Juan Cole

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is, "Engaging the Muslim World," (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored, "Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He has been a regular guest on PBS’s Lehrer News Hour, and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the Today Show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now! and many others. He has given many radio and press interviews. He has written widely about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He has commented extensively on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Iraq War, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Iranian domestic struggles and foreign affairs. He has a regular column at Truthdig. He continues to study and write about contemporary Islamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu and reads some Turkish, knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, and continues to travel widely there.

In War Crime, Saudi, UAE Airstrikes on Yemen kill over 100 in Migrant Detention Center, in War that has left 377,000 Dead

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The Saudis and the United Arab Emirates launched an air campaign of 45 air strikes on Yemen on Friday. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, one of the strikes hit a migrant detention facility in Sa’adeh in north Yemen, killing over 100 detainees there. In addition, there were large numbers of wounded, and the Red Cross mobilized ambulances to get them to two area hospitals. The Houthis are saying there were 233 Continue Reading...

Fightin’ Joe Biden Wins big, on Jobs, Covid, the Dow and Infrastructure, but Corporate News downplays Successes

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The for-profit press thinks it knows what the story in Washington, D.C., is. Joe Biden is a boring president who struggles to get anything done and the Democratic Party is a hot mess of infighting that paralyzes it. Corporate news is the Eeyore of the news world, spreading pessimism and gloom wherever it goes. The inside-the-beltway narrative of the rich for-profit journalists fails on every point, but they keep filling the airwaves Continue Reading...

The Accumulated Evil of the Whole: That time Bush and Co. made the September 11 Attacks a Pretext for War on Iraq

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Kyle Swenson at Washington Post reported in 2018 that Floridian Ishnar Lopez-Ramos was in love, but her intended only had eyes for another woman. So Ms. Lopez-Ramos enlisted two 22-year-old accomplices to target the other woman, who worked at the Ross Dress for Less at a shopping Center near Kissimee. They observed a woman fitting the description of Lopez-Ramos’s rival leaving the store. They kidnapped her and zip-tied her. Then they met Continue Reading...

Trump’s Tehran Poison Pill: US Trade Embargo provokes Iranian Attacks in Gulf, Making Return to Nuclear Deal Harder

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The BBC reports that a bitumen tanker, the MV Asphalt Princess, was boarded by nine men on Tuesday and hijacked. It cites unnamed “analysts,” presumably MI6, to the effect that the hijacking was the work of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. The MV Asphalt Princess, owned by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was about to exit the narrow Strait of Hormuz, heading from the Gulf into the Arabian Sea. Two years ago, Iranian forces hijacked Continue Reading...

Gaslighting the Pentagon: Tucker Carlson, who called Iraqis ‘Monkeys,’ Poses as anti-Racist in defending White Supremacy from “Pig” Gen. Milley

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Fox white nationalist (there, I’ve been redundant and repeated myself) Tucker Carlson once called Iraqis “semiliterate primitive monkeys,” managing to be racist, anti-Arab and Islamophobic all at once. Now Carlson is posing as an anti-racist. Funny thing, though. He isn’t out there apologizing for his racism against Iraqis. Then there was that time when Carlson advocated for the odious anti-Semitic “replacement theory” that rich Continue Reading...

Brutal Israeli Bombing, Palestinians in Gaza are Thirsty, in the Dark, and lack Medicine, and Thousands are Homeless

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Every time Israel bombs Gaza into smithereens, it is left to others to try to rebuild. The European Union, Qatar, and even the Biden administration are offering aid. (The US is giving a piddling $150 million; even tiny Qatar is pledging $500 million.) The Greek myths contain the story of Sysyphus, a trickster figure who ambushed Death when it came for him and chained it up. Ares ultimately freed Death, and when Sisyphus died he was Continue Reading...

New Wind and Solar up 50% globally in 2020, as China beats US by over 4 to 1

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The new report on 2020 by the International Renewable Energy Agency reveals that the world’s renewable energy generation capacity increased by an astonishing 10.3% in 2020 despite the global economic slowdown during the coronavirus pandemic. It beats the previous record for an annual increase in this sector by a healthy 50%. The bad news for Americans is that most of this increase took place in Asia, especially China. In this Continue Reading...

Attacks on Asian Americans are Rooted in over a Century of Racist Exclusion

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The spine-chilling attacks on Asian-Americans around the country, in San Francisco, New York, and now most bloodily in Atlanta, are manifestations of a white supremacism that has deep roots in American history. The odious Trump and his minions whipped up hatred by branding the novel coronavirus the “Chinese flu” or “Kung Flu.” He was not doing something new. The coronavirus, of course, came to the United States from Europe. Homo sapiens is a Continue Reading...

In Game Changer, Int’l Criminal Court will take up Israeli War Crimes and Apartheid in Palestine

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On Friday, the International Criminal Court found that it had jurisdiction to consider war crimes and crimes against humanity and the crime of Apartheid in the Palestinian territories. Israeli politician Abba Eban once quipped that Palestinians never lost the opportunity to lose an opportunity. But Palestinians have carefully, methodically created this opportunity to be heard in an international tribunal. It is the ruling Israeli right wing Continue Reading...

Peril in the Middle East, Peril at Home: Our Top 10 Stories of 2020

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2020 was a monster of a year, leaving three million Americans dead (a record), probably nearly half a million of them of Covid-19 once everyone is counted. The fecklessness of the outgoing Trump administration was responsible for a good deal of this national catastrophe, one that did not strike our allies South Korea or Germany to nearly the same extent (what with their having competent, rational leaders and a funded health care system, and all). Continue Reading...

In Bid to Kill a Biden Return to Iran Nuclear Deal, Israel Assassinates Leading Nuclear Scientist

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The Iranian newspaper Ettela’at reports that on Friday, what it called “armed terrorist elements” mounted an assault on the automobile carrying Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was badly wounded in the midst of the clash between his security team and the assailants and was transported to hospital, where he died of his injuries. Fakhrizadeh, an eminent nuclear scientist, was the head of the Research and Innovation Organization within the Iranian Continue Reading...

Sudan’s Revolutionaries insist Israel Deal must be ratified by Future Parliament, as Trump’s Strong-Arm Tactics threaten its Democracy

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Donald Trump held a press conference in the Oval Office with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on speaker phone in which he breathlessly announced that Sudan had agreed to normalize relations with Israel, following on Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates earlier this year. Egypt and Jordan had signed peace treaties with Israel decades ago. Except that as usual, Trump got over his skis. Here’s the wrinkle. The whole Sudanese government Continue Reading...

On Labor Day, Trump’s Mismanagement of Pandemic has left 27 Million Unemployed and Turning to Food Banks

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It is a sad Labor Day, in the shadow of the Trump Pandemic. Over a fourth of workers are afraid of losing their jobs because of the pandemic, up from 15% last year this time, according to Gallup. That is, the anxiety over joblessness as almost doubled. Many are much more worried, as well, about having their wages cut. Workers are more anxious than at any time since the Great Recession began to taper off nine years ago. Some 27 million US workers Continue Reading...

Will Trump’s Maximum Pressure on UNSC against Lifting Iran Arms Embargo Backfire Big Time?

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Peter Hutchison at AFP reports that the Trump administration may be set to shoot itself in the foot at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) next week by pressing for an over-ambitious resolution against lifting the arms embargo on Iran. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed by the US and the other permanent members of the UNSC plus Germany involved a set of bargains. Iran had to give up 80 percent of its civilian nuclear Continue Reading...

All the Lies Trump told the West Point Graduates about American Militarism

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It was bad enough that Trump endangered the health of the graduating class at West Point for the purposes of a photo op for his reelection campaign by insisting on bringing them back to campus. It was bad enough that he gave an alarming performance in which some observers saw an advancing dementia and during which he had difficulty lifting a glass of water. What was worse was all the lies and half-truths Trump told the West Point Continue Reading...