Baghdad is all atwitter over the P-5+1 talks with Iran beginning today. A sandstorm kept many European and Western diplomats from landing, but the Iranians were out in full force, with Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili leading the way.

The Obama administration’s recent focus on finding a compromise to allow the Iranian regime to maintain some enrichment capabilities “for peaceful purposes” distracts from the underlying nuclear threat at hand.

Joe Biden lashed out at the Bush administration for its failure to stop Iran’s drive toward nuclear arms. “When we took office, let me remind, there was virtually no international pressure on Iran ... We were the problem. We were diplomatically isolated in the world, in the region, in Europe. ... Today it is starkly, starkly different.” It's different  — but not in the way Biden suggests.

For the first time in 20 years, Saudi Arabia has named an ambassador to Iraq. For years the Saudis resisted U.S. entreaties to take this step, and the current relationship between these two most important Arab countries in the Gulf has not been warm, so the timing is curious and...

When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged from seemingly nowhere to capture the Iranian presidency in 2005, American officials were dumbfounded. Whereas his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, sought to assuage the West with talk of ‘dialogue of civilizations’, Ahmadinejad was crude and coarse.

Editor's Note: FMSO’s Operational Environment Watch provides translated selections and analysis from a diverse range of foreign articles and other media that analysts and expert contributors believe will give military and security experts an added dimension to their ...