Juan Cole

Disputed Assassination attempt on Sistani Alissa Rubin of the LA Times reports that there are conflicting stories about whether Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani was the victim of an attempted assassination attempt on Thursday. Two Shiite members of the Interim Governing Council told her that they were briefed that there was such an attack. On the […]

Rumsfeld: We never said it! Tony Blair admitted Thursday that he had not understood what was being claimed in British intelligence estimates that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. The intelligence claim, which was anyway wrong, was speaking of battlefield weapons. Blair confessed that he thought the report referred to a […]

Honduras Protests against Iraq War, US Imperialism Thousands of protesters, including students, union members and leftists, thronged the streets of five major cities in Honduras on Thursday to protest the Iraq war and US imperialism. Some 370 Honduran troops are serving in Iraq under the Spanish command around Nasiriyah.

Kurdish Parliament Rejects Islamization of Personal Status Laws Late last December, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and some allies on the US-appointed Interim Governing Council issued an executive order abrogating Iraq’s secular personal status laws and putting each Iraqi under the personal status laws of his or her religious sect. This step had clearly negative implications for […]

Al-Hakim: Presidential Council OK Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and a member of the US-appointed Interim Governing Council, has according to AFP given his assent to the presidential council proposed by Adnan Pachachi and the Sunnis. Pachachi had suggested a rotating 3-man presidency, which would appoint the […]

Reformers implore Sistani to Intervene in Iran Crisis Ali Nourizadeh of the Saudi newspaper ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports today that more than 400 Iranian writers and cultural figures, along with some members of parliament, have penned a letter to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf, requesting that he express his opinion on the “massacre of democracy […]

Sistani Aide: Loose Federalism not in Iraq’s Interests BBC Monitoring picked up a radio interview in Cairo on Sawt al-`Arab on Wednesday with an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani named Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim Bidali, conducted by Fawzi al-Jundi. Some brief excerpts: Bidali “With respect to the issue of elections, His Eminence Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani […]

Tension in Najaf between SCIRI and Sadrists Hamza Hendawi of AP recently reported on the rising tensions between the followers of young radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and other Shiite factions in Iraq. In my own view, such tension is a side effect of the rise of the Shiites to political prominence. As the community becomes […]

1 US Soldier Killed, 1 Wounded, by Roadside Bomb; Kurdish toll rises to 100 BAGHDAD, Feb. 3 (Xinhuanet) — “A US soldier was killed and another injured on Tuesday by a roadside bomb in Iraq, the US military said in a statement. The roadside bomb exploded at about 10.30 a.m. (0730 GMT) when the US […]