Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – On Wednesday, the extremist Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) group, known for its brutal beheadings and mass murder, took over the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp inside Damascus city limits. Palestinian women and Christians and male secularists are at special risk now. Had they been living normally in their homes in what […]
As Iran talks Progress, US, Iran forces cooperate in taking Tikrit
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – By now the Iraqi government has a long history of claiming areas are “liberated” when the local picture remained mixed. This is the sort of thing that occurred recently in where Tikrit, where PM Haydar al-Abadi went on television and declared Tikrit no longer in the hands of […]
War with Iran, by the Numbers
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Sen. John McCain and others on the American Right are in favor of dropping those pesky negotiations with Iran and just bombing their nuclear enrichment sites. Doing so, however, would only set them back a year or so, and would certainly put Iran on a war footing with […]
Israel’s Netanyahu jumps Shark with “Iran-Lausanne-Yemen” axis barb
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, no longer allowed to sit at the adult table because of his past food fights, has been reduced, as Haaretz observed, to whining from the sidelines. Now he is complaining about an “Iran-Lausanne-Yemen” axis. The negotiations between Iran and the P5 + 1 (the […]
A Game-Changer in Syrian War? al-Qaeda-led Factions take Idlib
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The provincial capital Idlib, a city of 165,000 in the old days and administrative center of the northwestern Idlib province, appears to have fallen completely to a Muslim fundamentalist coalition spearheaded by Ahrar al-Sham (Free Men of Syria) and the al-Qaeda affiliate, the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra). Most […]
Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbullah slams Saudi attack on Yemen
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hizbullah, Lebanese Shiite party-militia, weighed in on Friday on the Saudi intervention in Yemen. The Saudis put together a Sunni coalition against the Shiite Houthis and have bombed Zaidi Shiite population centers like Sa’adeh. I discussed their motives in my just-published piece in […]
How GOP threats against Iran have Guaranteed end of European Sanctions
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The US sanction regime on Iran has a unilateral dimension. That is, there are sanctions only the US applies. Then there is a European dimension, which involves using the clout of the Department of Treasury as well as the persuasiveness of the Department of State’s diplomats to get […]
What’s Religion Got to do with it? German Co-Pilot as Terrorist
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Once it became clear that Andreas Lubitz, 28, deliberately crashed Germanwings Flight 9525, a reporter immediately asked “what was his religion?” (Parent company Lufthansa said they didn’t know). Authorities said there was no evidence it was “terrorism.” Lubitz is from Rhineland-Palatinate, known for its wine-growing and pharmaceuticals. It […]
Washington’s 2 Air Wars: alongside Iran in Iraq, Saudis in Yemen
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The United States is now involved in two air wars in the Middle East, not to mention more widespread drone actions. US fighter jets have, at the request of the Iraqi government of Haydar al-Abadi, begun bombing Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) positions in Tikrit, according to al-Hayat (Life). Initially, […]
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