Yves Herman/Reuters

Andrea Jelinek, the head of the European Data Protection Board, a new European body created to enforce the General Data Protection Regulation, gives a news conference in Brussels on May 25.

European regulators were once dismissed as pesky, procedural, and preoccupied with privacy. But as their new data protection regulation, considered among the toughest in the world, goes into effect today, their perspective could become the de facto global standard.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) establishes a range of new rules for how companies handle the personal data of customers in the EU. But, as the flurry of privacy updates filling up American email inboxes illustrates, it is already changing the way that companies outside the 28-nation bloc are doing business with customers, wherever they might be located.

Critics of the law have emphasized the burdens that it imposes on businesses outside the European Union. But some observers say that, just as state-level environmental standards were once considered unnecessarily costly but now figure among national, mainstream consumer demands, companies could adopt the privacy measures to market their trustworthiness to customers outside Europe. Trust is an increasingly valuable commodity in an era of data breaches, online stalking, and psychologically targeted hate speech and political propaganda.

“You can look at this as legal compliance,” says Paul Jordan, managing director of Europe for the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP). “But I think smart companies will look at this as a business enablement exercise as well.”

“Online customers are increasingly more sophisticated than they were 20 years ago, and they do pay attention to how their data is used,” says Mr. Jordan, who is based in Brussels. “So there is an opportunity for companies to build a new trust paradigm with an online consumer base.”

Your data, your rights

The regulation, which replaces a 1995 EU directive, enables those in the EU to request for free from companies any personal data they hold about them, and then have it corrected or deleted: the so-called “right to be forgotten.” Under the new law, businesses will need to explain in plain language what information they hold and how it’s used. Giving consent to use personal data must be “an affirmative act”: pre-ticked boxes or other “opt-out” mechanisms are not permitted. Noncompliance invites hefty fines – up to 20 million euros ($23 million) or 4 percent of annual global revenue, whichever is larger.

David Erdos, an expert in privacy law at the University of Cambridge in Britain, says that the regulation’s ultimate effectiveness depends on how vigorously it is enforced.

“Data protection has had a lot of challenges to be effectively implemented, and simply creating a new law doesn’t solve those fundamental difficulties,” he says. “In some ways it makes them more extreme, because if the rules now are more rigorous, and there is already a very significant implementation gap, then the problem of the implementation gap grows even larger come Friday.”

Questions remain over whether regulators will have adequate resources. And the learning curve is steep, for companies and the public alike. Julian Jaursch, of Digitale Gesellschaft, or Digital Society, a small nonprofit in Berlin, is running a German-government funded campaign for users that went live earlier this month called “Your Data, Your Rights.” “There is a lot of education that is needed,” he says.

A ‘flexing of state power’

Once facing the claim they are anti-technology – or at least anti-Silicon Valley – many European bureaucrats have insisted that they are creating a tool that speaks to the values of the 21st century, one that could raise standards everywhere.

“[GDPR] represents real flexing of state power in ways that are almost reminiscent of the 19th century, in the sense that the state is taking on the role of public risk guarantors,” says Trevor Butterworth, vice president of research for CynjaTech, an American company that specializes in data protection and privacy. “They see a risk in people people's data being abused, and they’re stepping in to say ‘look we’ve got rights and we're going to guarantee them protection.’ ”

Polls have long showed that Europeans – with histories of state police, dictatorships, and repression – tend to prioritize privacy more than Americans do: Pew research found in 2014 that 85 percent of Germans favored the new standards, compared to just 29 percent of Americans.

But with Russian meddling in the US election or the data breach with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, American minds have started to shift. “I think the two positions are converging as opposed to the opposite,” Jordan, of the IAPP, says.

That could make American companies more willing to use GDPR as a blueprint for privacy policies outside Europe. Microsoft and Facebook have already said as much.

It's not unheard of for governing bodies to enact laws that spill beyond their geographic borders. California, for example, has since the 1960s set vehicle emissions standards tighter than those mandated by the federal government. And because the Golden State presents such a large market for automobiles, many automakers have adopted California emissions standards for vehicles sold in all 50 US states.

But perhaps a better analogy for the GDPR is not environmental protection, says Mr. Butterworth, but the establishment of food safety standards at the turn of the 20th century.

“Why was the FDA created primarily? Well it was because nobody could trust the food they were eating,” he says. “People were clearly willing to poison their customers to make a profit. The FDA changed that. It could not have been easy to deal with these new rules. But ultimately the benefit was enormous. We can trust the food.”

A two-tiered system?

Calli Schroeder, an attorney with Lewis, Bess, Williams & Weese in Denver, who specializes in data privacy and security, says that the regulation carries a cost, either in updating standards or opting out of the EU market to avoid the regulation. But it also presents an opportunity: “You can make your company look really good by saying you’re going to give everyone the same rights,” she says.

Americans might become more demanding, especially if the privacy standards are bifurcated.

“The interesting question is, do American companies say we’re going to have a two-track system, we’re going to give all these rights to Europeans who use our products and we’re just going to strip mine Americans of their data?” Butterworth says. “Is that even economically rational? Is that feasible in terms of brand management? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

Marine Corps veteran Andrew Grant tucks a campaign flier into the hip pocket of his jeans, strides up the front walk, and rings the bell at a Spanish-style stucco home in this manicured suburb of Sacramento, Calif.

“I’m Andrew Grant, and I’m running for Congress,” the tall, athletic candidate tells retiree Don Holl, who cracks open the door and tentatively looks out. “I’m a Marine veteran,” Grant adds. 

“Oh, thank you for your service,” Mr. Holl says, perking up.

“I’m running against Ami Bera,” Grant continues, referring to the Democratic incumbent in California’s contested Seventh Congressional District.

“Good!” says Holl, now smiling broadly. “You’ve got my vote!”

Across the United States, a growing number of veterans of recent wars – both Democratic and Republican, men and women – are volunteering to serve again by entering congressional races. The trend is encouraging to advocates and experts who see these races as the front line of a promising political initiative: enlisting new veterans to help bridge partisan divisions and bolster public confidence in Congress.

“We’ve seen a pretty dramatic increase in the number of veterans who are competitive” in the 2018 midterm elections compared with 2016, says Seth Lynn, executive director of Veterans Campaign, a Washington-based nonprofit that educates veterans about running for office.

Nearly 400 veterans – including almost 200 who served after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – are currently running for Congress, according to a count maintained by With Honor, a “cross-partisan” super political action committee. With Honor is unusual because it endorses and funds veteran candidates from both parties who pledge to act with integrity and collaborate across the aisle.

People with military experience held the majority of US congressional seats for most of the latter half of the 20th century, and in 1969 they made up three-quarters of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Since then, however, the ranks of veterans in Congress have dwindled to about 20 percent today. Meanwhile, partisanship – measured by party conformity on roll call votes and an unwillingness to sponsor bipartisan legislation – has risen sharply. Public trust has eroded in Congress, which Gallup polls rank the least trustworthy among major American institutions.

Candidates who’ve served in the military – the most trusted American institution, according to Gallup – represent an untapped pool of mission-driven leaders whose teamwork skills could help build bridges and get things done in Congress, advocates say. 

Research indicates that veterans, even from deep red and blue House districts, are more likely than nonveterans to cosponsor bipartisan legislation, according to a scoring index maintained by The Lugar Center, a Washington-based nonprofit. Younger veterans, including those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, are also more bipartisan in their voting than nonveterans, according to Isaiah Wilson, a retired Army colonel, West Point professor, and incoming senior lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.

No one is suggesting that veterans alone can end the polarization in Congress or that the military is needed to rescue civilian society. Congress has in its ranks some highly partisan veterans. Still, veterans are one pool of capable candidates worth drawing upon, experts say.

“Things aren’t working, and there needs to be a change in attitude and philosophy and outlook in people serving in Congress,” says former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Robert Gates, who served eight US presidents from both parties. “Polarization has led to paralysis.” 

“People who have served in the military post-9/11 have this sense of mission and the willingness to reach across the aisle,” adds Mr. Gates, a With Honor political adviser. “In putting on the uniform, they have undertaken a mission that forces them to work together with anybody and everybody. They learn how important teamwork is and [the value of] tolerating and embracing people with a different point of view.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

‘I value my country, and my family, and my faith more than I value my party. The Congress isn't operating that way. It's the party front and center now.' – Andrew Grant, a Marine Corps veteran running as a Republican for Congress from California

***

Grant and other candidates with military backgrounds are pitching themselves to voters as patriots and problem-solvers. Most have significant experience outside the military in business, law, medicine, government, and other professions. Many are running for office for the first time, motivated by concerns they share as ordinary citizens.

“I value my country, and my family, and my faith more than I value my party,” says Grant in a crisp new campaign office in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova. “The Congress isn’t operating that way. It’s party front and center now.”

Grant, a graduate of the US Naval Academy and former Marine intelligence officer, has broad overseas experience and expertise in weapons of mass destruction and North Korea. A decade ago, he returned to his home state of California, working as an executive in the grocery business and in international trade. What he found, especially what he perceived as overreach by California’s government, motivated him to run as a Republican in this Democratic-leaning district. Grant’s GOP opponent in the race, Yona Barash, is a surgeon who served in the Israel Defense Forces.

“My wife said, ‘If you don’t decide to try to serve again, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life,’ ” Grant tells a living room full of potential supporters in Orangevale. “I won’t regret it if they don’t choose me, but I would if I didn’t try.”

Grant began his campaign by running in his district – literally. He jogged through each neighborhood with a GoPro action camera to film short clips explaining his goals. Now he teams up with campaign manager Max Ramsey, a veteran who was wounded in Iraq, knocking on doors in advance of the June 5 primary. 

Ever the intelligence officer, Grant scans for clues about the voters. “This one has an NRA [National Rifle Association] bumper sticker,” he tells Mr. Ramsey. Grant stresses he is not an NRA member and won’t take funds from the organization. “I’m not a big gun guy,” he says. Grant, a good listener, encourages voters to share more.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Former US Marine Andrew Grant meets voter John Riswold as he stumps for a US House seat in Orangevale, Calif. Mr. Grant is backed by a group that encourages veterans to seek office.

“I wouldn’t do this without putting rubber on the road; it would be disingenuous,” he says as he heads up another driveway in the afternoon sun.

A middle-aged man in a tan cap opens the door and likes what he hears. “We need somebody strong to run,” the man tells Grant, asking about his website. “Keep going door to door,” he advises. “In Orangevale,
that helps!”

The shoe-leather campaigning may be paying off. Over two days with Grant on the campaign trail, from doorsteps to coffee shops and chamber of commerce events, all but one of the scores of voters interviewed – Democratic as well as Republican – reacted enthusiastically to his military service. 

“A candidate who’s served, that’s highly sought after,” says Jeff Lachance, an employment agency manager in nearby Roseville, after talking with Grant at a local business expo. “It could help them keep cool in a crisis, make clear decisions, and look analytically at the issues at hand.”

***

Courtesy of Dan Feehan for Congress

Dan Feehan patrols a street during one of his tours in Iraq.

Leading a 24-person combat engineer platoon in Iraq as US troop deaths surged in 2006, 2nd Lt. Dan Feehan was handed the task of clearing roadside bombs. The prevailing tactic – driving the routes as fast as possible – wasn’t working. To accomplish the mission, he had to convince his teammates to slow down and sometimes walk alongside the route to spot bombs, wires, and triggers.

“It was hard because it was counterintuitive,” Feehan recalls. “But by building trust with noncommissioned officers, I was able to do it. We were able to find more roadside bombs.”

Now Feehan is running for Congress from southern Minnesota and is promising to bring the same team-building skills to Washington. “You can apply that same approach: envisioning a different way and showing it can work,” he says. “It comes with a sense of respect and empathy for everyone involved. I don’t see that happening [now] in Congress, but I know it works because it worked for us in the middle of a war.” 

Feehan was a freshman walking to class at Georgetown University in Washington on 9/11 when terrorists crashed American Flight 77 into the Pentagon. The event defined his call to service. He joined ROTC, majored in international politics, and was commissioned as an Army officer in 2005. He became an engineer in hopes of helping rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.

Deployed to Iraq with an armor battalion, his platoon faced heavy fighting, rushing to the aid of another unit during an ambush north of Baghdad in October 2006. Feehan received a Bronze Star and an Army Commendation Medal for valor. After leaving active duty in 2009, he taught school for two years, earned a public policy master’s degree at Harvard University, and served as acting assistant secretary of Defense for readiness.

As a Pentagon official, Feehan had “an intimate awareness of how consequential policy decisions are on the ground” but felt that many in Congress did not, so he decided to run for the House. In April, he won the Democratic party endorsement in his race for Minnesota’s open First Congressional District  – a mostly rural district along the Iowa border that is considered a toss-up. On the GOP side, he’ll face either former congressional candidate Jim Hagedorn or state Sen. Carla Nelson in November.

Courtesy of Dan Feehan for Congress

Dan Feehan, a former Army combat engineer seeking a US House seat in Minnesota, shakes hands with other service members at a Veterans Day assembly.

To advocates of military service, veteran candidates embody many qualities needed in Washington today. “In the military, the solutions we come up with are team solutions,” says Peter Chiarelli, a retired four-star general who served as Army vice chief of staff and is a senior veteran adviser to With Honor. He believes veterans are better suited “to listen to other points of view, and realize that no one has all the answers.”

Peter Feaver, a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University and an expert on civil-military relations, says exposure to the military’s diverse meritocracy is a major asset for lawmakers and offers intriguing, if untested, possibilities for promoting bipartisan collaboration. 

“Military service members have had to rub shoulders with a broader segment of Americans,” Dr. Feaver says.

They also bring depth of knowledge about defense, national security, and other issues. With defense spending accounting for about half of the yearly discretionary federal budget, lawmakers who are veterans “probably have a better idea of how to make the Pentagon efficient and how to administer some of these big programs,” says Gates, the former Defense secretary.

For this and other reasons, Emily’s List, which supports pro-abortion-rights Democratic women candidates, is backing several female veterans running for Congress in 2018. “[They] understand the importance of strengthening our national security, defending the [Department of Veterans Affairs], and fighting back against sexual assault in the military,” says Alexandra De Luca of Emily’s List.

Contrary to popular perceptions, veterans in civilian leadership are less likely than nonveterans to use the military in overseas disputes, according to historical research by Feaver and others spanning 200 years. “Veterans are more likely to ask a lot of questions and want to go slowly before committing troops to a conflict,” says Mr. Lynn, a Marine Corps Reserve officer. “The assumption of hawkishness is not borne out by reality.”

Indeed, Mr. Chiarelli, who commanded the 1st Cavalry Division and overall military operations during two tours in Iraq, believes that if more veterans had been in Congress, there would have been greater scrutiny of committing troops to Iraq and clarifying what the military’s role should be. 

Gates agrees. “If Congress had asserted itself, we would not be in 17-year wars,” he says. 

***

In between campaign events, knocking on doors, and driving his three children to school, piano lessons, and soccer practices, Grant must try to raise money – lots of it. 

Grant’s campaign finances are so far trailing those of the incumbent in a district that saw one of the costliest House races in California in 2016. “It is the one limiting factor in people deciding to run. They don’t like asking people for money,” Grant says.

In Minnesota, Feehan is in a stronger financial position. He outraised all his Democratic primary contenders and currently has more cash on hand than both of his Republican opponents.

But Feehan faces another problem common among veteran candidates: Years of absence from their home states during their military service has limited their ties with voters and local political networks.

“For a lot of folks who haven’t been out of the military very long, it’s harder to connect with their constituents,” says Lynn of Veterans Campaign. “Fewer people today have much knowledge or direct experience with the military, so it’s harder to explain what you’ve been doing the last few years.”

Moreover, Lynn discovered many veterans who “would make fantastic political leaders but had no idea how to run for office,” in part because of legal restrictions on partisan activity by service members.

These challenges – coupled with their being chosen more often to run in long-shot races – explain why veteran candidates do not have an overall advantage over nonveterans in winning elections, research shows. 

“They have great value as an electoral asset, but not on election day,” says Jeremy Teigen, a political scientist at Ramapo College of New Jersey in Mahwah and author of “Why Veterans Run.” “They have name recognition, an advantage in fundraising, and military experience resonates with voters. The election day test is a pretty high bar.”

The cost of running is particularly onerous for younger veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“So many of the candidates face long odds, even though they are great candidates, because of the obscene rise in the cost of elections,” says Rye Barcott, co-founder and chief executive officer of With Honor and an Iraq War veteran. Over the past 20 years, the average cost of a congressional race has more than quadrupled, to between $2 million and $4 million, he says.

Mr. Barcott launched With Honor to reduce barriers to entry for “next-generation” veterans in this year’s House races. With Honor will endorse some 30 to 35 candidates, including a balance of Democrats and Republicans. Of those, it will support about 10 to 15 campaigns with independent expenditures of $500,000 to $1.2 million, with most of that money used for advertising. The plan is to expand its support to more than 100 state and local races by 2020.

All candidates endorsed by With Honor must pledge to join a veterans’ caucus, meet regularly with members of the opposing party, and support and cosponsor bipartisan legislation. The goal by 2030 is to build a coalition of Democratic and Republican veterans in the House that can empower members to cross party lines – and fix what Barcott calls “our tribal polarization.”

***

Wearing a pinstripe suit and black cowboy boots imprinted with a gold Texas seal, state Sen. Van Taylor leans back in a leather swivel chair in his Plano, Texas, conference room with the easy confidence of a man who knows where he is going. Barring some unexpected turn of events, the decorated US Marine is well positioned to win the open House seat in Texas’ Third Congressional District, a Republican stronghold in a wealthy and growing suburb of Dallas.

Eric Gay/AP

State Sen. Van Taylor, a Marine Corps veteran who is running for Congress in a suburban Dallas district, speaks in the Legislature in Austin, Texas.

Senator Taylor is proud to be one of the most conservative members of the Texas Legislature, where he’s served for eight years. Endorsed by With Honor, the GOP candidate has pledged to support bipartisan legislation, to regularly meet with Democrats, and to join a caucus of veterans from both parties if he goes to Washington.

Taylor and other veteran candidates understand that, if elected, they will face strong pressure in Congress to toe the party line. But several who, like Taylor, have legislative experience either at the state level or as former congressional staff have concrete ideas for how to build bridges across the aisle.

Bipartisanship, they stress, is not centrism. It doesn’t require abandoning one’s principles. Instead, it means promoting civil discourse and a free, open, and fair airing of ideas to bring about compromise. Bipartisanship is “finding a common-sense solution that everyone can agree on. To be successful, you have to work hard, listen to lots of people, treat them with respect, be innovative with your solution,” Taylor says. “More than anything, it requires listening.”

Running in New Mexico’s solidly Democratic First Congressional District, Damon Martinez, an Army Reserve officer and judge advocate, is a first-time candidate who felt compelled to enter politics in part to “change the atmosphere” in Congress. “We are the standard-bearer for the rest of the world on people having a voice in the government, and people are scratching their heads about what is going on in America,” says the Democrat.

Mr. Martinez vows that, if elected, he will push for more open debates, drawing upon his experience as a former US House of Representatives legislative director. His mentors in Congress taught him how lawmakers used to “break bread together, making it harder for them to punch below the belt or get personal and vindictive,” he says.

Across the country in New Hampshire, lawyer, nurse, and Navy Reserve officer Lynne Blankenbeker is running as a Republican in Democratic-leaning District 2. A former member of the New Hampshire House, she stood up to party pressure to cast a roll call vote she disagreed with and used parliamentary maneuvers to prevent divisive, last-minute amendments by her own party from sabotaging bipartisan legislation. 

Courtesy of Lynne Blankenbeker for Congress

Ms. Blankenbeker stands on the deck of the Kearsarge, an assault ship, while on active reserve duty in 2016.

Ms. Blankenbeker says she would join a veterans caucus to advance bipartisan bills on defense, veterans, and national security issues. “Military people tend to do well together,” says Blankenbeker, one of 37 women veterans running this year. “If you are a Democrat and an aviator, and I am a Republican and Naval nurse, we need to bring that uniqueness together. A strong veterans caucus could be very influential and set the example.”

***

Still, in the end, no one expects any single category of candidate – military or otherwise – to solve the nation’s partisan woes. Some veterans, after all, are fiercely ideological and partisan. Many nonveterans are effective bridge-builders. And in this era of divided politics, pressure is intense from not only parties but many voters to place political point-scoring above compromise.

Experts caution against any misplaced belief that people with military backgrounds are inherently superior at governing. Duke University’s Feaver says overvaluing military experience could feed “a myth that we need the military to rescue civilian society ... that the military is so wonderful, so ideal, those who haven’t served represent lesser forms of the American experience.” Mr. Wilson of Yale warns against “ascribing sainthood to veterans.”

Yet boosters of candidates with military backgrounds aren’t advocating for a praetorian political class. They simply believe people who have served their country often see a larger mission and are less inclined to reject ideas because of a party label. 

As Lynn of Veterans Campaign puts it: “Those of us who have served overseas know the people across the aisle are not the enemy.”

Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/AP

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting with government officials in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, May 23, 2018. Iran's supreme leader is criticizing the US over its hard-line stance toward the country since President Trump's decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal reached between Iran and Western powers.

New US demands that Iran reduce its dominant influence in the Middle East could not have been more explicit – nor more clearly underscored Iran’s status as a regional superpower capable of shaping events on the ground like no other local actor.

“No more cost-free expansions of Iranian power. No more,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo vowed this week. “Iran will never again have carte blanche to dominate the Middle East.”

Iranian leaders responded with predictable defiance and counter-bluster, pointing out decades of failure by US leaders to undermine the Islamic Republic since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

“The rage of the US and its allies [as] the losers on the battlefield is understandable,” said Ali Shamkhani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. “US efforts aimed at limiting Iran’s strength have been futile and clearly indicate Iran’s power.” 

Washington’s threat of “unprecedented financial pressure” is not likely to change Iran’s strategic calculations, analysts say. Rather, it may backfire, prompting Iran instead to double-down in the belief that it needs to enhance deterrence against new dangers – especially after President Trump withdrew the US this month from the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

"Pressure and sanctions actually incentivize Iran to increase its influence in the region and demonstrate that it is a formidable regional power that has to be reckoned with,” says Payam Mohseni, director of the Iran Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

For Iran, one way of assessing its regional standing is how it measures up against Israel, its avowed enemy and a key US ally. Another is the performance of its allies and proxies, and its ability to help them.

“Iran is not looking for a war with Israel since its conventional military capabilities are limited in such a direct conflict and it would be quite costly,” says Mr. Mohseni. But an expected victory for an Iranian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, in Syria’s civil war, which was made possible by critical help from Iranian advisers, their Shiite militia proxies, and Russian air power, “would mean that Iran has retained its deterrent capabilities against Israel,” he says.

Mr. Pompeo promised that America will “crush” Iranian proxies and impose the “strongest sanctions in history,” in order to block Iran’s “quest for a regional hegemony” and to counter “destabilizing activities” that he said threaten the US and allies like Israel.

Pompeo’s 12 demands require Iran to dismantle the self-styled “axis of resistance” it leads to confront the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia; withdraw forces and advisers from Syria and Iraq; cut support for proxy forces from Lebanon to Yemen; and neuter its missile program.

Iranian officials have been uniform in their derision of the new US strategy.

“Iran’s missile and defensive capabilities are essential components of our deterrence,” Iran’s Defense Minister Amir Hatami said Wednesday. “If our enemies want to increase the pressure on us, our determination to bolster our defensive capabilities will only grow.”

Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami listens during the Conference on International Security in Moscow, Wednesday, April 4, 2018. Despite the defeat of the Islamic State in Syria, he said, the region remains unstable.

Iran experts say tension is exacerbated by the wide gap between how Iran views its use of hard and soft power across the Middle East – largely as defensive, to deter any attack that might jeopardize survival of the regime – compared with how the US and Israel view Iran’s rise, such that it now has more influence than any regional power in the past half century.

For example, where the White House and Israel see Iranian encroachment up to Israel’s borders on two fronts, in Syria and Lebanon, as an offensive menace that could trigger a war, Iran sees itself creating a deterrent to attack by the far stronger Israeli and US conventional forces.

“Iran is trying to create an effective deterrent in Syria and Lebanon,” says Nasser Hadian, a political scientist at Tehran University.

“It is not a projection of power. It is not expansionism…. If we lose the deterrent that we have against Israel, that would very much jeopardize our security,” says Mr. Hadian, adding that he expects little change in Iran’s Middle East policies.

“The perception is that the US is looking for regime change…. Decisions are going to be made on the security considerations of Iran, not what Trump would say or do,” says Hadian.

Hard-liners in Iran think “exactly the same way that Trump would think, [that] you have to stay strong, we have to challenge the US wherever we can, we have to make an effective deterrence against the US, and then the US strategic calculus would be different,” he adds.

Ehud Yaari, an Israeli strategist with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, writes in a recent analysis in The American Interest that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is “determined to transform Syria into a platform for a future war against Israel,” but that “Iran is in no hurry to have a confrontation.” Its leaders, he adds, “seem to have abandoned for the moment their earlier plans to deploy Hezbollah and other militias close to the Golan frontier” due to a series of Israeli airstrikes.

Yet a wider conflict is “almost inevitable,” Mr. Yaari writes. For Israel, Iran’s alliances and infrastructure in Syria represent  “a major strategic failure with far reaching implications,” he says. “Israel is faced not only with a preserved Assad regime – a vital ally to Iran and Hezbollah – but also with the emergence of Iranian military power next door."

The US demands are a familiar wish list that Iranian leaders have heard from successive presidential teams. But never before has Iran been in such a position of influence, hard-won on the back of the years-long anti-ISIS fight in Iraq and Syria, and the apparent retreat of US leadership during the Obama era.

But using force to balance competing threat perceptions and create red lines is a dangerous game. In February, for example, Iran sent an armed drone flying into Israel, which shot it down, but then Israel, in a strike on Iranian positions in Syria, lost one of its own F-16 jet fighters to a fusillade of Syrian anti-aircraft missiles, prompting a further Israeli response that damaged Syrian air defenses.

Iran later vowed revenge for a mid-April Israeli air strike against an Iranian drone unit at the T4 base inside Syria, which killed seven Iranians from the IRGC.

Two weeks ago, Israel accused Iran of firing 20 missiles toward Israeli held territory on the Golan Heights – this week it updated that number to 32 – which did little reported damage since only four reportedly made it across the border and were shot down by Israel missile defense systems. That prompted a wave of Israeli airstrikes against 20 Iranian targets in Syria, which Israeli Air Force commanders say resulted in 100 Syrian anti-aircraft missiles fired at Israeli planes, and the subsequent destruction of five Syrian missile batteries. Israeli officials initially said the airstrikes hit 50 targets and destroyed a “substantial” portion of Iran’s military infrastructure in the country.

Iran denied any significant losses, and neither side has presented much evidence about the incident.  But rhetoric in the aftermath pointed to the ever-present risk of escalation.

Iran would “step up its missile capabilities day by day so that Israel, this occupying regime, will become sleepless and the nightmare will haunt it that if it does anything foolish, we will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground,” said the hard-line Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, as he led Friday prayers in Tehran shortly after the Israeli strike.

But away from the bombast, other voices are also being heard.

To minimize the risk of escalation, argues one Israeli analyst, Israel may have to curtail its own aims regarding Iran’s presence in Syria.

“Israel’s stated goal of ‘denying Iran any and all military entrenchment in Syria’ is unachievable,” says Eran Etzion, a former member of Israel’s National Security Council and head of the Forum of Strategic Dialogue in Tel Aviv, in an analysis published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

Israel will have to deploy a “complex array of overt and covert military capabilities [and] smart diplomacy,” to meet the challenge, writes Mr. Etzion, or it “risks uncontrolled escalation into the kind of inter-state war unseen in the Middle East since 1973.”

Iran also must balance its aims and threat perceptions to avoid war, says Kayhan Barzegar, director of the Institute for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, in a parallel analysis published by ECFR.

“Tehran is keen to avoid major escalation with the Israelis and careful about establishing military bases in the south of [Syria]” close to Israel, writes Mr. Barzegar. “Such escalation would challenge Iran’s main justification for its presence in Syria: battling terrorist groups. Instead, Iran is confident that it can maintain a balance of power using asymmetric means,” such as relying on allied forces like Hezbollah and unconventional tactics that don’t result in face-to-face showdowns.

Readers who follow climate news might have noticed last week that scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the planet just had its 400^th consecutive month with above average temperatures – yet another record set in a steady stream of similar ones.

Earlier this month, there was a brief flurry of stories noting that, in April, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration levels passed 410 parts per million averaged over the whole month. A year earlier, readings had first crossed 410 ppm. They breached 400 ppm in 2013. Other milestones also regularly make news – from record-low sea ice in the Arctic to record-high global temperatures.

To climate scientists, each milestone represents an opportunity to help the public visualize the changes that the Earth is experiencing, and to keep attention focused on the issue. But for average citizens, they can start to feel redundant or overwhelming. It can be difficult to discern which indicators are important to pay attention to, or just what they mean.

“I’ve long thought that we don’t serve ourselves well by holding these things [like the 410 ppm threshold] up. It’s sort of like us drawing a line in the sand, and then people step over it. So you step back and draw another line in the sand. After a while they don’t respect the line anymore,” says James White, a geology professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “But how do you get people to pay attention?... This to me is the fundamental question.”

Part of the difficulty, say Professor White and others, is the lack of general understanding for how warming works, and on what time scale: The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises much quicker than the effects that will eventually be associated with it.

“The challenge with climate change is that it’s a slow-moving crisis,” says Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. To keep it at the top of people’s consciousness frequently means needing to take note of such milestones, she says. “But at the same time, it does give the impression – people said it would be a disaster if we passed 400 ppm, and we passed 410, and the world hasn’t ended. It creates this false sense that it’s okay.”

Dr. Hayhoe likes to use a paleoclimate perspective to help people understand: records we have from the last time that carbon dioxide levels were as high as they are now. The most recent era with atmospheric concentrations of about 400 ppm was the Mid-Pliocene, some 3 million years ago – when sea levels were about 50-80 feet higher.

White often uses analogies like a pot of water on the stove: After turning up the temperature, it takes a while for the water to fully heat.

But better education and explanations can’t overcome all the hurdles to getting people’s attention, says Hayhoe. “It’s also part of our psychology,” she says. “We as humans are built to look at and respond to the short term.”

That’s why, anytime she talks to the public, she not only includes the facts, figures, and indicators, but also two central ideas: how climate change is affecting people in the places they live, already, and what attractive solutions – particularly ones that are also good economically – are already being implemented.

“The two biggest myths are, it doesn’t matter to me, and there’s nothing we can do to fix it,” says Hayhoe. “This is what I talk about almost every single time.”

Adrees Latif/Reuters

On Tangier Island, a speck of grassland in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay, climate activists are struggling to get residents to pay attention to rising seas, which some scientists estimate could ultimately render the island uninhabitable.

Context matters

Other scientists agree that indicators like carbon dioxide levels or global temperature are most useful when they’re put in the right context.

“A random factoid that suggests the world is going to hell in a handbasket, or that it’s going there even faster than we thought, is likely to raise some people’s anxiety levels, but not likely to help them think about what options they have for doing something about it,” says Edward Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication. He likes to think about such numbers as metrics, rather than milestones, and put them in a context that helps people see solutions.

An indicator like carbon dioxide concentrations can be useful to watch, says Professor Maibach, since it’s one way of understanding that “we’ve left the safety zone, and now are decidedly in the red zone.” But what makes it meaningful is “if we tie that to the actions we can collectively take to stop the needle moving upward.”

At the same time, Maibach notes that it’s not as though most people are being deluged with more information about climate change than they can process. “Members of the public tell us in response to surveys that they don’t talk about it, and they don’t hear friends and family and coworkers talk about it,” he says. “The average American sees about one story per month on climate change.”

And noting milestones we keep passing, like the carbon dioxide levels, can be a useful reminder “that projections from the past really are coming true,” says Richard Alley, a geologist at Pennsylvania State University, writing in an email. “As we pass milestones of, say, CO2 concentration, we are seeing the warming that was projected for CO2 concentration, accurately and reliably,” he explains.

Hayhoe says she likes to point to Arctic sea ice as an indicator because of how visual it is – people can see, in photos, large areas disappearing. Carbon dioxide, by contrast, is invisible, and not well understood by most non-scientists.

White, at the University of Colorado, also watches Arctic sea ice, both because it’s easy to visualize, and because of how drastically it’s likely to shift weather and climate systems, as reflective ice gets exchanged for absorbent blue ocean.

Melissa Kenney, an environmental decision scientist at the University of Maryland, says she generally cites five primary indicators people should keep an eye on to get “the pulse of the planet:” global temperature, carbon dioxide levels, global sea level rise, Arctic sea ice, and ice sheets and glaciers. But sounding the alarm does little good if it isn't accompanied by proposed actions, she says.  

“Unless we’re coupling these indicators with opportunities for change, then some of the message is lost,” says Professor Kenney. “Part of what we see with these indicators is the future we’re committing our children to…. That’s our moral imperative: to make the hard choices that our parents didn’t get around to making, so our children don’t have to experience a future that’s even more intense and extreme and difficult to manage than what we’ve set up.”

Courtesy of Roya TV

Click, a short comedy series poking fun at 21st century social media use, in which each character personifies a social media app, is one of a dozen Jordanian comedies produced for the holy month of Ramadan.

Divorce? Terrorism? Pollution?

After a long day of fasting, work, and prayer, many Jordanians are gathering each night this Ramadan for one thing: a good laugh.

In what is quickly becoming a Ramadan tradition, Jordanians are filling theaters, hotels, and their living rooms for comic relief and satirical social commentary to cap the night during the holy month.

But it often has quite the edge.

Local TV stations have produced no fewer than 12 Jordanian comedic miniseries this Ramadan, marking a break from recent years in which lavish period dramas from the Gulf and Egypt dominated Jordanian airwaves during the Arab world’s biggest television and media season.

Experts and artists say the satire does more than tickle the funny bone. It fills a deeper need for citizens to discuss issues and frustrations in a country that over the past decade has borne a substantial burden from the region’s crises.

Local laughs

During the holy month, theaters and hotels in the capital host nightly “dinner and show” performances featuring regional and local actors and comedians.

Comedy has also become a genre of choice for TV stations who plan all year for holy month, during which family, friends, and neighbors gather in living rooms following the iftar meal, drinking coffee and having post-meal sweets in front of the TV.

Comedy, say artists and producers, has become a preferred entertainment for practical reasons: Comical situations, unlike heavy plays or drawn-out Ramadan dramas with casts of dozens and complex soap-opera plots, demand less from viewers.

Some stations, like private Jordanian channel Roya TV, have dedicated an entire hour of short local comedy programs each day for post-iftar viewers.

“People are home after a long day and they want to relax, laugh, and have a change of mood,” says Nasser Khoury, content supervisor at Roya TV. “Nothing does that better than comedy, and the most effective comedy is comedy speaking directly to the people.”

While local and regional channels also air Lebanese and Egyptian comedies during the holy month, networks have found that Jordanian comedy – scripted, acted, and produced by Jordanians using the local dialect and touching on local issues – evokes greater laughs, and better ratings.

The subjects are topical, but often heavy: unemployment, overcrowded schools, refugees, rising divorce rates, government incompetence, pollution – and of course, taxes.

In an episode of the series, Jalta, featuring a stereotypical Jordanian family, the father of the family starts life after retirement from a government job – once a lifelong goal for most Jordanians – only to find that the free time, lack of purpose, and a small pension is not all it is chalked up to be.  

In another local series, Maalam Sahas, a crude-talking puppet surveys various hot-button issues. One episode explores the rising “exploitation” by taxi drivers, merchants, and Jordanian beggars who even throw themselves onto cars in order to receive compensation.

Another focuses on the ludicrously high tuition for private schools – one of the few options left for Jordanians due to public schools overcrowded with Syrian children – which can reach as high as $20,000 a year. In another, the love-crossed puppet goes into shock as wedding costs soar into the thousands – a familiar burden on young Jordanian men.  

At the end of each episode, the puppet hits the streets for reactions from real people.

Some comedy shows pull no punches.

In one such miniseries, 1,001 Dreams, young Jordanian men dream of an idealized world around them – the creation of a free Palestinian state, for example, or a united Arab nation that is a source of financial aid, rather than a taker of Western funds – only to wake up to harsh news reports of dead protesters and bitter Arab rivalries.

“Don’t look at me like that, this is the news, I’m just an employee,” says a news broadcaster on the show, breaking the fourth wall.

Populist punch-lines

Despite a reputation within the Arab world for being serious, stoic Bedouins, Jordanians have a comedic tradition of populist-driven satire that pokes fun at Arab leaders, the Mideast peace process, and even includes impersonations of King Hussein himself.

Artists say the time is ripe this year for Jordanians to once again turn to comedy.

“Jordanian comedy is originally from the people, for the people, by the people,” says Hussein Al-Khateeb, an actor and head of the Jordanian Artists Association. “It speaks about the issues facing average people and gives citizens an opportunity to express themselves and articulate their shared experience.”

“With the poor economy, unemployment, terrorism, refugees, wars, and the issue of Jerusalem,” he says, “there is plenty to talk about this Ramadan.”

AP Photo

A TV crew works outside the Popular Party's headquarters in Madrid, Spain, May 24, after the National Court issued hefty prison sentences for politicians and businesspeople involved in a kickbacks-for-contra­cts scheme that helped fund the ruling party.

One of the healthy competitions between Europe and the United States is over which one can set a new global standard. On May 25, the European Union began to win on one standard – digital privacy – with the start of stiff rules on how companies handle personal data. The impact, though limited to firms operating in Europe, is being felt globally.

In another type of standard, however, Europe has only begun to compete with the US.

Corruption still pervades many countries on the Continent. The latest example is the May 24 sentencing of 29 people in Spain’s ruling Popular Party related to a massive scheme involving kickbacks. Another is the alleged bribery of members of the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly by Azerbaijan for remaining silent on discussions of human rights violations in that Central Asian country.

Yet one by one, more European nations from Ireland to Slovakia are tightening enforcement of anti-graft rules, especially against companies that operate overseas. For years, many governments have turned a blind eye toward bribery of foreign officials on a dubious assumption that their domestic firms might lose business.

In France, for example, people were shocked in April when a powerful businessman, Vincent Bolloré, was held in jail and questioned over suspected graft in Africa. The move, however, is the result of what is considered a cultural revolution in France. A new law that took effect last year, known as Sapin II, set up a new anti-corruption agency and gives prosecutors new tools to deal with corporate corruption abroad. At least three companies have already settled with the new agency in cases involving bribery of a foreign official.

The new French law is similar to Britain’s Bribery Act of 2010, which itself is based on a ground-breaking law in the US, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. The US law has been effective in catching many European companies, an embarrassment that has proved an incentive for EU member states to toughen up their own laws. Germany, for example, has cracked down on its firms after the US settled a case with the German engineering firm Siemens in 2008. 

With each new anti-graft law in Europe, the US finds it easier to work with European officials on cases of transnational corruption. On both sides of the Atlantic, governments are rising to higher standards of honesty, transparency, and accountability. Together, they may ultimately set a new global standard.