AEI's Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies explains in a new post why these negotiations are destined to fail and a new report by AEI Iran expert Ali Alfoneh on Iranian Brigadier General Gholamreza Baghbani, the current chief of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force (IRGC QF) office in Zahedan, and a narcotics trafficker.

U.S. military training missions are an economical way to promote security and good governance and to support our friends and allies and prepare them to tackle these problems on their own, as well as help other countries in the region. 

The Cold War is an increasingly distant memory in American military minds, except in the minds of the arms control community, and in particular those who seek the elimination of nuclear weapons. Alas, our president is a member in good standing of this community—indeed, an organizer.

When an imperious bully like Fidel Castro starts to fear, his instinct is to try to sow fear among his enemies. Today, with his student and benefactor, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, dying of cancer, what the Cuban dictator fears most is that his bankrupt regime in Havana is about to lose billions in critical aid and oil.

Venezuela's impeached supreme court justice, Judge Eladio Aponte-Aponte describes a judicial system that is systematically corrupted by Chávista cronies and military leaders who have made billions of dollars trafficking in cocaine and laundering the proceeds of an international criminal syndicate.

The United Nations is hardly the force for good it claims to be.

The following is an English translation of El Nacional's interview with AEI fellow Roger Noriega, who told the Venezuelan newpaper that its government is deeply involved in the drug trade but he has "never heard of a witness who is in a better position to bear witness to the criminal activities of dozens of officials in the highest levels of that government."

Followers of cancer-stricken strongman Hugo Chávez are stunned after nearly 3 million Venezuelans voted Sunday to select a unity candidate to compete in presidential elections scheduled for October. If the opposition has any real hope of defeating Chavismo, they will have to be prepared for dirty tricks, provocations, and even a narco-coup in the months ahead.