There’s been a lot of speculation about just how far the latest IAEA report on the Iranian nuclear program would go towards letting Tehran off the hook. The fact that in the past few weeks the U.S. turned over longheld intelligence to the IAEA and that France ratcheted up the rhetoric significantly is a measure of just how anxious Washington and Paris were about the possibility. Well, the report was just distributed to the IAEA Board of Governors yesterday and bits and pieces are starting to leak out, including portions that confirm increased Iranian cooperation with various outstanding issues, some [...]
More than a week has passed since the assassination of Hezbollah’s terror mastermind Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, and the question of who did it remains as much a subject of speculation as the question of potential repercussions. Unsurprisingly, Israel is the prime suspect, and while Israeli officials have protested innocence, nobody pretended to be sorry. After all, Mughniyeh was not only one of the founders of Hezbollah, but also one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, accused by the West of killing hundreds in suicide bombings and hijackings in Lebanon and around the world. And it was not just Mughniyeh’s [...]
Under normal circumstances, it’s nearly impossible to get countries to restrict the use of widely available weapons that are seen as militarily advantageous. At the moment, however, two groups of countries are competing to sharply cut back on one type armament that humanitarian groups claim pose a particular danger to civilians in war zones: cluster munitions. Cluster munitions are bombs, rockets, and artillery shells that disperse smaller submunitions over broad areas. These grenades or bomblets, sometimes numbering as many as 600 submunitions from a single munition, can fail to detonate immediately yet maim or kill if disturbed later. Officials of [...]
