By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – There is a lot of talk about nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and the ways in which an Iranian bomb would provoke Saudi Arabia and others to acquire nuclear warheads of their own. But for decades, the primary impetus to a nuclear arms race in the region […]
The von Moltke Fallacy and avoiding another World War, with Iran
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Iran has just de facto announced that it does not want a nuclear weapon, at least in this generation, and probably ever. That American and Western hawks can’t see this is a measure of their own blinkered view of reality or their own corruption. Some hawkishness is a […]
Syria: ISIL Conquest of Yarmouk Palestinian Camp refutes Israeli Propaganda
Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – On Wednesday, the extremist Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) group, known for its brutal beheadings and mass murder, took over the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp inside Damascus city limits. Palestinian women and Christians and male secularists are at special risk now. Had they been living normally in their homes in what […]
As Iran talks Progress, US, Iran forces cooperate in taking Tikrit
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – By now the Iraqi government has a long history of claiming areas are “liberated” when the local picture remained mixed. This is the sort of thing that occurred recently in where Tikrit, where PM Haydar al-Abadi went on television and declared Tikrit no longer in the hands of […]
War with Iran, by the Numbers
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Sen. John McCain and others on the American Right are in favor of dropping those pesky negotiations with Iran and just bombing their nuclear enrichment sites. Doing so, however, would only set them back a year or so, and would certainly put Iran on a war footing with […]
Israel’s Netanyahu jumps Shark with “Iran-Lausanne-Yemen” axis barb
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, no longer allowed to sit at the adult table because of his past food fights, has been reduced, as Haaretz observed, to whining from the sidelines. Now he is complaining about an “Iran-Lausanne-Yemen” axis. The negotiations between Iran and the P5 + 1 (the […]
A Game-Changer in Syrian War? al-Qaeda-led Factions take Idlib
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The provincial capital Idlib, a city of 165,000 in the old days and administrative center of the northwestern Idlib province, appears to have fallen completely to a Muslim fundamentalist coalition spearheaded by Ahrar al-Sham (Free Men of Syria) and the al-Qaeda affiliate, the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra). Most […]
Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbullah slams Saudi attack on Yemen
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hizbullah, Lebanese Shiite party-militia, weighed in on Friday on the Saudi intervention in Yemen. The Saudis put together a Sunni coalition against the Shiite Houthis and have bombed Zaidi Shiite population centers like Sa’adeh. I discussed their motives in my just-published piece in […]
How GOP threats against Iran have Guaranteed end of European Sanctions
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The US sanction regime on Iran has a unilateral dimension. That is, there are sanctions only the US applies. Then there is a European dimension, which involves using the clout of the Department of Treasury as well as the persuasiveness of the Department of State’s diplomats to get […]
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