Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must love the tropics', commented ironically The Miami Herald.[1] He has spent more time in Latin America than President Bush. Since his inauguration in 2005, Iran's foreign policy focus has shifted from Africa to Latin America in order to, as Ahmadinejad puts it, ‘counter lasso' the US.[2] Iran's Goals in Latin America Farideh Farhi argues that while Iran's increased attention to Latin America as a region is a relatively new development, its...

Explosive pits containing dozens of advanced, standard IEDs recently found near the main road to the village of Al-Khiyam in south Lebanon. It is a gross violation of Security Council Resolution 1701, endangering the civilian population and UNIFIL forces operating in the area. The eastern sector of south Lebanon where the explosive pits were found. Overview 1. At 20:00 hours on December 26, 2009, a force belonging to UNIFIL’s Spanish brigade discerned the movement of...

It is no exaggeration to say that Venezuela's burgeoning alliance with Iran represents the greatest threat to hemispheric stability since the Cold War. Both governments have supported international terrorist groups operating in South America (including Hezbollah). Both have embraced other terror-sponsoring regimes (such as Syria). Both have initiated an arms buildup. Both have pursued close military cooperation with Russia. Both share a visceral anti-Americanism and are committed to...

The diplomatic ties between Iran and Venezuela go back almost 50 years and until recently amounted to little more than the routine exchange of diplomats. With the election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, the relationship dramatically changed. Today Mr. Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez have created a cozy financial, political and military partnership rooted in a shared anti-American animus. Now is the time to develop policies in this country to ensure...

President Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderón are in Guadalajara, Mexico, today for the North American Leaders' Summit. They will discuss, among other topics, what to do about the explosion in drug-trafficking violence on the continent. But they are also expected to address the political situation in Honduras. Honduras's Partido de Unificación Democrática (UD) is on the list. The party has only a small representation...

The first time Hugo Chavez froze relations with Venezuela's second largest commercial partner (Colombia that is, on January 2005), it was due to the capture of one of FARC's leaders Rodrigo Granda, while attending in Caracas one the Bolivarian get-togethers organized by the Venezuelan regime. Granda, a wanted criminal involved in planning and assassinating Cecilia Cubas, daughter of former Paraguayan President Raúl Cubas, had been living in Venezuela and was given citizenship by the...

The sacred memory of the lost ones and the country’s dignity itself force Argentina’s society to insist fighting for the justice which was not served at this horrid event of the AMIA massacre.The effort and work employed by the family members and organizations surrounding them, such as AMIA and DAIA, have expressed the extent at which the courage and determination continues to eventually achieve this justice. (From Buenos Aires) NOBODY WAS EVER PUT INany jail for the murder of 86...

In the 1960s, leftist philosophy professor Abimael Guzman started a Maoist guerilla group at the University of San Cristobal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru. Guzman named this organization in honor of the most celebrated phrase ever turned by an early Peruvian Communist and journalist, Jose Carlos Mariategui, who wrote that "Marxism-Leninism will open the shining path to the revolution." Little did Peruvians realize then that the path would turn into a river of blood. Dried up for a...

The Cutting EdgeFor centuries, blue-turbaned nomadic Tuareg tribesmen have led caravans of camels across the expanses of the Sahara. Laden with millet and cloth from Africa’s West Coast, the caravans traveled unmarked paths to trade for salt and dates in Timbuktu, across the sand plains of Niger, and into the mountain oasis of the Algerian south. Smugglers take the same routes today - driving SUVs along paved roads or with guidance from the Tuareg and satellite phones - to move...

It is clear to all but the most blinkered observer that Iran's recent presidential election was a sham. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fraudulent "victory" over challenger Mir Hussein Mousavi, and the violence that followed, confirmed that the Islamic Republic is a brutal police state that crushes dissenting voices. Most governments around the world have refused to congratulate Ahmadinejad, realizing that such a gesture would merely legitimize the stolen election and discourage the...