Juan Cole

*Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, 30, is in Iran for talks, according to az-Zaman. In the seminary city of Qom, he met with Ayatollah Kadhim al-Ha’iri, whose representative in Iraq he is held to be. He also met with other clerics. He had complained bitterly after the fall of Saddam about the stranglehold the Iranians […]

*Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani threw his weight behind the desirability of a near-term interim government in Iraq, during a meeting with Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani. and calling for elections to a national assembly for Iraqis to produce a new constitution, according to Patrick Tyler of the New York Times.Sistani is deeply unhappy with current conditions […]

*“BAGHDAD (Reuters) – One U.S. soldier was killed and five were wounded when an assailant fired a rocket-propelled grenade at them in the restive Iraqi town of Falluja on Thursday, the U.S. military said. It said the wounded soldiers, from the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, had been driven to a […]

*“Protests against U.S. actions in Iraq continued Tuesday in the streets of Baghdad with some 3,000 Muslim religious students demanding the release of a Shiite cleric rounded up by U.S. occupation forces last weekend.”–UPI. Sheik Jassem al-Saedi was arrested by US troops on Sunday. The crowds also chanted against the US decision not to hold […]

*The stockpiling of arms in mosques has been denounced on Coalition radio in Iraq according to AFP/az-Zaman. The broadcast condemned the desecration of holy places in this way and pointed out that attacks on coalition forces with such heavy weapons typically injures innocent Iraqi civilians, as well. US troops in Falluja recently came under fire […]

*The formula for the transitional government in Iraq keeps changing an almost daily basis as Paul Bremer searches for a way out of the various dead ends that his predecessors had set up for him. Now he is talking, according to various reports including Az-Zaman and al-Hayat, about cancelling the Iraqi convention planned for July […]

*There were demonstrations in Basra against the new British governor. Thousands of Shiite demonstrators insisted that Iraqis could rule themselves. Some of the discontent may have come from followers of the deposed governor Shaikh al-Tamimi, a Shiite tribal leader. *The Bremer administration in Iraq has decided to widen the transitional leadership council of Iraqi organizations […]

*Three Shiite young men were killed by US troops in Samarra’ according to az-Zaman. The local Shiite clergy called for calm in their Friday Prayers’ sermons. There are various narratives about what happened. Some say the youths were engaging in celebratory gunfire for a wedding and that US troops mistakenly returned fire; another narrative had […]

*Tony Blair, in southern Iraq, warned Syria and Iran against interfering in Iraq or supporting terrorism there. There were demonstrations Thursday by Shiite clergymen who claimed that the Americans had imprisoned some of their colleagues, and had “plundered Najaf” (the Shiite holy city). The hundreds of demonstrators passed out pamphlets from the “military wing” of […]