Three American hikers who have been detained in Iran since July 31st, including Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal, apparently unwittingly strayed over the border from Iraqi Kurdistan, according to a fourth member of their party, Shon Meckfessel. Meckfessel, who did not join his friends on the ill-fated hike, wrote in a statement that the four were travelling in Iraqi Kurdistan on vacation, and his friends went off on a recommended hike to popular tourist destination Ahmed Awa, an area known for its lovely waterfall. Apparently unaware that Ahmed Awa was near the Iranian border, the three were detained while hiking in the area by Iranian authorities, and have yet to be released. Meckfessel writes, "I hope that people understand my friends' presence in the area for what it was: a simple and very regrettable mistake."

With the recent release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee from North Korean custody, thanks to a deus ex machina intervention from former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the question being asked in the Iran case is where diplomacy goes next. Have Clinton's actions in North Korea piqued the interest of the Ahmadinejad regime, perhaps empowering them to turn these hikers into pawns in a greater diplomatic game with the United States? Iran has detained many Americans over the years, most recently arresting Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh, charged with instigating post-election violence.

The story of one of these hikers, freelance journalist and documentary photographer Shane Bauer, was featured in today's episode of Democracy Now below, which airs on Link TV. Bauer, an Arabic speaker and graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, delivered a report for Democracy Now in February 2009 on U.S. military alliances with Iraq's Sunni militias.

U.S. President Barack Obama visited Russia in early July to much media fanfare in the West, but was anything really accomplished? In a carefully choreographed diplomatic dance, Obama met first with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and allocated only a breakfast with Prime Minister (and de facto Russian leader?) Vladimir Putin. Clearly Obama hoped, in the Bushian turn of phrase, to "see into the soul" of Medvedev and lure him away from the omnipresent Putin-Sputnik.

But during the visit, the Russian leaders both seemed steadfast in their attempts to slip out of America's crumbling unipolar dominance of world affairs and maintain their own sphere of influence over the former Soviet Union. And although there were some agreements made between the U.S. and Russia on cuts in nuclear arms, at least one prominent supporter of nuclear disarmament, journalist Jonathan Schell, told Democracy Now's Amy Goodman that he found the nuclear agreement between Obama and Medvedev to be "disappointing".

On a lighter note, somehow the trim President Obama was able to mostly resist the temptation of this fantastic Saint Basil's Cathedral cake, featured in this Russia Today report: 

Cake aside, the diplomatic ballet continued earlier this week, as Vice President Joe Biden paid a requisite visit to NATO hopefuls and Russian archenemies Ukraine and Georgia. While Russians merely yawned in the face of Obama's star power, Biden was greeted with adoring crowds in Georgia's capital of Tbilisi, as he drove by "George W. Bush Street" (the former president was always a popular figure in Georgia, due to his support of Georgian independence from their domineering Russian neighbors).

In Ukraine, Biden affirmed U.S. support of Russia's near abroad, rejecting Russia's "sphere of influence" in the region. But it remains to be seen if Washington can back up these words of support with true action. With Russia's civil society and politics drifting back to the authoritarian, stifling dissent from human rights activists, journalists, and competing politicians, the U.S. has some tough decisions to make in dealing with the Russian bear.