Juan Cole

Juan Cole is a public intellectual, prominent blogger and essayist, and the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles; He blogs on the contemporary Middle East at Informed Comment.

Did the Saudi Hackers who Trapped Khashoggi Target Jeff Bezos for Nude Photos?

Juan Cole breaks down the sordid web of ties between Saudi hackers, Jamal Khashoggi and Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post.

Juan Cole
By Juan Cole
Mohammed bin Salman | Khashoggi

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ security team has alleged in The Daily Beast that Saudi Arabian intelligence hacked his phone and passed to the National Enquirer intimate photos that the married Bezos had sent to his lover, Lauren Sanchez. Although the Enquirer’s parent company, AMI, has alleged that it received the material from Sanchez’s brother, this

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Trump Explodes at CIA over Iran: “Naive and Passive,” “Go Back to School!”

Anyone who thinks the US intelligence agencies are passive or unconcerned about Iran hasn’t been following the issue.

Juan Cole
By Juan Cole
Donald Trump | Iran

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Our great leader has delivered himself of some weighty pronouncements about Iran, about which he knows not a single little thing, likely even where exactly it is. He called the US intelligence agencies “passive and naive” on Iran, said that Tehran had become less active since Trump violated the 2015 nuclear deal, said

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Saudi Crown Prince Loses Support of Key Republican Senators with CIA Briefing

“If Bin Salman went before a jury, he would be convicted in 30 minutes.”

Juan Cole
By Juan Cole
Mohammed bin Salman Protest G20

Among the things Saudi Arabia wants from the United States is support for its war on Yemen and permission to buy from US arms corporations state-of-the-art military weaponry. Both things are now in peril, as key Republican senators reacted to a secret briefing by Gina Haspel, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Haspel gave her

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Saudi War on Yemen: World’s Worst Famine in a Century Could Claim 13 Million

The United Nations coordinator for Yemen has warned that the world has only 3 months to halt the slide toward catastrophe in Yemen

Juan Cole
By Juan Cole
Yemen Famine

Yemen is a country of some 29 million persons, but over a third of them are at risk of starvation if Saudi and UAE bombing campaigns continue. Lise Grand, the United Nations coordinator for Yemen, has warned that the world has only 3 months to halt the slide toward catastrophe. She seems to think that an immediate armistice must be called in the

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DC Elites Shocked at Trump Bromance with Putin but Give Israel’s Netanyahu a Pass

In Washington, it is all right to slam Trump for treason for making nice with Putin, but it is political death to criticize Netanyahu’s interference in American foreign policy or aggressive Israeli land theft or Israel setting the US up for conflict with Iran.

Juan Cole
By Juan Cole
israel

The inside-the-beltway crowd was absolutely outraged and appalled by Trump’s performance at Helsinki. There, Trump violated all the principles of American hawkishness. He sat next to Vladimir Putin, leader of a rival power, signaling that Russia is a peer. He sided with Putin over the assessments of the CIA, the NSA and other US intelligence

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Roseanne Barr Is What America Has Become

Barr’s odyssey from a liberal champion of the underpaid working class to a vitriolic Trump supporter and conspiracy theorist with an attraction to racist language is in many ways symptomatic of the United States itself.

Juan Cole
By Juan Cole
Actress Roseanne Barr attends the Tribeca Film Festival world premiere of "Roseanne For President!" at the SVA Theatre on Saturday, April 18, 2015, in New York. Evan Agostini | Invision

The cancellation of Roseanne Barr’s situation comedy reboot at ABC/Disney is not, as some of my more serious acquaintances on social media are saying, unimportant. Barr’s attack via Twitter on former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett (who, Barr said, looked like the offspring of a union of the Muslim Brotherhood and planet of the apes), is an important

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Here’s Why the Trump Administration’s New Iran Sanctions Will Fail

Unilateral US sanctions as a means of regime change or radically changing regime behavior have a strong record of failure, especially when applied to states with pricey primary commodities like petroleum.

Juan Cole
By Juan Cole
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy think tank, in Washington, May 21, 2018. Pompeo issued a steep list of demands Monday that he said should be included in a nuclear treaty with Iran to replace the Obama-era deal, threatening "the strongest sanctions in history" if Iran doesn't change course. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speech on new sanctions on Iran lays out a wide range of Iranian behavior he would like to change, and specified harsh US financial sanctions as his instrument. Pompeo, a Kansas oil man backed by the Koch brothers, is just a former congressman and a virulent Christian fundamentalist with white nationalist

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