إيران

Instead of choosing a leader who will coax it back to engagement with the world, the government in Tehran will be led for another four years by the small-minded Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. The brave protests by supporters of defeated electoral rival Mirhossein Mousavi could peter out soon. Ahmedinejad's thugs have few

On June 10, 2009, Ali Alfoneh, Meir Javedanfar, Mehdi Khalaji, and Patrick Clawson addressed a special Policy Forum at The Washington Institute to discuss what to expect from Iran's June 12 presidential election. Ali Alfoneh is a visiting research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,Meir Javedanfar is a Middle East

To most Westerners, Iranian politics is essentially a black box, making it difficult to know what to hope for out of Friday's presidential elections. Knowledgeable commentators offer vastly differing opinions regarding the extent to which the results will reflect the will of the Iranian people versus that of Iran's ultimate

With Iran's presidential campaign culminating on June 12, all three challengers to incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad are expressing increased concern about the possibility of election fraud and manipulation of the election. Not only are there complaints about regime influence on the campaign, such as biased coverage by state-run television, the voting

On June 7, Lebanon goes to the polls to elect a new government. All told, 587 candidates are competing for the 128 parliament seats, and with just days to go, the contest is too close to call. Both the pro-West March 14 coalition incumbents and the Syrian-Iranian-backed Hizballah-led March 8

Sanctions are a frequent yet controversial tool used by the international community in dealing with proliferant states and nuclear non-compliance. Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson examine the impact of sanctions against Iran and North Korea. © IHS (Global) Limited, Jane's Intelligence Review. Reproduced with permission.

Just as he is being criticized by those to his right for his emphasis on engagement with Iran, President Obama came under attack from the left, in the op-ed pages of the May 23 New York Times, for just the opposite. Unlike critics from the right who largely concur with

Hanging over yesterday's meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was one overriding question: Can the president's strategy of diplomatic engagement persuade Iran to cease its efforts to develop nuclear weapons? Unfortunately, history offers little cause for hope -- especially if the United States remains focused on

Earlier this year, Cyprus impounded the Iranian-chartered freighter Monchegorsk, a vessel laden with war materiel bound for Syria (and perhaps beyond). This episode highlights the shortcomings of current UN and European Union sanctions on Iran, and underscores the need for a more systematic approach for dealing with Tehran's efforts to