Juan Cole

Al-Hayat [Life] is reporting in Arabic that Lt. Gen. Charles Jacoby now says that the US military withdrawal from Iraq is on schedule and that only 50,000 US troops will be in the country by the end of August. He also affirmed that the Iraqi military and police are now capable of keeping order in […]

The Old Taliban of Mullah Omar hit Qandahar late Saturday with the largest coordinated bombing campaign since 2001, killing at least 35 persons and wounding 56. A spokesman said that the movement had targeted Qandahar on hearing the plans of Gen. Stanley McChrystal pledge that the US will mount a major campaign to clear Qandahar […]

The run-up to the Ides of March in Pakistan has been characterized by numerous horrific bombings, credit for which has been claimed by the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or Taliban Movement of Pakistan. After a string of bombings in Lahore on Friday, on Saturday morning, a suicide bomber detonated his payload at a checkpoint station […]

Al-Sharq al-Awsat [The Middle East] reports in Arabic that the Independent High Electoral Commission in Iraq has released some information on the performance of the major political coalitions in two southern Shiite provinces, based on a count so far of about a third of the vote. The big news is that prime minister Nuri al-Maliki’s […]

Ali Fathollah-Nejad writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment: Collateral Damages of Smart Sanctions on Iran The prospects for democracy, socio-economic development and conflict resolution will suffer if the West continues to rely on punitive measures By Ali Fathollah-Nejad* This time, the war-mongers’ silly season found its apogee in U.S. neo-conservative Daniel Pipes’ advice […]

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates traded insults on Wednesday in Kabul. Gates accused Iran of claiming to support the Karzai government in Kabul but of playing a ‘double game’ and secretly giving aid to the Taliban. Ahmadinejad complained that the US fostered Sunni radicalism in the 1980s as part […]

Obama’s Mideast policy lies in tatters this morning and US credibility as a broker of any future settlement was deeply wounded. Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, announced Wednesday that he had been informed by Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that the latter has pulled out of indirect talks with Israel. Late Wednesday, […]

The far rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel majorly sandbagged Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday, demonstrating once again that it has not the slightest interest in pursuing a just peace with the Palestinian people or in trading a cessation of its colonization of the Palestinian West Bank for a comprehensive peace with the […]

As I reported in January, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has begun taking the line that the September 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaeda on New York and Washington were actually stage-managed by US “Intelligence,” to create a pretext for American invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. This view is not widely shared among Iranians or […]