Middle East

The US and Israel rapidly established air superiority over Iran in the first days of the war now under way in the Middle East. Regimes, however, cannot be destroyed from the air. President Trump clearly has no intention of committing a large ground force to Iran. If Washington and Jerusalem are serious in their stated ambition of destroying the 47-year-old Islamic regime in Tehran, then they are in obvious need of allies on the ground. A number of credible reports in regional media in recent days have identified a relationship of cooperation between the US and Israel and a number of armed Iranian Kurdish groups located in the Iraq-Iran border

If there’s one thing that the ongoing Iran-US conflict is teaching North Korea, it is that nuclear weapons are an invaluable asset in the hermit kingdom’s toolbox. Nearly twenty years ago, Pyongyang conducted its first and far-from-successful nuclear test. Its capabilities have increased substantially since that moment and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, that of Libya’s Gaddafi in 2011, and now, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has shown Pyongyang that acquiring what the Kim regime has long-called its ‘treasured sword’ has been its most successful foreign policy decision to date. It is no surprise that only yesterday, Kim Jong-un oversaw cruise missile tests from a naval destroyer and pledged to

According to the old Farsi proverb, if you want a peacock, you must suffer the hardships of travelling to India. In other words, be careful what you wish for. This is good Persian wisdom that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu should remember before they declare job done and crown themselves the liberators of Iran. Most Western military action since World War Two has involved hubris followed by nemesis This might end up a fabulously judged operation, a clinical set of strikes that decapitated the regime, allowed the Iranian people to rise up, and ushered in a new era of peace and democracy. This would be a fabulous result, and if it

It must be a comforting thought to those who oppose the military action against the Iranian regime that it is, to coin a phrase, a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing. It’s not our fight and not our war, they argue. The Iranians have plotted and planned the assassination of British citizens, on British soil, for many years But the arrests this morning of four people – one Iranian and three dual British-Iranian nationals – on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service show how ludicrous such a view really is. (Six other men were also arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender.) Iran

Why are students in British universities mourning Ayatollah Khamenei? The Iranian dictator’s death brought jubilant crowds of Jews and Persians out onto the streets of London. Yet, on campus, there’s a more sombre mood. Islamist extremists at British universities are working to continue the Ayatollah’s legacy Members of University College London’s Ahlul Bayt Islamic Society are grieving the ‘martyrdom’ of the Ayatollah. Khamenei’s death is described as ‘an unimaginable loss for the entire Ummah’, or global Islamic community. Students in mourning are asked to recite Surah al Fatiha, the first chapter of the Quran, ‘for our beloved Sayed’. Alarmingly, the group’s ‘mental health’ wing not only sends members their condolences

The US-Israeli attack on Iran presents an opportunity to get rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan. If there is a collapse of central authority in Iran, tens of thousands of Afghan former soldiers living in exile there could use the power vacuum to mobilise, return home and fight against the Taliban. There are several resistance groups who have advanced plans to fight but need a reliable haven outside the country to launch attacks inside Afghanistan. Iran, which has a 600-mile border with the country, could be the launchpad they need. This represents a unique opportunity for Afghanistan, as for the first time the country faces conflict on both sides. While

Liberal supporters of the US-Israeli killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are straining to parry the charge that Operation Epic Fury is illegal. They say that Washington and Jerusalem are returning fire in a continuing war initiated by Iran, which has funded proxy terror organisations to target Americans and Israelis. It’s a good try but once you kill a country’s head of state in a targeted bombing, it’s hard to claim regime change wasn’t the object of the exercise.  If international law says Khamenei should still be in place, maybe international law deserves to be detonated along with him Customary international law, as commonly understood, does not permit the violation of

As of now, it is possible to draw a number of immediate conclusions from the war currently under way between the alliance of the United States and Israel, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Firstly, the range and nature of US and Israeli targeting indicates that a determined attempt to destroy the 47 year old regime in Iran is now finally under way. The most senior leadership, up to and including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, appear to have been targeted – and possibly killed – by Israel. Action of this kind make sense only as part of a comprehensive attempt at regime destruction. History provides no unambiguous examples of regimes removed by