These must be heady days for Iran’s ayatollahs. Just a year ago, American efforts to contain and isolate the Islamic Republic seemed to be gathering steam. A third UN Security Council resolution censuring Iran for its nuclear advances was on…
By now, a great deal has been written about Russia’s invasion of Georgia and the resulting conflict raging in the Caucasus. Most of it, however, misses the crucial context: that the current war is a bellwether for the future physical…
And now for a bit of self-promotion. Over at the Washington Times today, I take a look at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s efforts to rally a whole host of Third World nations against the United States and the West.
Saudi Arabia’s official thought police appear to be getting into a new business: animal control. The Agence France Presse reports that Saudi Arabia’s feared Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has formally banned the sale…
Conventional wisdom has it that the last days of second-term presidencies are a sorry sight to behold, and the Bush administration seems determined to prove the old adage correct. Yesterday, news broke that the White House was sending Undersecretary of…
Internet usage is about to become an even riskier business in Iran. Iran’s parliament, the majles, is now reportedly considering a new law that would greatly expand penalties on what the regime deems inappropriate uses of the World-Wide Web. If…
Over at today’s edition of the London Guardian (enemy territory indeed!), I have an article on why Europe is essential to economic pressure on Iran — and how European leaders, despite all of their positive pronouncements, are actually being rather…
The Raja Suleiman Movement (RSM), a Philippine-based group with links to Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah, al-Qaeda affiliates both, has just been blacklisted by the Treasury Department. Today’s measure also marks the RSM’s leader, Ahmad Santos, as a Specially Designated…
By now, you might have assumed that conspiracy theories about the September 11th attacks had become a thing of the past, tall tales relegated to the margins of the blogosphere at best. You would be wrong, though. The latest such…
In today’s “Best of the Web” column, the Wall Street Journal‘s James Taranto highlights an interesting new study from Harvard University, which finds a direct correlation between critical media coverage of the war in Iraq and actual activity by insurgents…