Victor Davis Hanson:
The world of publicity-hungry Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not expanding, but shrinking. Despite his supposedly populist credentials, his support at home and abroad will only further weaken as long as the United States continues its steady, calm and quiet pressure on him.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/VictorDavisHanson/2006/12/28/iran%e2%80%99s_ahmadinejad_far_weaker_than_he_lets_on

Daniel Pipes:
After defeating fascists and communists, can the West now defeat the Islamists?
On the face of it, its military preponderance makes victory seem inevitable. Even if Tehran acquires a nuclear weapon, Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the cold war. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the gulag?
Yet, more than a few analysts, including myself, worry that it’s not so simple. Islamists (defined as persons who demand to live by the sacred law of Islam, the Sharia)
might in fact do better than the earlier totalitarians. They could even win. That’s because, however strong the Western hardware, its software contains some potentially fatal bugs. Three of them – pacifism, self-hatred, complacency – deserve attention.
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4227

Tommy Lapid:
Does anyone really think it is possible to reach a settlement with the Palestinians that will guarantee peace between us?
I can understand that there are those who believe it may be possible to reach a settlement. And I can understand that there are those who hope it is possible to reach a settlement. But does anyone really think it is possible to make peace with the Palestinians - I mean, really think so?
How can one not see the rift among them, their inability to administer their own lives, Fatah’s helplessness, Hamas’s abysmal hatred, the murderousness of the popular resistance organizations, the destructive influence of radical Islam, the interference of Iran and the belief - so deeply rooted in almost every Arab heart - that, sooner or later, Israel will disappear off the map?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881991966&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull