Is Pakistan an enemy of the United States? For the past two years, the Obama administration has doggedly maintained that the South Asian nation remains a vital American ally, even as it has grappled with what it itself admits is a "complicated" relationship.
Europe and the U.S. may be in grim economic straits, but the Islamic Republic of Iran is doing just fine—at least if Iran's leaders are to be believed. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has insisted relentlessly that his country's economy is healthy, while Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has christened the current Iranian calendar year as the "Year of Domestic Production and Support for Iranian Capital and Labor."
Across the Middle East, hopes for Arab-Israeli peace face obstacles that, of late, are rising on multiple fronts.
Fatah and Hamas are working toward a coalition government, which will further empower a terrorist group that's sworn to Israel's destruction and isolate Palestinian moderates; a candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood is assuming the presidency in Egypt while the emerging government is threatening to upend the longstanding Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty; and an Iranian regime that increasingly threatens Israel's destruction continues to make progress toward nuclear weaponry.
Italian prosecutors have now detained the former head of the Vatican’s bank after searching his home and former office for suspected criminal behavior. Catholics and followers of the Holy See will be disappointed to learn that the Vatican’s bank appears to be embroiled in yet another financial scandal.
For all their ideological fervor, revolutions in practice tend to be fairly predictable affairs. More often than not, when the initial groundswell of popular discontent recedes, the best-organized and most ideologically cohesive political factions assume power and proceed to run the show according to their own preferences.