Change is afoot in Pakistan. Evidence was on display in early February, with the capture of the Afghan Taliban’s number two commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in a joint operation by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence. The arrest of Baradar, who had been operating with relative impunity in Pakistan for years, was met with elation in Washington, where officials have been fruitlessly pressing the Pakistanis to crack down on the Afghan Taliban since 2001.

If it's true that in politics you are judged by the caliber of your enemies, Yukiya Amano is off to a stellar start. The 62-year-old Japanese technocrat has only been at the helm of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for two months, but he is already exceedingly unpopular with the Iranian regime.

What can the Obama administration do about Iran's drive to develop nuclear weapons?

The president's informal year-end deadline for a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear impasse with Iran has come and gone. Iran recently announced that it plans to build 10 nuclear fuel plants and has moved to enrich uranium to a higher level than necessary for peaceful purposes. As a result, the center of gravity within Washington policy circles is moving toward punitive measures against the Islamic Republic in the hope of curtailing its persistent nuclear ambitions.

Yet in order for the tougher measures it contemplates to be effective, the White House will need to know a lot more about the Iranian program than appears to be the case currently. A comprehensive reevaluation of what we know about Iran's atomic drive -- and what it means -- is in order.

What do al-Qaida's leaders fear most? It's not the more stringent screening requirements imposed by the Transportation Security Administration in the wake of the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing by Nigerian extremist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Nor is it the long-awaited deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan as part of the Obama administration's AfPak plan. And it certainly isn't the prospect that al-Qaida foot soldiers might end up in U.S. federal court, whether in New York or anywhere else. Rather, what keeps Osama Bin Laden and his followers up at night is the prospect that the Muslim world might get wise to their dirty little secret: that supporting al-Qaida is hazardous to your health.

There's an old saying, familiar to historians and foreign policy practitioners, that "geography is destiny." A modern twist to this rule is that demography is no less decisive.

Russia is finding this out the hard way. Over the past several years, under the direction of former President (and current Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin and his handpicked protege, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia may have re-emerged on the international scene with a vengeance. But behind all of the Kremlin's contemporary geopolitical bluster, the successor state of the once-mighty Soviet Union is caught in a demographic and socioeconomic death spiral.

The funny thing about windows of opportunity is that they have a way of closing. Over the past year, spurred by mounting worries over Iran's nuclear ambitions, Congress has taken up the issue of economic pressure against the Islamic Republic in earnest. The result is a series of sanctions bills aimed at targeting what is commonly viewed as the regime's economic Achilles' Heel: its deep dependence on foreign refined petroleum.

A funny thing happened in the skies over Norway last month. On Dec. 10, as U.S. President Barack Obama geared up to deliver his acceptance speech before the Nobel Prize Committee in Oslo, spectators outdoors were treated to a spectacular display of spiraling light. The cause was not a UFO, as some contended, but a failed test of the Bulava, Russia's newest sea-launched intercontinental ballistic missile. The episode was a telling reminder of the shifting strategic balance between Washington and the rest of the world.

Another month, another fissure within the Islamic Republic. In the six months since Iran's fraudulent presidential elections brought protesters out into the streets en masse, the Iranian regime has weathered a profound and sustained domestic crisis of confidence. The latest sign of this discontent began on Dec. 7, when tens of thousands of students clashed with regime security forces on university campuses throughout Tehran in days of unrest. This protest and numerous others like it serve as a telling reminder that the rift between the Iranian people and the thuggish theocracy that rules them remains as deep as ever.

Remember Moqtada al-Sadr? Just three years ago, the firebrand cleric and his feared Mahdi Army militia were the scourge of the coalition in Iraq, spearheading the Shia opposition to the United States and its allies in the former Ba'athist state. Since then, the man who ranks as one of Iraq's most notorious native sons has largely disappeared from view, preferring flight rather than fight in the face of an increasingly assertive central government in Baghdad. Now, however, there are signs that Sadr is poised on the brink of a major political comeback – one that could significantly reconfigure Iraqi politics.

When it comes to Iran, the Obama administration could learn a thing or two from Europe. That is because, even as Washington clings doggedly to its plans for "engagement" with Tehran, there are signs that a new consensus is emerging in Europe about confronting the Islamic Republic.

On Nov. 24, the Dutch parliament caused a minor political earthquake on the Old Continent when it voted to designate Iran's powerful clerical army, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), as a terrorist group under Netherlands law. The same measure also called for the IRGC to be put on the European Union's terror list--a step that would harmonize U.S. and European approaches toward Iran's ideological army.