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In late July, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs assembled a number of top experts to discuss a critical threat to the homeland: electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

In July, President Barack Obama said that he hoped the proposed nuclear deal with Iran could lead to continued conversations with the Islamic regime "that incentivize them to behave differently in the region, to be less aggressive, less hostile, more cooperative," and to generally behave in the way nations in the international community are expected to behave. The most optimistic proponents of the deal believe that the process could open the door to more comprehensive detente, empower Iranian moderates and lead to a gradual, peaceful form of regime change - a change of heart, if not of leadership.

What's next after the Obama administration's opening to Cuba? Why, an embassy in Tehran, of course.

On Aug. 14, in a ceremony replete with pomp and circumstance, Secretary of State John Kerry presided over the formal re-opening of the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba. The occasion marked the culmination of nearly two years of quiet diplomacy between the White House and the Castro regime.

A central plank of the Obama administration's case for the nuclear deal just concluded by the P5+1 powers is that the agreement closes off "all pathways" by which the Iranian regime could acquire a nuclear capability, at least for the coming decade.

Not all that long ago, it seemed as if the United States could learn a thing or two from Europe when it came to economic pressure on Iran. Today, a great deal has changed.

Even as the fledgling Obama administration stuck doggedly to its "engagement" policy toward Tehran, European capitals were rapidly heading in the opposite direction. In November 2009, in a move that caused nothing short of a political earthquake on the Old Continent, a majority of the Dutch parliament formally voted to place Iran's clerical army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), on the European Union's terror list.

Don’t forget what's really at stake for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

On December 17, 2013, the Financial Crimes and Battle Against Criminal Incomes department of the Istanbul Security Directory detained 47 people, including a number of high-level officials. The sons of the minister of the Interior, the minister of Economy, and the minister of Urban Planning were implicated, as was Erdogan's own son, Bilal, with all three ministers handing in resignations.

President Barack Obama says that 99 percent of the world supports his proposed nuclear deal with Iran. He had better check his math.

Since its historic rapprochement with Beijing in the 1970s, America has approached a rising China with an "engagement" strategy guided by two key assumptions: first, that political liberalization would ultimately follow economic growth; and second, that supporting China's integration into the global order would preempt Beijing from forcibly challenging that order. While confidence in those assumptions has waxed and waned, never did a consensus emerge that they were fundamentally flawed - until now.

Buried within the 150-plus pages of technical minutia and regulations that make up the recently concluded nuclear deal between the P5+1 powers and the Islamic Republic of Iran lies a stunning revelation, the full import of which has not yet been adequately appreciated by the international community. It is that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the agreement is formally known, is designed to serve as nothing less than a Marshall Plan for the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.

The White House says the only alternative to the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran is war. However it is the deal itself that is pushing the Middle East towards conflict.

As Vladimir Putin's international image continues to decline, his domestic popularity has, paradoxically, reached an all-time high. The most recent poll by the Moscow-based Levada Center reports a staggering 89 percent approval rating for the Russian president, in spite of a stumbling economy, declining living standards, rampant corruption and deepening international isolation.

Even before it was formally published late last month, Michael Oren's memoir of his time as Israel's envoy to the United States had ignited a firestorm of controversy, and for very good reason. His book, Ally: My Journey across the American-Israeli Divide, provides the most damning account to date of a "special relationship" that, on President Obama's watch, has deteriorated to an almost unthinkable degree, with the White House coming to view Israel and its often-pugnacious premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, as more of a problem than Iran's nuclear ambitions, Palestinian corruption, or the Syrian civil war.

For decades, first the Soviet Union and then Russia languished under adverse population trends. Deaths far outpaced births, life expectancy was dismally low, and social ills, from alcoholism to unsafe abortion practices, were rampant.

If North Korea could develop and test a nuclear weapon, even under a stringent arms control regime, why can't Iran also build a bomb under a far less ample nuclear deal?

Amid multiple signs of an impending battle in Ukraine, NATO and Ukraine have stepped up their response. But so has Russia.

By July 2015 it was clear that Russia is paying a steep economic price for its war in Ukraine. Poverty, inflation, unemployment are all rising, the economy is shrinking, and foreign investment is drying up. Moscow had to cut spending on the 2018 FIFA World CUP, pensions, and infrastructure, not to mention health care, education, science and technology, and infrastructure, i.e. human and social capital.

Those in America's foreign policymaking circles who are concerned about the emerging U.S.-led nuclear agreement with Iran are increasingly pinning their hopes not on Washington changing its negotiating posture but, instead, on Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei walking away from the table.

On June 18, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel offered a press preview of the U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue (S&ED) now taking place in Washington, D.C. During the briefing Russel fielded a question about U.S. efforts to reduce tensions with China in the South China Sea. His response was surprising: "As important as [the] South China Sea is... it's not fundamentally an issue between the U.S. and China."

It would be fair to say that the past year-and-a-half of nuclear talks with Iran has not been America's finest negotiating hour. But even by the comparatively low standards of U.S. diplomacy to date, the collapse of the American position in recent days has been nothing short of breathtaking.

The euphoria to which Turkey’s June 7 election results have given rise calls to mind an oncology ward patient learning that an experimental protocol might slow the advance of her tumor. The elation is warranted in rough proportion to the desperation of the situation. In other words, good news is, like most things, relative.