Few countries have remained so opaque to objective scrutiny, so resistant to coherent analysis, as Iran. Recurrently characterized as the most hostile of all Middle Eastern regimes to the West.

Opposition to a second term of office for President Ahmadinejad, and to the way the election was conducted, has brought together all walks of Iranian society. Despite the power residing in Iran’s Supreme Leader

Since we tend to take water for granted, it is almost always a bad sign when it is in the news; and lately there has been all too much water-related news from some of Asia’s most populous nations.

The Af-Pak war is unlikely to become a real Vietnam in scale, but it may have the capacity to inflict upon the US the sort of defeat the US itself once helped inflict upon the Russians

Interview with leading French jurist on the fate of ‘social Europe’ after Maastricht: subordination of labour to market, and of EU enlargement to the priorities of capital. Might the continent’s bloody past inspire alternative visions?