الديمقراطية والإصلاح

If oil income falters due to falling prices or sanctions, Tehran will have great difficulty paying its promised $45 billion per year in public subsidies, making the regime more susceptible to foreign pressure.

After months of drafting, heated interagency discussion, and many rounds of redrafting, the White House is reportedly set to release its long-expected national strategy on countering violent extremism.

America achieves greatness by setting itself to great tasks, with great conviction; now is a time to streamline our budgets, programs, and expenses, but not our ambitions in the world.

Egypt's political future is being decided by the military, the Muslim Brotherhood, and protest groups in the streets.

Turkey's political stalemate following the recent elections has overshadowed a key development: the near doubling of female deputies in parliament.

The sooner the governing military authorities understand that Egypt needs more security, not more money, the better the chance that the country will be able to reverse the current dynamic and start moving toward a more prosperous future.

Tensions are rising between Israel and Lebanon due to potentially huge offshore gas and oil reserves in yet-to-be-agreed "exclusive economic zones" in the eastern Mediterranean.

Testimony before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, U.S. House of Representatives. "Recently, I journeyed to Lebanon's Wadi Khaled to visit with Syrian refugees who fled from the Sunni Muslim village of Tal Kalakh, which is surrounded by a constellation of villages dominated by Alawites -- the heterodox offshoot of

The more that liberals concede to Islamist demands, the more they will be marginalized in the struggle for Egypt's future.