Last Sunday, Iran and the P5+1 countries (the U.S., U.K., France, China, Russia, and Germany) formally adopted the new nuclear agreement concluded this summer. In coming days, under the terms of the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Islamic Republic is obliged to begin implementing a series of curbs on its nuclear program.
U.S. freedom of navigation operations could take the U.S.-China relationship past a point of no return.
The global response to recent Palestinian terror in Israel highlights the world's appallingly exceptional treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one that infantilizes both sides and only encourages more terror.
Those who oppose the gift or sale of defensive weapons to Ukraine have long rested their argument on a simple supposition: that any level of help the West might muster will inevitably be exceeded by Russian military escalation. After all, they argue, Ukraine is more important to Russia than it is to the United States. Lost in this argument, though, is the clear fact that Ukraine is more important to Ukrainians than it is to Russians - including many Ukrainians who are Russian speakers and/or ethnically Russian.
On a leafy street in the Ukrainian capital, just steps from the ornate building that houses the country's parliament, sits what is perhaps the nation's most powerful weapon in its protracted battle of ideas with Russia. There, tucked away in a once beautiful tsarist-era building, are the offices of the Ukrainian National Memory Institute. It is a tiny government agency with a massive mandate: to counter decades of Russian intellectual disinformation.
Don't believe the hype surrounding Russia's involvement in Syria. Ever since President Vladimir Putin launched a major escalation of the 4 1/2-year-old conflict there last month, Western media has been awash with commentary about the Kremlin's strategy, with most interpreting it as a function of Moscow's strength — and Washington's weakness.
It's an image that the Kremlin is eager to stoke, for obvious political reasons. Yet Russia's intervention in Syria also carries serious downsides for the Kremlin — negatives that are likely to come back to haunt Russia's leaders in the not-too-distant future
Unlike some critics of the Afghan war, I do not believe the conflict was unjust or doomed to failure. I simply agree with the assessment of the U.S. director of national intelligence in 2009: “No improvement in Afghanistan is possible without Pakistan taking control of its border areas.”
"I want Russia to be successful," President Barack Obama told reporters on Friday after chastising Vladimir Putin for his stepped-up militarism in Syria. "This is not a contest between the United States and Russia. It is in our interest for Russia to be a responsible, effective actor on the international stage that can share burdens with us, along with China, along with Europe, along with Japan, along with other countries - because the problems we have are big."
Timing is everything. On September 20, Pope Frances met with former Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Havana. Three days later, Cuban President Raúl Castro was photographed in a three-way handshake with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Rodrigo Londoño, known as Timochenko, the commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Castro’s hands were clasped over theirs as if he were blessing a marital union. And, in a way, he was. The Colombian government and FARC had just announced that, after over two years of negotiations, they had come to an agreement on transitional justice, the last point on their four-point peace talks agenda.
"We need to get to the negotiation," Secretary of State John Kerry said of efforts to convince Syria's Bashar Assad to step down. "That's what we're looking for, and we hope Russia and Iran, [and] other countries with influence, will help to bring that about, because that's what's preventing this crisis from ending."
JERUSALEM - It's all over but the shouting. Over the past week, the political tug-of-war over President Obama's controversial nuclear deal with Iran has tilted decisively in favor of the White House.
Despite widespread disapproval among the American electorate, and last-ditch attempts by some in Congress to delay its passage, it increasingly appears that the agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, will soon be a done deal.
In mid-August, during the latest wave of violence in the long-running Ukraine crisis, Russian President Vladimir Putin and a coterie of other Kremlin officials trekked out to Crimea. The high-profile visit was intended as a public sign of the Kremlin's enduring commitment to its newest territorial holding. But behind the headlines, the story is far less reassuring: Russia is realizing that its Crimean annexation has become an increasingly costly venture in both political and economic terms.
When the proposed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between Iran and the P5+1 powers was announced in July, it was sold as a tough deal with robust verification that blocked Iran's pathways to nuclear weapons and would lead to peace and stability in the region. However, it soon became apparent that the deal is much weaker than its proponents first suggested. With a vote on Capitol Hill approaching, members of Congress who rushed early to support the proposed deal need to take another look at their positions. The deal as announced weeks ago is already falling apart.
Ukraine is at war. Since the spring of 2014, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign of aggression against its smaller western neighbor. Moscow’s “hybrid warfare” in support of separatist enclaves in Ukraine’s Donbass region has included the insertion of military forces to augment pro-Russian insurgents, large-scale deliveries of military matériel to these fighters, and the widespread use of propaganda. The Kremlin’s efforts have met with political and economic pressure from the West, in the form of multilateral sanctions imposed by the Obama administration and the European Union. However, the strongly negative effects of this pressure on the Russian economy have not caused the Kremlin to change course in any meaningful way.
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.