Spiegel International

Flynt Leverett, on the other hand, is no diplomat. In 2003, he parted ways with the National Security Council and, since then, he has been outspoken about ...

In the future, globalization will further weaken the nation-state. A long transition process toward global government will be, like the Middle Ages, a time of great insecurity. But Europe's governance structure will prevail, even in the United States. It will buy its way to peace and its model will be copied across the globe.

This week's protests in Iran are truly unprecedented, says Iran expert Afshin Molavi in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE. The demonstrators come from all walks of life and from across the country. Discontent with Tehran's hardline leadership is widespread.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: On Thursday, a million people demonstrated in the streets of Tehran. Are we witnessing a revolution in Iran?

Flynt Leverett from the think tank New America Foundation, who is considered one of the foremost Iran experts in Washington, told SPIEGEL ONLINE immediately after the election that support for Ahmadinejad's main challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi had been ...

Many in Iran and the West assume that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election was the product of fraud. American Iran expert Flynt Leverett told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the irregularities likely weren't as bad as in Florida in 2000. Now, the US has to make the regime an offer.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad scored an overwhelming victory in the Iranian presidential elections held on Friday. Are you surprised?

These days it is not fashionable to speak of empires, which are considered to be aggressive, mercantilist relics supposedly consigned to the dustbin of history with post-World War II decolonization and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many then predicted that ethnic self-determination would drag the world into a new era of political fragmentation as the number of countries proliferated from fewer than 50 at the end of World War II to, potentially, hundreds in the 21st century, with every minority getting its own state, currency, and… more

(Britta Sandberg) - ...Paul Cruickshank of New York University and terrorism expert Peter Bergen spent six months investigating the turmoil within al-Qaida. The two were the first to interview Noman Benotman, and they also spoke with other critics of the terror organization -- including Sheikh Salman al-Oudah. On the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Saudi went on the television channel MBS to publicly demand of bin Laden how many innocents had already been killed in the name… more

To explore the likely future performance of candidates Obama and Clinton (while she was still in the race), Steve Clemons of the Washington, DC-based New America Foundation decided late last year to study closely how each handled their committee assignments as US Senators.

"I thought Hillary Clinton did not have the patience and that Obama was probably very involved in committee processes," said Clemons, who directs the Foundation’s American Strategy Program and previously worked in the Senate. "In fact I… more