On December 16, the US military launched a second round of strikes against Islamic State personnel and infrastructure in Syria since the fall of the regime of Bashir al Assad on December 8. US operations...
Musical chairs in the Iraqi parliament can no longer solve the country's problems.
Note to President Trump: The new Iran strategy that you announced just three weeks ago is hanging by a thread. Its fate will likely be decided in the next few months on the Syria-Iraq border. If...
Co-written by Ali Alfoneh. Last week Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the principal architect of the Islamic Republic, died of a heart attack at 82. The former parliamentary speake...
Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, no voice arguing for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein had greater moral weight than that of Kanan Makiya. As Dexter Filkins put it in a 2007 New York Times Magazi...
“The United States intends to preserve Daesh in order to make Muslims dependent on America,” Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani declared using the Arabic acronym for the Isla...
Experts most everywhere agree that the fall of Ramadi to Islamic State is a disaster. It solidifies IS control over a major east-west route from Ramadi (75-100 miles from Baghdad) to deep into Sy...
Co-authored by Caleb Weiss The Islamic State claimed to have breached the perimeter of Camp Habbaniyah in Anbar province, via photographs released o...
The great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun centered his understanding of history on asabiyya, which is perhaps best translated as esprit de corps mixed with the will to power. In his maste...
The unfolding situation in Iraq has reportedly reignited the debate insi...
Ansar al Islam (AAI), a jihadist group founded in northern Iraq in September 2001, has released a set of photographs purportedly showing its ongoing operations. Since the latest rebel offensive a...
Imagine two men planning for years to escape from a high-security mental institution that is surrounded by 100 walls. On the night of their escape, they reach the 99th wall, and one asks the othe...
Al Qaeda is Having a Bad Reaction in Diyala Province.
How to create experts in counterinsurgency.
In Anbar, the Marines do what they've always done.
The elite media's coverage of Iraq is a fiasco
In Iraq we are now where we should have been in 2005 if the Sunni Arab community had not staged a bloody revanchist insurrection. The parliamentary elections on March 7 gave us a good snapshot of...
By Reuel Marc Gerecht and Lawrence B. Lindsey One of the standard accoutrements of the decision making process in the West Wing is the three-option "decision memorandum...
General Petraeus' Senate briefing slide from Sept. 11, 2007. The plan for the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to take over Iraq security is directly linked to...
Diyala Governor Ra' ad Rashid al Tamini. Photo by Bill Murray. BAQUBAH, IRAQ: Governor Ra' ad Rashid al Tamini didn' t seem in an overly jovial mood on Wednesday,...