Today, Venezuela will hold the official state funeral for Hugo Chávez. Already, ceremonies in honor of El Comandante are well underway. On Wednesday, a caravan carried Chávez’s body along a seven-hour-long procession through the streets of Caracas. The flag-draped coffin was laid in state at the military academy where he …
Sunday night, Argo—the Ben Affleck film portraying the rescue of U.S. Embassy staffers from Iran—won best picture at the Oscars. Iran may have boycotted this years’ Academy Awards by pulling its film submission, but it certainly didn’t ignore Argo’s Oscar win. The biggest winner may have been U.S. public diplomacy …
Senator Rand Paul (R–KY) yesterday gave a thought-provoking speech on foreign policy at The Heritage Foundation in which he argued that “a more restrained foreign policy is the true conservative foreign policy, as it includes two basic tenets of true conservatism: respect for the constitution and fiscal discipline.” He compared …
The efforts of United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to negotiate a ceasefire between the Syrian military and rebels for the Arab holiday Eid al-Adha are likely to be fruitless. Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) begins this year on October 26. While this holiday focuses on the prophet Abraham being …
Iran could now produce enough enriched uranium to arm a nuclear bomb within two to four months, according a new report by a Washington think tank. The Institute for Science and International Security cautioned that Iran may still face “engineering challenges” in assembling a weapon and longer delays if it …
On October 7, millions of Venezuelans will vote for the man who will lead their country for the next six years. Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s populist, authoritarian Goliath, is confident of victory. Despite battling cancer and working overtime to hide the consequences of 13 years of mismanagement, incompetence, and corruption, he …
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s highly anticipated U.N. speech can be summed up in one word: erratic. Although he toned down most of the incendiary language he used in previous years, Ahmadinejad whined about how “the current world order is discriminatory and based on injustice.” To replace it, Ahmadinejad tried to …
President Obama spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in New York yesterday – and what a disappointing speech it was. He actually scrapped his original speech outline to focus on the controversial YouTube video that many have suggested sparked recent anti-American attacks in the Middle East, including one in …
The war of nerves between Iran and Israel continued to escalate over the weekend as a prominent Iranian officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to launch a pre-emptive attack on Israel if Tehran concluded that an Israeli attack was imminent. Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of …
