by Paul Pillar* Many participants in debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East have a lot invested in maintaining the idea of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a bogeyman forever to be feared, despised, sanctioned, and shunned, and… Continue Reading
by Wayne White President Barack Obama’s news conference today showed some well-placed White House caution against acting in ways that would support more substantially Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s sectarian agenda in Iraq. Hopefully, Obama’s repeated implicit criticism of Maliki’s government… Continue Reading
by Marsha B. Cohen One of the more remarkable aspects of the recent news coverage of Iraq — the Maliki government’s loss of control over the northern region of the country, the deadly confrontations taking place between Iraqi Shia and Sunnis, and the… Continue Reading
by Wayne White Coverage of the Iraqi crisis from the media to Capitol Hill has been characterized by scary worst-case scenarios and exaggerations of the military capabilities of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIL or ISIS). Yet this… Continue Reading
by Shireen T. Hunter The beleaguered Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, is the latest in the long list of the West’s favorite political leaders turned into pariahs. The conventional wisdom now is that Maliki’s flaws and wrong policies, especially… Continue Reading