I dug up and scanned this picture from exactly a decade ago. As a youthful stunt, I scrawled “God Bless America” on a t-shirt and ran in front of the “Den of Spies” aka the former American embassy in Tehran.…
Can the U.S. and Russia ever get on?
I was shocked back into geopolitics today (thank god!) with another cheery call from London. I appeared on the BBC World Service today in the wake of President Obama’s trip to Moscow to ink a new nuclear disarmament deal with…
Goodbye 1980’s
In a brief departure from my Middle East/South Asia blogging, I covered the death of the King of Pop here in Los Angeles yesterday for Polaris Images and the Huffington Post. I’ve never covered a non-political related event before…
Michael and the Mullahs
Mir Hussein Mousavi is refusing to back down from an implacable Ayatollah Ali al-Khamenei. The Mullahs in Qom and the Assembly of Experts are under immense pressure to conclude the most chaotic episode in Iran’s revolutionary history. They may have…
Just Another Monday
NYT journo David Rohde escaped from a Haqqani network compound in North Waziristan this weekend after being taken hostage in Afghanistan’s Logar Province last November on his way to interview a Taleban commander. The commander set up Rohde, his driver…
Iran’s Elections: Dear Supreme Leader
Keep that momentous pixelated video coming! I posted a piece addressed to Ayatollah Khamenei last night on the HP here. According to the Guardian, during the called-for day of mourning, protests are not letting up from Kurdistan to Baluchistan and…