Articles

The White House says the only alternative to the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran is war. However it is the deal itself that is pushing the Middle East towards conflict.

As Vladimir Putin's international image continues to decline, his domestic popularity has, paradoxically, reached an all-time high. The most recent poll by the Moscow-based Levada Center reports a staggering 89 percent approval rating for the Russian president, in spite of a stumbling economy, declining living standards, rampant corruption and deepening international isolation.

Even before it was formally published late last month, Michael Oren's memoir of his time as Israel's envoy to the United States had ignited a firestorm of controversy, and for very good reason. His book, Ally: My Journey across the American-Israeli Divide, provides the most damning account to date of a "special relationship" that, on President Obama's watch, has deteriorated to an almost unthinkable degree, with the White House coming to view Israel and its often-pugnacious premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, as more of a problem than Iran's nuclear ambitions, Palestinian corruption, or the Syrian civil war.

For decades, first the Soviet Union and then Russia languished under adverse population trends. Deaths far outpaced births, life expectancy was dismally low, and social ills, from alcoholism to unsafe abortion practices, were rampant.

If North Korea could develop and test a nuclear weapon, even under a stringent arms control regime, why can't Iran also build a bomb under a far less ample nuclear deal?