Concepts like “Shiite oil” and “Kurdish oil” obfuscate the debate about Iraq’s energy resources. This paper starts from the proposition that it would be better to call a thing by its name: in terms of the size of reserves, ...

This paper discusses the two prevailing interpretations of the political attitudes of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq today. It is argued that neither the traditional “quietist” ...