New York Times

As the world watches the political maneuvering over restarting nuclear talks with Iran -- this time with American participation -- few are paying attention to a broader strategic competition that has started between the United States, Russia and China. Ultimately, this competition will decide not only the direction of Iran's nuclear activities but also its economic, political and military role in the Middle East and beyond. The outcome hinges on which countries will assume dominance in developing Iran's enormous oil and natural gas reserves.

You wouldn't expect to find good news for President Bush in a book by Andrew Kohut, a pollster and commentator who seems to divide his time between quantifying America's Bush-era plunge in the world's esteem and quantifying Bush's plunge in America's esteem. Then again, you also wouldn't expect to find good news for President Bush in a book by Julia E. Sweig, a liberal senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

OVERTHROW:America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq

By Stephen Kinzer

Illustrated. 384 pp. Times Books/Henry Holt & Company. $27.50.

Is the United States importing too many immigrant physicists and not enough immigrant farm workers? You might think so, to judge from two provisions that Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, added to the comprehensive immigration reform package that just fell apart in the Senate. Senator Feinstein insisted that the bill call for some fees for foreign students applying to study at American colleges and universities to be doubled, and also demanded that agribusiness get the right to 1.5 million low-wage foreign guest workers over five years.

Bush administration defenders, right-wing bloggers and neoconservative publications are crowing about Iraqi documents newly released by the Pentagon that, they say, prove that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were in league.

As states get ready to comply with a law passed last May and roll out Real IDs (think 50 flavors of enhanced drivers' licenses that will also, for lack of anything more suitable, regulate access to airplanes, bars and banks), it might be time to consider a national identification card. Unfortunately, two camps own the conversation.

The American left and right don't agree on much, but weeks of demonstrations and embassy burnings have pushed them toward convergence on one point: there is, if not a clash of civilizations, at least a very big gap between the "Western world" and the "Muslim world." When you get beyond this consensus -- the cultural chasm consensus -- and ask what to do about the problem, there is less agreement. After all, chasms are hard to bridge.

When Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called last week for Israel to be "wiped off the map," he raised fears not only abroad but also at home, particularly among Iran's sizeable, democratically minded middle class. The new president's confrontational tone threatens to deepen the isolation of Iran's democrats, pushing them further behind his long shadow. Western powers have a dual challenge: to find a way to engage this population even as they struggle to address the new president's inflammatory rhetoric.

While it's impossible to measure the human suffering caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it is possible to measure their effect on the nation's budget. Given our precarious fiscal situation -- large budget deficits and huge imbalances for long-term entitlement programs -- Congress cannot afford to blindly add billions to the already swollen deficit.  In the comming years (or better yet, months) there will have to be a bi-partisan effort to balance the budget for both the short and long terms.

The votes are all in, and Fernando Ferrer has won New York's Democratic mayoral nomination, narrowly avoiding a runoff (even a nominal one) with Representative Anthony Weiner. That sounds like great news for the Democrats, who can now focus on trying to defeat Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But in truth it's the opposite: what New York's Democrats need isn't hand-holding--it's bloodletting.