Middle East

Iran: Rights Defenders Sentenced for Questioning Covid Policies: Arbitrary Arrest and Unfair Prosecution

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Iranian authorities sentenced five prominent human rights defenders to prison on June 19, 2022, for attempting to file a legal complaint against government agencies and officials for mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should quash the convictions of the human rights defenders, which […]

Archaeology

Does Megadrought of the 500s in Yemen help Explain the Rise of Islam?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new article in the journal Science gives evidence for a prolonged dry spell in the kingdom of Himyar (which now would comprise Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia and Oman) in the 500s. Since the Prophet Muhammad is traditionally said to have been born in 567 or 570, any new information […]

Arms Sales

Unlike SCOTUS, Iraqi Kurds are Rethinking Lax Gun Laws after Shootings; Will even Iraq be Safer than the US?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Other countries can just adopt rational policies to deal with severe social problems. The United States is locked into various weird metaphysical dogmas that make reasoning about such issues difficult. The second amendment, for instance, has nothing to do with universal gun ownership, whatever ideologues on the Right assert. The […]

Featured

Türkiye gets its Way on Kurdish Groups, agrees to Swedish, Finnish NATO Bids, as Biden weighs F-16 Sales to Ankara

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Türkiye (formerly Turkey) spent this spring vowing that Sweden and Finland would not be admitted to NATO because of their stance on the Syrian Kurdish organization, the YPG. He seemed adamant, but the stance was clearly a bargaining position, whereby he sought to wring as […]

Iran

In Major Security Shake-Up, Iran Replaces Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Chief

Golnaz Esfandiari

( RFL/RE ) – Hossein Taeb, a hard-line cleric, was the intelligence chief of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the armed forces, for over a decade. But in a surprise move, the IRGC announced on June 23 that it had removed Taeb from his prominent post. The major shake-up […]

Israel/ Palestine

Palestinians ‘are not animals in a zoo’: On Kanafani and the need to redefine the role of the ‘victim intellectual’

Ramzy Baroud

Years before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, US media introduced many new characters, promoting them as ‘experts’ who helped ratchet up US propaganda, ultimately allowing the US government to secure enough popular support for the war. Though enthusiasm for war began dwindling in later years, the invasion of Iraq had begun with a […]

Israel/ Palestine

Chomsky on Israeli Apartheid, Celebrity Activists, BDS and the One-State Solution

Ramzy Baroud

( Middle East Monitor ) – This is, said Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci, the “interregnum”; the rare and seismic moment in history when great transitions occur, when empires collapse and others rise, and when new conflicts and struggles ensue. The Gramscian interregnum, however, “is not a smooth transition”, for these profound changes often embody a […]

Apartheid

Saudi Arabia: Biden Visit Risks Fostering Repression: US Should Publicly Seek Rights Commitments, Reforms

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – US President Joe Biden’s expected visit to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman risks encouraging new abuses and further entrenching impunity, 13 human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, said today in a joint letter to President Biden. The Biden administration should secure clear and […]

Apartheid

Apartheid: How a Reluctant UN Official Was convinced to so Describe Israeli Policies toward Palestinians

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Dawnmena (Dawn in the Middle East and North Africa), the democratization site founded by the late Jamal Khashoggi, carries an important column this week by Michael Lynk, who was the seventh United Nations Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, serving in […]