Middle East

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In an exclusive, Reuters reports today that the Trump administration is going into the Iraq reconstruction conference in Kuwait next week with no plans to contribute a dime to the effort. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will attend. Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi estimates that Iraq […]

Yemen

Yemeni Peace Nobelist Karman: Saudi Arabia, UAE are occupying Yemen

contributors

Middle East Monitor | – – Yemeni Nobel Peace laureate Tawakkol Karman called for an end to the Saudi-led coalition’s military occupation of Yemen in an exclusive interview with Reuters today. Tawakkol Karman, Via Belfer Center, YouTube “The Saudi-Emirati occupation … betrayed the Yemenis and sold them out, exploiting the coup of the Houthi militia […]

Feminism

Why Iranians are Really protesting Compulsory Veiling Laws

contributors

By Moujan Mirdamadi | (The Conversation) | – – Protests against Iran’s mandatory hijab law – which requires all women to wear it in public – have sprung up across Iran in the first few weeks of 2018. Women, acting individually, stood on utility boxes in public places, taking off their headscarves and holding them […]

Bashar al-Assad

Syria: Deir al-Zor attack on US Troops, allies, Shows their Vulnerability

contributors

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – US troops and the Kurdish and Arab fighters among whom they are embedded came under a coordinated attack by pro-Damascus militias on late Wednesday into Thursday morning. The action took place in Deir al-Zor Province, in Syria’s far east. It is possible that the pro-regime militias […]

Israel/ Palestine

Israel’s New Admirers: The White Nationalist Right

contributors

By Harry Blain | (Foreign Policy in Focus) | – – A famously anti-Semitic movement has come to admire modern Israel’s “ethnonationalism.” That speaks volumes about the ascent of the far right in the country. Much of the “alt-right” literature in the United States is exactly what you would expect. Images of George Soros using […]

Featured

Syrian Kurds allied with US stream into Afrin, Rally against Turkish Offensive

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Arabic daily Elaph reports that hundreds of Kurds who came into Afrin from other Kurdish cantons in northern Syria staged a demonstration in the city Tuesday evening against the Turkish invasion. Kurds drove from the northeast, from Qamishli and Hasaka, and from Kobane, through Kurdish-held […]

Colonialism

British Empire’s hidden workings in India and Iran revealed in remarkable new film footage

contributors

By Jonathan Westaway | The Conversation | – – In a basement office at the Royal Geographical Society in London’s South Kensington, grainy 16mm film footage flickers silently across the screen, one of over a hundred expeditionary and travel films digitised recently by the society and the British Film Institute. They are now free to […]

Displaced and Refugees

UN: 47,000 displaced By Saudi-led war on Yemen since December

contributors

Middle East Monitor | – – Up to 47,000 Yemenis have been displaced to Aden as a result of rising military tensions in Taiz and the Red Sea port governorate Hudaydah, the Anadolu Agency reported today. “Escalating conflict in Taiz and Hudaydah since December 2017 has displaced nearly 47,000 people to Aden and other governorates […]

Israel/ Palestine

Turkey & Vatican tag team Trump over Jerusalem

contributors

Middle East Monitor | – – Both Erdogan and Pope Francis are opposed to US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which many US allies say could doom Middle East peace efforts. Tayyip Erdogan made the first visit by a Turkish president to the Vatican in 59 years on […]