By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The US corporate press is letting the presidential candidates set the agenda. Occasionally someone will step out of line, as Fox’s Megyn Kelly did when she pressed Donald Trump on his misogyny and general disrespect of women. But virtually no one in the mass media has […]
Why did Nigerian Military attack Muslim Protest Movement when violent Boko Haram is Still at Large?
By Allan Christelow | (Informed Comment) | – – On December 12-13, 2015 Nigerian security forces carried out an attack against the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) in the city of Zaria. The movement’s leader, Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, and his wife, Zeenah were both seriously injured by shooting, and then kept in detention. The incident occurred […]
Don’t be fooled: Lindsey Graham & GOP Establishment just as Crazy as Trump
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Lindsey Graham has been posing as the voice of reason in the Republican Party for the past few weeks, warning Tuesday that if Donald Trump gets the Republican nomination and Hillary Clinton is the Democratic standard-bearer, then “crazy loses to dishonest” in the public’s eye. There […]
Russia open to “Federal” Syria, but opposition worries about Partition
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov said Monday that Russia supports whatever arrangements the Syrians in the current negotiations reach about the future, included a possible federal state. The United States has a federal system, which means that individual states retain a certain amount of autonomy, […]
“Tehran is liberated territory” as Pragmatists & Centrists win Iranian Capital & Expert Assembly
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The era of former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also a former mayor of Tehran, is completely over. Ahmadinejad’s so-called spiritual mentor, Mohammad-Taqi Misbah-Yazdi (actually an extremely hateful individual), lost his seat on the Assembly of Experts, as did far right figure Mohammad Yazdi, the body’s sitting […]
How Much will Iran Change after Ayatollah Khamenei?
By Golnaz Esfandiari | ( RFE/RL ) | – – The succession question in Iran has come to the fore recently with the election of a new Assembly of Experts, the 88-member chamber of (male) theologians who pick and nominally oversee the work of the country's supreme leader. Speculation mounted about potential successors to Supreme […]
Syrian Ceasefire: A Signal that Russia is winning the War?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Whether or not the cessation of hostilities in Syria holds, it is a major turning point in the revolution and civil war that began in 2011. As of Saturday morning in Syria, the major fronts between the regime and the Muslim Brotherhood factions were quiet. There […]
Iran Election Results Show that when US rewards Pragmatists, they Win
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Early results in Iran’s parliamentary elections suggest that the centrists, pragmatists and independents will have more seats than the Khomeinist far right. For the first time since the 1979 revolution, no one bloc will dominate the national legislature. The far right had had 66% of the […]
Rubio’s 7 Fallacies on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In last night’s Republican debate co-sponsored by Telemundo, billionaire bigot Donald Trump, usually a resident of Mars, briefly came back to earth long enough to suggest he could broker a deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians by being even-handed. It is not a matter, he […]
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