UNESCO recently admitted Palestine as a full time member of the UN family. This decision has had considerable consequences: division among the EU powerhouses, U.S. suspension of its financial support to UNESCO, and the end of the Euro-Atlantic community unity as we know it. The 194 members of the UN Education, Science, and Cultural Organization […]
Since its entry into force in February, the U.S. and Russia have been busy implementing the hard-won reductions embodied in the New START treaty to which both countries are party. On Tuesday, the State Department released new numbers reflecting reductions that have taken place under the treaty. Walter Pincus at the Wash Post profiled the […]
It’s called a ‘murder-for-hire’ sting, a standard law enforcement ploy designed to help the criminal find the very worst in his nature and act on it. But sting operations come with their own risks as well as rewards—and attorneys know that ‘entrapment’ can be a strong defense. . .
Informants are like sharks, scouring the underworld for opportunities and targets the feds can use as springboards to career-making cases. It’s the informant’s job to find two sticks (agent and opportunity), to rub them together vigorously, and to blow gently on the sparks of criminal enterprise.
Think about this as well….the ‘downpayment’ for the ‘hit,’ the100k wired to the US undercover bank account is enough to trigger a case for conspiracy, but it still doesn’t prove that the Iranian government was driving the bus. To do that, US authorities must establish a link between the owner of the account in the UAE — or the owner/s of an account held by an international financial institution with correspondent branches/banks around the world — and the government of Iran.
This is a critical point–one that could defuse the Obama Administration’s claim that ‘senior officials at the highest levels of the Iranian government’ were tied to the assassination plot and challenge the call of senior US officials for alterations to current foreign policy, in the US and abroad, toward Iran. If US authorities cannot prove that this was something more than a plot formulated by a small group of non-state actors, the President, the Secretary of State, DEA and the FBI have some explaining to do. . .
Over the last month I’ve participated in two Department of Defense sponsored Bloggers roundtable on Afghanistan and one sponsored by the Army on the role and importance of our forces in Europe to our National Security policy. What I like about these forums is it gives me an opportunity to hear views about important topics […]
Operation Unified Protector, NATO’s mission in Libya, is winding down. Claiming victory, the Obama administration is chiding those who opposed U.S. involvement. While NATO has succeeded in preventing Muammar Qadhafi from further targeting civilians, the mission has exposed a significant alliance weakness: the unfair sharing of the burden for common defense among NATO members. In […]
Former Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev has added his two rubles to the ongoing commemorations of the Reykjavik Summit that almost did away with nuclear weapons. Whether its been a post-Soviet conversion or his ability, now long out of power, to wax poetic on things nuclear, Gorbachev has been speaking out about the value of nuclear […]
The numbers are unsettling. According to a story in last Sunday’s Review section of the New York Times, Chinese manufacturers showed off 25 different kinds of remotely controlled aircraft at an aerospece show this time last year. In all, 50 countries are thought to have built or bought UAVs, and more do so all the […]
Anyone in the business of studying violence should look askance at recent US claims that Iran’s Quds Force – a unit belonging to the Pasdaran, aka the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – is behind the amateurish plot to assassinate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the US. The main issue in contention here is […]
In light of the amazingly dramatic reveal of an Iranian plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. at his favorite DC dinner spot using a Mexican drug cartel gun for hire (calling Robert Ludlum!), I thought it pertinent to cite a recent Der Speigel interview with former IAEA Deputy Director for Safeguards Olli […]
This past Friday, October 7th, was the 25th anniversary of the summit meeting of then-President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. It was a meeting that now-famously almost led to an agreement between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to completely abolish nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, that did not come to pass. […]
Readers commenting on my earlier post about an FAS report evaluating missile defenses slated for deployment in Europe have taken me to task on two counts: for confining my comments to the executive summary and not analyzing the report itself in detail; and for neglecting the sound technical reasons Russia has for feeling concerned about […]
Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to death for apostasy in Iran – various Human Rights groups are now pleading for his release. Although the ruling itself is said to be questionable in light of the Iranian civil code, the ruling was passed under the Shariah. The Shariah, as we know it […]
Back when the U.S.-India nuke deal was being sussed out, a lot was made of the impact the deal would have on India’s sparse stock of uranium. Specifically, that the U.S.-India 123 agreement would help India – in “Hill Approps-speak” – plus-up their reserve by enabling them to 1) get LEU from the U.S. to […]
On September 30th, Mr. Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General, gave a talk underlining the themes that will be addressed in the Chicago Summit in May 2012. Mr. Rasmussen is facing a considerable challenge on top of the Afghan mission, namely the financial crisis. The crisis is lasting longer than initially thought and forcing members of the […]
While perusing the blogosphere and news updates for items to highlight, I came across an interesting little nugget at The Atlantic entitled “Weapons-Grade Confusion: The Danger of Misreading Our Nuclear Adversaries”. The title intrigued me, so I dug further. Patrick Disney (no relation, I don’t think), an M.A. candidate at Yale, authored the piece which […]