January 21st, 20210BAGHDAD — ISIS claimed responsibility for an attack in a crowded Baghdad market on Thursday, killing at least 32 people in Iraq’s first big suicide bombing in three years, authorities said, describing it as a possible sign of the reactivation of ISIS.
ISIS claimed early on Friday that two of its men blew themselves up in Tayaran...
January 7th, 20210BAGHDAD — A judge in Baghdad has issued an arrest warrant for President Trump for the killing of an Iranian general and Iraqi militia leader last year.
The Washington-directed drone strike had killed Gen. Qassim Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis outside of the capital’s airport last January.
Al-Muhandis was the deputy...
October 3rd, 20200DEARBORN — With the November election now a month away, U.S. Senator Gary Peters is in a race to maintain his seat for another term against conservative, Trump-backed John James.
Several polls, including RealClear and Reuters, puts Peters ahead of James. Peters has a history of direct engagement with the Arab American community,...
February 21st, 20200BAGHDAD — Iraq’s newly appointed Prime Minister Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi said on Wednesday that he has picked a cabinet of political independents and has called on the country’s parliament to hold an extraordinary session next week to give it its vote of confidence.
Speaking to the nation in a televised speech, Allawi said that...
January 14th, 20200WASHINGTON, D.C — A new report by NBC News claims President Trump authorized the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani seven months ago with the condition that Trump would have final signoff on any specific plans to kill the general. The information was provided by five current and former senior...
January 12th, 20200WASHINGTON, D.C. — Defense Secretary Mark Esper contradicted President Trump on Sunday, saying he did not see any specific evidence from intelligence officials that Iran had plans to attack four U.S. embassies. Trump has used these purported plans to justify the Jan. 2 killing of Iran Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in...
January 10th, 20200The world has been in the grips of an uncertain fear since it woke up to news of the Jan. 2 assassination of a top Iranian general at the hands of the U.S.. Images from recent memory of endless, expensive and insane military ventures in the Middle East became vivid once more as Tehran promised revenge and President Trump goaded the...
January 8th, 20200WASHINGTON, D.C. - At the White House on Wednesday, President Trump seemed to simmer down days of heated rhetoric and said the U.S. would not respond to early morning missile attacks on Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops with military force.
Early Wednesday, both Iranian authorities and U.S officials confirmed Tehran launched a series of...
January 7th, 20200TEHRAN - Tensions came to a head on early Wednesday as Iran retaliated against the U.S. killing of Iran Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani by launching a series of surface-to-surface missiles at two Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops.
Reuters reports the firing of more than a dozen ballistic missiles from Iranian...
January 6th, 20200TEHRAN — On Monday, in the wake of the January 2 targeted killing through a missile strike of Iran Revolutionary Guard General and important political figure Qassem Soleimani, throngs of Iranians mourned the death of a beloved leader.
Aerial views and independent reports on the ground told of a vast procession of mourners, a mass...
November 2nd, 20190DETROIT – A sea-change in Iraqi governance looms as tens of thousands of Iraqis across ethnic and sectarian divides have taken to the streets to demand their right towards prosperity and self-determination.
Prominent support towards the ousting of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi will likely not be enough to quell the fury behind the...
October 30th, 20190WASHINGTON, D.C. — A U.S. counterterrorism official spoke at a House hearing on global national security threats on Wednesday to tell members of congress that a new leader of ISIS will eventually emerge, following the killing of Abu al-Baghdadi in last weekend’s raid.
AP reports that National Counterterrorism Center Acting...
November 4th, 20180The next round of economic sanctions on Iran, which will start going into effect on Nov.4, will mainly target the country’s oil and gas industries. These sanctions were eased after the 2015 signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, but are being phased back in following...
October 30th, 20180BAGHDAD - ISIS has claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on Shi’a Muslim pilgrims in Iraq on Tuesday, the Islamist militant group’s news agency Amaq reported.
The roadside bomb killed three pilgrims as they walked to a holy site near the northeastern Iraqi city of Khanaqin.
October 29th, 20181Iraq’s new prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, has had an early taste of the partisan politics he hopes to rein in, failing so far to win parliament’s approval of a full government to begin to tackle the destruction of years of war and rampant corruption.
At a heated session on Wednesday night, parliament members rejected key...
October 1st, 20180BASRA, Iraq — Once dubbed the “Venice of the Middle East” for its canals, Iraq’s crumbling port city of Basra is slowly dying of thirst.
Crisscrossed waterways that earned it comparisons with the Italian city are now filthy pools of stagnant water.
Its vibrant freshwater lifeline, the Shatt-al-Arab river that runs through...
September 30th, 20180WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than 1,100 civilians have been killed in U.S.-led strikes against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria since the operation began in 2014, the U.S. military said on Thursday.
The coalition fighting ISIS militants said in a statement that during the month of August it had determined that an additional 53 civilians...
September 9th, 20180BASRA, Iraq — On Thursday, hundreds of people took to the streets of Iraq’s southern oil city Basra for a fourth day of violent protests, where residents, angry over the neglect of their city’s collapsing infrastructure, set fire to political offices.
Ten demonstrators have been killed in clashes with security forces and dozens...
MOSUL, Iraq — Iraqi grandmother Sana Ibrahim al-Taee has a full-time job feeding and clothing her 22 grandchildren after ISIS killed their fathers - her sons - a struggle in a cramped flat with little help from the state.
Al-Taee and her husband, who has Alzheimer’s, share their four-room apartment in eastern Mosul with the...
July 21st, 20183DEARBORN – After a successful ousting of ISIS insurgents and a democratically-held election, Iraq’s situation seemed to be on an uptick. But in the midst of a transition in government, ongoing political corruption, a worsening economy, few jobs and scarce electricity have sparked massive protests across the oil-rich county’s south,...
June 24th, 20180DETROIT – On Monday, a federal judge ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to stop coercing Iraqi detainees into signing a document giving up their right to be in the U.S. and agreeing to be deported.
The government is trying to send back the mostly Christian detainees, but the ACLU said their return to Iraqi...
May 15th, 20180BAGHDAD — Already pressured by the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Iran faces a major test in managing Shi'a cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a formidable opponent who beat Tehran’s longtime allies to achieve a shock victory in Iraq’s parliamentary election.
But If Tehran overplays its hand by squeezing Sadr out of a coalition...
May 10th, 20180BAGHDAD — For the first time since driving out ISIS, Iraqis go to the polls on Saturday in an election that will shape attempts to heal the country’s deep divisions and could shift the regional balance of power.
Iraq’s three main ethnic and religious groups, the majority Shi’a Arabs and the minority Sunni Arabs and Kurds, have...
May 2nd, 20180WASHINGTON - About 3,800 artifacts, including Sumerian cuneiform tablets dating to 2100 B.C., that were illegally smuggled to retailer Hobby Lobby Stores Inc were returned to Iraqi officials in Washington on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials signed over the artifacts to Iraqi Ambassador...
April 26th, 20180BRUSSELS ― International donors raised $4.4 billion in emergency aid for Syria and its neighbors this year on Wednesday, but the total fell well short of the U.N. target for 2018 after the United States failed to submit a pledge.
Humanitarian agencies also pleaded for peace before the Syrian military and its Russian and Iranian...
March 9th, 20180BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi issued a decree on Thursday formalizing the inclusion of mostly Shi'a paramilitary groups in the country's security forces.
According to the decree, members of the militias, an assortment of militia groups known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), will be granted many...
March 2nd, 20180Fifteen years ago this week, while the Bush Administration was busy beating the drums for an invasion of Iraq, I submitted a resolution calling on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to oppose this rush to war. The resolution, which was also endorsed by then Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who served with me on the DNC, warned that...
February 23rd, 20180Over the next few weeks, I want to take a look back to February and March of 2003, to those fateful days leading up to the Bush administration's disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. I remember all too well the lies that were told, the hysteria that was created, the bullying tactics that were used to silence debate and the mass...
