Middle East

When authoritarian regimes start to wobble, outside observers often reach instinctively for the single, familiar idea of ‘the alternative’. It is a human reflex, but a dangerous one. In Iran, as the clerical theocracy shows signs of fracture and the country’s crisis deepens, some Western voices have begun to flirt with a thought that feels neat and historically legible: the return of the Shah’s son. That would be a profound mistake. Iran doesn’t need a restoration Iran’s tragedy since 1979 has been that an autocracy was replaced by another autocracy. The lesson should be plain: changing the personality at the top is not enough. What matters is the nature of

An Iranian friend of mine once told me that ever since fleeing his homeland in the early days of Iran’s Islamic Republic, his grandfather had kept a packed suitcase by his front door, awaiting the day he may return. Alas, in his case, that day never came: the old man was buried before he could ever revisit the places and people he most cherished. As a new wave of protests sweeps through Iran, nearly 47 years since the establishment of the current regime, once more I, and many other lovers of Iran but despisers of the Islamic Republic, find ourselves daring to hope again. Or, at least, hoping to dare

‘If they shut down the internet, you know it’s serious,’ said a well-informed observer of Iran to me yesterday morning. The internet blackout came yesterday afternoon – along with over a million Iranians marching in streets across the country. Strikes are continuing in bazaars and the cries for the end of the Islamic Republic are becoming more brazen. A video was sent to me before the blackout from Iran’s upscale northern suburbs, home to the sons and daughters of the regime elites, in which the cries of ‘death to the dictator’ could be heard loud and clear. ‘We are excited,’ was the caption to the video. And this morning there

For the past fortnight, Rozita (not her real name) has been out on the streets of Tehran, calling for an end to the Islamic Republic. The 37-year-old witnessed the anti-riot police shooting indiscriminately at her fellow citizens. ‘They don’t think about who or where they are shooting. I’ve been beaten up by them many times before,’ she tells me. Fortunately, Rozita’s quick on her feet. She learned her lesson from the Woman, Life, Freedom protest in 2022. Rozita was hit in the face with tear gas and she needed medical treatment, which she still takes to this day. She was also shot with plastic bullets. She would have been hit with real

And just like that, the left loses interest in the Middle East. In 2025, they spoke of little else. They culturally appropriated Arab headwear, poncing about in China-made keffiyehs. They wrapped themselves in the Palestine colours. They frothed day and night about a ‘murderous regime’ – you know who. And yet now, as a Middle Eastern people revolt against their genuinely repressive rulers, they’ve gone schtum. It is especially electrifying to see Iran’s young women once again raise a collective middle finger to their Islamist oppressors What is it about revolts in Iran that rankle the activist class? These people love to yap about ‘resistance’ and ‘oppression’. Yet the minute

There are protests in Iran again. But this time, something is different. In the uprisings of 2019, 2022 and 2023, the dominant slogan was negative: what Iranians did not want. ‘Death to the dictator’ echoed through the streets. Today, the country has moved beyond rejection. Now there is affirmation. A name is being chanted: Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. More than ten Iranian cities have risen up in recent days, from the most conservative quarters of society to elite universities. Across Iranian cities one hears slogans: ‘Pahlavi will return’, ‘Javid Shah’ – the Persian equivalent of ‘Long live the King’ – and simply, ‘King Reza Pahlavi’. For the first time since

Iran’s clerical establishment has spent nearly half a century insisting – always with that brittle certainty peculiar to ideologues – that history culminated in 1979. That the Shah is a hushed embarrassment, monarchy a quaint relic, and the very notion of a crown something to be packed away with mothballs and other discarded finery. Yet politics, like biology, evolves in defiance of official catechisms. And Iran, in these final days of 2025, looks less like a regime in command than a contraption still whirring chiefly because no one has yet found the off-switch. Iran, in these final days of 2025, looks less like a regime in command than a contraption

The escalation that emerged overnight in southern Yemen did not originate on the battlefield but in a relatively quiet logistical operation. It began with the arrival of two ships carrying weapons and military vehicles from the United Arab Emirates, docking at the port of Mukalla in Hadramawt. The cargo was unloaded without coordination with the Saudi-led coalition or with Yemen’s internationally recognised authorities. Early this morning, Saudi aircraft struck it at or near the port.  Mukalla marks a shift from managed rivalry to overt confrontation between Saudi Arabia and the UAE inside Yemen Saudi Arabia described the strikes as action against unauthorised external military support entering Yemen. It stated that

Apparently it has been a “top priority” for Keir Starmer and his government, since the moment they came to office, to return Alaa Abd el-Fattah to the United Kingdom. A man granted British citizenship only in December 2021. A man who had previously described Britons as “british dogs and monkeys”, who wrote that he “rejoice[s] when US soldiers are killed, and support[s] killing zionists even civilians”, and who declared, without equivocation, “I’m a violent person who advocated the killing of all zionists including civilians, so fuck of [sic]”. Top priority. The Prime Minister’s enthusiasm was echoed in chorus. Yvette Cooper expressed her ‘delight’. Hamish Falconer assured the world that ‘the