Juan Cole

Aljazeera English reports on the activists abducted by Israel as they attempted to deliver food and other civilian aid to Gaza, which is under a debilitating blockade by Israel. This site explains the dire character of the Palestinians’ straits. A reader asked what would happen if someone tried to get food aid to Cuba. That […]

WaPo reports that opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi has released documents alleging bias in the June 12 presidential elections in Iran. He slams the Revolutionary Guards for interfering in the election. Mousavi’s website in Persian is here. Hosain Shariatmadari, a close adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, called in an editorial Saturday for Mousavi and […]

The USG Open Source Center translates a hard line editorial by an adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, calling for opposition leaders Mir Hosain Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi to be put on trial. Rightwing Iranian paper calls for prosecution of Musavi and KhatamiKeyhan OnlineSaturday, July 4, 2009 Document Type: OSC Translated Text Text of editorial […]

US hostages held in foreign country on Fourth of July, including a former Congresswoman, after having been captured in a naked act of piracy in international waters after the Americans attempted to respond to a crisis provoked by crimes against humanity, as detailed by Amnesty International. Once upon a time, Americans would have had the […]

Remembering the protests in Iran in pictures and film on the occasion of the America Declaration of Independence: Aljazeera English on “Mousavi and the Masses”, part I: Mousavi and the Masses,” Part II: Parnaz & Ashkan: “The Owner of this Land”: And some relevant print reports: LAT on one innocent man’s 10 days in Iran’s […]

In what may be a major development, it is being alleged that Iranian opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard are calling for a general strike next week. Such a strike would be harder for the regime to forestall than crowds coming into the streets, and whether it has a big effect […]

Joyce Battle (with help from Brendan McQuade) has posted twenty interviews of Saddam Hussein by the FBI to the National Security Archives at George Washington University, having done the hard work of FOIAing them. In this pdf file, the FBI interrogator asks a lot of leading questions about al-Qaeda and Saddam shoots them down effectively. […]

Dick Cheney reacted to the cessation of unilateral US patrols of major cities in Iraq, saying that he had concerns that the “insurgents” might launch more attacks and that “I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.” First of all, Cheney didn’t make […]

Some 4,000 US military personnel and 650 Afghan troops are launching an assault on Taliban positions in Helmand Province, with an aim to ‘take, clear and hold’ in emulation of the counter-insurgency tactics deployed successfully in some parts of Iraq. Helmand has been a particularly violent province in recent years, and is also the major […]