These demonstrations may not topple the regime, but they serve as a reminder of the will of the Iranian people to resist dictatorship.

When Vladimir Putin returns to the Russian presidency on Monday, May 7, the pageantry surrounding his inauguration will aim to portray a picture of unassailable strength, a confident master of his domain invulnerable to pressures from within or without. But things are not quite as stable...

The Iranian regime appears to have thwarted any large-scale and potentially destabilizing opposition demonstrations on the anniversary of the 1979 revolution.

Recent protests show that a segment of the Iranian population remains willing to confront the regime despite the threats of violence by security forces, restrictions on communication, arrests and detentions, and political intimidation.

The Shia holy day of Ashura saw the largest and deadliest protests in Iran since the June 2009 elections. These demonstrations showed that dissenters are willing to fight and die for their cause in an unprecedented confrontation in the Islamic Republic.

The waves of change are indeed sweeping across the shores of the Middle East and North Africa. However, the Islamist regime in Iran is better geared to suppressing internal dissent than other regional autocracies and, therefore, has better prospects of surviving the crisis--for now at least.

Why does Mitt Romney sound so corny? It seems to me that Romney missed one experience which changed the outlook and even the vocabulary of most of his schoolmates. This is a man who never experienced the '60s. You know what I mean: peace demonstrations, dope smoking, ironic detachment, all that.