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Recent reports suggest that groups inside Iran are training and arming Shiite Iraqi militants fighting against U.S. forces. Karim Sadjadpour explains on the Diane Rehm Show that the Iranian leadership views U.S. efforts to spread secular democracy throughout the Middle East as an "existential threat." 

Sadjadpour: Reading Khamenei • Ahmadinejad in Iraq • Iran's Influence in Iraq

Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated as the Russian Federation’s third president on May 7. Serious questions about Medvedev’s ability to lead persist as Vladimir Putin is widely expected to shift the power-base of the Russian leadership to his new post as prime minister. Carnegie experts in Washington and Moscow provide commentary and analysis for understanding the implications and issues surrounding the Russian presidential election.

Gottemoeller: No Softer Than Putin
Event: After Russia's Presidential Election
Trenin: The Meaning of Medvedev
Petrov: A Regional Shift in Moscow
Resource: Russian Presidential Election

The May issue of the Arab Reform Bulletin features:
• Why Kuwaiti politics will keep boiling even after May 17 elections
• How blogs, Facebook, and You Tube are changing Egyptian politics
• Why the benefits of economic reform are not trickling down in Jordan and Egypt
• What Syria's new economic reform laws mean
• How educational reform initiatives in Gulf States differ

Plus developments from across the Middle East, debates in the Arab media, new publications, and much more.

Top-level officials from the UN, U.S., EU and Russia met in London last week to discuss the Middle East peace process. Their call for Arab countries to honor aid pledges to the Palestinians underscores the importance of regional leadership for realizing a two-state solution. Carnegie experts provide analysis of, and commentary on the political pressures that define state relationships in the Middle East.

Region: The New Middle East
Palestine: Road Out of Gaza
Iran: Reading Khamenei
Egypt: Egypt's Deteriorating Politics
Resource: Crisis in the Middle East

The international community’s efforts to rebuild Afghanistan must be directed by the Afghan government, said Ambassador Kai Eide, the new UN Special Representative in Afghanistan and head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, at Carnegie on Monday. Unless international organizations seek to build the capabilities of the Afghan government and to convey the impression that Kabul is able to provide services and stability to the country, the reconstruction effort will fail, said Eide.

Event: Afghanistan's Impact
Event: Suicide Attacks in Afghanistan
Grare: Pakistan-Afghanistan Relations in the Post-9/11 Era

Recent meetings in Hainan, China between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Vice President-elect Vincent Siew of Taiwan provide an initial glimpse into how relations between the two countries may change as Siew and President-elect Ma Ying-jeou prepare to take office in Taipei on May 20. While both sides remain constrained by domestic political concerns from pursuing an agenda beyond improved economic cooperation, there is momentum inside Taiwan for greater openness across the Taiwan Strait. Carnegie experts provide analysis to help explain the evolving relationship between China, Taiwan, and the U.S.

Events: Assessing U.S. Taiwan Policy
Pei: Taiwan Poll Offers Hope for Peace
Kagan: Behind the 'Modern' China

Democrats in the U.S. House plan to pass legislation this week funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into 2009. Carnegie recently hosted an event with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz who estimates the total cost for these wars will exceed $3 trillion. Long-term expenditures — including healthcare and benefits for veterans — have been hidden from U.S. taxpayers and will continue to add up in the years ahead.

Mathews: Lessons and Principles • Effectiveness of the "Surge"
Ottaway: The Iraq Stalemate
Additional Resources: The War in Iraq

Kuwait's parliamentary election on May 17 is more likely to continue political stalemate than move the country toward much needed political and economic reforms, argues Nathan J. Brown. Kuwait's looming tensions between the ruling family and parliament may have serious implications for democracy promotion in the broader Middle East as "other countries in the region are coming to see Kuwait as a negative model of what democracy can result in."

With China now the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide, Director of the Carnegie Energy and Climate Program, William Chandler, argues that Beijing and Washington must make a coordinated and concerted effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As the world's largest polluters, they have a responsibility to reduce energy consumption by regulatory and pricing policies that recognize the reality of global warming. (Video available.)

Chandler: Breaking the U.S.–China Suicide Pact • Financing Energy Efficiency in China

Anxiety over the scarcity of oil and other natural resources has caused global military expenditures to jump nearly 40 percent in the last decade. Joshua Kurlantzick argues in the Boston Globe that the world has entered a new arms race where nations who both consume and produce resources are arming themselves to protect their economic interests, creating a “growing possibility for real state-to-state conflict”.

Mathews: A New Russia-U.S. Arms Race on the Horizon?
Event: The Chinese Navy
Resources: U.S.-Russia Relations

The Egyptian government’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in advance of the controversial April 8 local elections underscores the present backward slide and broad deterioration in Egyptian politics. In Egypt’s Local Elections Farce: Causes and Consequences, Amr Hamzawy and Mohammed Herzallah further argue that the activist's last minute decision to boycott the elections signals to the government that with "sufficient political persecution and repression, the authorities can count on the Brotherhood to take itself voluntarily out the political equation."

Commentary: Egypt's Political Future

In his ground breaking new book, Superclass, David Rothkopf contends that an often unregulated global community of 6,000 individuals governs not only the world's business and finance, but also politics and culture. Rothkopf lifts the veil that has protected this little-known society to reveal the most powerful people on the planet whose daily decisions impact the lives of millions across borders and whose ideas shape the history of our times. (See CSPAN coverage of the book event, check your local listings.)

Rothkopf: What Power Looks Like (Newsweek) • Who Is The Superclass?(Newsweek) • Superclass Has Global Influence (Miami Herald)
Event: Rothkopf Discusses Superclass

With little information released to the public about the recent explosion at the Khushab military nuclear facility in Pakistan, and India pushing to purchase Australian uranium for its civil nuclear program despite the fact that it has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Carnegie experts argue for greater nuclear transparency in the subcontinent.

Squassoni: Accident at Khushab
Choubey: Leadership Down Under