Juan Cole

*The attacks on US troops in Iraq continue. On Thursday there were three such incidents. In Samawah, a largely Shiite town with some Sunni presence, a rocket propelled grenade hit a military ambulance and killed a US soldier. In the Shiite holy city of Samarra north of Baghdad, a mortar was fired at a US-run […]

*According to Islam Online, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has issued a religious ruling or fatwa calling upon Iraqis to wage “civil” (i.e. nonviolent) “jihad” on the US occupation, by simply continually asking rather pointedly when the Americans are planning to leave. Sistani’s secretary and spokesman compared this period of psychological preparation for resistance to the […]

*The Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq does not support violence against occupying US troops, says Abdul Aziz al-Hakim in al-Hayat. The leader of the Badr Corps denounced the remnants of the followers of Saddam who have been striking at US troops as saboteurs. But he insisted that no Iraqi can accept a […]

*The student protests in Tehran seemed to die down on Tuesday evening, and were not nearly as big as before. Likewise, the evening was not characterized by clashes between students and the Islamist vigilantes, Ansar Hezbollah and the Basij. Still, the political impact of the demonstrations is visible in the letter signed by 250 academics […]

*The big student protests in Iran continued for a sixth night on Sunday. This, despite the attack on the students Saturday by armed thugs controlled by the hardline clerics, which injured 50 and killed one. Many protesters have also been arrested by the regime. But, some of the hardline Hezbollah or Party of God goons […]

*Little has been written by American observers about the ways in which the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has worsened women’s lives. Not least, it has unleashed a wave of Shiite nativism and puritanism that is hyper-patriarchal. Thus, bravo to the Christian Science Monitor for covering some of the impact on women of the […]

*Several hundred Iranian students have demonstrated against the regime in Iran, and plan bigger protests on the anniversary of the 1999 demonstrations. The students are fed up with the repression of the hardliners and with the inability of the reformists such as President Khatami to get anything accomplished. The reformists have done well in elections […]

*In the brouhaha over the failure of the US to find much in the way of weapons of mass destruction programs or materials in Iraq, lots of things are being overlooked. The really scary weapon of mass destruction was nuclear weapons. The fact is that Iraq did not reconstitute its nuclear weapons program after 1998 […]

*It is now being reported that interrogations of top al-Qaeda leaders Khalid Shaikh Muhammad and Abu Zubayda reveal that the organization avoided entanglement with Saddam Hussein, on orders of Usama Bin Laden himself, because they didn’t want to end up being manipulated by him. I have long held that there was no plausible linkage of […]