Stories I'm following today

Tom Friedman’s bemusing and creative diplomatic solution for Iran – an Obama-Cheney ticket. In The New York Times, Friedman calls for a good cop-bad cop routine that would squeeze out concessions from Iran. The catch: Washington needs to be prepared to accept yes for an answer.

It’s the U.S. and the west as a whole that keep getting the Pakistan story wrong – Musharraf was always an autocrat, but the outside persisted in seeing him as a democrat in a uniform. Peter Spiegel of the L.A. Times reports on the Pentagon finally adopting a constructive approach to Pakistan’s current crisis – tie aid to results in the pursuit of militants.

Saudi Arabia has a lesson for Russia – it’s okay to be a price-setting petro-superpower if you seem interested in establishing a stable market. Last week, Russia’s energy minister told Guy Chazan of The Wall Street Journal that the oil-thirsty world should expect only modest supply increases from Russia in the coming years. Here, Javier Blas of the FT reports on Saudi Arabia’s own plans to boost production in response to the world’s supply crunch.