Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has now declared his candidacy for president of Iran, and many Western media accounts suggest that he is the kind of “moderate” who could radically change Iran’s conduct and its relations with the United States.  The Guardian in London referred to him as “the 79-year-old moderate politician famous for his pragmatism.” The BBC says he is “seen as a moderate.” France 24 calls him “this pragmatic moderate.” The Associated Press refers to him as a “moderate former president.” There are many others examples. Read more »

It is fashionable to claim that support for democracy in Egypt is a fool’s errand, given the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood and the weakness of the opposition. Both claims deserve skeptical analysis.

The newest polls tells us that President Mohamed Morsi’s popularity continues to decline. Today 47 percent of Egyptians say they are dissatisfied with his performance while 46 percent approve of it. Only 30 percent would today vote for him for president. Read more »

In a blog post here on April 15, I noted that Secretary of State Kerry was doing a great deal of traveling but was spending too little time tending to his own Department. His job now is not that of a senator; he must be a manager, and cannot succeed at that if there are vacancies in so many top jobs at State. Read more »

To be called “Iran’s Lech Walesa” probably very badly hurt Mansur Osanlu, head of the Tehran bus drivers’ union and the best known labor leader in Iran. The regime knows that a free labor movement is dangerous to its hold on power. So it was that Osanlu was jailed by the regime–and now has been forced into exile. Read more »

During Secretary of State Kerry’s visit to Moscow, it seems we have proposed an international conference on Syria as a step toward peace there. Here is the BBC version:

Russia and the US have agreed to work towards convening an international conference to find a political solution to the conflict in Syria. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry announced it would follow on from an Action Group for Syria meeting in Geneva last June. Mr Kerry said they would try to “bring both sides to the table”. Read more »

On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin showed his contempt for the United States by making our secretary of state wait three hours to see him. It is an unprecedented and unheard-of insult.

But the background makes this insult less startling. Kerry was in Moscow to plead for Russian help in sorting out the administration’s terrible dilemma in Syria. President Obama does not wish to intervene but the humanitarian toll–75,000 killed since he said in the summer of 2011 that Assad must go–and the presence of Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria make that position increasingly indefensible. We may not want some sort of proxy war in Syria but Iran and Hezbollah do. And their presence has helped attract some 6,000 Sunni jihadis, whose presence destabilizes not only Syria today but potentially several other countries tomorrow. Read more »

The Syria crisis has led to a great deal of criticism of administration policy, most of it in my view quite justified on both humanitarian and strategic grounds. I discuss this in a short article in the Weekly Standard, here. Read more »