Featured

Lebanon held the first parliamentary elections since 2009 (they are supposed to be every 4 years but the Syrian civil war and political gridlock made it difficult to meet that schedule until now).* Given all the talk of Trump pulling out of the Iran deal in part because of Tehran’s supposed regional dominance, the results […]

Corruption

Treason: Obama Iran Deal Officials allegedly targeted by Trump via Israeli Black Cube

Juan Cole

On Saturday, The Observer broke the story that soon after Trump’s visit to Tel Aviv last year, his aides initiated a dirty tricks campaign to smear Obama-era officials Ben Rhodes, Colin Kahl (and likely others) in an effort to discredit the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or Iran nuclear deal. Apparently the thinking […]

Featured

Syria: Did E. Ghouta Gas Reports cause Rebels to surrender en masse in Homs, Hama?

Juan Cole

The Syrian regime and its Russian backers have managed to expel opposition guerrilla groups from the areas just north of the central cities of Homs and Hama. The groups agreed to hand over their heavy and medium weapons and to board buses for either Idlib province or Jarabulus in Aleppo province in the north. The […]

Featured

Dear Trump: The Hugest Solar Plant in the New World is in Mexico, not the US

Juan Cole

Mexico wants to produce 43% of its electricity from renewables by 2024, in only 6 years. It has 58 new power plants planned, the majority of them solar and the rest wind. Toward that end, in December it opened the Vilanueva solar farm in the desert, with 2.3 million solar panels, generating enough just to […]

Featured

Why Trump can’t put Iran back in an Obama-style box of severe sanctions

Juan Cole

Iranian oil exports were back up to 2.5 million barrels a day or so last month, similar to the levels common before the US placed severe sanctions on the country beginning in 2012. At the low point Iran, which produces around 4 million barrels a day, was only exporting 1.5 million barrels a day, forced […]

Donald Trump

If Giuliani’s right Trump lied about Porn Star Hush Money, why believe him on Iran?

Juan Cole

Rudy Giuliani’s so-called defense of Donald J. Trump on Sean Hannity’s nightly One Hour of Hate involved outing the president’s money laundering deal with Michael Cohen whereby he paid him a regular retainer for undisclosed services and then expected him to spend from his own bank account on fixer jobs for Trump. This arrangement helps […]

Donald Trump

Top 4 things more disgraceful than Michelle Wolf’s Jokes or leak of Mueller Questions

Juan Cole

This week, the Right wing outrage machine, in part orchestrated by Trump, has been groaning about comedian Michelle Wolf’s roast at the White House Correspondents’ dinner and now Trump is calling the leak of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s questions for him “disgraceful” (typos suggest Trump may have leaked them himself. Here are some things that […]

Featured

Netanyahu: Don’t look here where we’re shooting children, look over there at Iran

Juan Cole

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a notorious warmonger, serial liar and supremacist racialist who used to lead the closest thing Israel has to a fascist party until parties even more extreme got elected to parliament, is attempting to bamboozle the clueless Trump into getting on a war footing with Iran. Netanyahu’s breathless announcement that there […]

Featured

Why is Pompeo Suddenly against Saudi Arabia’s War on Yemen?

Juan Cole

According to a State Department leak to the New York Times, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, when he was in Riyadh on Saturday, pressured the Saudi government to wind up the war in Yemen. If this report is true, it is puzzling. In contrast, Secretary of Defense James Mattis has urged President Trump to stay […]