A top Iranian official say the country now has 4,000 working nuclear centrifuges.
Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Reza Sheik Attar made the claim to Iranian state media Friday, saying another 3,000 centrifuges will soon be installed at Iran’s main nuclear site in Natanz.
The centrifuges could significantly boost Iran’s ability to produce enriched uranium.
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The real threat from China lies elsewhere. It is that China will destabilize the world economy. It will distort trade, foster huge financial imbalances and trigger a contentious competition for scarce raw materials. Symptoms of instability have already surfaced, and if they grow worse, everyone — including the Chinese — might suffer.
China is now “challenging [...]

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The hysteria over the expected arms deal between Russia and Syria should be directed elsewhere. Israel may indeed find it harder to strike Syria every time it feels like “sending a message” to Damascus. What should worry Jerusalem more, however, is the fact that it, and Syria, are now at the center of the great [...]

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With all the world’s attention focused on the Beijing Olympics and to a lesser extent, the “truce” in Georgia, we should not underestimate the serious implications for U.S. strategic objectives posed by the Chinese military modernization programs, (Russia’s announced modernization programs is another element).
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By 2010, the PLA Navy could have about 60 very modern to [...]

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To understand just how unsettling Russia’s invasion of Georgia is to American foreign policy, it’s useful to highlight a short exchange that Senator McCain’s leading foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann had with a reporter from Radio Free Europe in April.
Scheunemann was asked whether the U.S. should be willing to “trade off” Georgia and Ukraine’s NATO [...]

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Does the United States really need Russia? According to many pundits, we need Russia more than it needs us. Russia could cause a lot of problems if we’re not careful.
I say bunk to that nonsense. It’s time to throw down the gauntlet. If Russia is going to terrorize its neighbors and exercise strategic unhelpfulness on [...]

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Read the first five paragraphs of the NATO statement on the Russian invasion of Georgia and you will find not a hint of who invaded whom. The statement is almost comically evenhanded. “We deplore all loss of life,” it declared, as if deploring a bus accident. And, it “expressed its grave concern over the situation [...]

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The president of Syria spent two days this week in Russia with a shopping list of sophisticated weapons he wanted to buy. The visit may prove a worrisome preview of things to come.
If Russia’s invasion of Georgia ushers in a sustained period of renewed animosity with the West, Washington fears that a newly emboldened but [...]

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But an unexpected war is imminent, according to best-selling new biblical analysis
According to Salus, the next war in the Middle East will involve Israel’s closest Arab neighbors – not faraway Iran or Russia, the re-emerging military power to the north. He says a sometimes overlooked or misinterpreted passage in Psalm 83 is the key to [...]

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New emergency plan doesn’t address alarming nuclear scenario in revised disaster response
Electricity grids down, uncontrolled fires from exploding gas transport systems, no communication to call for help, no water to battle fires: It’s all part of a catastrophic scenario some scientists predict could happen under an electromagnetic pulse attack – and the Department of Homeland [...]

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Everyone is distracted by the Olympics. The squabbling here on the campaign trail consumes the media. Two presidential candidates and a lame-duck president all are weighing in on foreign policy. No wonder Vladimir Putin thought it was a good time to invade Georgia.
Apparently the Russian prime minister knew exactly what he was doing but [...]

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Still, Russia is a giant on feet of clay, demographically speaking. Russia is a country in such steep decline that it is estimated by demographers to decline to 99 million by 2050. Some even predict the figure as low as 77 million. By then the United States, whose population growth continues unparalleled among developed nations, [...]

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Rethinking NATO and EU Enlargement
Summary: After the Cold War, NATO and the EU opened their doors to central and eastern Europe, making the continent safer and freer than ever before. Today, NATO and the EU must articulate a new rationale for enlarging still further, once again extending democracy and prosperity to the East, this [...]

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A six-day conflict in the Caucasus mountains has transformed the international balance of power, with Russia now looking stronger than ever. But what sparked it? Diplomatic Editor Anne Penketh reveals how the Georgian government walked straight into a trap set by Moscow – and considers the consequences of the first war in Europe for a [...]

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The spread of freedom and the West standing up to it.
The Russian state’s open hostility, not only toward Georgia but also toward Ukraine and the Baltic states, is, in this sense, partly ideological. Genuine elections have taken place in all these countries; people who have not been preselected by the ruling oligarchy sometimes gain wealth [...]

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Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has given in to pressure to resign before being impeached by parliament. He told the nation in a live TV address that he was leaving his future “in the hands of the nation.” more…

Interview with the Head of Afghanistan’s Secret Service: ‘Piles and Piles of Evidence’ that Pakistan Is Responsible for [...]

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As NATO ministers gather in Brussels to discuss how tough to get with Russia after the Georgian crisis, an opinion poll shows one in two Poles fear an attack by Russia. Eastern European countries are unhappy with the response of the West. more…

The Dangerous Neighbor: Vladimir Putin Takes on a Powerless West
SPIEGEL Interview with Gerhard [...]

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OVER the weekend, photographic proof emerged that the Russians used mur derous Chechen mercenaries to do their dirtiest dirty work in Georgia: The ragtag unit in question is so vicious that, last April, Chechnya’s Russian-installed “president” demanded it be disbanded.
War snaps taken by Russian photojournalist Arkady Babchenko have been circulating among intelligence personnel. The shots [...]

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The often repeated refrain “we don’t want to be in another cold war” is nonsense - we are in one. And Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is a much more dangerous opponent than dozy old former head of state Leonid Brezhnev. However, the latest demonstration of this truth in Georgia is only a week old, [...]

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New Russian threat comes in response to war in Caucasus, US-Poland deal for missile defense shield in Europe. According to Sunday Times, nuclear warheads could be supplied to submarines, cruisers and fighter bombers of Russia’s Baltic fleet based between Poland and Lithuania
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WARSAW — Signing a missile-defense deal with its good friend the United States has earned Poland nothing less than the threat of nuclear attack from Russia — a threat that might not sound so empty these days, given Moscow’s bloody battle with Georgia.
That conflict has plunged Europe into serious crisis, sending waves of jitters through [...]

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