ROUGH RIDE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Michael Young at Reason reviews Lee Smith’s book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. If you want to know what ails the Arab world, Smith is your man and this is your book.

EVEN CRIPPLING OR BITING sanctions would most likely fail to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, but Marty Peretz says what’s on offer right now is feeble and flaccid. “This will only encourage Tehran to be more and more truculent in its nuclear pursuits. This faces the United States and the West with the option of force. Or Israel with the imperative of force.”

THE OTHER IRAQ: It has been a while since I’ve been to Iraqi Kurdistan, but Abe Greenwald is there now and wrote a strong piece for Commentary.

DOES THIS MEAN IT’S OVER? Red Shirt leaders surrender in Thailand.

YIKES: Reuters reports that South Korea plans to officially blame North Korea for sinking its warship in March.

OUTSTANDING PALESTINIAN JOURNALIST Khaled Abu Toameh explains why an imposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a terrible idea. Meanwhile, former PLO ambassador Ali Kazak accuses him of being a traitor for exposing corruption in the West Bank and Gaza.

YESTERDAY I posted a link to an article by Claire Berlinski about the Soviet archives, an article Ron Radosh takes issue with. Berlinski and Radosh are both terrific authors, and I hate getting caught in the middle of a dispute between them, but I’ll let readers interested in this topic read both and decide for themselves.

UPDATE: Claire Berlinski responds to Ron Radosh here.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS’ new book Hitch-22: A Memoir wasn’t supposed to be released until June, but my copy from Amazon.com arrived today. He sent me an uncorrected advance reader copy a few weeks ago, and it’s terrific.

MAX BOOT on the ongoing Korean war.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Left, right, and wrong.

CLAIRE BERLINSKI at City Journal wonders why hardly anyone cares about the unread Soviet archives.

PATRICK WINN at the Atlantic says Bangkok looks, smells, and sounds like war.

TONY BADRAN on the shape of things to come with Iran.

AFTER SWEDISH CARTOONIST LARS VILKS was attacked in a theater last week for showing ten seconds of a provocative film offensive to Muslims, his house was set ablaze over the weekend.

MIDDLE EAST democracy advocates are fed up with Obama. If he didn’t see that coming, he certainly should have.

REQUIRED READING: My colleague Rick Richman at Commentary agrees with me that Paul Berman’s terrific new book The Flight of the Intellectuals should be considered required reading, and he adds two more to the list: Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England by Anthony Julius and The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism by Pascal Bruckner.

TERRORISTS KILL MUSLIMS AGAINST TERRORISM: Two Sunni Arab imams in Iraq were savagely murdered today after preaching against Al Qaeda in their mosques.

MAOIST REBELS destroy a bus in India with a roadside bomb and kill dozens, including civilians and police officers. It’s hard to believe communist insurgency is back so many years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but at least it doesn’t have much of a cheering section this time.

SHOWDOWN IN TEHRAN: In six days, on the 31st anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, we may see the biggest and possibly the bloodiest confrontation yet between the regime and its enemies, the Iranian people.

PROGRESS OF SORTS: Gen. McChrystal says the situation in Afghanistan is serious, but at least it’s no longer deteriorating.

GOOD GRIEF: High school girl arrested and handcuffed for doodling on her desk.

SO THAT EXPLAINS IT: Why a six-hour flight now takes seven.

GET A CLUE: Hezbollah is not the IRA.

CHANGE! Harry Reid trails four Republicans.

WE’LL SEE HOW THAT WORKS FOR YA: Obama dismisses pleas from his own party to move to the center.