John Ricardo Irfan "Juan" Cole (born October 23, 1952) is an American academic and commentator on the modern Middle East and South Asia.

His father completed two tours with the U.S. military in France (a total of seven years) and one 18-month stay at Kagnew Station in Asmara, Eritrea (then Ethiopia).

[5] Soon after his resignation, Cole created an email list and website called H-Bahai, which became a repository of both primary source material and critical analysis on the religion.

After September 11, 2001, Cole turned increasingly to writing on radical Muslim movements, the Iraq War, United States foreign policy, and the Iran crisis.

[15] Since 2002, Cole has published the blog Informed Comment, covering "History, Middle East, South Asia, Religious Studies, and the War on Terror".

[17] In 2006 National Journal called Cole "the most respected voice on foreign policy on the left"[18] and his blog ranked the 99th most popular in 2009,[19] but it has since fallen off the list.

Leading up to the 2008 United States presidential election, Cole chastised several candidates, including Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney, for making bellicose statements about Iran in order to present themselves in a tougher or more conservative light.

[23] In a 2005 speech at the Middle East Policy Council, Cole was critical of the U.S. allying itself with offshoots of the Islamic Dawa Party in the Iraq War but vehemently opposing Hezbollah in Lebanon.

[27] Cole and Christopher Hitchens traded barbs regarding the translation and meaning of a passage referring to Israel in a speech by Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Fathi Nazila of The New York Times's Tehran bureau translated the passage as "Our dear Imam [Khomeini] said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map.

[29] Cole responded that while he personally despised "everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini",[30] he nonetheless objected to the New York Times translation.

[30] He also stated that Hitchens was incompetent to assess a Persian-to-English translation, and accused him of unethically accessing private Cole e-mails from an on-line discussion group.

"[35] Yale political science professor Steven B. Smith commented, "It would be very comforting for Cole's supporters to think that this got steamrolled because of his controversial blog opinions.

He described the so-called "scandal" surrounding his nomination as "a tempest in a teapot" that had been exaggerated by "neo-con journalists": "Who knows what their hiring process is like, what things they were looking for?