As we wind down the clock on 2011 (Guys, why are still using winding clocks in 2011? Go digital!), a lot of people are making predictions about the year to come. With the Mayans already having staked a claim on one of the biggies, most pundits are focusing their predictions on the coming election. Yesterday, The Five‘s Kimberly Guilfoyle predicted that President Obama already had the election “wrapped up.” Today, Donald Trump shared his two dollars (rich men’s thoughts are worth more than two measly cents) by predicting that, to win the election, Obama would launch a war with Iran.

Given that tonight’s CNN debate is focused exclusively on foreign policy, Rep. Ron Paul has been getting many of the questions and answering, predictably, in a much different manner than many of his fellow candidates. On the most delicate foreign policy issue in the Republican Party, however, the defense of Israel, Rep. Paul did not back down on his refusal to intertwine himself in their foreign affairs, telling the audience tonight that he would not support materially an attack on Iran by Israel.

With Rep. Ron Paul consistently near the top of Republican polls since the presidential campaigns started at full speed, the Congressman’s libertarian policies are receiving increased scrutiny. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly and Brit Hume discussed Rep. Paul’s appearance on Face the Nation, where host Bob Schieffer took him to task on his position on a nuclear Iran. Rep. Paul’s answers, O’Reilly contended, were “dangerous stuff,” for someone who would want to be President.

Rep. Ron Paul was on the receiving end of some of the hardest questions he has taken since the 2012 campaign for president began, perhaps not in small part due to his recurring appearance at the top of Republican polls. On today’s Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer pressed Rep. Paul to explain how his attitude towards American foreign policy did not amount to “saying Americans caused 9/11,” and how he would deal with Iran in a way that would guarantee safety.

Are GOP presidential candidates committing treason by openly discussing covert operations in Iran? That is what CNN implicitly suggested in a report today on The Situation Room.

“We don’t have to talk about that, nor should anyone who wants to go into public office. So what we see with current debates and discussions about covert operations, specifically against Iran or other potential nations or entities, should be eliminated. That needs to stop,” said retired Army intelligence general James Marx.

At Saturday night’s Republican presidential debate on national security and foreign policy, co-frontrunner Mitt Romney and others harshly criticized President Obama‘s efforts to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, based on a recent IAEA report. At a press conference in Hawaii Sunday evening, President Obama brushed off the “shocking” criticism, and saying that anyone who oversimplifies the issue “is either politicking, or doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

Who knew that almost fifty years later, the legacy of President John F. Kennedy would arouse such passionate feelings in people? Chris Matthews, who was on Real Time with Bill Maher tonight to promote his new book about the late president, was naturally very defensive of the Kennedy legacy, and went at it rather passionately with fellow panelist Andrew Sullivan over Kennedy’s foreign policy credentials and whether he was a militaristic hawk while in office.

Herman Cain has a lot of problems on his plate, but he is facing the cameras, and tonight did another extended interview, this time with Bill O’Reilly. While he spent half the interview discussing the recent sexual harassment charges, it is the second half of the interview– on foreign policy– where Cain lets out some new views, including the fact that a war with Iran doesn’t seem to phase him, nor does he consider putting warships on the Persian Gulf a “provocation.”

It’s been an earth-shattering week for Middle Eastern dictators, and with the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, many in the region are turning their eyes towards Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as their people continue to struggle (though less violently) from within to free themselves from their regime. Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, is doing a round of media in America, talking to Fareed Zakaria in an interview airing tomorrow on CNN, and asking that the international community respect Syria’s relationship with its citizens.

Rep. Ron Paul is guaranteed to deliver an offbeat comment or drag in a topic no one else on the stage will during almost any Republican debate, but this time around, he knocked the wind out of the sails of his colleagues by taking a swipe at the most venerated figure in his party. Yes, Rep. Paul asked his colleagues to condemn President Ronald Reagan for exchanging arms for hostages in Iran during his tenure. Naturally, he mostly got crickets as a response.

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat who endorsed Republican Bob Turner in New York’s 9th District special election for the Anthony Weiner seat to “send a message to Obama to take a stronger position in support of Israel,” told MSNBC’s Rev. Al Sharpton last night that he is “back on board the bus,” and will campaign for the President’s reelection. Koch recounted, for Sharpton’s PoliticsNation viewers, the conversation he had with the President that changed his mind.

To the untrained eye it might seem that Norah O’Donnell of CBS should be buying a beer for White House Press Secretary Jay Carney right now to make up for her hardcore follow-up questioning at this afternoon’s press briefing on how the United States would be reacting to the attempted assassination attempt of Adel A. Al-Jubeir, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States. Mediaite’s own White House reporter Tommy Christopher assures me this kind of questioning is routine at White House briefings.

At about 2:15 on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that charges have been filed against Manssor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen holding both Iranian and U.S. passports, and Gholam Shakuri, an Iran-based member of Iran’s Qods Force–a special operations unit of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)–in an attempt to assassinate Adel A. Al-Jubeir, the 49 year-old Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the U.S. The attacks, according to Holder, were to take place in Washington, D.C. Charges were filed in federal court out of New York’s Southern District.

Up until last week, Americans Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal had been held in an Iranian prison since July 2009. The two arrived back in the United States and made clear that they saw their 781 days in captivity as nothing more than the symptom of spiteful diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. According to Bauer, whenever they complained about conditions, the Iranian guards “immediately remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay.”

After more than two months of imprisonment, and then several more weeks of uncertainty, the two American hikers being held as spies in Iran have been released today. Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, were immediately flown to Oman where freedom and their families waited. The two arrived just before midnight local time, exiting the plane in a near run, before being ushered of without making statements to reporters. According to MSNBC , the two “appeared thin, but in good health.”

After a debate night marked by the multilateral attack facing frontrunner Rick Perry, his closest competitor, Mitt Romney, gave his assessment on the performance and some topics that eluded the candidates on stage to Bill O’Reilly tonight. After a few questions on his relationship with Perry and the dynamics on stage, however, O’Reilly went on the offensive, pushing Romney to explain how, after the killing of Osama Bin Laden, President Obama could be considered a foreign policy failure.

Despite condemning the NATO-led operation in the African nation, Iran has publicly supported the Libyan rebels in their struggle for freedom. President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad said a few months ago that Gaddafi’s forces should not be killing civilians.

The debate began with the two most similar candidates– Minnesotans Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Michele Bachmann– pulling no punches in disparaging each other’s records. It wouldn’t take long for the two most different candidates to have at it, and the foreign policy conversation between. Rep. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum delivered just as much as the experience one among the Minnesotans.

Sometimes it takes an outrageous comment from a foreign leader to remind Americans of how advanced our capacity for empathy has become. To many in the West, it may come as a surprise that Iranian President (and, for all purposes, dictator) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has angered many of the country’s powers-that-be for being too “liberal,” especially given that his “liberal” comments now include blasting those who promote the ownership of nuclear weapons as “retarded people.”

Bill O’Reilly introduced his first guest of tonight’s show emphasizing the bizarre position she now found herself in: “does it make you queasy that you are now in agreement with some on the far left about Afghanistan?” Naturally, when put that way, Ann Coulter was spooked, though “even a broken clock is right twice a day,” and argued that Democrats now wanted to stay in Afghanistan only because it “is not in America’s national security interest.”

Reports have been coming in that 11 people were hung in Iran yesterday with five people hung to death in public. However, the group Iran Human Rights has an incredibly disturbing report about the executions. They claim to have a picture that shows a young boy of indeterminate age being used to actually perform one of the public executions.

Presidential candidates, as a rule, hate being corrected by lowly reporters. Just ask Tim Pawlenty. Meeting with reporters on the trail, Pawlenty was asked about U.S. policy towards Iran, but seemed to be referring to Iraq in his response, “I think the situation now in Iran is such that Secretary Gates is negotiating with whether the United States Military will be there beyond the end of this year. And they’re looking to the Iranians to see if they invite the Americans to stay, invite us to stay.” The extended answer was interrupted by a reporter who said “you mean Iraq, not Iran.”

And naturally, it was caught on tape and distributed, Politico’s Ben Smith says, by “the new Democratic group American Bridge.”

In an interview with PressTV of Iran, former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney said the Tea Party movement “was definitely hijacked.” McKinney, making her first visit to Iran to attend an anti-terrorism seminar, told her interviewer that there was “tremendous pressure inside the political process to make sure that the voters stay aligned inside either the Democratic or the Republican parties, because both of those parties have been captured by special interests.”

McKinney suggested the Tea Party was an example of a grassroots movement “hijacked” and then “corralled back into the Republican Party fold so that these could then stay where the powers that be would like them to be.” McKinney said Sarah Palin was a key part of that effort:

An Al Jazeera journalist detained for 19 days–three in Syria and then 16 in Iran–has given her first interview to Al Jazeera English since being released by Iranian officials Wednesday. Dorothy Parvaz, returned to AJE headquarters in Doha, says her experience mirrors that for many in Syria: sudden, unexplained arrests, captivity without any way of contacting friends, employers or family, and routine physical abuse. “The beatings I heard around the clock were savage,” she said.

Al Jazeera confirms this morning that one of its journalists, Dorothy Parvaz, has been released from detention in Iran and is safe, headed home to Canada. “I’m delighted to let you know that Dorothy Parvaz has been released and is safe and well and back with us in Doha,” said an Al Jazeera spokesperson. “She has been in contact with her family, and we are with her now to find out more about her ordeal over the last nineteen days.”