John Kerry may have met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss the peace process on Thursday, but what's really gotten commentators worked up is the contents of the shwarma he consumed during an impromptu snack in Ramallah. Reputable sources such as the Guardian, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times have reported that the secretary of state's sandwich was stuffed with turkey. But for many with ties to or interest in the region (including myself), the news made absolutely no sense. It would be one thing if Kerry had gobbled down chicken or lamb. But whoever heard of turkey shwarma? 

Saudi journalist Ahmed Al Omran expressed this very sentiment in his response to the bewilderment of FP's own David Kenner:

@davidkenner there is no such thing as turkey shawarma. Like the peace process, it is probably an illusion.

— Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed) May 24, 2013

Others were downright outraged at the very notion of turkey in shwarma:

I'm really furious as an Arab to know that there is something called "Turkey Shawerma": nytimes.com/2013/05/24/wor… #Kerry #US

— Menna ????(@TheMiinz) May 24, 2013

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg floated one theory about the confusion:

.@allison_good1 @blakehounshell The original talking points have it as lamb. Then CIA got involved.

— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) May 24, 2013

Meanwhile The Angry Arab implored the world to get to the bottom of the nagging mystery:

Turkey Shawarma? Is that true? Can somebody verify it was turkey and not lamb or beef or chicken? nblo.gs/LwEbX

— The Angry Arab (@AngryArabNews) May 24, 2013

FP was happy to oblige. In the interest of putting the speculation to rest once and for all -- so that we can all move on to more pressing matters -- we called Samer restaurant, where Kerry ate his shwarma, to find out just what was in the secretary's sandwich.

"Chicken," said Samer, the proprietor, who seemed rather amused about the whole situation.

Excited to have stumbled upon this piece of intel, I pressed Samer to confirm that the shwarma was not in fact turkey. "Oh, yes. It was turkey," he amended. "Not chicken?" I asked. "No, turkey. We have lamb and we have turkey. He ate the turkey and really enjoyed it."

According to Samer, turkey shwarma is not uncommon in the West Bank -- though Palestinians often refer to it as chicken, which explains the confusion during our conversation. "There are people who use chicken and people who use turkey," he told me. "But people like turkey more." 

John Kerry, it seems, agrees.

On Tuesday, Iran's Guardian Council confirmed the list of approved candidates for Iran's June 14 presidential elections -- and with it the suspicions of many that this will be a less-than-exciting election season. In whittling down 686 presidential hopefuls to just eight finalists, the Council arguably left off the two most interesting contenders: former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hand-picked successor Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.

So who are the 1 percent of aspirants deemed fit to rule Iran? These eight may all be symbols of the status quo and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's considerable influence in the political realm. But between them they have some pretty colorful qualifications for the job.

Saeed Jalili

Iran's current nuclear negotiator, Jalili is also considered the race's frontrunner -- not to mention Khamenei's choice for president. A former member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, he lost his right leg in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s.

In 2007, when Jalili was chosen as nuclear negotiator by Khamenei, many thought he was too inexperienced for the job. Since then, he has developed a reputation for being uncompromising. And if a recent interview with the Financial Times is any indication, it appears that trait will carry over into his presidency. "My understanding is that the more we rely on our religious and internal principles," he told FT, "the more we can resist [the demands of the international community]."

But you have to give Jalili credit for his optimistic lemons-into-lemonade attitude. "At least over the past few years when I have been carefully following the effects of sanctions, I see that they can be easily bypassed and turned into opportunities," he added. Jalili did not elaborate as to how.

Gholam Ali Haddad Adel

One of the country's self-styled conservative "principlists," Adel, along with Ali Akbar Velayati and Mohammed Baqr Qalibaf,  positions himself in direct opposition to the reformists who attracted many Iranians during Iran's contentious presidential election in 2009. He's also a favorite of Khamenei's as both an advisor and a relative (his daughter is married to Khamenei's son).

A lesser known fact about the prominent politician: Adel penned an influential work of Islamic "feminist" thought, The Culture of Nakedness and the Nakedness of Culture, in the 1980s. According to Pamela Karimi, a professor of art history at UMass Dartmouth, he advocates "the concealment of women’s bodies as a way to protect the larger society from the manipulation of capitalism and imperialism." He strove to "catch up with modernity and yet indigenize it through Islam."

Ali Akbar Velayati

Iran's longest-serving foreign minister (from 1980 to 1996), he is currently Khamenei's senior advisor on international affairs. Velayati is credited with helping shape Iran's tough stance toward the West, but he might be more willing to engage than it seems. In 2009, as Velayati contemplated a bid for president, an aide reached out to U.S. diplomats expressing interest in cooperating with the West and asking that some sanctions be lifted in order to help raise funds for Velayati's campaign, according to leaked cables. A doctor by training, Velayati studied pediatrics at Johns Hopkins before the 1979 revolution.

Velayati has also been implicated in authorizing the Mykonos operation in 1992, during which three Iranian Kurdish political figures and a supporter were murdered while dining in a private room of the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin.

Mohsen Rezaei

A past presidential contender who came in third in 2009, Rezaei has said he's "in it to win it" this time around. In addition to being the former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Rezaei is also the secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, which advises Khameini. In 2009, he memorably stated that he would include women in his cabinet if elected. 

Not-so-fun fact: Rezaei has the distinction of being on Interpol's wanted list for his alleged complicity in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina that killed 85 people, in the deadliest attack in the country's history. Rezaei, for his part, vigorously denies involvement in the incident (Velayati, above, is also a suspect in the attack). 

Hasan Rowhani

Rowhani is the closest of the remaining candidates to a reformist. In April, Roberto Toscano -- a former Italian ambassador to Iran --  told Al-Monitor that "if the reformists do not run their own candidate or one who is insignificant, Rowhani could get a lot of votes." He went on to note Rowhani's "impeccable CV" -- if you're really interested you can see it here -- which includes over 100 publications.

Rowhani's candidacy brings the nuclear issue to the forefront, as he was Iran's most cooperative -- if short-lived -- nuclear negotiator between 2003 and 2005. But although he is close to Rafsanjani, don't expect too much of a departure from Khamenei. Rowhani has also been an advisor to the supreme leader since 1989 and has close ties to the political establishment.

Mohammad Reza Aref 

Aref was Iran's vice president during President Mohammad Khatami's second term (2001 to 2005). Though he is a bit more on the reformist side than many of the other candidates, as a current member of the Expediency Council he remains an advisor to Khamenei.

Though you might not expect it from his long political career, Aref's educational background is actually in statistics. He received a Ph.D. from Stanford. If you're interested in seeing an example of the potential future president's academic work (or if you want to learn about a "mathematical model for a general single-source single-sing communication network"), check out his thesis here.

Mohammed Baqr Qalibaf 

Qalibaf succeeded Ahmadinejad as mayor of Tehran in 2005, after losing to him in that year's presidential election. And what a mayor he has been. In 2008, he came in eighth place in the World Mayor Awards (a bienniel award aiming "to raise the profile of mayors worldwide and honour those who have served their communities well"). According to the organization, he beat out other global mayoral heavy weights "for his modernisation of the capital’s infrastructure and public services." The foundation also described him as "a keen student of other metro areas around the world, actively investing in monitoring innovation in traffic management and public transport." Is there a better recommendation for president than that?

On the flip side, Qalibaf recently took heat for acknowledging his role in vigorous government crackdowns on political protests in 1999, 2003, and 2009. 

Mohammad Gharazi 

The Guardian Council's inclusion of this former minister of petroleum and parliamentarian has left many scratching their heads. Unlike his fellow nominees, Gharazi has been out of the political spotlight for over a decade and faded into relative obscurity.

One website, Iran's View, says it all with an article entitled "Everything About Mohammad Gharazi, Unknown Qualified Presidential Candidate." Word count: 240.

Ahead of President Obama's big counterterrorism speech tomorrow, Attorney General Eric Holder has written a letter, obtained by the New York Times, to the Senate Judiciary Committee disclosing the four American citizens killed by targeted strikes during the Obama administration, three of whom "were not specifically targeted by the United States":

Since 2009, the United States, in the conduct of U.S. counterterrorism operations against al-Qa'ida and its associated forces outside of areas of active hostilities, has specifically targeted and killed one U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi. The United States is further aware of three other U.S. citizens who have been killed in such U.S. counterterrorism operations over that same time period: Samir Khan, 'Abd al-Rahman Anwar al-Aulaqi, and Jude Kenan Mohammed. These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States.

The letter does not include the names of all Americans who have been killed in drone strikes. A fifth U.S. citizen, Ahmed Hijazi (a.k.a. Kamal Derwish) was killed in 2002 during the Bush administration in the first ever U.S. drone strike. That strike, in Yemen, was directed at Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, who was associated with the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. An unnamed FBI source told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer several years ago that another U.S. citizen was believed to have been killed by a U.S. cruise missile in Somalia sometime between 2006 and early 2009.

Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were propagandists for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and the U.S. government believes that Awlaki played a role in planning the attempted underwear bombing in 2009. His son, 'Abd al-Rahman, had reportedly linked up with AQAP members while looking for Awklaki when a drone targeted his vehicle. The three men were killed in a series of airstrikes in September and October 2011.

The only new name is Jude Kenan Mohammed, whose death in Pakistan was rumored in a February 2012 local news story in his hometown of Raleigh, N.C but had not been previously acknowledged.

With the letter, the Obama administration has now admitted killing more U.S. citizens than detainees the Bush administration admitted waterboarding. Hooray for transparency?

The full text of Holder's letter is included below:

At  7 a.m. on May 6, Yu Xuejun received a phone call from the captain of a fishing boat he owns. "I asked him what the problem was," Yu told state broadcaster China Central Television in an interview broadcast Monday, "and he said one of the ships was missing" from off the coast of Liaoning, a Chinese province that borders North Korea.

Thus began the bizarre, opaque, and as-yet unresolved saga of the North Korean kidnapping of 16 Chinese fishermen.

The next day, May 7, Yu received a call on a satellite phone from someone he identified only as "the North Koreans' translator." The mysterious caller asked for $200,000. "Then," Yu told CCTV, "they said we don't want that much, just $130,000." Yu asked, "Why did you take my boat?" He couldn't understand the caller's answer.

"If you pay, we'll release the boat," the translator told Yu. The calls kept coming, from the same number. On the fourth call, Yu says, the captors dropped the number to $100,000 and allowed the captured captain to speak to him. "His voice was trembling. I could feel he was very afraid," Yu wrote on his microblog, where he broke the news of the kidnapping. "I suspected that my crew had been mistreated. I can't imagine what the North Korean side could do."

China remains North Korea's closest ally, yet often gets repaid for its friendship with inexplicable acts of aggression. The kidnapping was probably coordinated by Pyongyang -- as the Chinese newspaper the Global Times wrote on Monday, the kidnappers are "highly likely from the North Korean army." The paper also quoted Jin Qiangyi, director of the Asian Studies Center at northeast China's Yanbian University, speculating that North Korea is "taking revenge on China" for approving the U.N. sanctions that followed its nuclear test in February.

According to Yu, his boat is now by the island of Changyon, which hosts a North Korean military base -- one would guess that the boat would only be allowed to dock at that island with permission from Pyongyang. According to the website for state radio service Chinese Radio International, Kim Jong Un visited Changyon in 2012 and "expressed satisfaction" at the navy's state of readiness.

But if the "pirates" were actually members of the North Korean military acting in concert with Pyongyang, why the laughably small ransom? Yu told a Chinese journalist that he can't pay the "sky-high price" of $100,000 -- that may be true, but the sticker price for international incidents is usually higher than that of a luxury car. (By comparison, in 2010, the average ransom demand from Somali pirates was $5.4 million.)

It's not the first time this has happened. A year ago almost to the day, North Koreans abducted 29 Chinese fishermen; the identity of the North Koreans, or whether they were authorities or autonomous kidnappers, remains unknown. The fishermen were returned and relieved of all their possessions, in some cases even including their clothes and the pencils in their pocket. Is the North Korean army so starved of resources that it would steal writing utensils from Chinese fishermen?

Throughout its  history, North Korea has been more on the receiving end of piracy, as its ships have rarely ventured overseas. In the Historical Dictionary of Democratic People's Republic of Korea, former British diplomat James Hoare writes that Japanese pirate attacks in the 16th century are one reason for North Koreans' historical hatred of Japanese. 

So far, Beijing's public response to this latest hijacking incident has been muted. The Wall Street Journal reports that "Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China is in close communication with Pyongyang, without offering details," while China's Internet universe is understandably angry. ("Americans say, 'I'll attack whoever I want,'" writes Weibo user Christopher-Columbia in a typical post. "Us Chinese, we say, 'whoever attacks us, we'll just insult them in return,'" he adds.) The Journal also quoted retired general Luo Yuan as writing on his microblog, "North Korea has gone too far. Just because you're poor, that doesn't mean you can cross borders and detain people for ransom." Unless China does something, Pyongyang may prove Luo wrong.

For those born after a certain year, Barbara Walters may be best known for her banter with the likes of Whoopi Goldberg and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on her talk show The View -- or her interviews with the likes of Monica Lewinsky and Michael Jackson. But with the 83-year-old Walters officially retiring next summer, we wanted to remind the whippersnappers among us to show some respect: Before The View, Walters snagged interviews with some of the most defining world leaders of the late 20th century.  

Walters, after all, rode in a jeep with Fidel Castro, picking his gun up off the floor when they forded streams so it wouldn't get wet. She sparked a fight between the shah of Iran and his wife over whether women were capable of ruling countries. She asked Jiang Zemin whether he knew what happened to Tiananmen Square's tank man. More recently, she spoke with Bashar al-Assad about the Syrian military's brutal campaign against its own citizens.

Below is a selection of some of Walters's most noteworthy sit-downs with world leaders in the more than 50 years she's been on television.

Fidel Castro

Walters first met Fidel Castro in 1975, but had to wait two more years before she was able to nab the first American TV interview with the Cuban president. During her time on the island, Castro brought her to the mountains where he had been a guerrilla fighter (Walters and her production team spent the night at his camp). Her interview with him lasted five hours and, "in an unprecedented action," almost all of it aired on Cuban television. "The only part he deleted," Walters wrote, "was my question about whether he is married and his evasive answer. 'Formally, no!'"

Shah Reza Pahlavi

In the interview below, Walters asks the shah about how much support the CIA was providing to the Iranian regime. "Does the CIA play any part in this country today?" she asks. "Sure -- gathering information. We don't mind," the ruler replies. 

The interview also included questions about the shah's views on women. "So you don't feel that women are in that sense equal, if they have the same intelligence or ability," Walters inquires. "Not so far," the shah replies. "Maybe you will become in the future. We can always have some exceptions."

"I give the shah credit," Walters later said. "He was certainly not politically correct ... he said what was on his mind."

Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin

It was an historic milestone in November 1977 when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel since its founding. While he was there, Walters got him to agree to a joint interview with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (Begin told Walters that he convinced Sadat to do the interview together "for the sake of our friend Barbara"). In the video below, Walters describes how she arranged the interview (footage of the interview itself wasn't available).

Walters later spoke of her admiration for Sadat. "He had such courage," she said.

Jiang Zemin

During his interview with Walters, the new Chinese premier displayed what the New York Times called "a stunning cynicism" about the bloody crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square, which had taken place just a year earlier.  The army behaved "with great tolerance and restraint," Jiang told Walters. "I don't think any government in the world will permit the occurrence of such an incident as happened in Beijing."

"It takes a lot to stop Barbara Walters in her tracks," New York Times reporter Fox Butterfield wrote. But even she was stunned when Jiang called the incident "much ado about nothing."

"We feel it's a great deal to do about something," she eventually retorted.

Bashar al-Assad

As late as 2011, Walters was still going after big names, scoring an exclusive interview with President Bashar al-Assad after the protests in Syria had begun (Walters later took some heat for assisting an aide of Assad's who she admitted helped her get the interview).

"Do you feel guilty?" Walters asks Assad toward the end of the conversation. "I did my best to protect the people, so I cannot feel guilty, when you do your best," he responds. "You feel sorry for the lives that has been lost, but you don't feel guilty -- when you don't kill people."

"I like Camus, man."

That's how Cody Wilson, the man behind the first fully functional 3-D printed gun, replied when asked by the right-wing radio host Alex Jones to describe his political heroes. This past week, Wilson's company, Defense Distributed, announced that it had created a functioning handgun produced by a 3-D printer -- a device that creates products from electronic blueprints by layering plastic -- and that it planned to make the schematics freely available online.

So far, Wilson's effort has largely been portrayed in the media in two ways: as a dangerous way to circumvent gun-control statutes and as a tech story about how an innovative manufacturing technology is being harnessed for unanticipated ends. But there's a political story here, too. While it's easy to caricature Wilson, a 25-year-old law student at the University of Texas, as a right-wing nut hell bent on defending his Second Amendment rights, a common thread of anarchist thinking runs through nearly all Wilson's public statements. This isn't just a guy who loves his guns -- this is a political project. Or at least it purports to be.

"Now that we have a [federal license to manufacture guns] we can ... develop something like a single-shot completely printable plastic gun," he said on Alex Jones's show back in March. "Yes, it's undetectable, but more importantly it's unobservable by institutions and countries and sovereigns.... This might be a politically important object."

Wilson is the rare gun-rights advocate who drops names like Michel Foucault, Albert Camus, and John Milton in his interviews, and the worldview he's selling has more in common with hacktivist collectives like Anonymous than bearded woodsmen preparing for the end times. Here he is diagnosing the current state of American politics in a revealing Vice documentary:

There's this Fukuyamaist idea that like history had ended after the Cold War. Right? And that like if we could just tweak neoliberal democracy, everything's gonna be fine. Forever. You know that like somehow this is like the final political form? I mean this is ridiculous. And like you can see it -- there is no evidence of a political program anymore in the world, in America. There aren't genuine politics. There's the media telling you Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney is like the epic clash of ideology when we both know they're globalist neoliberals. They both exist to preserve like the interests of this relatively autonomous class of Goldman Sachs bankers.

So what exactly is Wilson proposing? Well, like any good leftist he's short on specifics. But consider the following exchange with Glenn Beck -- an appearance, by the way, that had Beck visibly uncomfortable:

GB: Ok, so are you an anarchist?

CW: I guess in a functional sense, sure. But perhaps like a principled one.

GB: I don't know what that means.

CW: Well there's a guy named Michel Foucault. And I'd recommend that you read him some time. Really I see the battle as one of just trying to remain human and against you know massive forces, anonymous forces of discipline and control that we can't really understand. I don't think there's a massive conspiracy. But I do think the self is under siege and I think liberty itself is under siege...

So if we take Wilson seriously, his 3-D gun project is aimed at reclaiming some sense of individual autonomy, which has been stripped away by the regulatory impulses of the state. The project, he claims, is a deeply moral one aimed at forcing individuals to face up to their choices:

Milton's Areopagitica is essentially the spiritual analogue that I'm holding out for people. Which is more to do not about like why guns are good. It's more about why like speech and information is good. Why like you just must reckon with, you must be free to reckon with whatever ideas that you can. It isn't enough that a society can just withhold things. That doesn't befit you as a moral agent. That doesn't allow you to exist or to, that doesn't allow you to fully exercise your capacity as a human being, as a moral agent.

As much as Wilson would like to present himself as a gun sage, he also possesses a deal of old-fashioned anti-establishment anger, and that's a perspective that doesn't quite square with his high-minded invocation of John Milton:

But what this project's really about, fuck your laws, you know what I'm saying? It's stepping up, it's being able to go, you know what, I don't like this legal regime I neatly step outside of it. Now what, you know?

That's a perspective that should ring a bell for anyone familiar with Anonymous. And it's a serious problem when a group aspiring to real political power busies itself instead with cursing off the government. Maybe Milton has something to say about that.

Europe has a romanticized history of lone figures joining "the cause" in war-torn foreign countries -- from Lord Byron's death fighting for Greek independence to George Orwell's storied participation in the Spanish Civil War. But tales of Europeans joining Syrian rebels on the frontlines haven't exactly been met with enthusiasm.

"Not all of them are radical when they leave, but most likely many of them will be radicalised" in Syria, the EU's anti-terror chief, Gilles de Kerchove, told the BBC on Wednesday, noting that an estimated 500 Europeans are fighting in Syria's civil war, where they could come under the influence of al Qaeda-linked groups like the al-Nusra Front.

Governments from Australia to the United States share these concerns, but the apprehension is less about the impact of this cadre of foreign fighters on Syria's conflict -- who, as we noted recently, form a tiny fraction of the resistance -- and more about what could happen when these citizens return home.

Australia, which has seen around 200 of its residents join the action in Syria, has made it clear that anyone fighting in the conflict is breaking Australian law. The Australian Federal Police have distributed flyers with the following statement:

Australia has imposed an arms embargo on Syria. This means it is illegal for any person in Australia, or any Australian citizen (including dual citizen), anywhere in the world, to provide any kind of support to any armed group in Syria - Government or opposition; Syrian or foreign.

Interestingly enough, another country that has weighed in on the legality of foreign participation is Saudi Arabia. Though the kingdom has a strategic interest in encouraging the rebellion against Bashar al-Assad, it is apparently illegal for Saudi citizens to join in the combat. As NPR reports, the official line may be more diplomatic than dogmatic:

Fighting with the rebels in Syria is illegal, declared Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior. "Anybody who wants to travel outside Saudi Arabia in order to get involved in such conflict will be arrested and prosecuted," he said. "But only if we have the evidence before he leaves the country."

NPR goes on to quote Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani, a Saudi professor and human rights activist as saying this amounts to a "don't ask, don't tell policy."

The United States is also taking a variety of legal approaches to address the issue. As my colleague Josh Keating noted back when an American joined the Libyan rebels, it's generally legal for Americans to fight in another country's army -- so long as they're not fighting against America:

According to the U.S. code, any citizen who "enlists or enters himself, or hires or retains another to enlist or enter himself, or to go beyond the jurisdiction of the United States with intent to be enlisted or entered in the service of any foreign prince, state, colony, district, or people as a soldier or as a marine or seaman ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both." But a court ruling from 1896 involving U.S. citizens who fought with Cuban revolutionaries against Spanish colonial rule interpreted this to mean that it was only illegal for citizens to be recruited for a foreign army in the United States, not to simply fight in one....

A few caveats: If an American joins an army engaged in hostilities against the United States, that's considered an act of treason and punishable by death. The law also, obviously, doesn't sanction membership in designated terrorist organizations...

Just last Friday, the FBI arrested Abdella Ahmad Tounisi, an 18-year-old from Aurora, Ill., at O'Hare Airport before he boarded a flight to Istanbul. The Chicago Tribune reports that Tounisi told an undercover FBI agent he intended to join the al-Nusra Front. He now faces up to 15 years in federal prison for the felony charge of "attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization."

And in late March, when Eric Harroun, the U.S. citizen who trained and fought with the al-Nusra Front, returned to the United States, he was oddly enough charged for conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction -- specifically rocket-propelled grenades.

The European Union, meanwhile, has yet to make a concerted legal effort to bar citizens from joining the fight in Syria. While one man was detained last week in Belgium for allegedly recruiting residents to go to Syria, efforts have largely focused on curbing the effects of radicalization. As the BBC reports, the EU is "pushing to bring in a Europe-wide passenger database for air-travel which in future could help track individuals down."

It's a thorny problem to solve. As de Kerchove, the EU anti-terror chief, reminds us, "[n]ot all of them are radical when they leave."

The Soviet Union's 10-year occupation of Afghanistan cost the country more than 15,000 lives, and an additional 50,000 were wounded. Before the USSR withdrew its forces in 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev described the Soviet efforts to fight the insurgency there as "a bleeding wound." And yet -- just over two decades after leaving what came to be considered the Soviet version of the Vietnam War -- Russia is now eager to return to Afghanistan.

Russian defense officials are exploring the possibility of establishing military bases on Afghan soil after the U.S. drawdown in 2014, according to Russian press reports. Sergey Koshelev, of the Russian Defense Ministry's Department of Cooperation, told Russia Today that the military "will look into various options of creating repair bases" to maintain the Afghan National Security Forces's Russian-made equipment. Further cooperation is also being considered, according to Russia's NATO envoy Aleksandr Grushko.

Russia certainly has an economic stake in post-war Afghanistan. In addition to maintaining Russian gear -- from small arms to armored personnel carriers and helicopters -- Russia is also considering expanding its supply routes into Afghanistan through Central Asian countries. These supply routes, often called the Northern Distribution Network, have been a troublesome logistical lifeline for ISAF troops in Afghanistan, and will likely remain important after the drawdown.

An article in the government-sponsored paper Pravda last November touted Russia's cultural projects in Afghanistan as a prelude to new projects like those being discussed now. "It's obvious that Moscow's interest after the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan ...will increase dramatically," Lyuba Lulko wrote then. "The country has always been in the zone of Soviet and Russian interests." The article went on to recast the Soviet occupation: "After what the Americans leave in Afghanistan, the Soviet presence seems to be a blessing. Soviet soldiers are remembered with respect," Lulko added. An Afghan student studying Russian was quoted saying, "Russia is our neighbor, we love its culture. All was well, when the Russians were here."

Nonetheless, as RT's report stressed, "Russian officials have repeatedly denied that Moscow is considering resuming its military presence in Afghanistan."

Today, North Korea scolded the South for its reported plan to destroy two giant bronze statues in Pyongyang if the North issues any further provocations. Experts on the conflict, speaking with Foreign Policy today, tend to agree with the North: This would be a really bad idea.

The South Korean plan first surfaced yesterday in the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, which cited government sources saying a surgical strike on statues of patriarchs Kim Jong il and Kim il Sung would convey an important message to the North Koreans:

The statues are considered sacred in the North, and any damage to them could deliver a huge psychological impact. "If North Korea launches another provocation, our military has developed a plan to respond with air-to-surface and surface-to-surface missiles to strike not only the source of provocation as well as support and command forces, but also some statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il," a government source here said Sunday.

The towering bronze statues deifying the late Korean leaders reside atop Mansudae Hill in Pyongyang. While the analysts we spoke to noted that South Korea has patiently endured military bombardments, provocations and insults from the North for years, they raised a number of concerns about the wisdom of the hypothetical strike:

Technically, this would be difficult to pull off

"It doesn't make sense to me," Michael Green, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told FP. "The air defenses around Pyongyang are much tougher than around the naval and air installations on the West Sea. I think their general practice in the South will be to hit the regional command HQ responsible for any provocative strike --and the most likely spot for a NK hit would be on the West Sea."

These statues are a non-strategic target. The strike wouldn't be worth it

Wiping out the statues would be gratifying from a nationalistic standpoint, noted Scott Snyder, senior fellow for Korea Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "I think this stems from a strong South Korean determination to send a message to North Korea that nuclear weapons acquisition has not given North Korea the capacity to use its nuclear status as an instrument of blackmail toward the South," he told FP. But Snyder emphasized that the statues are "non-strategic targets." Not only would they not weaken North Korea's military, but hitting them wouldn't guarantee a proportional response from the North. " The South Korean response places a premium on the North ensuring that it also has a plan for managing escalation control stemming from any conflict." Of course, no one can say for sure what the North would do.

Are you crazy? This would ignite a Second Korean War.

Jae H. Ku, director of the U.S.-South Korean Institute at Johns Hopkins, said this kind of a strike would almost certainly escalate the conflict beyond anyone's control. "If South Korea were to bomb the statues, this would effectively be the start of the Second Korean War," he said. "Bombing Mansudae Hill would be like the North Koreans bombing the Blue House [the South Korean president's residence]. How can either country stand down from that?"

On Friday, French President François Hollande defended his plan to supply weapons to Syrian rebels, as part of a British and French effort to lift the EU's arms embargo. If Libya is any example, U.S. thinking may not be far behind -- especially as the conflict's death toll climbs above 70,000.

Clearly, the Obama administration is reluctant to flood the conflict with arms for fear that they could wind up in the hands of extremist groups such as the Nusra Front. But if Barack Obama does buckle under the pressure of Syria hawks, many of whom he personally hired, there are a range of powerful weapons that could potentially turn the tide in the rebels' favor. Which ones? To find out, we talked to top arms expert Jeffrey White, defense fellow at the Washington Institute, and Chris Dougherty, research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Weapon: Anti-aircraft weapons such as the 9K38 Igla -- a Soviet-made, man-portable, infrared-homing surface-to-air missile.

Pros: In many areas of the country, rebels are getting creamed by the regime's arsenal of Soviet- and Russian-made jets, the most advanced being Mig-29 Fulcrums. There are already plenty of MANPADS in the hands of Syrian rebels, but not in some of the most heavily targeted areas, White told Foreign Policy. "Down in Daraa province, we're not seeing a lot of anti-aircraft activity, or in Damascus, which is important," he explained. If the United States wanted to make a big splash, shipping surface-to-air missiles to Daraa province and Damascus via Jordan, where Syrian jets have strafed freely, could have a big impact. They would also be helpful in rebel-held areas like Aleppo that face frequent aerial bombardments.

Cons: Legitimate fears persist that dumping this type of powerful weaponry in the middle of an extremist hotbed could create serious blowback for the United States in ways one can't easily anticipate. This is especially the case with some of the more sophisticated MANPADS such as the SA-24. As Popular Mechanics noted last year, these pack a powerful punch. "The SA-24 missiles, made in Russia, can shoot down an aircraft flying at 11,000 feet," the magazine pointed out. Domestic airliners are particularly vulnerable. After 9/11, Congress poured money into methods of jamming SA-24s. But after 8 years with no success, the White House cut the program last year, meaning commercial airliners remain exposed.

Weapon: Tanks, such as T-62s, T-65s, or T-72s from Warsaw Pact countries.

Pros: Rebels are already operating all three types of tanks listed above, which they've captured from regime forces. Handing these off to a preferred rebel group would give those units a substantial firepower advantage over other rebel units, and open up opportunities to push back against the regime. Successful attacks by rebels' armored vehicles against Syrian tanks have already been documented:

Cons: Besides the potential for devastating blowback, there's also a tactical downside. Once you transition the rebels from light infantry forces to heavier forces, they are less nimble and become easier targets for conventional regime forces.

Weapon: Anti-tank guided missiles or rocket-propelled grenade launchers such as RPG 29s.

Pros: Very effective against T-72 tanks with reactive armor. Though some are in rebel hands, there aren't many. "The regime relies very heavily on its armored fighting vehicles and the rebels simply don't have enough of these systems," said White. "Giving the rebels more anti-tank weapons would significantly cut into their ability to repel the regime."

Cons: Unless you were living under a rock, you remember what happened last September, when extremists armed with rocket-propelled grenades stormed the U.S. compound in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and four others. Given that this occurred in the aftermath of the Libyan civil war, which saw a flood of foreign weapons enter the country, the parallels couldn't be more relevant.

Weapon: Indirect fire weapons such as mortars: 122 mm and 120 mm guns.

Pros: Effective against the regime's field artillery, which includes cannons, mortars, and rocket launchers. "Unless rebels get more indirect fire weapons, it's really hard to get after the regime's artillery," said White. "Getting mortars would substantially increase rebel capability and address the disparity in firepower."

Cons: As with the argument against rocket-propelled grenades, the downsides of these weapons getting into the wrong hands are significant. 

Weapon:  Guided mortar rounds, which are essentially mortar rounds that are deployed at a ballistic trajectory and use fins to guide them to a desired GPS coordinate.

Pros: The rounds would help the rebels hit fixed Syrian positions -- including barracks, airfields, and roadblocks -- with much more accuracy. "The rebels may now have some mortars, rockets, or recoilless rifles, but those unguided weapons depend on the skill of the user to hit a target," Dougherty told FP. "Given the Assad regime's air superiority and the likely low level of training possessed by the rebels, any successful long-range attacks with unguided weapons are probably the result of sheer, dumb luck. Guided mortars would give the rebels the ability to hit a fixed target accurately and consistently -- regardless of range."

Cons: There's a high risk that such weapons could fall into the hands of U.S. foes, which could result in a high level of destruction. "The United States wouldn't want to lose positive control over these weapons -- one of them fired at a major tactical operations center in Afghanistan could kill a substantial number of personnel," said Dougherty.

Weapon: Training and support from a Special Forces Operational Detachment deployed to Syria or a neighboring country. 

Pros: It's not unheard of for U.S. special operations forces to say "humans are more important than hardware," Dougherty notes. "This training and advice doesn't need to mold the rebels into a conventional fighting force -- it needs to make them the most effective guerrilla force they can be," he said. "It may not be 'sexy,' but without proper training and advice, the rebels won't be able to use advanced weapons systems properly, nor will they be likely to wield them to full strategic effect."

Cons: These types of special forces units are still deployed in Afghanistan, so they're in high demand. It also wouldn't be a short deployment. "Building trust with foreign partners takes persistent, long-term engagement," said Dougherty.

We're all familiar with the genre of storytelling in which two characters, usually male, leave home and embark upon a quest. Hilarity and misadventure often ensue, as lessons are learned, mistakes are regretted, and friendships are tested and reaffirmed. It's an old American standard, from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the Blues Brothers, but the latest version is more Robot Chicken than Hollywood: Colorful former Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman says he plans to vacation with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un this August.

Rodman, who visited Pyongyang in late February, confounding the North Korea-watching world with the access he received, didn't give any more details about their travel plans. Of course, in a world where the best known source for the nuclear-armed leader of a misanthropic state is a basketball player who, in 1996, married himself, the two figures traveling together is not all that surprising.

Still, where will they go?

Rodman has spent a lot of time in Las Vegas, but Kim, considering his country just threatened the United States with a preemptive nuclear strike, probably wouldn't be able to get a visa. If Kim wants to get out of Asia, there's always the Montreux Casino on the shores of Lake Geneva in discreet Switzerland. Kim reportedly spent a few years in state-run school in nearby Berne, where "he was a big fan of the Chicago Bulls," Reuters quoted one of his classmates as saying.  

Kim's father and grandfather, North Korean leaders Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung respectively, were reportedly afraid of flying. If Kim Jong Un has developed the same phobia or paranoia as his father, who reportedly survived two assassination attempts, his international vacation options are limited.

Harbin, a Chinese city known for its beer, is nearby; it's not the best tourist destination, but they could visit Stalin Park (yes, that Stalin) and Kim could see what Chinese-led development could mean for Pyongyang.   

In the end, a domestic holiday is probably the best choice: there's the scenic Mt. Paedku, the mountain that straddles the border between China and North Korea, on which, legend has it, Kim Jong Un's father was born; or a hotel near Mt. Myohyang, featuring fresh air that supposedly cures hangovers. (I stayed there in 2008; if memory serves, we nicknamed it The Overlook and wondered when the blood would rush from the elevators.)  

And of course, there's North Korea's rollercoasters. 

On Tuesday, the Iranian press reported that the country is seriously considering a lawsuit against the makers of Argo over the film's unrealistic and negative portrayal of Iranians. According to AP:

Several news outlets, including the pro-reform Shargh daily, said French lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre is in Iran for talks with officials over how and where to file the lawsuit. She is also the lawyer for notorious Venezuelan-born terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal.

This isn't the first time the Iranian government has complained about the film's portrayal of the Iranian people during the 1979 hostage crisis. In February, the government even organized a conference to highlight the anti-Iranian ideology behind Ben Affleck's film and other movies. The lawsuit was discussed on Monday during yet another conference in Tehran for Iranian cultural officials and movie critics entitled "The Hoax of Hollywood."

While the details of how (and if) Iran will go about suing Hollywood have yet to be released, one can't help but wonder: Does Iran actually have a case?

The short answer? Not really. "The threshold for a defamation suit in this context is pretty steep," Cory Andrews, senior litigation counsel for the Washington Legal Foundation, told FP. To prove defamation, you have to not only establish that what is presented as fact is actually false (a difficult task when dealing with a partially fictionalized movie), but also that the plaintiff's reputation was injured, causing financial damages. "I'm not sure how the current Iranian regime would go about proving damages," Andrews notes. "The film is loosely based on events from 1979, not 2013. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is dead, and as a general rule of law you cannot libel the dead." 

Even if Iranian officials choose to pursue a case of group libel -- a controversial legal theory, typically raised in cases of racial hate speech -- they would still have to prove that the regime suffered an injury to reputation and measurable damages as a result of the film. 

As for where Iran could file its lawsuit, Noah Feldman, a professor of international and constitutional law at Harvard, tells FP, "The Iranianans could bring suit in any place where the film is shown, I suppose, and rely on anti-defamation laws." Still, he adds, "it seems highly unlikely to go anywhere in any credible jurisdiction."

Then again, Andrews reminds us, "it's the easiest thing in the world to file a suit." So while Iran might have an exceedingly difficult time proving their case, that won't necessarily stop them from giving the makers of Argo a minor headache in the process. 

If you've already threatened nuclear holocaust, shredded a sacrosanct armistice agreement, terminated a military telephone line, invalidated all non-aggression pacts, and declared "all-out-war," what do you do next to show the West you really really mean it this time?

That's the challenge facing North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as his regime reaches new heights of rhetorical belligerence in response to a fresh round of U.N. sanctions and the start of U.S.-South Korea military exercises.

In a way, it's almost inspiring how many unique and different types of threats the regime has been able to drum up over the last several weeks. But short of actual war, what more can Kim Jong Un do to manifest his rage? (He's already played the Nuke Card, for Pete's sake.) Here are some of the remaining tools in his temper-tantrum toolbox, according to top North Korean experts:

Threaten Internal Instability

It's a little counterintuitive but not out of the question. The threat of internal chaos, if delivered from the highest rungs of power, probably wouldn't intimidate the United States, but it would certainly spook China, which wants to avoid a flood of North Korean refugees across its border. Scott Snyder, senior fellow for Korea Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told FP this may be the DPRK's last threat left. "It does seem that the North Koreans are on the verge of running out of threats," Snyder said. "The last option for North Korea is to use the prospect of its own internal stability as a threat."  When asked how the DPRK might convey such a threat, Snyder said "probably by making oblique references to factionalism or infighting."

Threaten to Share Nukes

This could get the West's attention. "They could escalate by threatening to 'transfer' their
nuclear deterrent,'" Michael Green, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told FP. This is "something they threatened in 2003 and carried out in the form of helping Syria with the al-Kibar reactor, which Israel bombed in 2007." Time for a repeat?

'Demonstrate' That the Armistice Is Over

Short of all-out war, this tactic could manifest itself in the form of a modest conventional military hit on South Korea -- an approach Pyongyang took in 2010. "It's tough to outdo their comments, but I think they will have to follow up with some concrete action before they back down in the name of victory or peace," Jae H. Ku, director of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins, told FP. "I don't think they will do anything that will involve South Korean superiority, as in engaging the South Korean navy, but they can score some big hits that have larger political consequences. What if they shelled not some remote island but parts of Ilsan, a major suburb of Seoul just a few kilometers away from the border?" It goes without saying that the move would carry the risk of a South Korean counteroffensive and the end of food aid from the South.

Acts of Terrorism

Short of full-scale war, Paul Pillar, director of graduate studies at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program, emphasized the potential for some form of international terrorism. "Given that a nuclear strike probably represents the outer limit of threatened misbehavior, any different threats issued now would represent something of a comedown," he said. "But there are other -- more plausible -- things the regime could do that it is not doing now."

He continued. "One type of behavior that comes to mind is a return to international terrorism of the sort that included, in particular, the bombing in Rangoon in 1983 that killed several visiting members of the South Korean cabinet.  The sort of threat that could be voiced might refer in some way to holding individual members of the South Korean government responsible for what they do to the North and making them pay." Jae H. Ku also mentioned the potential for acts of terror such as "infiltration, assassination, abduction, and bombing of airliners."

Regardless, it's safe to say that any escalation beyond the current juncture represents a step into unchartered and extremely dangerous territory.

It's been a long hunt, but today U.S. officials confirmed the capture of al Qaeda spokesman and Osama bin Laden son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. Beating the FBI and CIA to the announcement, New York Congressman Peter King leaked the news to the press and made a point of referencing Ghaith's infamous post-9/11 propaganda videos.

"The propaganda statements in which Abu Ghaith and his late father-in-law, Osama bin Laden, praised the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are alone enough to merit the most serious punishment," King said.

The congressman's jurisprudence aside, it could certainly be said that Abu Ghaith was at the forefront as al Qaeda agents threw salt in the wounds of a reeling, post-9/11 America. In videos in which he appeared alongside Osama bin Laden, Abu Ghaith praised the attacks, dwelled on the demands of the terrorist network, and promised far more serious attacks in the future.  

His most infamous broadcasts were released in 2001 on Oct. 7 (shown above) and 10. "The Americans should know that the storm of plane attacks will not abate," Abu Ghaith said on Oct. 10. "There are thousands of the Islamic nation's youths who are eager to die just as the Americans are eager to live."

"Let the United States know that the battle will continue to be waged on its territory until it leaves our land, stops its support for the Jews, and lifts the unjust embargo on the Iraqi people," he continued. "U.S. interests are spread throughout the world. So, every Muslim should carry out his real role to champion his Islamic nation and religion."

After the release of the videos, the government of Kuwait stripped Abu Ghaith of his citizenship. He then moved to Iran in 2002 and was placed in a loose form of house arrest in 2003, according to reports. He is believed to have then illegally entered Turkey, where he was apprehended several weeks ago, deported to Jordan, and then placed in U.S. custody.

Though much of his rhetoric included empty threats, they were taken seriously by the Bush administration, including a claim that al Qaeda had a "right to kill four million Americans, including one million children, displace double that figure, and injure and cripple hundreds and thousands."

As Long War Journal noted, former CIA director George Tenet wrote in his book that it "would have been easy to dismiss his ranting as the hyperbole of a deranged man," but the government "had to consider the possibility that Abu Ghaith was attempting to justify the future use of weapons of mass destruction that might greatly exceed the death toll of 9/11." From now on, those empty threats will have to come from a prison cell, it seems.