Just how durable is the Iranian economy, really? As the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran marks its one-year anniversary, that's the question many policymakers in Washington are asking. Iranian officials have been eager to supply the answer. According to the country's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, U.S. pressure has foundered in the face of Iran's heroic revolutionary resistance. America, Khamenei recently intoned, was deluded in thinking that it "will bring Iran to its knees by focusing on maximum pressure, particularly through economic sanctions." Other top Iranian decisionmakers have said much the same, taking pains to minimize the impact that U.S. pressure has had on the country's economic health. Look a bit closer, however, and it becomes clear that the Islamic Republic is profoundly ailing.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Ilan Berman

The Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system continues to make headlines as it knocks Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets out of the sky. The system is the crucial lower tier of Israel's layered missile defense system, which guards Israel's skies from threats near and far. The David's Sling system covers middle-layer threats, and the Arrow system defends against long-range projectiles.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Jonathan Schanzer

A black man, born into a dirt-poor family in a dirt-poor town in the Deep and segregated South beats the odds, the obstacles and the bigots to become one of America's most consequential legal thinkers, and an authority on the Founders' vision. You might expect such a story to be told in every grade school and college in the country.

You'd be wrong. I'd wager that most young people, black or white, know little or nothing about the man to whom I'm referring. Of those who do, most probably don't admire him. Many would revile him.

Their minds might be changed were they to watch the soon-to-be-released documentary "Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words."

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Clifford May

Conservative critics of potential presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg complain that the former New York mayor loved skyscrapers, hated cigarettes, trans fats, and Big Gulp sodas, and supported such liberal causes as gun control and battling climate change. But New Yorkers—and other Americans who paid attention to his three terms as mayor—also know that he never lost a political race, and that, during his 12 years in City Hall, New York's crime rates plunged, schools improved, tourism soared, racial tensions eased, and city revenues swelled. His achievements—and failures—for New York are clear.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Judith Miller

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.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Jeff Jacoby

A Portuguese populist party called Chega! — Enough! — has secured a seat in Parliament, after winning more than 65,000 votes in legislative elections held on October 6. It is the first time that an anti-establishment party has entered Parliament since Portugal became a democracy in 1974.

Chega leader André Ventura, a 36-year-old law professor and television sports personality, campaigned on a theme of law and order and opposition to both political correctness and the imposition of cultural Marxism. He rode a wave of discontent with traditional center-right parties, which in recent years have drifted to the left on domestic and foreign policy issues.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Soeren Kern

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.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Henry I. Miller , M.D.

"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.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi