Juan Cole

Aljazeera.net is reporting that the streets in Iran’s capital, Tehran, were almost deserted Sunday morning. Since it is a weekday in Iran, there should have been heavy traffic, but many people appear to have stayed home from work. Reports from students in Tehran say that the universities and polytechnic institutes have been closed for the […]

Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen 1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, […]

One person was wounded and 8 injured (all policemen) by a Taliban bombing at Kohat Saturday morning. The attack was likely intend to punish the Pakistani security forces for their campaign against the Taliban in the North-West Frontier Province . . . The Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (Movement of the Taliban of Pakistan), led by Baitullah […]

On Friday, Iranians and the rest of the globe are eagerly awaiting an outcome in the presidential elections. Iranians started voting Friday morning. Rallies and electioneering were not allowed on Thursday, the day before the vote, leaving Tehran’s streets eerily ghost-like after days of raucus rallies every evening. Howard LaFranchi at CSM asks what the […]

The USG Open Source Center analyzes Iran’s political blogs and finds that the conservatives have redoubled their efforts on Ahmadinejad’s behalf. OSC Analysis: Iran — Conservative Bloggers Intensify Support of AhmadinezhadIran — OSC AnalysisThursday, June 11, 2009 Document Type: OSC Analysis In the second week (23-29 May) of analysis of 100 Iranian political bloggers President […]

The political head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,Yadollah Javani clearly had a scare thrown into him by Monday’s enormous demonstration in Tehran in favor of reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hosain Mousavi. He issued a statement Wednesday warning that there would be no “velvet revolution” in Iran and that attempts to foment one would be nipped in […]

The USG Open Source Center summarizes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s television appearance in which he defended his performance in the debates and reaffirmed the truth of the economic statistics he cited (which implied widespread prosperity and low unemployment, which nobody in Iran believed). FYI — Iranian President Rejects Opponents’ AccusationsVision of the Islamic Republic of […]

My column is out in Salon.com: Obama wins an election in the Middle East: Lebanon’s voters gave the White House the victory it wanted — with a lot of help from Hezbollah. Excerpt: ‘ Whatever the size of Obama’s influence, the election has already had a direct impact of the future of Arab-Israeli negotiations and […]

A terrorist group stormed the parking lot of the Pearl Continental Hotel, killing or wounding guards and arranging to move a bomb-laden mini-truck in close to the hotel. A suicide bomber then detonated the truck and caused one wall of the hotel to collapse, creating a 15-foot deep crater. It was the most powerful bomb […]