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Long-time observers of American politics know that in order to truly put your finger on the pulse of the nation, you have to watch Wall Street. Savvy Iran-watchers will tell you that to do the same in the Islamic republic, you need to keep your eye on the bazaar.

Iran's sprawling marketplaces are more than simply centers of commerce. They are home to a powerful class of merchants who historically have served as key power brokers in the country's labyrinthine political system. Indeed, as the renowned historian Walter Laqueur astutely pointed out in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the shah's loss of support among the country's shopkeepers and merchants was an important part of why Ruhollah Khomeini's clerical takeover ultimately succeeded. Simply put, Iran's businessmen no longer felt invested in the old, secular status quo. The rest, as they say, is history.

For years now, Sakineh Ashtiani has been incarcerated in an Iranian prison, sentenced to death by stoning for the "crime" of adultery. Until earlier this month, the case of the 43-year-old mother of two was known only to the select few who have been following her sad fate at the hands of the Islamic Republic. Today, however, her name has become a rallying cry to end the mullahs' suppression of human—and particularly women's—rights.

A widow living in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz, Mrs. Ashtiani was jailed in 2005 for adultery. She was convicted the following year of having "illicit relationships" with two men following the death of her husband, and received 100 lashes, the punishment Islam stipulates for sexual relations outside of marriage. Mrs. Ashtiani's ordeal did not end there. Her case was reopened in 2007, and new, graver charges of adultery while in wedlock were added. She was convicted once again, and this time sentenced to death by public stoning.

How stable is Saudi Arabia? Not very, according to at least one member of the Kingdom's ruling class. Last month Prince Turki bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, a prominent dissident now in exile in Cairo, issued an open letter to his fellow royals, urging them to abandon their desert fiefdom for greener pastures. According to the prince, the current social compact between the House of Saud and its subjects had become untenable, with the government no longer able to "impose" its writ on the people and growing grassroots discontent at the royals "interfering in people's private life and restricting their liberties." His advice? That King Abdullah and his coterie flee the Kingdom before they are overthrown--and before their opponents "cut off our heads in streets."

Does Washington care about freedom in Iran? On the surface, it seems like a silly question. Ever since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini swept to power in 1979, Washington policymakers of all political stripes have been holding out hope that a kinder, gentler regime would emerge in Tehran. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have expressed their support for freedom within the Islamic Republic, and both sides of the political aisle have condemned the regime's repressive domestic practices. Yet, concrete proof of the U.S. commitment to pluralism in Iran is hard to come by. The strategies by which the United States can assist Iran's opposition remain poorly understood and even less effectively implemented. This is unfortunate, since with the proper vision and political will, the United States can harness economic, diplomatic, and informational strategies to significantly affect the unfolding struggle for Iran's soul.

The new issue of Rolling Stone magazine has yet to hit newsstands, but its centerpiece - a devastating expose of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan - already has sent shockwaves through Washington. The article, copies of which already have found their way onto the Internet, paints an unflattering picture of a military commander at war with his own civilian leadership, replete with insults of sitting officials and serious charges of political malfeasance.

Since news of the piece leaked over the weekend, Gen. McChrystal has issued repeated public mea culpas and was forced to fly to Washington for an in-person dressing down by the president. The apologies were not enough; Wednesday afternoon, President Obama announced that he had relieved Gen. McChrystal of duty as commander of the Afghan theater.

A week from today, a federal judge in San Diego has an opportunity to right a grievous wrong - to reverse last year's decision by the Department of Homeland Security to deny political asylum to a young Palestinian man who, over the course of a decade, prevented the deaths of potentially thousands of innocent people in Israel and the territories.

His name is Mosab Hassan Yousef and his life story, as recounted in his autobiographical Son of Hamas, reads like the best in historical fiction - though his extraordinary tale is true, confirmed by Israeli intelligence.

At the mouth of the sprawling plaza that houses Casablanca's magnificent Hassan II mosque overlooking the Atlantic Ocean lie two squat, ornate buildings. In these structures, flanked by neatly manicured gardens and largely unnoticed by the outside world, the Kingdom of Morocco is forging what could become one of the world's most potent weapons against Islamic extremism.

The buildings are the future site of a new Quranic school, which--once formally inaugurated in the coming year--will serve as a magnet educational institution for the country's religious students, as well as those from the rest of the region. Its objective, my guide told me, will be singular and unequivocal: "To promote Moroccan Islam. Tolerant Islam."

Whatever happened to the Green Movement? A year after the fraudulent reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad galvanized a groundswell of popular outrage, protesters in the Islamic Republic are growing silent. This has led some observers to conclude that the country's counterrevolution has run its course. But a closer reading of events shows a movement that is still viable, if beleaguered.

North Korea's brazen, unprovoked torpedoing of a South Korean warship last month has refocused international attention - and criticism - on the Stalinist regime situated above the 38th Parallel. Beyond the public outrage now coming from Washington, however, it's painfully clear that the White House doesn't possess much by way of a coherent approach toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) or its "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il.

What a difference a few years can make. A little more than a decade ago, regional rivals Turkey and Syria nearly went to war over the latter's sponsorship of the radical Kurdish Workers Party in its struggle against the Turkish state. Today, however, cooperation rather than competition is the order of the day, as highlighted by recent news that the two have kicked off joint military drills for the second time in less than a year.

The thaw in Turkish-Syrian ties is a microcosm of the changes that have taken place in Ankara over the past decade. Since November of 2002, when the Islamist-oriented Justice and Development Party, or AKP, swept Bulent Ecevit's troubled secular nationalist coalition from power, Turkey has undergone a major political and ideological metamorphosis. Under the direction of its charismatic leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP has redirected the Turkish ship of state, increasingly abandoning Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's ideas of a secular republic in favor of a more religious and ideologically driven polity.

With a headiness nourished by electoral victory, every incoming American president succumbs to "new president's disease" - the confidence that, with more brains, more effort, and a better staff in and around the Oval Office, he will succeed on longstanding challenges where his predecessors have failed.

No challenge has so dominated the time of recent presidents as the fiery mix of issues that span the Middle East. But, in addressing them, our presidents have consistently operated on the basis of a conventional wisdom from our foreign policy establishment whose central tenets have repeatedly proved false.

The latest issue to raise heckles [in India] has been cyberespionage. In January, India’s National Security Advisor MK Naryanan directly blamed China for multiple hacking attacks, and the chairman of India’s Cyber Law and IT Act Committee warned that same month that China had “raised a cyber army of about 300,000 people and their only job is to intrude upon the secured networks of other countries.” In April, a study by US and Canadian researchers claimed that a Chinese ‘shadow network’ had copied secret files of India’s defence ministry, potentially compromising some of India’s advanced weapons systems.

The coup that swept the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan in early April caught almost everyone by surprise. The ouster of the country's strongman president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, after two days of rioting by opposition forces, likely at Russia's instigation, has fundamentally altered politics in the impoverished but strategically vital Central Asian state. In the process, it has called into question the stability of America's presence in the "post-Soviet space."

For the past two decades, many in the West have worried about the growth of Russo-Chinese influence over the newly independent states of Central Asia. Through the mutual-security group called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and in scores of joint military exercises, counter-terrorism maneuvers and energy projects, the two great powers collaborated closely in order to keep these buffer states peaceful, compliant and relatively free of American penetration. Lately, however, a perceptible shift has overtaken the region. In 2010, the biggest threat to China and Russia's Central Asian interests may now be each other.

Last March, when the Obama administration's outreach to Russia was still in its embryonic stages, America's chief diplomat made a major gaffe. Meeting in Geneva with her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented him with a symbolic red button, meant to signify the "reset" of bilateral relations publicly being advocated by the new president. But the button was mislabeled; in a glaring error of translation, it boasted the label peregruzka (overload), rather than perezagruzka (reload). Both Clinton and Lavrov were quick to laugh off the incident, but a serious message had inadvertently been sent: that the Obama administration was woefully out of its depth on foreign affairs.

That unfortunate episode sprang to mind last month, when Presidents Obama and Medvedev announced that work on a successor to the now-defunct 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) had been concluded. Details of the deal--predictably named "New START"--have now been made public, and they confirm that the latest exercise in U.S.-Russian arms control is flawed on at least three fronts.

At the heart of President Obama's nuclear weapons policy lies a key assumption - that Iran, North Korea and other "rogue" states are susceptible to threats of isolation and tempted by global acceptance.

He may be right - and I hope he is - but history offers compelling evidence to the contrary.

Politics can offer some strange second acts. Just ask Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate turned would-be presidential candidate who is now flirting with joining forces with Egypt's main Islamist party. Since leaving his post as director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in December, the 67-year-old diplomat has dipped his toe into electoral politics in his home country of Egypt. While still notional, ElBaradei's possible candidacy in the country's 2011 presidential election has galvanized Egypt's long-moribund political opposition.

Great athletes describe how, during moments of success, they feel as if time is slowing down so that - whether they are leading a fast break or awaiting a 95-mile-an-hour pitch - they see the game unfold in a kind of slow motion. In the arena of public affairs, we, too, have the power to step back and watch a new world unfold as if in slow motion. What seemed like disparate events as they occurred over the course of weeks, months or longer can, upon reflection, reveal a consistent pattern of activity with a predictable conclusion. And so it is with Iran's nuclear program.

Just how durable are the ties between Russia and Iran? For years Western policymakers have been attempting to understand--and end--what is arguably the Iranian regime's most important international partnership. Recent weeks have only added urgency to the question, as the West ramps up its desperate scramble to stop Iran's relentless march toward the bomb.

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.