By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s clerical leader, gave a speech on Sunday in which he said he supports an agreement with the West on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program that is practical and can be achieved, but added, “I will not accept a bad deal.” The speech is being seen […]
Amal Clooney Seeks talks with Egypt’s Sisi over Client jailed for Committing Journalism
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Update: Egypt has announced that Mohamed Fahmy will be retried in Cairo. Human Rights attorney Amal Clooney, wife of the actor George Clooney, wrote to Egyptian President Abdel Fattal al-Sisi on Saturday, requesting a meeting with him with regard to the fate of her client, Mohamed Fahmy, the […]
Why Obama is Right to avoid double standard about Modern Christian Atrocities
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – President Obama, speaking on Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast, condemned religious extremism in the Muslim world, noting that it is the work of twisted individuals rather than being intrinsic to the religion. He then added, “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is […]
Williams Affair: Reagan and Bush Lied about Military Records but Get a Pass
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – NBC nightly news anchor Brian Williams is under fire for repeatedly having told an embellished story of being in a Chinook helicopter that took RPG and small arms fire at the beginning of the Iraq War and was forced down. His critics, and military personnel present on the […]
Is ISIL’s ‘Shock and Awe’ more Awe-ful because One Victim?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The Daesh (ISIL or ISIS) burning of a captured Jordanian pilot alive produced justified revulsion globally, resulting in the terrorist organization being termed “barbarous” and similar epithets. Why did it behave this way? Because it wants to terrify its opponents into submission and underline that it is too […]
Angry Jordanian Crowds Rally over ISIL Murder of Pilot, but some blame US, King
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Jordanian protesters came out in the thousands on Tuesday to protest the gruesome murder by Daesh (ISIL, ISIL) of a captured Jordanian pilot, Muath al-Kasasbeh. He was from the central Jordanian town of Karak (pop. 70,000), 87 miles south of the capital of Amman, and crowds came out […]
GOP’s Scott Walker: Pitches possible Syria War to make us Like Him
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Likely Republican presidential candidate, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, says he might favor sending US ground troops to mount a conventional war against Daesh (ISIL or ISIS) in Syria or at least wouldn’t rule it out. Let’s see. The Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003 on false pretenses of […]
Journalist Greste Freed by Egyptian Junta, but Press Freedom still Hostage
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Peter Greste, an Australian journalist working for Aljazeera English, has been released from an Egyptian prison after a 400-day ordeal in which he was jailed merely for reporting the news. Greste was preemptively released by a presidential pardon from Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the military dictator. Nothing is more […]
Ironies of Empire: US now Allied with Shiites Trained by Assassinated HIzbullah Leader
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The revelation by the Washington Post’s Adam Goldman and Ellen Nakashima that the car-bomb assassination of Hizbullah commando Imad Mughniyah in Damascus in 2008 was a joint CIA/ Israeli Mossad operation comes at an awkward time for Washington. The administration of George W. Bush did not target Mughniyah […]
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