The President of the United States isn't interested in overthrowing the Iranian regime. That idea has been a virtual political constant since at least 2016, when candidate Donald J. Trump used the presidential campaign trail to rail against the 2015 nuclear deal concluded byBarack Obama, but pointedly didn't advocate the idea of regime change in Tehran as a substitute strategy. In much the same way, the Iran policy pursued by Trump's administration has concentrated on applying "maximum" economic and political pressure on the Iranian regime to cease its malign regional behavior, while holding out the prospect of a new diplomatic bargain with Tehran as a reward for good conduct. Perhaps the clearest indication of this approach was provided last week, whenPresident Trump— in responding to the Iranian regime's rocketing of military facilities in Iraq — emphasized that the pathway for Iran to return to the negotiating table remained open. In his televised address on Jan. 8, Trump stressed his desire to work toward "making a deal with Iran that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place," and which "allows Iran to thrive and prosper and take advantage of its enormous untapped potential." Yet, in recent days, the White House has slowly but surely gravitated toward greater support for opposition elements within Iran that are now seeking an end to the Islamic Republic.

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Few Americans have heard of Qaboos bin Said al-Said, the sultan of Oman. But when he died Friday at 79, the U.S. lost an invaluable interlocutor. In nearly 50 years on the throne, Qaboos time and again helped presidents navigate delicate diplomatic and military challenges.

The sultan kept such a low profile that the adjective "reclusive" was almost obligatory in articles about him. But when President Obama's efforts to restrict Iran's nuclear-weapons program stalled in 2012, the interview I had long requested was suddenly and mysteriously granted. Within days, I was seeing him for a second time—the first was in 1997—at Hisn Al Shomoukh palace, some 90 miles from Muscat, the capital.

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The man once celebrated in Tehran as "the living martyr," Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, is now just a martyr in the traditional sense. Felled by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq, his life ended in the conflict zone that launched his career nearly 40 years ago. As the leader of the deadly Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, Soleimani was the lynchpin in Iran's transnational terrorism apparatus, stretching from Yemen to Lebanon to Latin America and beyond. His death therefore marks a significant political and strategic setback for the Islamic Republic.

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At 80 years of age, Ali Khamenei is an old man in a hurry. The ruler of the Islamic Republic of Iran regards himself as the leader of a global revolution, one that began years before the advent of al Qaeda, that jihadi-come-lately.

His ambition is to establish a great Islamic empire, a successor to those that dominated the civilized world in antiquity. That requires "Death to America!" because America is the leader of the West or, as he might prefer, the "Crusader-Zionist alliance." He believes, not without reason, that the acquisition of nuclear weapons is the surest means to that end.

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Hungarian police recently discovered two tunnels used to smuggle migrants into Hungary from Serbia. The tunnels were found at the same time that Hungarian police reported a five-fold increase in the number of migrants attempting to enter Hungary.

Hungary is not alone: Border authorities in countries across the European Union are struggling to stanch renewed flows of illegal migration. More than 126,500 migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East illegally entered the EU during 2019, according to the International Organization for Migration.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The American Jewish Left has once again fallen in line with the Palestinian demand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict always be conflated to a problem of "occupation," regardless of facts or history. By leaping to condemn Mike Pompeo's factual statement that Israeli West Bank "settlements" do not violate international law, American Jewish leftists joined forces with the BDS movement, which views the entirety of Israel as "occupied."

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WHEN BOSTON police officers declared an illegal strike in September 1919, Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge condemned the men for "desertion of duty," and upheld the decision of the commissioner of police to fire the strikers and hire replacements. "There is no right to strike against the public safety," he declared, "by anybody, anywhere, any time."

Coolidge's resolute stand made him a national hero overnight. In November he was reelected in a landslide. A year later he was Warren Harding's running mate on the GOP national ticket, and won election to the White House in his own right in 1924.

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Part 1 in a series

Much of modern environmental activism, which owes more to zealotry than evidence, has spawned a nasty perversion — let's call it the Pseudo-Scientific Method. As employed by environmental campaigners and the activist scientists who enable them, it has little to do with scientific discovery or the accumulation of knowledge; rather, it is "advocacy research" that creates "evidence" to support a pre-determined public policy — usually, inappropriate regulation or even bans.

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"Trump has betrayed the Syrian Kurds" — so goes a popular refrain regarding the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the areas of northeast Syria held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The events that have followed — namely, a Turkish invasion of parts of SDF territory along the border and the deployment of Syrian government forces in some SDF areas — have been characterized as a strategic disaster for American interests, with some commentators even proclaiming the withdrawal as indicative of a U.S. imperial decline and U.S. disengagement from the Middle East.

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