Here are two signs that the Obama administration is attempting to dial down tensions with Iran, sending powerful symbolic signals that Washington does not want to see the crisis with Iran militarized. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will hold talks this week with his Israeli counterparts. He appears to be […]
Archives for January 2012
Elbaradei Quits Egyptian Presidential Race
Mohammad Elbaradei has withdrawn from the Egyptian presidential election. He is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and was a thorn in the Bush administration’s eyes because of his honesty and lack of tolerance for false accusations. Elbaradei says he is afraid that the presidential election will be fixed by Egypt’s powerful […]
Omar Khayyam (6)
When I die, prepare my body in wine, and in place of a eulogy lift a glass! On Resurrection Day you’ll find my dust stirring beneath the threshold of the bar. translated by Juan Cole From Whinfield 6 ___ For the life and thought of the Iranian humanist, Omar Khayyam, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of […]
Israeli Mossad Agents allegedly Impersonated CIA in fostering Baluch Terrorism against Iran
Mark Perry reveals that Israeli Mossad intelligence operatives pretended to be American field officers when contacting members of the Baluch Jundullah terrorist group, presumably in Pakistan, and funding and encouraging Jundullah to blow up targets in Iran. Among Jundullah operations was a July, 2010, bombing of a Shiite mosque in Zahedan in July of 2010– […]
Will Pakistan’s Crisis affect US in Afghanistan
Pakistan is an important country and a key US partner, and so it is bad news that it is lurching from political crisis to political crisis. There is a crisis between the military and the civilian government. There is a crisis between the military and the US government. There is a crisis between the Supreme […]
Cole Interview on the Iran and Iraq Crises
Interview of Juan Cole by Rick Schenkman of the History News Network at the American Historical Association meeting on the Iran and Iraq crisis.
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Superpower Adrift in an Alien World
Here’s the ad for this moment in Washington (as I imagine it): Militarized superpower adrift and anxious in alien world. Needs advice. Will pay. Pls respond qkly. PO Box 1776-2012, Washington, DC…
Good Nuclear Iran, Bad Nuclear Iran
An ad for the nuclear industry from the 1970s, depicting pro-Western Iranian dictator Mohammadd Reza Pahlavi:
A Murder in Tehran
Reuters makes a good point that Iran is having difficulty getting the international community to condemn the terrorist attacks against its scientists, which over time have left four of them dead in bombings. Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Behdast, a professor at Tehran’s technical university, was killed yesterday. Behdast was aged 32 and had been a chemistry […]
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