Middle Orient

The young people who took to the streets in 1979 as part of the Iranian revolution are now in their sixties. They haven’t quite aged out of politics, but they’re getting close. It’s a dangerous time for any revolution when the generation that transformed society prepares to exit the stage. …

The media have been hyping inflation pretty much non-stop for the last year and a half. They tell us that this the only thing people care about. They don’t care about whether they have a job, how much the job pays, whether they have health care, or any other economic …

Some of the attacks by Iranian Revolutionary Guards on Iranian opposition party offices in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in late September struck towns and villages where the parties were not carrying out any military activity, according to local residents, Human Rights Watch said today. According to media reports, the …

More than a month ago, “morality police” in Tehran accosted 22-year-old Mahsa Amini over the arrangement of her mandatory head covering, subjected her to such physical abuse that she fell into a coma and died three days later. Since then, international media have attached ever greater significance to the ensuing …

The Iranian cyberattack on Albania earlier this year threatened to paralyze public services and digital systems, hack into state records and further sow chaos. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama arrived in Israel on Sunday to strengthen his country’s cyber defense after a series of attacks from Iran that led his …

According to officials, Israel has succeeded in almost completely curbing Iran’s ability to transfer weapons to Syria and to manufacture weapons there. The Israeli military has destroyed about 90% of Iran’s military infrastructure and attempts to entrench itself – with Hezbollah – in Syria, top officials in the defense establishment …

Key takeaways Turkey’s transition to a hyper-centralized presidential system has given rise to a growing malaise in the educational and cultural fields, manifested through purges, witch hunts, and the erosion of university autonomy and resulting in an exodus of the creative classes and cultural institutions. Academic and cultural impoverishment not …

Iran’s ongoing protests were sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, in a hospital in Tehran one month ago after she was detained by the so-called “morality police” (Gasht-e Ershad) for allegedly wearing her headscarf incorrectly.

On an early autumn day in Tehran, the morality police arrested in a city park a 22-year-old Iranian woman who was in the capital on a family visit, bundled her into a van and drove her to the police station. The detention of Mahsa Amini on September 13 set in …

The country’s political class now stands at a crossroads: Will it seek to heal the country’s deep divides or go back to business as usual? Iraq hit two anniversaries this month. Three years ago in October, Iraqis rose up to protest the failure of the Iraqi government and political class …