Juan Cole

*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 […]

*”Operation Rockingham” was the name of a covert operation within the Defense Intelligence Staff of the UK’s Ministry of Defense that aimed at skewing intelligence on Iraq so as to emphasize Saddam’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and to play down evidence to the contrary. So reports Neil McKay of the Sunday Herald. I […]

*Things are not going well again between the US and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim. Al-Hakim has said his organization refuses to participate in a leadership council appointed by the American civilian administrator Paul Bremer. Originally the plan was for the 7 parties appointed by Jay Garner […]

*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 […]