Russias Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin, current President Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian foreign policy elite (as it is fond of calling itself), and much of Russian public opinion all strongly oppose American "hegemony" or "unipolarity," and seek to restore Russia as a great power in a multipolar world.

A May 17 Washington Post op-ed piece by Ali H. Soufan entitled, "Coddling Terrorists" decried how Yemen has let free some of al-Qaida terrorists responsible for the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole warship in the Yemeni port of Aden. In his article, Soufan (who played a key role in the FBI investigation of the bombing) declared, "If Yemen is truly an ally, it should act as an ally." Why, then, has the Yemeni government not done so, especially since al-Qaida threatens it as well as the United States?

Will the United States and Iraq be able to achieve a status of forces agreement, or SOFA? If so, when will this occur, and what will be the terms? In order to get a sense of how these questions might be answered, I ran a role-playing game about the Iraqi-American negotiations in my War on Terrorism class at George Mason University on June 16.

There is a little publicized conflict going on in Yemen between government forces and a Shiite opposition group known as the "Huthis" in the countrys far north, close to the Saudi border.

WASHINGTON -- It has been widely reported that conditions in Yemen are deteriorating under the influence of insurgents, public rioting, and al-Qaida.

In the midst of an escalating war of words between Iran on the one hand and the United States and Israel on the other, the significance of an explosion that took place in the Iranian city of Shiraz on April 12 has been overlooked.

What are Irans goals in Iraq? That Tehran opposes the U.S. presence there is clear. But what Iran seeks to accomplish in Iraq is much less so.

Nearing the end of his second four-year term as president, Vladimir Putin could easily have gotten the tame Russian legislature to amend the constitution to grant him a third term. Indeed, many of its members expressed their earnest desire to do just this. But Putin would not hear of it.

From time to time Irans Fars News Agency, which maintains Web sites in Farsi, Arabic, and English, e-mails me a set of questions on current international politics to answer. Fars is usually pretty good about sending me a link to any story it quotes me in afterward. But although the questions are sent to me in English, the story I am quoted in is always in Farsi – which I cant read.

There have been an increasing number of reports that Iran is providing arms to Iraqi Shiite militants, who are using them to target both American and Iraqi government forces alike. These Iranian-backed Shiite militants are now seen as more of a threat to American efforts to stabilize Iraq than are al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni insurgent groups. American officials are now warning that if Iran does not stop, the United States may strike against it.