John Mearsheimer: Rebalancing the Middle East | Newsweek Newsweek: Global Agenda

Shopping for a New Policy on Iran
Mark Hosenball 9/12/2009 12:00:00 AM
The Obama administration has accepted a long-awaited Iranian offer to negotiate, but responded skeptically to it. It was "not really responsive to our greatest concern," Iran's nuclear program, says a State Department spokesman. Tehran proposed talks on a range of issues last week but indicated it wouldn't discuss shutting down its uranium-enrichment program. Israel has signaled an end-of-year deadline for military action, but U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said last week that President Obama would be "taking stock" with permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (plus Germany) later this month.
Eight Years On
9/5/2009 12:00:00 AM
The 8 a.m. US Airways shuttle from Washington to New York City took off pretty much on time. The mid-September sky was clear, the air still, and most of the flight was perfectly uneventful. My State Department colleague David Pearce and I read the papers and looked over our notes as the plane began its descent toward LaGuardia. (Article continued below...)
The Critics Can ‘Go To Hell.’
Tracy McNicoll 7/25/2009 12:00:00 AM
The French gas and oil major Total first struck oil near Kirkuk, in Iraq, in 1927, and in July, Total CEO Christophe de Margerie visited the country with French Prime Minister François Fillon and other French business leaders looking to renew commercial ties there. In his La Défense office outside Paris, de Margerie spoke with NEWSWEEK's Tracy McNicoll about France's return to Iraq, Total's interest in Iran, and the company's bad image back home. Excerpts:
The Beginning Of The End
7/13/2009 12:00:00 AM
When Michael Jackson pushed Iran from the front pages and protests simmered down, both the Iranian government and the opposition tried to figure out their next moves. The government realized that the burst of citizen fury over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial reelection was not limited to students, secularists, or the rich groups they've never relied upon for support and that bore little resemblance to Iran's silent majority. So officials began a campaign to persuade those Iranians that the unrest was being guided by Iran's enemies. Meanwhile, the opposition, mindful that the accusation might stick, chose a strategy emphasizing Islam and the rule of law while opposing government moves in court. The resurgence last week of protests (unprompted by opposition leaders) makes it look like the opposition is as strong as ever. In fact, though, the character of the protests makes one thing clear: the government is now winning the battle for the streets.
The Wall Isn’t Falling
Fareed Zakaria 6/27/2009 12:00:00 AM
whenever we see the kinds of images that have been coming out of Iran over the past two weeks, we tend to think back to 1989 and Eastern Europe. That time, when people took to the streets and challenged their governments, those seemingly stable regimes proved to be hollow and quickly collapsed. What emerged was liberal democracy. Could Iran yet undergo its own velvet revolution?
Theocracies Are Doomed. Thank God.
Jon Meacham 6/20/2009 12:00:00 AM
For years American conversation about Iraq has included a refrain about how we cannot expect to create a Jeffersonian democracy on the Euphrates. The admonition is true: if you think about it, America itself is not really a Jeffersonian democracy either (we are more of a Jacksonian one, which means there is a powerful central government with a cultural tilt toward states' rights). And yet Jefferson keeps coming to mind as the drama in Iran unfolds. The events there seem to be a chapter in the very Jeffersonian story of the death of theocracy, or rule by clerics, and the gradual separation of church and state. In one of the last letters of his life, in 1826, Jefferson said this of the Declaration of Independence: "May it be to the world what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves."