BEWARE OF BORDERS: Three American hikers arrested last summer for crossing into Iran from Iraq are now being called spies by the Iranian government. They aren’t, of course. Our intelligence agencies are too sophisticated to send people in country that way, but Tehran finds them useful and is now proposing a prisoner swap.

Years ago I walked right up to the Iranian border from the Iraqi side with a colleague, and we retreated the instant we sensed we were within grabbing distance of Iranian border guards. In hindsight, getting even that close may have been a little too daring.

I SURE HOPE HE’S WRONG: Christopher Booker says of the Euro crisis, “We have still scarcely begun to wake up to the gravity of the crisis now upon us, not just for the eurozone but also for us here in Britain and for the entire global economy.”

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: We are not done with Goldstone.

IT’S A HAZARD OF THE PROFESSION: Al Qaeda big shot in Yemen blows himself up while tinkering with a bomb.

THE FOOL ON HIS ERRAND: John Kerry returns to Syria hoping Bashar Assad and his Baath Party regime will work toward a pan-Arab peace treaty with Israel. He’ll fail.

GORDON CHANG on Obama, the sinking of the Cheonan, and the failure of nuclear deterrence.

MICHAEL YON is still in Thailand and posting updates on his Facebook page. Things seem to have quieted down, at least for now. He has a few words of warning, though, about war tourism. “During the recent troubles some tourists came to the danger zone to see the action. This is incredibly dangerous. I read that a total of 85 people were killed and about 1,900 injured. If you’ve never been in combat you’ll probably have a very bad surprise if it kicks off. It’s not fun and it’s not a thrill ride and you literally can get your guts shot out.”

THE ISRAELI-ARAB ALLIANCE AGAINST IRAN.

RUSSIA will sell an advanced missile system to Iran despite sanctions.

THE ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTRY says thirty five tons of weapons seized last year on a plane from North Korea were bound for Hezbollah.

BENJAMIN KERSTEIN on liberalism and Zionism.

IS THE EURO AS WE KNOW IT FINISHED?

LEE SMITH says Lebanese-American Rima Fakih, this year’s Miss America winner, isn’t necessarily a fully Westernized Muslim just because she wore a bathing suit. She may well be what her admirers say she is, but to know for certain you’d have to look into her head and her heart, not at her body or clothes. The same is true for any other beauty pageant contestant, but there’s something else, too: Some bikini-clad women in Lebanon, believe it or not, support Hezbollah, just as a small number of Middle Eastern doctors perversely become terrorists.

I have already strongly recommended Smith’s book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations, but I want to plug it one last time because everyone who wants to understand how the Middle East works needs to read this.

IMPERIALIST RUNNING DOG Joshua Stanton on how to overthrow North Korea’s Kim dynasty: A Capitalist Manifesto, Part One and Part Two.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The Fruits of Weakness.

WE’D BETTER HOPE THIS IS JUST BOMBAST: “North Korea said on Friday the peninsula was heading toward war and it was ready to tear up all agreements with the South after it accused the reclusive state of torpedoing a navy ship near their disputed border.”

HEZBOLLAH IS INTERESTING IN THE WAY FREDDY KRUGER IS INTERESTING: Michael Ledeen has more on why searching for Hezbollah “moderates” is such a half-baked idea, and retired Lt. Col. Rick Francona wonders why John Brennan, who hatched this idea in the first place, still has a job.

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE: The cyborg insects are coming.

MICHAEL RUBIN reviews Lebanese-American author Michael Young’s new book The Ghosts of Martyrs Square, which I strongly recommend to anyone who wants to understand what has happened to that tortured country since the Syrians were evicted in 2005.

THE TRUTH ABOUT SYRIA. Evelyn Gordon understands what the White House does not. “As long as Assad can get everything he wants from the West without a peace deal, Israeli-Syrian peace will be unattainable. Only when the West starts punishing ‘resistance’ rather than rewarding it will Assad’s strategic calculation change.”

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Don’t let Iran blackmail the world.

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD’S CHIEF OF STAFF says Iran can destroy Israel in a week.

SEARCHING FOR MODERATE TERRORISTS is a complete waste of time.

SIGH: Pakistan blocks access to Facebook and YouTube, apparently to protect its people from Mohammad cartoons.

IT’S NOT OVER IN THAILAND: Some of the Red Shirt leaders may have surrendered in Bangkok, but violence is spreading. Michael Yon is posting updates on his Facebook page and is getting picked up by Thai media, while Joshua Kurlantzick publishes a piece in Foreign Policy explaining what led to all this.