Middle East

The incoming Labour government has pledged a more robust Iran policy than the Conservative party has had over the last decade. The bar is low. Somehow, nothing new came of Iran’s women’s movement, support for Russia, assassination attempts on British soil, and attacks on all our regional partners – or the unprecedented cross-party consensus this all generated. Tehran may never have a better window for building a bomb Labour is apparently planning a pivot that includes proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), cracking down on Iran’s domestic networks, and more robust deployments to the Middle East and Mediterranean. Whether Keir Starmer’s party will implement these plans is another question. The key difference is that

Voting takes place in Iran’s snap presidential election today – a contest brought forward by the death last month in a helicopter crash of the former president Ebrahim Raisi. A few predictions can be made with absolute certainty. Firstly, the winner will be a man (there are no women taking part – Iran’s ruling clerics take a dim view of the idea of a woman being allowed near the presidency). Secondly, the new president will be someone who swears absolute loyalty to the system and ultimately the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. All of which prompts the question of why bother to have an election. The answer is that elections – the

From time to time, even the most belligerent warmongers get taken down: whether it’s bad weather, or other unseen forces, there are always bigger powers at work. For now, the helicopter accident that claimed the life of Iran’s president appears to have been an act of nature, the will of God, as we like to remind ourselves in Islam. Sometimes good things do happen in bad helicopters. In the days before his death, Ebrahim Raisi was busy. Right before he left Azerbaijan for Iran, Raisi met with the country’s president at a ceremony to open a dam. Days earlier in Tehran, Raisi saw the president of the Kurdish regional government. Their talks, initiated by

Even before Tehran had formally announced the death of President Ebrahim Raisi, conspiracy theories as to whether foul play was to blame began coming in rapidly. Was Israel’s Mossad, the go-to organisation Iran likes to blame for almost any catastrophe that befalls the Islamic Republic, behind the helicopter crash? Was it the CIA, the same organisation which swept the Shah to power in a coup d’état in 1953? Or was it one of many internal enemies Raisi had managed to accumulate after his years in power? Raisi, after all, had no shortage of enemies both within and outside the regime. He was responsible for the mass executions of  an estimated

Iran’s strike on Israel yesterday is, simultaneously, a moment for alarm and calm. Alarm because, by unleashing more than 300 drones, cruise and ballistic missiles in response to Israel’s attack on its Damascus consulate at the start of the month, Iran is basically saying: we can do this every time Israel or its allies cross a line. Calm because not only did Israel repel the attack, it did so thanks to collaboration from its Western allies and friendly Arab states, with both Saudi Arabia and Jordan opening their skies to US combat aircraft. Israel has the right to defend itself, and will doubtless respond militarily. But its allies have a

Only a few days ago, President Biden was framing remarks about Israel in tones which were astoundingly critical for an American leader. For decades it has been axiomatic that there is barely a cigarette paper between Washington and Jerusalem, but Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza has threatened to push them apart. Biden condemned the ‘indiscriminate’ bombing, and last week made his views unmistakable clear: ‘Israel has not done enough to protect civilians.’ Suddenly, though, without meaning to, it looks like the Islamic Republic of Iran may have saved Israel’s most important bilateral relationship. Last week, an Israeli air strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus killed 16 people, including

I recently returned from a trip to the south east Syrian province of Deir al Zur, where I witnessed Kurdish and American soldiers in a tense face-off against Iranian and proxy forces along the Euphrates River line. After making my way home to Jerusalem via Iraq, Jordan and northern Israel, I had hoped for a couple of days respite from the Middle East and its attentions. No such luck. A terse message arrived in my community WhatsApp group: ‘The Home Front Command has this evening updated the list of required items, in an article at its national emergency portal. In contrast to the previous list, the current list includes food