Recent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks raise questions as to why Washington invested so much in such a misbegotten venture, but they brought one salutary result - they laid bare the Obama Administration's hostility to the Jewish state
Give the Iranian regime credit for creativity. In the midst of extensive nuclear negotiations with the West, officials in Tehran have apparently hit upon a new way to play for time.
The most recent developments in Ukraine as of April 25 betray a mounting series of dangerous paradoxes. First, Russian officials from Putin down have consistently denied reports of Russian troops either in Crimea or now Eastern Ukraine. But Putin in his call-in show on April 17 admitted that they were present in Crimea and even linked that presence to the subsequent referendum though he claimed it was a fully democratic exercise where nobody was intimidated. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Putin and his officials deny the presence of Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine.
It seems more apparent that Russia's war against Ukraine also aims to impose a new ideological-political order in Russia if not the entire Commonwealth of Independent States. At home, this war has featured a massive, unrelenting propaganda offensive depicting Ukraine as a Hobbesian nightmare of civil anarchy and Russia as a unique Christian civilization under siege from the secularizing and nihilistic West. Russia explains the siege against it in geopolitical terms — as an effort to prevent the country from becoming a great power again. Russia also presents the attack in ideological terms— as an attempt to foist an alien and corrupt Western civilization and culture upon it.
In the current debate over the Iranian bomb, the White House is staying quiet about its concerns over the regime’s progress on missile development. It’s the dog that isn’t barking.