Notices of the demise of Iran’s Green Revolution are premature. Without question, the tyrannical triumvirate — Ayotallah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard — have dealt a crippling blow to the popular movement protesting their electoral coup of June 12.

Thousands of Iranians have been arrested and savagely tortured — from street protesters to election campaign organizers for Mir Hussein Moussavi, the likely victor in that contest. Many are now being forced to “confess” to having been agents of the United States or Britain.

We have seen this play before, not simply in Iran but in other tyrannies that suppressed mass movements for democratic change with massive violence and terror.

But Iran in 2009 is not China in 1989, Burma in 1990 or Belarus in 2006. The crisis in the Islamic Republic has exposed and widened massive cracks within the ruling elite. Such divisions are always a sign of an impending crackup of dictatorship.

Despite the rush to bury Iran’s reformist movement as another lost cause, Iran remains at a possible political tipping point. Democracies around the world have a duty — not simply to themselves, but to their strategic interests — to weigh in. They must not be deterred by threats to shun talks over Iran’s nuclear program.

President Obama has gotten it right by signaling America’s support for peaceful protest, human rights and the rule of law. More explicit language, not to mention action, would only play into the hands of the most cynical and vicious conservative elements in Iran. Moreover, with no diplomatic ties and all but no trade with Iran, there is little more the U.S. could do right now to pressure the regime.

But there are over 100 other democracies in the world. It is time that their voices were heard and their actions felt in Tehran.

Britain shares with the U.S. the handicap of a past history of negative interference in Iran. But Britain has diplomatic and economic ties to the regime, and breaking or suspending those will weaken Ayatollah Khamenei and his reactionary allies.

Moreover, Britain can have a unique kind of impact in Iran: For more than a century, Iranians have believed in the omnipotence of the “British hand” in the affairs of their country. Any indication that Britain is no longer willing to do business with the Islamic regime will hearten the Iranian people and undermine the regime’s aura of invincibility.

Germany, France and Italy are major trading partners with Iran. They have little history of colonial interference in Iranian affairs. Their decision to refuse to recognize the Ahmadinejad regime would have an immense effect. More compelling still would be a similar declaration from the entire Group of 8 at its impending summit.

The smaller and less powerful democracies can also have an impact. It would be preposterous for Iranian hardliners to attribute ulterior strategic motives to actions by the Scandinavian countries or the Netherlands, Ireland, Canada or Slovenia. If a coalition of such countries were to condemn the crackdown, call for a release of political prisoners and demand full respect for human rights — and back up these positions with a downgrading of diplomatic and trade ties — this would send a powerful message to both sides in Iran.

Many democracies around the world, including the above, have diplomatic ties with Iran. It is important that they maintain their embassies in Tehran. But they should now refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s government.

The most powerful coalition of democracies in the world, the 27-member European Union, is now debating whether to withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran in protest over the detention of the British Embassy’s Iranian personnel.

The withdrawal of E.U. ambassadors would send a stunning message to the Iranian hardliners that coups and bloody suppression of peaceful protests carry a heavy price in international standing.

With the simple diplomatic act of denying legitimacy — something nearly all democratic forces in Iran are now asking of the world — the democracies of the world can give a needed boost to the forces of democratic change in Iran and earn the lasting gratitude of a movement that will eventually triumph.

As President Obama will soon discover, erasing the nuclear weapons legacy of the cold war is like running the Snake River rapids in Wyoming — the first moments in the tranquil upstream waters offer little hint of the vortex ahead. Now that Mr. Obama has set a promising arms reduction agenda with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, he faces the greater challenge of getting his own government and the American nuclear weapons establishment to support his audacious plan to make deep weapons cuts and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons.

So far, Mr. Obama has effectively coupled an overarching vision of getting to a world without nuclear weapons, outlined in a speech in Prague earlier this year, with concrete first steps like the one-quarter reduction in operational strategic nuclear weapons promised in Moscow this week. Given his short time in office, and the looming December expiration of the treaty with Russia covering strategic nuclear arms reductions, the new limits are a good, realistic start. It is especially important to extend the monitoring and verification provisions of the expiring arms accord.

But the overall Obama approach involves a balancing act that requires him to move boldly while reassuring opponents that he is not endangering our security. Put simply, he has to maintain a potent nuclear arsenal while slashing it.

Mr. Obama might consider Ronald Reagan’s experience when he tried to set a similar course. The nuclear weapons crowd practically disowned Reagan when he proposed abolishing nuclear weapons during his 1986 summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. After the meeting, when Reagan asked his generals to explore the ramifications of possibly sharply cutting warheads and eliminating nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, they politely but firmly told their commander in chief it was a terrible idea.

Mr. Obama’s moment of truth with his generals is coming later this year when the Pentagon completes its periodic Nuclear Posture Review. This, in the Pentagon’s words, “will establish U.S. nuclear deterrence policy, strategy and force posture for the next 5 to 10 years.” So it will be the American nuclear weapons bible for the remainder of Mr. Obama’s presidency, one term or two.

President Obama must make sure it reflects his thinking. That will not be automatic, because the nuclear weapons complex — the array of Pentagon and Energy Department agencies involved in nuclear operations, including the armed services and the weapons labs — harbors considerable doubt about his plans. The same goes for the wider world of defense strategists. There is resistance in Congress, too.

The view in these quarters is that the weapons cuts Mr. Obama envisions — deeper than the modest goals set in Moscow this week — would dangerously undermine the power of America’s arsenal to deter attacks against the United States and its allies. Sentiment also favors building a new generation of warheads, a step Mr. Obama has rejected.

If the White House does not assert itself, the Nuclear Posture Review could easily spin off in unhelpful directions. The review that was produced when Bill Clinton was president in 1994 offered a rehash of cold war policies. The one that was done when George W. Bush took office in 2001 was more unconventional, but was quickly overshadowed by the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq.

To serve Mr. Obama’s interests, the new review should lay the groundwork for pronounced cuts in weapons and shape America’s nuclear stockpile to fit a world in which threats are more likely to come from states like North Korea and Iran than from a heavily armed power like Russia.

After the review, the next big test for Mr. Obama will likely be Senate consideration of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He has pledged to resubmit this 1996 United Nations treaty, which was flatly rejected by the Senate in 1999.

To get the two-thirds majority needed for its approval, Mr. Obama will need to hold his fellow Democrats in line — far from a sure thing — and also pick up some Republican support. Two influential Republican senators — John McCain and Richard Lugar — are pivotal. Both voted against the treaty in 1999.

Opponents wrongly argue that the treaty is unverifiable. That might have been the case a decade ago, but technological advances make monitoring of even small underground nuclear tests possible today. Critics also say a permanent ban on testing — the United States has honored a moratorium since 1992 — would eventually cripple the nation’s ability to maintain reliable warheads. So far, most weapons experts would say, that has not proven to be true and should not be for many years.

Few presidential moments are more glittering than the announcement of arms reduction accords in the Kremlin’s gilded halls. For Mr. Obama, that was the easy part.

Peter B. Henry, the Matsushita Professor of International Economics at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and an affiliated faculty member with the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), has been appointed by President Obama to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, the White House has announced. This distinguished and diverse group of 28 accomplished Americans is responsible for recommending an exceptional group of men and women to the President for selection as White House Fellows, America’s most prestigious program for leadership and public service.

“The men and women of this commission embody what makes the White House Fellows program so special,” said President Obama in making the June 17 announcement. “These leaders are diverse, non-partisan, and committed to mentoring our next generation of public servants. I am confident that they will select a class of White House Fellows that demonstrate extraordinary leadership, strong character, and a deep commitment to serving their country.”

“Peter Henry is a superb scholar, teacher, leader, and mentor,” said CDDRL Director and FSI and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Larry Diamond. “This recognition is richly deserved and will give Peter a national venue to continue developing a new generation of leaders, scholars, and policy practitioners.”

Alumni of the White House Fellows Program include former Secretary of State Colin Powell, retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, and author Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Henry is also the John and Cynthia Fry Gunn Faculty Scholar and Associate Director of the Center for Global Business and the Economy at Stanford’s business school.  He is a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Among the numerous awards and honors Henry has received are a National Science Foundation Early CAREER Development Award, a National Science Foundation Minority Graduate Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and the National Economic Association Dissertation Prize.  He has published several articles in journals and books, including “Capital Account Liberalization, the Cost of Capital, and Economic Growth” in the American Economic Review and “Perspective Paper on Financial Instability” in Bjorn Lomborg’s Global Crises, Global Solutions.

Dr. Henry received his BA in Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was later a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a BA in Mathematics.  He received his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institution of Technology.

Professor Henry is also part of the distinguished Stanford faculty group that teaches in the Draper Hills Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program each summer at Stanford.  From some 800 applicants, this program selects 25 to 30 rising leaders from important countries in transition – such as Russia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe—and brings them to Stanford to examine and help foster linkages among democracy, development, human rights, and the rule of law in their countries.  Other Stanford faculty teaching the Draper Hills Summer Fellows include Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper, FSI Deputy Director Stephen Krasner, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond and Deputy Director Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, FSI Senior Fellow Helen Stacy, Avner Greif from economics, and Erik Jensen from Stanford Law School.

High-level American envoys visiting Seoul say they are cooperating with regional allies to dissuade North Korea from the path of nuclear weaponry and back to dialogue aimed at disarmament. The delegation is making stops around Asia for consultations on how to respond to last month's nuclear weapon test by the North.

Daniel Sneider is with Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He says neither the Obama administration, nor any future one, can afford to recognize North Korea as a nuclear weapons nation.

"It would, for one thing, undermine our alliances with South Korea and Japan.. and, frankly it would set an increasing risk of serial proliferation in this region," he said. "It would give further encouragement to those - in Iran, first and foremost - who are on a similar path, who have sought and gotten the help of North Korea to get there. So we can't do that."

In recent months, North Korea has put on trial two young American journalists working for former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV, launched a long-range rocket, and tested its second nuclear device. It has renounced the Beijing Six-Party nuclear talks and the 1953 Korean armistice agreement. It will likely soon fire another long-range rocket and may test a third nuclear device and stage limited military attacks against South Korea.

The regime’s actions are a source of serious concern. North Korea might transfer nuclear weapons technology to rogue states or terrorist groups. It has long sold its missiles to many countries in the troubled Middle East and South Asia, and two years ago the Israelis destroyed a nuclear facility that the North Koreans were building in Syria, possibly in coordination with Iran.

North Korea’s pursuit of reliable nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles with which to launch them constitutes a direct threat not only to the United States but even more so to U.S. allies Japan and South Korea. The Japanese and South Koreans may eventually feel forced to build their own nuclear arsenals, which could destroy the balance of power with China in East Asia.

Pyongyang has often engaged in provocative behavior, but lately the pace and tone of its threats have worsened considerably. After suffering a stroke last fall, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il seems to have begun the process of naming his 26-year-old third son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor. The nuclear and rocket tests may have been aimed at boosting nationalistic enthusiasm for the move. Even in North Korea there may be those who question the legitimacy of yet another dynastic succession there.

But while extreme and anachronistic, North Korean leaders are not irrational. Fundamentally, they feel they must have a nuclear “deterrent,” as they call it, to re-balance their relationship with South Korea. North Korean leaders believe theirs to be the legitimate Korean regime on the peninsula, but they know that democratic South Korea is decades ahead of them, economically, diplomatically, and in conventional military terms.

Information about North Korea is scarce but two decades of dealing with North Korea have given American policymakers a much better understanding of the regime. The North’s brinkmanship playbook is now well known, and the Obama administration is determined not to play that game anymore. It has made clear it is willing to deal fairly with North Korea but that it will increase diplomatic, financial, and military pressures on the regime until it agrees to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

The United States will need to proceed very carefully. There is no perfect North Korea policy, no silver bullet that will suddenly end all of the challenges the regime poses. Although North Korea is basically a failing country, its artillery arrayed along the Demilitarized Zone just north of Seoul could cause hundreds of thousands of casualties there. Over the past decades, the North Koreans have come to believe that they almost always win when they engage in a game of chicken with the United States and South Korea. They will almost certainly continue their provocations until they think they have won the latest match.

The United States and its allies must game-out the many possible scenarios on the Korean Peninsula and be prepared for continuing North Korean provocations, something previous U.S. administrations have not done well. The aim should be gradually to limit North Korean room for maneuver and eventually force them to abandon their nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs. At the same time, the United States should ignore calls for drastic steps that risk war on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea’s nuclear and rocket programs are still primitive; the regime is weak. There is still time for stronger and smarter diplomacy - including both sticks and carrots - to work.

The fortunes of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood may be shifting after three difficult years that saw the group's worst electoral result in history, reports of diminished influence, and sustained government repression. After hitting an unprecedented low, the relationship between the Jordanian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest opposition grouping, has improved recently. This is the opposite of what many observers, including this author, expected. Hammam Sa'id, known as a hardliner, was elected General Guide of the organization in May 2008, leading many to predict heightened confrontation between regime and opposition. Analysts Matthew Levitt and David Schenker wrote, for instance, that the leadership change suggested the Brotherhood "can no longer be considered ‘loyal' to the kingdom." During Sa'id's tenure, however, events have moved in an unexpected direction. Since being elected, he has toned down his abrasive rhetoric, emphasized domestic priorities, and made an effort to reach understandings with the government of Prime Minister Nader al-Dahabi on key issues of contention.

The question of the Palestinian Resistance Movement (Hamas) is one area where Islamists and the regime have moved closer to each other. After nine years of severed ties, Jordan has opened a dialogue with Hamas, recognizing the group's growing influence and its strong position in Gaza. With its close ties to Hamas leaders, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), played a critical role in facilitating the resumption of contacts.  

Moreover, Jordan's King Abdullah-known as one of the region's most pro-Western rulers-has attempted to strengthen ties to other U.S. adversaries, including Iran and Russia. He has met with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev three times in the last eight months, and their discussions have increasingly revolved around military assistance and cooperation, including joint production of multi-caliber grenade launchers. Such moves have given Islamists hope that Jordan is beginning to shake off Washington's tight embrace.  

For their part, Islamists are drawing a degree of optimism from their improved relations with the regime. Even IAF Secretary-General Zaki Bani Irsheid, one of the government's fiercest detractors, said in a private conversation in August that Jordan may be entering a "new political phase." Coinciding with the improved ties between Islamists and the regime, relations between internal Brotherhood/IAF factions have also improved after nine months of crippling internal divisions that had threatened to tear the movement apart. In early August, so-called hawks and doves reached an agreement that left both sides content, at least temporarily. The agreement reflects what had been a difficult and sustained round of internal negotiations over a variety of contentious issues, including Bani Irsheid's pending trial by an internal IAF court for allegedly sabotaging his own party's prospects in the 2007 parliamentary elections. This agreement might have postponed further infighting, however, rather than ended it; there are still factions within the Brotherhood that hold substantially different visions on how to proceed in what remains a challenging economic and political environment.  

It is unclear what the Jordanian regime's efforts at strategic repositioning-taking into account a perceived decline in U.S. influence in the region-bode for further political opening and reform. Over the last three years, the Jordanian government interpreted U.S. silence on reform as a green light to clamp down aggressively on Islamists. However, if it continues to see a need to reach out to Hamas, the regime will    need to expand political space for the Islamist opposition and maintain a mutually beneficial working relationship with it.  

Of course, there have been bouts of optimism before, and they have been misplaced. Each time the regime has reached out to the Brotherhood, as it did in advance of the November 2007 elections, it has quickly reversed course and resumed anti-Islamist policies. Islamists are unlikely to be fooled again. Despite the optimism expressed by Bani Irsheid and others, most Islamists see this as yet another round of tactical maneuvering. The Jordanian regime is not necessarily acting in good faith; it is acting in its own self-interest. So too is the Islamist opposition.