Middle East

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, […]

Barack Obama

Obama-Netanyahu Tiff worsens: US won’t rule out using UN to create Palestine

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – President Obama put some further hints out there on Tuesday about how he might proceed on Israeli-Paletinian relations in his final two years. Asked if he’d be willing to go through the United Nations to achieve Palestinian statehood, he replied, “We’re going to do that evaluation . . […]

al Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula

As Yemen crumbles, civilians brace for the worst

contributors

By Almigdad Mojalli | – SANA’A (IRIN) – Abdu Hasan Dabwan is not willing to let it happen again. Twice before, the 54 year-old says, he waited too long, refusing to flee in the hope that the tensions in his home country would not tip over into chaos. Twice he was wrong. The first time […]

Apartheid

Netanyahu’s Victory did us the favor of ending the Charade

contributors

By Yigal Bronner | (Informed Comment) – (Jerusalem) | The results of the Israeli elections are good for everybody. Good, because any remaining fog has cleared, and we now have a perfect view of where the country is heading. The elections were won on two straightforward and simple principles. First, as Netanyahu said very clearly, […]

Apartheid

Jim Crow in the Holy Land

contributors

By Phyllis Bennis | (Foreign Policy in Focus) – The last days of the campaign sounded an awful lot like the Jim Crow South, when African Americans had officially won the right to vote but still faced massive discrimination. On election morning, a powerful white official running for re-election urged his followers to get out […]

Featured

Mideast Apocalypse 2030: Why Obama wants the Palestine Issue Solved. Now.

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – It began in Hebron, which Palestinians call “al-Khalil,” the city of Abraham. Hundreds of thousands of Israel squatters had been enticed into this Palestinian city of 400,000 by the Likud government with cheap rent in cookie-cutter apartment buildings constructed on stolen Palestinian land. The raids on Palestinian olive […]

Israel

Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories ‘must end’ – White House chief of staff

contributors

RT | – US officials continue to maintain that American policy towards Israel will undergo changes in the wake of pre-election comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he stated that no Palestinian state would be established on his watch. Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories has lasted for nearly five decades and “must […]

Arab World

The Rise of ISIL & the Political Bankruptcy of Arab Politics in the Levant

contributors

By Ali R. Abootalebi | (Informed Comment) The rise of the so called ‘the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (al-Sham)’ or the ISIL—the Daesh in Arabic—is fundamentally the result of both the poverty of Arab Politics and the failure of the Islamic clerical leadership in formulating and institutionalizing the mechanics necessary for modern governance. […]

Economy

What exactly have the US & EU been doing to Iran’s Economy?

contributors

By Luke Johnson | (RFE/RL) Iran has been targeted by a steady dose of economic and military sanctions over the past 35 years, resulting in a maze of red tape intended to compel Tehran to end its support for international terrorism, improve its human rights record, and to assuage concerns that it is seeking to […]