Articles

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.