, hard-wired and in place...

Random Thoughts
Random thoughts on the passing scene:...

Take Steps Toward A Nuclear-Free Future
As we head into the presidential nomination conventions this week, there's one important subject that has gotten only scant attention from candidates Barack Obama and John McCain: our global nuclear weapons crisis...

THE STANLEY FOUNDATION: A NEW LOOK AT NO FIRST USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Earlier this year, the staff of the Stanley Foundation's US Nuclear Review project assembled several experts on nuclear weapons in a discussion on the feasibility of the United States adopting a policy never to strike first using nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict...

The Cold War, reheated
So you haven't liked the last couple of decades?...

Humanitarian Crisis Looming in Iraq
Since 2003, the ayatollahs’ regime has been relentless in sowing terror and mayhem in Iraq...

U.S. Sees Much to Fear in a Hostile Russia
The president of Syria spent two days this week in Russia with a shopping list of sophisticated weapons he wanted to buy...

The Next President
The next president will inherit leadership of a nation that is still the most powerful in the world -- a nation rich with the continued promise of its dynamic and increasingly diverse population, a nation that could, and must, again inspire, mobilize, and lead the world...

The Burqa Bomber Strikes Again in Iraq
Last week in Iraq, a female homicide bomber, masquerading as a Shiite religious pilgrim, murdered 20-30 pilgrims, half of them women, and injured at least 100 others...

REINING IN IRAN
There are a number of ominous signs that Israel, alone or perhaps together with the United States, may be preparing a so-called pre-emptive military strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities...

Terrorism's New Structure
History is accelerating; and so the future becomes more and more unknowable...

Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tehran
This week the words of Wendell Berry come to mind: "We concluded in 1945, after our atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that we had made war 'unthinkable' – and we have gone on thinking of it, preparing for it, fighting it, suffering and profiting from it ever since."...

Georgia on Our Mind
What is happening in the republic of Georgia is all too reminiscent of what happened back in 1956, when Russian tanks rolled into Hungary — and the West did nothing...

Russian support for Iran sanctions at risk amid Georgia rift
Fierce American criticism of Russia's military action in Georgia is almost certain to jeopardize a very different US strategic objective: stepping up pressure on Iran with another layer of United Nations sanctions...

U.S. relations with Russia growing icy in Georgia conflict's midst
Russia's invasion of Georgia has plunged relations with the United States to their iciest point since the Cold War, but just how deep the chill will go depends on whether Moscow turns its tanks around or sends them into Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, to oust the country's pro-Western government, U.S. officials and analysts said Tuesday...

Davenport: Showdown with Iran Awaits Next President
The news out of Iran lately couldn't be clearer--they are actively developing nuclear capabilities and playing a deadly game to delay any serious attempt to stop them...

Full text of 2008 Nagasaki Peace Declaration
We will not forget the atomic cloud that rose into the sky on that fateful day...

Oil and prestige fuel the 'New Cold War'
THE UN headquarters on New York's East River was supposed to have been in darkness on Friday night, the diplomats tucked up at home to watch the fireworks of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony...

Summer of Reflection
Beneath all the doom and gloom, what strikes one this late summer is the sheer resurgence of the United States...

Bueno de Mesquita on Iran and Threats to U.S. Security
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of Stanford University's Hoover Institution and New York University talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about threats to U.S. security, particularly Iran...

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tehran: Lest we forget
This week the words of Wendell Berry come to mind: “We concluded in 1945, after our atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that we had made war ‘unthinkable’ – and we have gone on thinking of it, preparing for it, fighting it, suffering and profiting from it ever since.”...

Fouad Ajami: Back to the Iranian Bazaar
There have been rumors of war and rumors of an accommodation...

Iran Looms As Nuclear Party Crasher
Missiles flare through the skies above Iran. U.S. and British warships stage all-hands-on-deck maneuvers in the Persian Gulf...

Walker's World: Which Iran is in charge?
Will the real Iranian government please stand up to be identified?...

Nuclear ban? Start with U.S.
Wednesday is the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and an appropriate time to reflect upon the persistence of nuclear danger...

Israel, Iran and the Bomb
Israel and the entire Middle East are approaching a stark existential choice: a nuclear holocaust or a nuclear-free Middle East...

Where Art Thou, Hillary?
I think buyer’s remorse will soon set in among Democrats...

The real nuclear threat
We heard a lot recently about the nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran...

Back to the USSR
John McCain likes to compare himself to Theodore Roosevelt, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan...

What If Iraq Works?
There is a growing confidence among officers, diplomats, and politicians that a constitutional Iraq is going to make it...

THE WRONG PLACE
Two assertions about Iraq ought to be challenged or at least examined more closely...

Revisiting the “Axis of Evil” – Part I
As the debate on Iran rages in the United States, the hawks need to examine the 2003 Iraq War and its aftermath, pondering the wisdom of George Santayana – "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."...

A Summer of War and Politics
Why Do Europeans Love Obama?...

It’s America, Obama
What disturbed me about Barack Obama's Berlin speech were some reoccurring utopian assumptions about cause and effect — namely, that bad things happen almost as if by accident, and are to be addressed by faceless, universal forces of good will...

Obama the Sophisticate
It’s beginning to look as though Senator Barack Obama really is more popular than Senator John McCain abroad...

‘This Is the Moment’
Given the size of the audience in Berlin Thursday, the enthusiastic response, and the standard lines about how we-were-, -are-, and -will-be-friends boilerplate, one wonders whether all it took to win the Euro-hearts and minds was to have a charismatic, multiracial American spice up a standard George W. Bush speech about helping the world, addressing AIDs, more troops in Afghanistan, etc.?

Obama's Experience Doesn't Match Up
Heading off on his week-long, high-profile tour of seven countries, Barack Obama defined the first part of the trip's purpose by telling reporters, "I want to, obviously, talk to the commanders and get a sense, both in Afghanistan and in Baghdad of . . . what . . . their biggest concerns are."...

Abizaid: "Iran Is Not a Suicide State; Deterrence Will Work"
Monday evening at a meeting of the Pacific Council, retired General John Abizaid, the former commander of the US Central Command for Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003-2007, offered lots of wisdom and an impressive analysis of the Middle East...

The End of Humanity: Nukes, Nanotech, or God-Like Artificial Intelligences?
The Global Catastrophic Risks conference sponsored by the Future of Humanity Institute concluded on Sunday...

Our Many Messiahs
The more we size up the current energy crisis, the more it seems like we are waking up from a long coma...

A New Openness to Talks With That ‘Axis of Evil’
When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets her North Korean counterpart, Pak Ui-chun, in Singapore this week, it will be the first substantive high-level meeting between Washington and the North since Madeleine K. Albright visited North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, during the waning months of the Clinton administration...

Samir Kuntar and the last laugh
Israel has lived the past 60 years more intensively than any other country...

Re-Thinking the Iranian nuclear threat
WOULD IT be a great disaster if Iran had nuclear weapons?...

Philip Bobbitt: The presidents' brain
'Shall we break with convention," he says, "and have champagne?"...

An Uncomfortable Conversation about Nukes
Why are Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry, and Sam Nunn writing opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons?...

Summer Madness
So an exasperated Sen. Barbara Boxer screams that the farm-belt senators better support her regional selfishness in opposing California off-shore drilling against the national interest, in the same manner she went along with the ethanol boondoggle...

More Iraqi Ironies
There is by now only one constant in the entire sad Iraqi saga since the brilliant three-week victory of 2003, and the subsequent violent reconstruction that followed...

With no laurels to rest on, U.S. must regain can-do spirit
In the past 20 years, we were lectured constantly about "post-industrial" America...

The nuclear reaction
In a surprising move this week, the Bush administration announced William Burns, its third-highest-ranking diplomat, was going to Geneva to attend talks with Iranian envoy Saeed Jalilli this weekend...

Questions From the Past
Sometimes, like you, I start feeling down about the direction of our world today...

Will Washington Betray Anti-Regime Iranians?
As the United Nations mandate that legitimizes the presence of U.S forces in Iraq expires on December 31, 2008, a humanitarian and strategic disaster is coming into view...

Obama vs. McCain: Seven Areas of Agreement, and Six of Disagreement, on Nuclear Weapons
In a campaign that features back and forth on issues large and small, where Barack Obama and John McCain disagree on everything from taxes to offshore drilling to Social Security to Iraq, it is amazing how much agreement there is on nuclear weapons issues...

Decline and fallacy
American crises seem to produce two kinds of diagnosticians, those who want to scare their readers and those who want to reassure them...

Hagee's "Christians for Israel" Meet in DC, Seeking Conflict with Iran
You have probably heard of Pastor John Hagee...

Analysis: Iran runs risk in missile tests
Iran's bold move in test-firing nine missiles Wednesday could be desperation or bravado, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that powerful figures in Tehran are spoiling for a radical confrontation with the United States...

Barack W. Bush?
Almost everyone is talking about Barack Obama’s flip-flops, as the Senate’s most liberal member steadily moves to the political center and disowns firebrands like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Fr. Michael Pfleger...

Iran Raises Vanishing of 4 Citizens in Beirut as U.N. Issue
Iran, sharpening its image contest with Israel amid the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program, has resurrected questions about the fate of four of its citizens who disappeared in Beirut in 1982 while Israeli forces occupied the city...

What Reagan and Shultz Can Teach Us About Talking to Iran
In their column on National Review on June 24, 2008 called “10 Concerns about Barack Obama,” William Bennett and Seth Leibsohn, begin their list of attacks on Senator Obama by writing that “Barack Obama’s foreign policy is dangerous, naïve, and betrays a profound misreading of history.”...

Good and Bad Times
Obama said not a word last autumn about the Moveon.org slander of Gen. Petraeus when he was running hard left of Clinton and the Moveon.org crowd was essential to his candidacy...

LETTER TO EDITOR: Not another war
Arnaud de Borchgrave's column should be essential reading for everyone concerned about what is going on in the world ("U.S.-Israel moment of truth?" Commentary, Monday)...

[The Islamist-Leftist] Allied Menace
"Here are two brother countries, united like a single fist," said socialist Hugo Chávez during a visit to Tehran last November, celebrating his alliance with Islamist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...

Forty Years After Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, US Tops World in Nuke Arsenal
This week marks the fortieth anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, when nuclear powers agreed to eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons, and non-nuclear states agreed not to seek to develop nuclear weapons capabilities...

The Campaign Heats Up
I watched the other night Shane and Hombre, and realized how much I missed Jack Palance and Richard Boone (both Stanford attendees at one time)...

Crusading is not the answer, but nor is pulling up the drawbridge
Next week, a bunch of political leaders will sit around a table at the G8 summit in Toyako, Japan, contemplating the state of the world...

A new approach on Iran?
The Bush Administration sought and Congress agreed to fund covert operations in Iran to destabilize the government there, according to a recent New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh...

Analysis: Report fans Iran attack fears
U.S. officials have denied claims that U.S. Special Forces are already operating across the Iraqi border in Iran, but Seymour Hersh's claim that senior U.S. generals are opposing American airstrikes against Iran reflects very real divisions in the Pentagon and the Bush administration...

Japan and the Future of Nuclear Disarmament
Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s entry in the visitors’ book at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum last month may not sound so astonishing or dramatic...

A Measure of Pride

Five years into the Iraq war, a better country is emerging. By Fouad Ajami.

Time for a “Diplomatic Surge”

Democracy may be turning a corner in Iraq, but it’s going to need a lot of help. What kind of help? Intense pressure on Iraq’s leaders. By Larry Diamond.

Unfounded Hopes

In a nuclear Iran, could we count on a democratic counterrevolution? Hardly.Why we may have to impose a naval blockade instead. By Shmuel Bar and Peter Berkowitz.

A Modest Proposal for Mideast Peace

Refugees, lost territory, artificial states . . . after we somehow fix these problems in spots like Kashmir and Eastern Europe, fixing them in Israel will be a cinch. By Victor Davis Hanson.

Goodbye to All That?

Washing our hands of the Middle East—a notion that’s as futile as it is appealing. By Thomas H. Henriksen.

How Israelis See the Future

The evolving consensus: their nation, though threatened, is sound. By Peter Berkowitz.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Turns 40 Today
Try an experiment today...

More Newsweek Rehash
Newsweek is running an old story of 2007 by Evan Thomas suggesting that the 300 was a sort of racist propaganda, and he thinks that it reflects the administration’s Manichean views that derive from ancient Greece/Persia faultlines...

It Doesn’t Always Compute
Two of the Three in the Axis of Evil — Korea and Iraq –seem no longer to be acquiring weapons of mass destruction...

Are Congressional Democrats Leading Us to War with Iran?
Until recently, the power struggle within the Bush administration over whether to attack Iran seemed to be going badly for the hawks...

Commentary: Suez and Hungary redux
Israel's message to its only ally, the United States, was quite clear...

THE STANLEY FOUNDATION: POLICY DIALOGUE BRIEF: US NUCLEAR WEAPONS POLICY AND ARMS CONTROL: 24/06/2008
On November 13, 2007, the Stanley Foundation convened a half-day discussion at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Washington, DC, with US administration officials, congressional staff, foreign diplomatic staff, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) policy experts, as one of a series of Stanley-organized discussions on US nuclear weapons policy...

Talking to enemy nations becomes a point of contention for McCain, Obama
A California voter named Stephen Sorta posed the question on YouTube, which was played at a Democratic debate, and Barack Obama swiftly answered, "I would."...

Level of Iranian Support for Ahmadinejad Uncertain
Looking ahead to Iran's presidential election in 2009, the big question is what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's chances are of re-election...

Iraq in Review
Many commentators on Iraq had no strong ideas about the wisdom of removing Saddam Hussein, but often predicated their evolving views on the basis of whether we were perceived as winning or losing — and later made the necessary and often fluid adjustments...

Opposing view: Prepare to attack
In a declassified National Intelligence Estimate, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities, the U.S. intelligence agencies announced last December, "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."...

Arms talks relaunch
IT may take a while for Kevin Rudd's plan to save the world, aka eliminating all nuclear weapons, to be fulfilled...

Start drilling!
The other day in southwestern Fresno County, a poor part of Central California, I talked with a number of folks at a rural gas station...

The toxic Texan's foreign policy doctrine will endure
American presidential elections are reliable occasions for political futurology...

We need to turn-back the nuclear Doomsday clock.
Kevin Rudd's decision to establish a Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Commission is a vital and timely initiative, for nuclear risks have been rising...

'Hotline to Iran' Aims to Head Off War
Members of Congress joined religious and civil society leaders today in an urgent call to stop the "drumbeat of war" with Iran and open up diplomatic talks to resolve growing tensions between Washington and Tehran...

Obama riding crest of cocky ignorance, media support
Now that Sen. Barack Obama has become the Democrats’ nominee for president of the United States, to the cheers of the media at home and abroad, he has written a letter to the secretary of defense, in a tone as if he is already president, addressing one of his subordinates...

Iran rewind
If you know nothing about Iranian history, I suggest you read Abbas Milani's piece "Pious Populist" about president Ahmadinejad in the Boston Review...

McCain Signals Desire to See Reduction in Nuclear Arms
Sen. John McCain called for a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia on Tuesday, staking out a position on nonproliferation somewhat at odds with the policies of the Bush administration...

Peace Train Bleeding heart liberal? Think again.
"The United States should lead a global effort at nuclear disarmament?"...

Pipes: Iran war definite if Obama wins
Neoconservative political analyst Daniel Pipes says if a Democratic nominee becomes president, Iran should 'watch out' for a US attack...

Where is the Wind and Solar?
Gas in central California is right at $4.50 a gallon...

Obama is Europe's dream candidate, but we may have to settle for McSame
To say that Europeans will welcome President George Bush on his farewell visit to Europe next week would invite a charge of verb-abuse...

Experts Affirm Bright Future for Indo-U.S. Ties
A distinguished panel of experts provided thoughtful, substantive insights at the India Community Center here into Indo-U.S. relations that suggested that while the future of relations between the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest democracy appears to be very bright, it is by no means a given, and continued efforts need to be sustained to ensure the two nations continue to nurture a harmonious and mutually beneficial relationship...

Rush's Guidance: Focus on Future
Now, we've talked a lot in the past couple days about what to do here...

Politics As I See It
One of my favorite columnists is Thomas Sowell, a Ph.D. economist at the Hoover Institute...

US Leaders Break Ground for Peace Institute
American political leaders gathered in Washington Thursday for the ceremonial groundbreaking of a building for a nonpartisan group helping to resolve international conflict and promote peace...

Rudyard Griffiths: A Toronto audience flips for John McCain (and flops on Barack Obama)
Last week in Toronto, Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize winning author and former adviser to Barack Obama, was uncharacteristically downbeat...

New Opportunities for Nonproliferation
The 40th anniversary of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the treaty’s looming 2010 review conference offer serious opportunities to think anew about the challenges and the opportunities in the critical field of nuclear nonproliferation...

Obama and McCain
Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober-- if not grim-- assessment of where we are...

Obama vs. McCain on the Middle East
How do the two leading candidates for president of the United States differ in their approach to Israel and related topics?...

The Middle East with Daniel Pipes: Chapter 3 of 5
What to do with Iran — or more specifically, an Iran with nuclear weapons?

Diplomacy thriving, but without U.S.
Just this spring, a number of diplomatic initiatives and conflict-settlement discussions are taking place without the United States, raising questions about the reach and strength of American global power...

The Tracks of His Record
It is amazing how seriously the media are taking Senator Barack Obama’s latest statement about the latest racist rant from the pulpit of the church he has attended for 20 years...

Iranians at Stanford face hurdles
Mahdiyar Noorbala’s acceptance letter to Stanford’s highly competitive physics doctoral program was only the first step in an arduous journey from Iran to California...

America's oil crisis demands a leader like Churchill
Through the 1930s, Winston Churchill was a has-been. He was old; he had been in Britain's Parliament for better than 25 years...

Iran, Venezuela in joint bank venture
Iran and Venezuela are teaming up to launch a development bank, further cementing the countries' political alliance...

The Quilliam Foundation
The launch in London of the Quilliam Foundation, described as "Britain's first Muslim counter-extremism think tank", has aroused very mixed reactions - from praise and admiration to speculation, suspicion and vilification...

Media missteps
The mainstream media has been taking quite a few hits lately...

The Talking Cure?
In their litany of American presidents who met with hostile dictators, supporters of Barack Obama cite John F. Kennedy and his meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961...

Debate this: GOP keeps us safe
Next Monday, the inaugural Munk Debate takes place at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum on the issue: "Be it resolved that the world is a safer place with a Republican in the White House."...

Appeasement and Its Discontents
Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along...

The Rise in the Price of Oil
The run-up in the world price of oil during the past several years, and especially the rapid climb during the last few weeks to over $120 per barrel, has fueled predictions that the price will reach $200 a barrel in the rather near future...

Israel at 60: World's worst neighbourhood
Two religiously identified new states emerged from the shards of the British empire in the aftermath of the Second World War...

The Democratic Recession
There are two important recessions going on in the world today...

A Treaty to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Although few people are aware of it, there has been considerable progress over the past decade toward a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons...

Why oil matters in Iraq
The White House this week warned Congress that any cuts in aid for Iraq could prolong the war...

Empowering our enemy
The gloomy election-year refrain is that America is mired in Iraq, took its eye off Afghanistan, empowered Iran, and is losing the war on terror...

Can Bush attack again?
At a time of ongoing talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), of diplomatic efforts by a group of UN Security Council members to persuade Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, and coordination between Washington and Tehran over Iraq to the extent of forming joint security committees, a dangerous current is pushing in the polar opposite direction and gaining momentum...

Divided nations to meet on ailing atom control pact
More than 180 nations gather on Monday to seek elusive common ground on how to save the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...

Don’t Let Up
Whether or not Iran has really suspended its military nuclear program, pressure on Tehran must continue. By Michael McFaul and Abbas Milani.

Shield of Falsehoods
“There is no military solution . . . we haven’t tried diplomacy. . . .” Strategies rise and fall, but untruths about the Iraq war refuse to die. By Victor Davis Hanson.

Not Appeasement
As the world sees it, America tends to dash off to war without moral authority. How we could change that view. By Shelby Steele.

The Sarkozy Revolution?

He may be the most pro-American French leader since the Marquis de Lafayette, but the new president is still . . . French. By Deborah Hanagan.

Abizaid addresses Middle East problems
Retired General John Abizaid spoke about "Diplomacy, the Military, and the Future of the Middle East" at 7 p.m. April 9 in the Student Union Building Jordan Ballroom...

HOW ABOUT WE DON'T THREATEN TO NUKE IRAN?
In his column today, Charles Krauthammer laments the fact that Iran is moving ahead with its nuclear program...

Iran's 160,000 U.S. hostages
U.S. ground forces in Iraq are held hostage to long and vulnerable supply lines up from Kuwait and the Gulf, all controlled by Shiite militias strongly sympathetic to the Islamic republic in neighboring Iran...

Shultz on Nukes — Then & Now: Chapter 4 of 5
Can the world live with a nuclear Iran, or must that nation be stopped from attaining nuclear weapons at all costs....

Where We Stand on Iraq and the Election
I saw a startling statistic that said that 24% of all stories in the New York Times until last year were devoted to Iraq, and this year, 3% were....

No Surrender
Wars have never been easy to defend....

The Iranian Threat Won't Just Go Away
Human beings tend, when faced with equally unacceptable alternatives, to rationalize inaction...

A look inside Iran
In a conversation recorded at the Commownealth Club of California, historian Abbas Milani and journalist Barbara Slavin discuss the politics, history and culture of Iran and how they might inform the United States' relationship with the Middle Eastern country...

Iran: Dissidents See Dark Legacy Of 'Glorious Revolution'
Thousands of Iranians have turned out for rallies to mark the day 29 years ago when the U.S.-backed shah of Iran was toppled...

Iranian-Americans Seek Least-Hawkish Candidate
Jaded toward their government back home and cynical of the current U.S. administration and the Republicans they historically supported, a new generation of Iranian-Americans appears to be looking to Barack Obama to bring about change, especially with regards to U.S. foreign policy toward Iran...

Dial down the hostility toward Iran
Will the U.S. enter a new war even before U.S. troops have withdrawn from Iraq?

Norman Podhoretz on World War IV: Chapter 4 of 5
Post-9/11 America has split into two camps, according to Podhoretz...

Norman Podhoretz on World War IV: Chapter 5 of 5
Can we live with a nuclear Iran?

Well-Spoken Dictators
Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wasn't the first tyrant to speak at Columbia. Arnold Beichman remembers when Hitler's ambassador showed up in 1933.

Dispatches from the Front
Victor Davis Hanson visits Iraq.

Economic Strategy Is Paying Off
A call for a “surge” in jobs and prosperity in Iraq, whose rising economy has gone unheralded. By John B. Taylor.

If Iraq Fell
Withdrawing from Iraq wouldn’t produce a happy ending—not for America, not for the world. By Josef Joffe.

The United States and Iran: Troubled Times
On January 6, 2008, the U.S. Navy reported that five Iranian fast boats confronted three of its vessels in the Persian Gulf...

Clash of Civilizations? No, a Clash With Iran
In 1993 the Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote an article in Foreign Affairs titled "The Clash of Civilizations?"

Iraq Redux: The Consequences of a U.S. Attack on Iran
Four years after its war of choice on Iraq, the White House is once again planning an attack on a Muslim nation...

The Iran Factor, the Sunni States, and the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
When George H. W. Bush was contemplating the removal of Saddam Hussein following the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the Saudis and Egyptians advised him not to do so. It could lead to civil war in Iraq, they argued, which would weaken the country as a bulwark against Iranian expansion in the region. Coupled with intelligence reports predicting the overthrow of Saddam by humiliated military men, the administration decided to follow its allies’ advice. Saddam was spared, Bush lost his bid for reelection, and the United States under Bill Clinton maintained a policy termed “dual containment” – degrading Iraq’s military capabilities through sanctions and air strikes while keeping Iran in the disfavored category of state sponsors of terrorism.

Victor Davis Hanson on War and History: Chapter 4 of 5
VDH discusses a nuclear Iran...

All Mixed Up Over Iran
Last week's U.S. National Intelligence Estimate states, with "high confidence," that Iran quit trying to get a nuclear bomb in late 2003...

Are We Doing the Best We Can with What We Know?
A recent National Intelligence Estimate claims that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003...

War Games
Since his surprise election in 2005, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has widely been seen in the west as a dangerous demagogue with an alarming anti-Semitic streak, a man determined to take his country into a bruising showdown with the US...

World war four is off: time to bargain with Iran?
For investors, world war one was a bolt from the blue – a crisis almost wholly unanticipated by stock markets until the first week of July 1914...

Iraniana
I have written too much about why it is a bad idea to bomb Iran now, but there remain nagging questions about the latest intelligence disclosures about Iran as the airways remain full of all sorts of crazy opinions...

Time for smart power
Why did President Bush raise the specter of World War III on Oct. 3 when he had known for at least six months what the gist of the National Intelligence Estimate would say?

(Some) Good News on Iran
The newly released consensus by US intelligence agencies that Iran likely halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is good news...

Revisionism and The Iranian Non-Bomb
The latest news from Iran about the supposed abandonment in 2003 of the effort to produce a Bomb — if even remotely accurate — presents somewhat of a dilemma for liberal Democrats...

Can Iran’s Opposition Finally Bring Democracy?
A silent majority has grown against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, but can it shake the lock that the president and the clerics have on the state’s machinery?

Understanding Ahmadinejad
One key is not to under-estimate him...

Iran: No Smoking Gun but Strong Evidence
The accusations come almost every day from U.S. officials: Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon...

Obama Is Right on Iran
After a recent Democratic presidential debate, Barack Obama proclaimed that were he to become president, he would talk directly even to America's worst enemies...

What if the U.S. Bombed Iran?
How would Iran react if the United States attacked?

What does 'no war in Iran' mean?
The latest obsession of protesters at Stanford — or whatever we’re supposed to call the student group that roams around campus from demonstration to demonstration — is stopping the impending “war in Iran..."

Ahmadinejad and Iran's Nuclear Program
Michael McFaul and Abbas Milani discuss Ahmadinejad and Iran's Nuclear Program...

Reducing Tensions Over Iran?
President George W. Bush has warned that "World War III" could be the consequence of Iran gaining the know-how to make nuclear weapons...

Iran's Power Play: Who Is Really in Charge?
Since his election to office in 2005, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has garnered much criticism for his brash anti-Semitic comments and questionable nuclear ambitions...

Risk of nuclear attack grows greater every day
It's almost axiomatic that the less high officials want to discuss a matter, the more important it is...

Bombing Iran Wouldn’t Be Just That
The jockeying by Republican presidential candidates to demonstrate toughness on Iran was taken to a new level on Thursday when former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts announced that he would advocate a naval blockade or “bombardment of some kind” if Iran does not yield to diplomatic pressure to give up its nuclear program...

Who’s Afraid of an Iranian Bomb?
At first glance, it would seem a straightforward thing to stop a relatively weak but volatile Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb...

Words of warning
Pundits are waving the yellow flag after President Bush told reporters last week that “if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon..."

Tehran brushes off U.S. threats
Despite heated new rhetoric from the Bush administration and the threat of additional sanctions, Iran made clear Monday that it had no intention of stopping its nuclear research program...

Iran: Rhetoric And Reality
There’s been an increase in combative rhetoric from the Bush Administration regarding Iran over the past week or so...

US needs more jaw and less war with Iran: analysts
The United States must stop "posturing" and start negotiating if it wants to avert President George W. Bush's "World War III" scenario of a nuclear-armed Iran, Middle East experts say...

One strike, Iran could be out
Of all the columns I've written for this newspaper over the last couple of years, none has elicited a more heated response than the one published in January 2006 about the Great War of 2007...

In Israel's strike on Syria, a message on Iran
It's almost axiomatic that the less high officials want to discuss a matter, the more important it is...

Nuclear-Armed Iran Risks World War, Bush Says
President Bush issued a stark warning on Iran on Wednesday, suggesting that if the country obtained nuclear arms, it could lead to “World War III..."

Bush's War Rhetoric Reveals the Anxiety That Iran Commands
When President Bush this week raised the specter of World War III if Iran manages to build nuclear weapons, he not only roiled the diplomatic world, he also underscored how much Iran has come to shadow the political dialogue both here in Washington and on the presidential campaign trail...

Signs of Hope
Violence is taking its toll on America’s enemies, too—and the final outcome in Iraq, Iran, and Palestine may still be better than anyone now expects. By Victor Davis Hanson.

Officials deny claims State Department not doing enough in Iraq
State Department leaders insist their agency is handling a fair share of reconstruction work in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite criticism from military officials that too few civilian experts have volunteered for posts in combat zones...

Bush says nuclear Iran might raise risk of 'World War III'
President Bush warned Wednesday that a nuclear-armed Iran might raise the risk of "World War III..."

Iran war cheerleading is terrifying
Cheerleading for Iran war has increased recently and, unlike Iraq, this war could impact students more directly...

How Iran Could Help End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
In invading Iraq, the U.S. unintentionally threw open the door to the expansion of Iranian influence in the region...

Diplomacy Better Than War With Iran
Few prospects are more disturbing than an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent visit to New York did nothing to allay our concerns, despite his insistence that his country is interested in nuclear power only for electrical generation...

Nervous Gulf Hears Calmer Tones on Iran
As the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East was leaving the Al-Jazeera television studios after an interview, one of the station managers shook his hand and joked: "Sir, you just made apartment prices jump in Dubai..."

Iran: As Tensions Rise, So Does Rhetoric
To any reader of the English-language blogosphere, September appeared destined to be the month of the Iran war media blitz...

U.S.'s own rhetoric toward Iran could use taming
One of the most unfortunate and unhelpful aspects of the United States' approach to foreign policy dilemmas is our tendency to demonize those who oppose our interests or our views....

Reader View: Nuclear Iran is Serious Threat
The Eagle's editorial regarding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia University started off reasonably enough but then took a dangerous turn ("Speak: Don't be afraid of dialogue with Iran," Sept. 25 Opinion)...

Give Iran the bomb? Reading Iran's apologists
Two Security Council resolutions later, and suffering the first effects of tightening economic restrictions, Iran remains a problem child...

Beware Kyl-Lieberman Pro-Iran-War Amendment
They're trying to get us psychologically primed for bombing Iran...

Ahmadinejad Gets Rebuke, Creates Political Theater
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a rambling presentation to a packed hall at Columbia University, asserted that there are no homosexuals in Iran, reiterated that his country isn't seeking nuclear weapons and said the Holocaust may have occurred, but the subject requires more research...

War, then and now
I’ve been watching the Ken Burns’ film each night, and generally think, as a sociological exploration of race, class, and gender issues during wartime, it is excellent...

Iran's President Takes The Podium At The U.N.
Thousands protested outside the United Nations on Tuesday, while inside the leaders of the world had their say...

A risky proposition on Iran
John Abizaid, a retired Army general, says "there are ways" the world could "live with a nuclear Iran..."

Secret US air force team to perfect plan for Iran strike
The United States Air Force has set up a highly confidential strategic planning group tasked with “fighting the next war” as tensions rise with Iran...

War with Iran would entail grave risks
The rumor mill is spinning over a possible war with Iran...

The Legacy Of War
The neoconservative movement is in its 11th hour...

Al-Qaida on the run?
Osama Bin Laden “is a man on the run, from a cave, who’s virtually impotent other than the tapes” he releases from time to time...

The World Can Live With a Nuclear Iran
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looks and sounds as if he is in a panic — and the Iranian president, on tour in New York this week, has very good reason to be...

Don't be afraid of dialogue with Iran
Dial down the heated war of words on Iran...

Victor Davis Hanson on the Columbia University invitation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Professor Hanson, thanks for making a quick stop by...

Such a Strange Place, Academia
It is likely (a) that Ahmadinejad was one of the terrorists who took American hostages in 1979, and so helped to start the quarter-century rise of radical Islamic jihadism that blew up on September 11; and (b) that he wants to visit September 11 precisely for the purpose of boasting when back home “I am going there, because I can,” the subtext, if not the overt message, cynically to commemorate what we deserved...

Iranians in U.S. face a choice -- to speak out, or not
USC professor Muhammad Sahimi knew he risked interrogation or arrest while visiting Iran because of his outspokenness about the need for political reform in his homeland...

Addressing the Address
Everyone expected a September do-or-die showdown over our presence in Iraq; but the good news from the surge and the absolutely insane, suicidal Democratic attacks against the best in our military have given the president another six months...

So Is the U.S. Going to Bomb Iran?
It was interesting that both Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker took the opportunity during their congressional testimony Monday to bash Iran...

Opinions Vary on Rumors of U.S. Attack on Iran
The past couple of weeks have seen an increase in the rumors of possible U.S. military action against Iran...

Iran's Leadership Changes May Alter Policy
Over the past week, there have been two key changes in the leadership of the Iranian government...

Iraq with an N? Anatomy of a Rumor That Has to be Taken Seriously
I don't see any point to contributing to a cycle of useless panic, but if Victor Davis Hanson is worried about war with Teheran, I'm worried and then some...

Don’t Bomb, Bomb Iran
There’s been ever more talk on Iran...

Rights & Wrongs: Esfandiari Released, Taylor Trial and More
Iranian authorities released Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari Aug. 21 after securing more than $300,000 in bail, ending her 100 days in solitary confinement...

Hannity’s Warmongering Foiled
A guest on last night’s (8/23/07) Hannity & Colmes put the kibosh on Sean Hannity’s armchair warmongering with Iran...

Tough Talk to Tehran
There are many reasons to be frustrated with Iran’s double talk about its nuclear program, its backing of Hezbollah in Lebanon and possibly arming Shiite militias in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan...

Jailed Academic in Iran Is Released on Bail
An Iranian-American academic jailed for more than 100 days on suspicion of promoting a “velvet revolution” in the Islamic Republic was released on hefty bail on Tuesday, looking tired and much thinner from her ordeal but pronouncing herself well...

As U.S. Steps Up Pressure on Iran, Aftereffects Worry Allies
America's allies are increasingly concerned about the Bush administration's plans to unilaterally escalate pressure on Iran, fearing that an evolving strategy may also set in motion a process that could lead to military action if Iran does not back down, according to diplomats and officials of foreign countries...

In the Debate Over Iran, More Calls for a Tougher U.S. Stance
Fourteen months after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered to talk to Iran, the failure of carrot-and-stick diplomacy to block Tehran's nuclear and regional ambitions is producing a new drumbeat for bolder action, including the possible use of force...

A Regional Iran Approach
The United States let loose a one-two diplomatic punch aimed both at undercutting Iranian power and rallying Arab financial and diplomatic assistance for Iraq when President Bush dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to the Middle East...

Confession Time in Iran
Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson Center describes herself as a link in a chain of civil society groups intended to “shake the system” in Iran...

First Iranian Reference Libraries
Libraries have been always regarded as one of the institutions that play a very significant role in advancing literacy and education in every society...

Iran gas more flammable?
Here's a gag that used to circulate in the days of the Soviet Union and communist central economic "planning..."

What Should We Do About The Nuclear Threat Of Iran?
One of the most important questions at this point in history is what to do about Iran...

Good Bad News from Iran
Good news from Iran...

Don't punt on Iran
During the Cold War, Ronald Reagan criticized the policy of "containment" toward the Soviet Union on the grounds that it was defensive and reactive and not designed to win the superpower competition...

Iran Cracks Down on Dissent
Iran is in the throes of one of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in years, with the government focusing on labor leaders, universities, the press, women’s rights advocates, a former nuclear negotiator and Iranian-Americans, three of whom have been in prison for more than six weeks...

Bargaining with Tehran
The prospect of U.S. military action against Iran is making headlines -- again...

New questions on Bush foreign policy
In early May, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her counterparts from Iran and other Mideast powers gathered at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh, setting the table for a May 28 meeting between the U.S. and Iranian envoys to Iraq...

300: The Sequel
The Battle of Thermopylae is long over, but it still has a great deal to tell us about friction between Persia and the West. By Victor Davis Hanson.

The Weakest Link
Ahmadinejad proved that he, not Britannia, rules the waves. By Niall Ferguson.

Hard Hearts
The most contested "hearts and minds" of the Iraq war may belong to Americans. By Victor Davis Hanson.

The view from Tehran
Imagine this scenario for a moment...

The faith that dare not speak its name
Amid the apologetics and invective over Islam, Paul Berman's portrait of the Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan in the June 4 New Republic stands out as a thoughtful critique...

Making Sense of Iran: From the Inside Out
After fifteen Royal Navy sailors were captured at gunpoint for allegedly entering Iranian waters, the British government struggled to analyze Iran’s opaque power structures to determine who, exactly, would decide the fate of the sailors...

Former U.S. defense chief: Israel must not attack Iran
Former U.S. defense secretary William Perry yesterday said it would be a mistake for Israel to attack Iran...

Will U.S.-Iran Talks on Iraq Lead to Other Topics?
Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University, assesses Monday's bilateral talks in Baghdad between the United States and Iran, the first such talks in almost thirty years...

Iran 'accused of attacks in Iraq to bolster US strategy'
The Bush administration may be highlighting accusations that the Iranian government is behind attacks in Iraq in order to strengthen its hand in preparing for military strikes on Iran, according to a leading British think-tank...

Is Sky Falling on America?
The suicide-murders and roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan sicken Americans...

National Security Forum on Biological and Chemical Weapons
Throughout the cold war the world's national security leadership was preoccupied with the threat of a nuclear holocaust and worked to reduce nuclear danger.At the same time, largely unnoticed, more and more nations were acquiring the ability to produce biological and chemical weapons (BCWs), and many proceeded to do so.

Bush doesn't want detente. He wants to attack Iran
In the next few days an unprecedented meeting between US and Iranian officials is expected to take place in Baghdad; both sides have insisted that discussions are limited to Iraq...

From Slow Simmer to Rolling Boil?
In his article in National Review Online, "Al-Quedism Again," Victor Davis Hanson presents the larger picture of the threat we face from the whole of radical Islamism, as opposed to the single sect of al-Queda.

Dealing with a Nuclear Iran
Lost in the debate about how to prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold is the fact that we lack the ability to prevent it...

A Softer, Gentler Era of U.S., Iran Relations?
Tehran's high-level presence at the meeting this week in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt to discuss Iraq's security boosts the chances for eventual negotiations between Tehran and Washington over their long-running disputes, say analysts here and in Iran...

It's the Oil, Stupid
It is usually silly to offer a single solution to complex problems. But it's hard not to when looking at the serial savagery in Iran and the Arab world...

Imus, Iran, and Illegal Aliens
Who is worse—the racist bully or the racist buffoon?

Courting the British Accent
Allegedly during the 1930s, The Times cover properly synthesized Britons’ idea of themselves in relation to Europe: “Dense fog over English Channel. Continent isolated..."

Missing Iranian Underscores Shadowy Skirmishes
A former Iranian deputy defense minister and founding member of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps disappeared while on a personal visit to Istanbul nearly four months ago...

Europe's shape must not be dictated by unelected newspaper proprietors
A new treaty and a fresh understanding of its relationship to the rest of the world will render the EU fit for purpose again...

Please Bomb Me!
It's probably a good rule to do the opposite of anything the Iranian theocracy wants...

Dealing with A Nuclear Iran
Some timely changes will help us cope with the unknown.

Iraniana
One can make all sorts of clever arguments—indeed the Brits have, from blaming us to blaming their own—about why this crisis was someone else’s fault, due to a misunderstanding, due to media exaggeration, due to an accident...

Iran exposes Britain's weakness
Blair's timid response to his soldiers' abduction shows how weak-willed the once-imperial power has become...

Houses of Straw
The EU’s delusions about the sufficiency of “soft” power are embarrassingly revealed...

Iran and its enablers
Taking its behind-the-scenes diplomacy public, Britain has stepped up its pressure on Iran to release 15 sailors and marines taken hostage last week, and it's time for the rest of the international community to follow suit...

Faced with Iranian blackmail, Europe must show real solidarity
Last week, while the European Union celebrated 50 years of peace, freedom and solidarity, 15 Europeans were kidnapped from Iraqi territorial waters by Iranian Revolutionary Guards...

UN sanctions seen hurting Iran despite oil wealth
Years of US imposed sanctions forced Iranian industry to be more self-reliant but mounting pressure is deterring even Iranians from making long-term investments...

Ramping up on Iran
In the words of Henry Kissinger: "There are all kinds of tactical discussions about how to deal with Iran.... But there are a number of fundamental principles to keep in mind...

Teetering In Tehran
Russia says the launch of Iran's nuclear power plant will be delayed because Tehran is behind in making construction payments...

'World must act to stop Ahmadinejad'
Iran could achieve nuclear weapons capability in one to two years, and the world must act collectively to stop Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "sick boast" that he will wipe out Israel, Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, nationally syndicated columnist and policy adviser to US President George W. Bush, told The Jerusalem Post...

Condi's rock'n'roll approach has been and gone. Let's try Benita's slow waltz
In Egypt the US has retreated from its push for democracy in the Arab world. Europe should step into the breach...

Opposing view: Don't negotiate with pariahs
America should attend regional talks that may include Syria and Iran, in support of stabilizing the democracy in Iraq...

Casting the First Stone
A new round of Middle East hysteria has broken out in Washington...

Tapping Ahmadinejad's Egg
We all know the Iranian M.O. - nuclear proliferation, Holocaust denial, threats to wipe out Israel, vicious anti-Western rhetoric, lavish sponsorship of terrorists at work attacking Israel and destabilizing Lebanon...

What to Do About Iran
Here's the British writer Timothy Garton Ash, who wrote so wonderfully about the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, on Iran...

We must stop Bush bombing Iran, and stop Iran getting the bomb
We should not bomb Iran to prevent Iran getting the bomb...

Politics and Governance in a Changing Iran

Mixin' it up
Does President Bush really want to start a fight with Iran or Syria?

Taking Iran Down a Notch
The battlefield, so far, remains confined to Iraq...

Sanctions put new pressure on Iran
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to impose sanctions on Iran aimed at slowing its nuclear program, but stopped short of allowing military action to enforce the sanctions...

U.S. shouldn't talk to weak Iranian leader
The Iraq Study Group, prominent U.S. senators and realist diplomats all want America to hold formal talks with the government of Iran...

Iran vote rattles leader's authority
When Iranians flocked to the polls on Monday to vote in local elections, Iran's official press agency quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cheering the high turnout...

A Reagan Strategy for Iran and Syria
The Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the Bush administration drop its preconditions and negotiate with Syria and Iran has been praised as a "no-brainer" -- and condemned as an improper effort to reward rogue regimes...

On Talking Back To Madmen
Among the excellent commentary exploring the meaning of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's genocidal reflections over the past week are two column that should be noted in addition to the items we posted over the week...

Florida Senator Meets With President Of Syria
President Bush says he won't be rushed...

Getting at the truth
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the egregious president of Iran, is hosting a conference this week on whether the Holocaust really happened...

From Khomeini to Ahmadinejad
Matthias Küntzel on Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam by Mark Bowden.

Baker-Hamilton's fine print: Stay in Iraq
'Persuasion involves both incentives and penalties," Henry Kissinger once remarked...

Iran's Fragile Fault Lines
Sanam Vakil on Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in Twenty-First-Century Iran by Geneive Abdo and Jonathan Lyons

Defusing Iran’s Bomb
How to make Tehran pay for its nuclear ambition

How Jew- Friendly Persia Became Anti-Semitic Iran
Abdol Hossein Sardari didn’t look like a hero...

The Baker group enters the debate
Talk about an anticlimax...

Observers Debate Iran's Influence in Iraq
Iran's influence in Iraq has led some American observers to criticize the Iranian government as meddling in Iraqi affairs...

We Refuse to Understand the Enemy, and Seal Our Fate
How about this letter that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has sent to the American people?

Midnight in Tehran
Hoover media fellow Robert Morton argues that the new regime in Iran is every bit as oppressive as its predecessor.

Arsenal of Poison
The Tocqueville-quoting president of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, has impressed the West as a moderate—while at the same time amassing an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. By Hoover fellow Arnold Beichman.

Iran 'regime' change: It's stronger
No credible Iran analysis can contradict the assessment of Abbas Milani, director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution, that America missed a major opportunity when former President Mohammad Khatami's democratic reform program failed several years ago...

Iran summit idea could assist U.S., analysts say
Perhaps seeking to assert itself even more prominently in the affairs of its Arab neighbor, Iran on Monday reportedly invited the leaders of Iraq and Syria to talks in Tehran this weekend aimed at curbing the violence in Iraq -- an invitation, analysts say, that could be turn out to be in America's interest...

Hopes High for WTO Deal at APEC Summit
President Vladimir Putin is widely expected to secure the United States' long-awaited agreement on Russia's World Trade Organization bid at a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in Vietnam this weekend, a step that could ease bilateral ties and prompt Moscow to drop its opposition to tough sanctions on Iran...

Stalemate in Tehran
Iranian reformers and religious hard-liners are locked in a bitter political struggle. An assessment by Iran watcher Daniel Brumberg.

A World of Many Cold Wars*
One cold war between nuclear protagonists was scary enough. A world of multiple nuclear cold wars would be the stuff of nightmares. Will we wake in time? By Niall Ferguson.

They're Back?
I have been going through the recent report, “Iran: Time for a New Approach” co-chaired by Zbigniew Brzezinski (in charge at National Security during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979) and Robert Gates (involved in Iran-Contra)...

Tehran, Coming Clean at Last?
Iran recently agreed to grant international arms inspectors greater access to its nuclear facilities. Small comfort. By Hoover fellow Charles Recknagel.

Nuclear Showdown?
Oct. 15, 2006: NEWSWEEK's Michael Hirsch; Dr. Sidney Drell, Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution; co-author, "The Gravest Danger: Nuclear Weapons...

Should the U.S. attack Iran?
Insight Editor Jim Finefrock talks with Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University, about the repercussions of a U.S. air assault on Iran's nuclear facilities...

Ahmadinejad's version of Puritanism at the UN
Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gave a generally vapid talk at the United Nations, intimating but rarely naming names of those he deemed guilty...

Insanity on a Global Scale
It's a mad world...

Orange Grove: Ahmadinejad's version of Puritanism
Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gave a generally vapid talk at the United Nations, intimating but rarely naming names of those he deemed guilty...

Should the US Nuke Iran and Syria?
In a recent article, "Will the U.S. Defend Itself?", economist Walter Williams seems to make a case for nuclear war on Syria and Iran. His case cries out for a response...

Nuclear Iran could be a disaster for U.S.
I t is hard to think of a time when a nation -- and a whole civilization -- has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today...

Experts say Iran delays on nuclear enrichment They see Tehran using tactic as way of sustaining program
Iran has promised to respond by Tuesday to a Western package of incentives seeking to stop its nuclear enrichment program…

The Vocabulary of Untruth
A "ceasefire" would occur should Hezbollah give back kidnapped Israelis and stop launching missiles; it would never follow a unilateral cessation of Israeli bombing…

The third world war has begun
The civilized world stands balanced between victory and defeat.

A Strange War
Sum up the declarations of Hezbollah's leaders, Syrian diplomats, Iranian nuts, West Bank terrorists, and Arab commentators — and this latest Middle East war seems one of the strangest in a long history of strange conflicts…

Now isn't the time for restraint
Imagine that this morning 50 missiles were launched from Cuba and exploded in Miami…

Creating an Islamic Republic: Iranian Collections from the Hoover Library and Archives
The shah grasps at the coattails of Uncle Sam as a fire-tongued dragon prepares to devour him; women with clenched fists raised march in the shadow of Shi‘i heroine Zeinab; awaiting execution, a row of men, blindfolded with hands tied behind their backs, yell “Long Live Iran!”

Both U.S., Iran play for time in talks over nuclear arsenal
Why did the United States suddenly reverse course and agree to negotiate directly with the Iranians over their development of a nuclear arsenal …

A case for political war with Iran
My friend Alex Alexiev, vice president at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., has been promoting a way to repel terrorism that hasn’t received the attention it deserves…

Engagement or confrontation?
Engage or confront…

Hoover Conference Examines Iran and Its Nuclear Program
Recent developments regarding Iran's intent and ability to develop a nuclear weapons program, covered widely by the media, highlight the importance of a conference hosted by the Hoover Institution on November 11.

What Are the Options?
How can we get Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions? By judicious use of the carrot—and the stick. By Geoffrey Kemp.

Order Out of Chaos
The mad, mad world of Iranian foreign policy. By Abbas William Samii.

The New War for Iraq
There is only one scenario for American success in Iraq—and it won’t be easy. By Larry Diamond. Sidebar: Reflections on the American Occupation It’s time for a smarter American strategy. By Larry Diamond.

Creating an Islamic Republic: Iranian Collections from the Hoover Library and Archives