Middle East

Found a better rainfall distribution map: Courtesy the National Center for Atmospheric Research, 2007

Obama’s 2010 Successes and Failures in the Middle East – Cole in Truthdig

My new column at Truthdig.com is just out: “Obama’s 2010 Successes and Failures in the Middle East”. Excerpt: ‘ As 2010 dawned, President Barack Obama had four big issues on his plate regarding the Middle East. These were Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Iran, and Afghanistan. The year has been as unkind to him on those issues as […]

Iraq

Iraq’s al-Maliki Rebuffed on Incomplete Cabinet

Juan Cole

Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that prospective Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki faced severe opposition on Monday to his insistence on announcing the formation of a government without naming all the cabinet members. Among the parties opposed to this step was the Iraqiya, the Kurdistan Alliance, and the Sadr Movement. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court issued a ruling […]

Israel/ Palestine

HRW on Israeli Racial Discrimination in West Bank

Juan Cole

Human Rights Watch has issued a new report on racial discrimination against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. HRW writes: ‘Israel operates a two-tier system for the two populations of the West Bank in the large areas where it exercises exclusive control. The report is based on case studies comparing Israel’s starkly different treatment of […]

Iraq

Iraq Arrests Dozens in Terror Sweep, Offers Help to Iran

Juan Cole

Iraqi authorities are going for the trifecta. They are finally forming a new government, nine months after the March parliamentary elections, to be headed by incumbent Nuri al-Maliki at the head of a Shiite-Kurdish coalition. They have finally gotten UN sanctions on Iraq, implemented after the 1990 occupation of Kuwait, lifted. And they are increasingly […]

Israel/ Palestine

Movement for Palestinian State gains International Momentum, to Dismay of US Congress

Juan Cole

Palestinian authorities on Thursday protested the resolution passed by the US congress on Wednesday condemning movement toward a unilateral declaration by Palestinians of a Palestinian state. The congressional resolution was actually fairly weak, showing the tensions between the US and the far rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu, since it did call for the establishment of […]

Egypt

Egypt: Israel’s Nukes Destabilizing to Region (Wikileaks)

Juan Cole

Whenever any US official says that Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program is destabilizing the Middle East by posing a proliferation problem, I wince. A civilian enrichment program is not a proliferation issue, since only the construction of a nuclear warhead would violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT explicitly allows countries to close the fuel […]

Iraq

Visser: Spin-Doctors and the Changing Nature of Imperial Power in Iraq

Juan Cole

Reidar Visser writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: Treaties, Acronyms and Spin-Doctors: The Changing Nature of Imperial Power in Iraq In the 1920s, during the early days of the Iraqi monarchy, a major bone of contention between King Faisal I and Britain concerned the definition of their bilateral relations. King Faisal objected strongly […]

Islam

Cardinal Ratzinger Moderated Opposition to Turkey Joining Europe on Becoming Pope: Wikileaks

Juan Cole

The Guardian reports on wikileaks cables regarding the position of the Catholic Church on Europe’s Christian character and its unease with Turkey joining the EU. (the cable is here.) The problem is that, while the article on this matter is clear and largely accurate, the headline: “Pope wanted Muslim Turkey kept out of EU” is […]