Tag Archives: Iranian Revolution
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 7 January 2020
At 1 AM on 3 January, an American drone strike killed the head of Iran's Quds Force, the division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) charged with exporting the Islamic revolution, and his Iraqi deputy, Jamal al-Ibrahimi (Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis). Sulaymani was the strategic driver of Iran's expansionist policy in the Middle East, as well as the orchestrator of its terrorism and assassinations further afield. Unlike with the killing of Al-Qaeda's Usama bin Laden in 2011 or the Islamic State's Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) in October, where the dynamics shifted little, Sulaymani's death opens up questions about the direction in which the Middle East will now move. Continue reading →
This entry was posted in Iran, Jihadi Biographies and tagged Abolhassan Banisadr, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur, Ali Hassan Salameh, Ali Khamenei, Ansar Corps, ARAMCO, Artesh, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Badr Corps, Bashar al-Assad, Benghazi, Black September, CIA, Colonel Qaddafi, Department 1000, Donald Trump, Gulf States, Hamza Corps, Hezbollah, Hizballah, Ibrahim al-Badri, Ibrahim Awwad al-Badri al-Samarrai, Imad Mughniya, Imad Mughniyeh, Iran, Iran-Iraq War, Iranian Revolution, Iraq, ISIS, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Islamic State, Ismail Qaani, Israel, Jalal Talabani, Jamal al-Ibrahimi, Jamal Jaafar al-Ibrahimi, JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Kataib Hezbollah, Kataib Hizballah, KDP, Kosar Bureau, Kurdistan Democratic Party, Kurds, Lebanon, Liwa Fatemiyoun, Masud Barzani, Masud Rajavi, MEK, Mohsen Reza'i, Mojahedeen-e-Khalq, Moqtada Sadr, Muammar al-Qaddafi, Mujahideen e-Khalq, Muqtada al-Sadr, Nabi al-Akram Corps, Nigeria, Osama bin Laden, Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PLO, PUK, Qassem Soleimani, Qassem Suleimani, Qods Force, Quds Force, Ramadan Corps, Ruhollah Khomeini, Russia, Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia, Shah, Shi'a militias, Shi'ism, Special Groups, terrorism, Tudeh Party, Unit 3800, United Arab Emirates, Usama bin Ladin, Yasser Arafat on January 7, 2020 by KyleWOrton.
The Memoir of a British Spy in Al-Qaeda
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 July 2019
The main issue with that Nine Lives has to overcome is the one that has attended Aimen Dean (a pseudonym) since he went public in March 2015 with an interview he gave to the BBC, claiming he had been a British spy within Al-Qaeda between 1998 and 2006. That issue is overcoming the doubts about his story. Nine Lives goes a long way to solving this by bringing in Paul Cruickshank, the editor-in-chief of CTC Sentinel, one of the premier academic resources in the terrorism field, and Tim Lister, a terrorism-focused journalist with CNN, as co-authors. As well as helping structure the book from Dean's memories, the two co-authors note they had been able to "corroborate key details" that convinced them: "In the years immediately leading up to and following 9/11, Aimen Dean was by far the most important spy the West had inside al-Qaeda". Continue reading →
This entry was posted in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda Terrorism, Book Review, Islamic Militancy and tagged Abu Abbas al-Bahraini, Abu Abbas al-Sharqi, Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir, Abu Hafs al-Masri, Abu Hamza al-Ghamdi, Abu Hamza al-Masri, Abu Hazim al-Sha'ir, Abu Khabab al-Masri, Abu Musab al-Suri, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Qatada al-Filistini, Abu Zubaydah, Afghanistan, Ahmad al-Khalayleh, Aimen Dean, al-mubtakkar, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Ali al-Fakheri, Ali Mohamed Abdul Aziz al-Fakheri, Anwar al-Sadat, apocalypse, AQAP, Armed Islamic Group, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bahrain, Bassam Bokhowa, Bosnia, Britain, chemical weapons, Darunta camp, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, EIJ, espionage, Finsbury Park Mosque, GIA, Hafizullah Amin, Hamza Rabia, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, Intelligence, Iran, Iranian Revolution, Iraq, IRGC, ISIS, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Islamic State, Islamism, Juhayman al-Utaybi, Kenneth Bigley, KGB, Khalden camp, Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, Khalid al-Islambouli, Khalid al-Islambuli, Khalid Ali al-Hajj, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Kurdistan Workers' Party, MI5, MI6, Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, MILF, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Mohammed Atef, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Muhammad al-Saghir, Muhammad Atef, Muhammad Ibrahim al-Saghir, Muhammad Qutb, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Muslim Brotherhood, Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, Nine Lives: My Time as the West's Top Spy Inside Al-Qaeda, Omar Bakri Muhammad, Omar Othman, Operation DESERT FOX, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, Philippines, PKK, Qatar, Qods Force, Quds Force, Ruhollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Said Arif, Salafism, Saudi Arabia, Sayf al-Battar, Sayyid Qutb, Secret Intelligence Service, Shah, Shehzad Tanweer, SIS, social media, Soviet Union, spy, Syria, Telegram, terrorism, Turki al-Bin'ali, Umar Bakri Muhammad, Umar Othman, Usama bin Ladin, Yemen, Yusuf al-Ayeri, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn on July 8, 2019 by KyleWOrton.
The Shah, the Cold War, and the Islamists
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 March 2019
Abbas Milani's The Shah gives a portrait of Iran's last monarch, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, and the impact that his downfall forty years ago continues to have in the Middle East, notably the emboldening of the Islamist movement. Continue reading →
This entry was posted in Book Review, Iran and tagged 15 Khordad uprising, Abbas Milani, Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, America, Asadollah Alam, assassination, authoritarianism, Baghdad Pact, Baha'is, Bohdan Stashynsky, Britain, CENTO, Central Treaty Organization, Cold War, Communism, Cuba, Dhofar, Dhufar, Eberhard Taubert, Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Gharani affair, human rights, Iran, Iranian Revolution, Iraq, Islamism, Islamists, Israel, Jamal Abd al-Nasr, Jews, Jordan, KGB, Libya, Mohamed Mossadeq, Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari, MOSSAD, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Muammar al-Qaddafi, Muammar el-Qaddafi, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, nationalism, Nazis, Nikita Khrushchev, nuclear weapons, Oman, Operation AJAX, Operation BOOT, Palestine Liberation Organisation, pan-Arabism, PFLP, PLO, political prisoners, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Project FLOWER, propaganda, religion, Republic of Mahabad, Reza Khan, Reza Shah, Ruhollah Khomeini, Russia, Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia, SAVAK, secret police, secularism, Shah, Soviet Union, Stepan Bandera, subversion, terrorism, torture, Treaty of Gulistan, Treaty of Turkmenchay, Turkey, Wadi Haddad, Wadie Haddad, wetwork, women's rights on March 20, 2019 by KyleWOrton.
The Russian Relationship with Israel: A History
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 12 December 2018
© AP Photo / Jim Hollander, Pool
Essay: "Zionism is Making Us Stupid": The Russian Relationship with Israel from the Soviets to Putin Continue reading →
This entry was posted in Iran, Israel, Russia, Syria and tagged Abolhassan Banisadr, Abu Dawud, Abu Iyad, Abu Jihad, Abu Mazen, Abu Nidal, active measures, al-Qaeda, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, Aleppo, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Zhdanov, Antisemitism, Ariel Sharon, Bashar al-Assad, Benjamin Netanyahu, Black September, Bolsheviks, Bosnia, Carlos the Jackal, Chechnya, Christopher Andrew, Cold War, Communism, Czechoslovakia, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, DFLP, Doctors' Case, Doctors' Plot, East Germany, Ekaterina Schulmann, Entebbe raid, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Golda Meir, GULAG, Hafez al-Assad, HAMAS, Hani al-Hassan, Hezbollah, Hizballah, Homo Sovieticus, Houthis, Idlib, Ilich Sánchez, Intelligence, Iranian Revolution, Iraq, ISIS, Islamic Republic, Islamic State, Israel, Jackson-Vanik amendment, JCPOA, Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Jewish Defence League, Jews, jihadism, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Jonathan Brent, Joseph Stalin, KGB, Khaled Meshal, Khalil al-Wazir, Kurdistan Workers' Party, Kurds, Kuwait, Lebanon, Leonid Brezhnev, Liwa al-Baqir, Mahmoud Abbas, Main Adversary, Meir Kahane, missiles, Mitrokhin Archive, Mohammad Oudeh, Munich massacre, NATO, Nayef Hawatma, Nazi Germany, Operation NORTHERN SHIELD, Palestine Liberation Organization, PFLP, PKK, PLO, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Qassem Suleimani, Rafat Abu Auon, refuseniks, Rudolf Slansky, Ruhollah Khomeini, Russia, Russian Orthodox Church, S-300, Sabri al-Banna, Saddam Hussein, Salah Khalaf, Saudi Arabia, Shah, Shi'a militias, siloviki, Six-Day War, Solomon Mikhoels, Soviet Union, Soviet Writers' Union, Stalin's Last Crime, Suez crisis, Syria, terrorism, The Gulag Archipelago, The World War Going Our Way, Turkey, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, urban guerrillas, Vasili Mitrokhin, Viktor Abakumov, Vladimir Naumova, Vladimir Putin, Wadi Haddad, Yasser Arafat, Yemen, Yuri Andropov, Zionism, Zionism is racism on December 12, 2018 by KyleWOrton.
Saddam and the Islamists, Part 2
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 20, 2015
Umm al-Qura (Mother of All Cities) Mosque, built by Saddam to commemorate his "victory" in the 1991 Gulf War
In December, I wrote a post, "Iraq Is Still Suffering The Effects Of Saddam Hussein's Islamist Regime," which was a review/analysis of an academic paper by Samuel Helfont that pointed out that the Saddam Hussein regime had, since the 1980s, used Islamists, including al-Qaeda, as part of its foreign policy. I critiqued the paper a little for having said it would not comment on Saddam's internal policy with the Islamists, while in fact the paper hinted that Saddam remained hostile to mixing religion and politics. I noted that the evidence does not support this: Saddam's regime adopted overt theocratic trappings before the end.
There were two kinds of pushback to the idea that Saddam's regime was Islamist. Predictably, one critique was related to the controversy over the way the Gulf War that Saddam started in 1990 was ended; opponents of the 2003 invasion of Iraq are heavily invested in the Saddam-as-secularist narrative, often coupled with the "Bush lied" hysteria—in this case about a connection between the Saddam regime and al-Qaeda—to say that the invasion empowered a previously, officially-repressed Islamism in Iraq. This simply is not borne out by the evidence. There was also pushback from some Iraqis. But this too was predictable: as I outlined in that post, drawing on Ali Allawi's book on post-Saddam Iraq, one of the reasons so many people with no agenda get the Islamist aspect of the Saddam regime wrong is that when they turn to what they believe is the best primary source—namely the Iraqis in the West—they encounter a source that for various reasons is actually several decades out-of-date.
Buttressing my initial argument is a 2011 paper, "From Militant Secularism to Islamism: The Iraqi Ba'th Regime 1968-2003," in which Amatzia Baram provides evidence from Iraqi internal documents and tapes of Cabinet meetings captured after the fall of Baghdad to show that Saddam's regime had formed an alliance with Islamists in the mid-1980s for use in its foreign policy, and from a bit later in the 1980s had begun steps toward Islamizing Iraq internally. Continue reading →
This entry was posted in Iraq, Islamic Militancy, Saddam and Islamism and tagged 1991 Iraqi Uprising, Abbas Madani, al-Qaeda, Ali Allawi, Ali Belhaj, Amatzia Baram, Ba'athists, Baathism, Bint al-Huda, faith campaign, Fedayeen Saddam, Gulf War, Hassan al-Turabi, invasion of Iraq, Iran, Iran-Iraq War, Iranian Revolution, Iraq, ISIS, Islamic Revolution, Islamic Salvation Front, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamists, Islamization, jihad, Kanan Makiya, Karbala, Michel Aflaq, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Muslim Brotherhood, Najaf, Operation DESERT STORM, Ruhollah Khomeini, Russia, Saddam Hussein, Salafism, Samuel Helfont, Shaaban Intifada, Shi'a Uprising, Sudan, Syria, Tariq Aziz, Vladimir Putin on April 20, 2015 by KyleWOrton.