In: Orient: deutsche Zeitschrift für Politik, Wirtschaft und Kultur des Orients = German journal for politics, economics and culture of the Middle East, Band 52, Heft 2, S. 19-25
"'Jihad' is a non-binding principle of Islam that, in our times, started with the fall of shah in Iran when people's movement was branded a holy war (jihad-e-moqaddas) by Ayatollah Khomeini. Ever since, the political exploitation of this religious term has not disappeared from everyday life of the people around the world. In Iraq, since the U.S. invasion of 2003, a new type of jihad has emerged which is less indigenous and more of a transitory, and ephemeral nature. While most Iraqis can be viewed as pluralistic Islamists, a small minority may be categorized under aggressive, fundamentalist, and jihadist cluster. Aggressive Islamists fall into two camps of Sunnis or Shiites each operating in Iraq or within the global jihadi movement with delineated ideological and operational strategies. A Jihadi organization in Iraq follows two major ambitions: First a global aspiration to see a single, transnational Islamic state (Caliphate). The second -in a regional and national level- with a variety of objectives from political challenge to local and national government, demands for better quality of life, or even making the costs of occupation costly for foreign troops. Iraq's economic prosperity can be fatal for the realization of the second goal. Obviously, slightest success can potentially embolden and encourage them to make greater claims on the global level. Alternatively, divisions and conflicts as well as fundamental ideological differences among the two categories of jihadists in Iraq is making organizational unification, uniformity of action or sharing of resources highly unlikely." (author's abstract)
In Sanctioning Iran: Anatomy of a Failed Policy, Hossein Alikhani has successfully organized a useful source that includes various ways to understand the American sanction policy. Numerous aspects of the policy have been elaborated in a book that contains ten chapters, a bibliography, and an index. The book provides an excellent and up-to-date, systematic accounting of the sanction's process.