Juan Cole

Even though Dubai’s boom has turned to bust, the emirate known for its gaudy exuberance, which comedian Jon Stewart once called ‘what happens when Saudi Arabia and Las Vegas have a baby,’ couldn’t restrain itself from yet one more big bash. South African casino owner Solomon Kerzner spent $20 million on fireworks and other party […]

The Iraq War is still hot in the northern city of Mosul (pop. 1.7 mn.) , where 10-12 car bombs still are detonated every day. On Thursday, McClatchy reports, “A suicide car bomber detonated in Mosul city around 8:30 pm. Police opened fire on the car before targeting a police station in the area that […]

Below is a statement on Iran that I and others are hoping will be adopted in Washington as a way forward. Any of my readers who has a way of getting this statement to decision-makers in Washington should please do so. Just Foreign Policy is doing it as a petition. Also, my blogger colleagues should […]

Ayman al-Zawahiri attacked Barack Obama in a video released on the internet on Tuesday. Fox News reprinted the whole transcript here. I’m a little bit confused by this step, since I thought the US networks had agreed under pressure from Bush only to carry excerpts from al-Qaeda, and the US elite has been deeply critical, […]

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Iraq parliament’s Committee on Security and Defense voted in favor of the Iraqi-US security agreement. That committee is headed by Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Organization (the paramilitary wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq). Badr’s willingness to vote for the agreement is a clear sign […]

McClatchy has published an English translation of the draft security agreement between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration. Leila Fadel of McClatchy’s reads the agreement as calling for all US troops to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011: ‘ If Iraq’s parliament endorses the agreement, in six weeks American forces would […]

Vice President: n. Political chief in charge of committing vice. The official can fulfill his public duties by committing a wide range of sins or crimes, including murder and treason (see Burr, Aaron and Breckenridge, John). Lazier and greedier incumbents have satisfied themselves with mere extortion, tax evasion, bribery, and conspiracy (see Agnew, Spiro). Energetic […]

The USG Open Source Center translates an article from the Kurdish press complaining that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been busily creating his own tribally based private militias, called ‘Isnad,’ and is using them to project his authority through brute force in various parts of Iraq. Iraq: What after Al-Maliki’s (Support) Councils?Kurdistani NuweTuesday, November 18, […]

Gitanjali Bakshi writes in a guest op-ed for IC: After months of slow but substantive progress, recent developments in Occupied Palestine, Israel and the U.S. have been largely unproductive. If we continue along this path in 2009, it will lead to a collapse in the on-going Israel-Palestine peace process. There are currently three main obstacles […]