Juan Cole

Iran’s PressTV says it has caught Israel forging documents in an attempt to implicate Iran in arms smuggling. The Israelis have been maintaining that a ship, the Francop, that their forces boarded near Cyprus originated in Iran and was bringing arms to Hizbullah and Hamas. Many US news outlets published the accompanying picture, which seemed […]

The Times of London reports that French commanders meeting with local Afghan leaders northeast of Kabul were targeted by insurgents with rockets, which killed 12 Afghan civilians and wounded about 38. No French personnel appear to have come to harm, though the French Gen. Marcel Druart was in some danger. The Taliban claimed responsibility. Also […]

Daniel Luban shows that the assault on the National Iranian-American Council by the rightwing Israel lobbies and their allies in the People’s Jihadi Organization [Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO)], a Marxist-Islamist political cult is actually an attempt to mortally wound the Obama administration. A strategist allegedly linked to the MEK, Hasan Daioleslam, wrote to […]

The Palestinian leadership is making medium-term preparations to go to the United Nations to ask for a declaration of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders (i.e. in the West Bank and Gaza). The move comes because the Obama administration’s attempts to kickstart the peace process have crashed and burned, as Elaf pointed out. The Obama […]

The Taliban Movement of Pakistan launched another bombing in Peshawar on Saturday, killing 12 and wounding 30. The bomb-laden vehicle was stopped at a checkpoint by a vigilant policeman intent on stopping it from approaching sensitive sites, and the driver then detonated his payload. The policeman was killed, but he likely stopped a much larger […]

Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that some top al-Qaeda 9/11 conspirators will be tried by jury in New York not far from the scenes of devastation that they had wrought. This decision by the Obama administration demonstrates faith in the American way of life, and a conviction that even the worst mass murderers can […]

AfPak continued to generate headlines and concerns on Friday morning. In Peshawar, insurgents set off a huge bomb near the regional HQ of Inter-Services Intelligence. Early reports say that the death toll was above 15, and that dozens were wounded. In Afghanistan itself, Aljazeera English reports on corruption in that country: Retired four-star general and […]

Deepak Tripathi writes in a guest editorial for IC News that the US ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, has sent classified messages to Washington in the last few days, advising President Obama not to send more troops to Afghanistan, is dramatic both in its timing and substance. It came just as Obama was to hold […]

AP is reporting that President Barack Obama is declining to be rushed into committing to the Afghanistan War as an open-ended project, and wants a timetable for turning security duties over to the Afghanistan National Army. AP says that the key intervention here came from US ambassador in Kabul, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who warned […]