More in ‘Iraq’

“If you can talk to an insurgency that kills Americans, it should be easy to talk to ones that don’t,” Mark Perry tells me on the phone. Perry is author of the recently published Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage With Its Enemies, a book documenting his meetings with terrorists around the Middle East, ...

As Iraq’s March 7 election draws near, I can’t help reflecting on how far the Iraqi nation, now entrenched in factionalism, has departed from the commitment to multiculturalism so vital to its birth. “There is no meaning in the words Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the terminology of patriotism, there is simply a country called ...

Last Friday afternoon, we worried that high tensions between Israel and Syria—most immediately prompted by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s threats to Syrian leader Bashar Assad—could lead to violence. Well, fortunately, they haven’t so far, and hot tempers have appeared to cool over the weekend. Which can allow us now to focus on the broader question ...

Ezekiel is buried in Iraq (so are Ezra, Daniel, Nehemiah, Nahum, and Jonah—where exactly did you think Babylon was, anyway?). He is supposedly interred in a tomb in the town of Al-Kifl, south of Baghdad. The building has a minaret attached, but in its interior there are Hebrew inscriptions and a Torah ark. Give credit ...

Iraq will reportedly demand that Israel pay reparations for bombing its nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. A member of the Iraqi parliament told a local paper that his country will lodge its claim with the United Nations and cite a contemporaneous resolution that strongly condemned Israel’s air strike. (The raid is retrospectively credited with ...

When my husband Scott shipped out to Baghdad last month, he left a lot behind; he knew he’d be weighed down with duffel bags full of body armor, combat gear, and new Army uniforms, so he put aside most of what he really wanted to take. (Although he is an active-duty Navy pilot, he’s ...

• The Israeli town of Kirvat Yam is offering over $1 million for photographic proof of a mermaid some claim to have seen off its shore. No word on how much the town is offering for that even more elusive mythical entity, a workable peace plan. [Daily Mail]
• That is, if we still need one: ...

Hold on for a second, and pay close attention: we have here a brand-new twist to an already labyrinthine spy tale. In 2005, Larry Franklin, the Pentagon’s former Iran desk officer, pleaded guilty to disclosing secret information on the U.S.’s Iran and Iraq policy without authorization to two members of the American Israel Public Affairs ...

• U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will visit Israel on July 27 to address the Iranian nuclear issue as well as, potentially, West Bank settlements. [JTA]
• In a statement, meantime, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected American calls to cease building settlements in East Jerusalem, asserting sovereignty over “united Jerusalem”. [NYT]
• In a skirmish, Gazans ...

In this week’s Weekly Standard, Peter Berkowitz attempts to answer an often-unasked question about an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program: what would such a strike look like? Berkowitz spoke to high-ranking Israeli policy analysts, and he reports that it’s still undecided whether an attack would be carried out by Israeli Air Force bombers or ...