“As a young man visiting a Sufi shrine in Algeria,” remarks the writer Robert Irwin parenthetically in an otherwise scholarly essay on medieval Arabic literature, “I once encountered a jinni in the form of a cat.” No further elaboration is …
Iran’s next president will be just as powerless
It took nearly 24 hours for the regime in Tehran to finally confirm that the deeply unpopular and uncharismatic Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other prominent officials, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abodollahian, had died when their Seventies-era helicopter crashed in …
Biden’s secret support for Iran
This past Memorial Day, as Americans honoured their war dead, the Biden administration was running interference for an Iranian regime whose Supreme Leader has described “death to America” as his official state policy. A report in the day’s Wall Street …
Iran is about to double down
It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving man. Ebrahim Raisi’s presidential career represented the worst of the Islamic Republic. As Tehran’s deputy prosecutor less than a decade after the revolution, he was a member of the so-called “death commission” …
Iran is about to double down
It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving man. Ebrahim Raisi’s presidential career represented the worst of the Islamic Republic. As Tehran’s deputy prosecutor less than a decade after the revolution, he was a member of the so-called “death commission” …
There is no solution to the Gaza War
In assessing Israel’s post-October 7 military campaign in Gaza, it helps to recall Clausewitz’s dictum that war, though horrific, isn’t ultimately about killing and destruction for the sake of it but a means for states to achieve their political goals. …
The West has a deviancy problem
When and why did American life become so coarse, amoral and ungovernable? In his classic 1993 essay, “Defining Deviancy Down”, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan offered a semantic explanation. He concluded that, as the amount of deviant behaviour increased …
The realist case for Israel
Navigating the wars in Ukraine and Gaza has brought the political theory of realism to the fore, becoming a sudden mainstay of popular and journalistic analysis. More than anyone, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, the doyen of American realism, …
China is winning the battle for the Red Sea
Hardly for the first time, remote Arab tribesmen are reshaping the world. Piratical attacks on international shipping by Yemen-based Houthi rebels have created a significant security crisis in the Red Sea. The world’s largest shipping lines have been forced to …
Should America strike back at Iran?
There’s no denying Iran’s proxy forces are great value for money. The regime’s support for its allied militias, including the Lebanese Hizbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, probably doesn’t exceed a few billion dollars per annum — perhaps even less, given …
The chaos behind Iran’s grand strategy
Reporting from Israel at the end of last year stirred various emotions in me, not least a constant feeling of mild claustrophobia. Not from the Hamas rockets that incrementally forced me to duck into bomb shelters, nor from the colossal …
Is there a realist case for Palestine?
Since October 7, foreign policy realists who were united in opposing escalation in Ukraine have split into two opposing camps. One side has taken a generally forgiving view of Israel’s response to Hamas’s terror assault. The other has been more …
Should Britain lead the war in Yemen?
“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living,” Karl Marx observed. When it comes to British military adventurism in the Middle East, that certainly rings true.
The recent history of British interventions …
How the West can stop the Houthis
With armed Houthi rebels prowling the Red Sea, attacking cargo ships and holding crew at gunpoint, America and its allies appear to be preparing for war. When asked about potential strikes in Yemen earlier this week, the UK Defence Secretary, …
Is the West Bank heading for war?
Driving from Israel to the West Bank is like stepping through the looking glass. The world is almost identical, but subtly altered. Scenery deceives; palm trees line the centre of a boulevard, but they are short and stubby. The same …