The last one and a half centuries of modern Iranian history have been marked by recurring popular revolts in the streets of Tehran and throughout the rest of the country. Among the countless uprisings, three stand out as dramatic examples of a people imposing their collective will on a despotic...

Following the announcement by Iran's Interior Ministry that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won reelection in an implausible landslide, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets with the kind of unbridled political anger that may have the power to escalate into full-blown revolution. The ball is now in...

On March 20, President Barack Obama sent Persian New Year greetings directly to the people of Iran. It was a powerful message. By mentioning the Islamic Republic by name, and not simply "Iran," the president was making clear that he considered the current Iranian government legitimate, a profound change in...

On August 12, 1982, Israel launched a massive bombing campaign over Beirut that came to be known as "Black Thursday." In the conflagration's aftermath, over five hundred Lebanese and Palestinian civilians lay dead, countless were displaced, and widespread hunger and infestation took hold in the absence of running water and...

There is a false argument being peddled by supporters of the McCain-Palin ticket lately; one that equates the experience of Sarah Palin, the hockey mom and former mayor of Wasilla, AK (population 7,500), with that of Barack Obama, the former state senator and twelve-year professor of constitutional law.

What the...

This week, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard insinuated that President Bush might launch an attack against Iran should Barack Obama be poised to win the presidency. Said Kristol: "I mean, what is, what signal goes to Ahmadinejad if Obama wins on a platform of unconditional negotiations and with...

This week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain claimed that he would reserve the right to wage preemptive war, and with good reason. After all, preemptive war could one day be necessary, and every president should reserve the right to wage it.

The problem, however, is that neither John McCain, nor...

Back in 2004, I was part of a small but active non-profit organization called Latinos for America. Our mission was to push for greater participation by Hispanics in the public sphere. We organized activist and candidate trainings around the country, and put out bilingual public service announcements encouraging Latinos to...

Univision, the largest Spanish-language television network, was recently bought out by a private equity consortium that includes billionaire Haim Saban. Saban is a close friend of the Clintons, and a particularly zealous Hillary fundraiser.

In May 2007, Fortune magazine wrote a piece on Saban that put in no...

In 2003, former President Bill Clinton made this remark on CBS' 60 Minutes: "I think presidents should be limited to two consecutive terms, then after a time out of office should be able to run again."

We can't say we weren't warned.

This election season, Bill Clinton's abrasive...

Barack Obama's historic win in Iowa leaves us with three powerful and inspirational lessons about America. These are lessons we can take with us beyond the current election cycle, and on which we can build a better political future.

Senator Obama's campaign in Iowa, outdoing the seasoned grassroots operation of...

Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great Roman politician and fearless opponent of dictatorship, warned us against leaders who, in "their admiration for shrewd and clever men, take craftiness for wisdom." In his ultimate how-to manual for governing, called On Duties, Cicero told us what we should already know: That morality and...

The latest bombshell National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's weapons capabilities, which established with "high confidence" that the Islamic Republic of Iran put to bed its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, came only weeks after the U.S. Treasury Department declared Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a "proliferator"...

On the front page of the New York Times this week, readers were treated to snapshots of an interview with Barack Obama, in which the candidate laid out a thoughtful and calibrated approach to questions of Iraq and the potential for diplomatic engagement with Iran. At a time when the...

Since retiring from the Army, General Wesley Clark has done much to advance the foreign policy debate in this country. Thankfully, Gen. Clark has taken the time to speak out against escalating tensions between the United States and Iran, going so far as to establish the website www.StopIranWar.com. Recently,...

These days, some high-profile opinion-makers are throwing around an image of Iran as an irrational, ideologically driven power bent on destruction. Behind the depiction of Iran as a country that seeks to kill Americans and do away with our way of life, are figures like Michael Ledeen of the neoconservative...

People ask the darnest things, like "when will our troops come home from Iraq?" But rarely do people ask the simple, but critical questions before a conflict starts. As we see the White House ratcheting up the war of words with Iran, one such silly question might go like this:...

It seems that with every news cycle comes yet another attempt by the Bush administration to pave the way for a war with Iran. As if we weren't facing enough problems in Iraq, there seems to be a degree of laziness across the political spectrum when it comes to understanding...