Iran

Wednesday

Justin Marozzi

Iran’s tradition of martyrdom is key to understanding this conflict

One word stood out in the florid and overwrought announcement of the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader by a tearful state-television newsreader on 1 March: ‘Leader and Imam of the Muslims, His Eminence Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, on the path of upholding the exaltation of the sacred sanctuary of the Islamic Republic of Iran, drank the sweet, pure draft of martyrdom and joined the Supreme Heavenly Kingdom.’ The dreaded ‘m’ word – martyrdom – immediately takes anyone familiar with Muslim history back to a legendary 7th-century battlefield in central Iraq. In 680, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Husayn ibn Ali – regarded as the third Shia imam – faced a

Peter Jones

Greek tips on how to beat Iran

In 500 BC, Persia (modern Iran) was the most powerful state in the known world, ruling an area of more than two million square miles from the Balkans and Egypt to central Asia (nearly half of the world’s population). In 499 BC, Athens and a number of other Greek states rebelled against its empire and incredibly defeated it in the ensuing Persian Wars (390-379 BC). The Greek historian Herodotus (d. c. 425 BC) wrote up those wars after travelling extensively around the whole region. He was as fascinated by different cultures as he was by the war itself, contrasting the Persian way of life with the Greek. For example, he

Monday

Freddy Gray

Will Iran descend into civil war?

33 min listen

Freddy is joined by historian and former diplomat, Charlie Gammell. They discuss the situation in Iran, whether the US is heading for a decisive confrontation, and examine the regional consequences: proxy warfare, Gulf energy security, Pakistan’s delicate position, and migration pressures on Europe.

Will Iran descend into civil war?

Sunday

Stephen Daisley

International law should not prevent regime change in Iran

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

Iran islamic republic
Charlie Gammell

Could Iran descend into civil war?

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a man whose life has been defined by the harshness of his rhetoric against the West (specifically, the US and Israel) and his ruthless rule, has died a martyr’s death under the rubble of his compound in Pasteur, Tehran.  It was always going to end this way. Khamenei came to prominence as a revolutionary first and then second as a wartime leader when he assumed the role of President of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. What is needed is a clear plan that can unite Iranians behind a shared, inclusive vision of their country The Islamic Republic is facing its most serious crisis since January, when it

Freddy Gray

Why is Vance silent on Iran?

Twenty eight hours or so into the new war against Iran, and America’s Vice President J D Vance has yet to declare his support in public. His social media account on X, which is normally so lively, has been conspicuously silent for the last two days.  He seems keen to position himself apart from the administration’s more ardent hawks when it comes to the Middle East It’s likely that will all change today and Vance, as he did after the Venezuela operation, will take to the airwaves for the big Sunday news shows in order to once again repeat that administration’s line that Donald Trump, the ultimate decider, has boldly

Jonathan Sacerdoti

How Israel killed Khamenei

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, was presented with irrefutable evidence yesterday, including footage, confirming the death of Iran’s so-called ‘Supreme Leader’: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike on his compound in Tehran, marking a pivotal blow to the Islamic republic regime. Initially Netanyahu only hinted at the fact that he was dead, but as the evening progressed more and more sources confirmed it until President Donald Trump eventually took to Truth Social to declare ‘Khamenei, one of the most evil people in history, is dead.’  Israel may have killed its leader, but the regime will ultimately be toppled by the Iranian people The strike

Wednesday

Charles Moore

Does Sadiq Khan approve of colonising?

How to report Iran? It is a huge story. Perhaps as many as 30,000 people were recently murdered there by the tottering regime, but it won’t let western media in. The BBC’s solution is a deal: their correspondent can enter and report, but the report cannot appear on their Persian service. This agreement is rightly explained on air, unlike the BBC’s iniquitous deal with Hamas over Gaza. Do the terms of the deal benefit journalism, however? We are always told that BBC foreign language services are the lifeblood of truth for citizens of dictatorships. Why are Farsi speakers to be deprived of this? Also, what do we learn from Lyse

Monday

Daniel Thorpe

Why Erdogan wants to help Iran

The Iranian regime remains firmly in the crosshairs of American bombers. As President Trump mulls whether to strike, Turkey is using every available channel to halt a military intervention. President Erdogan has personally offered to mediate between Tehran and Washington. At the same time, Turkish authorities have tightened their grip on exiled Iranian opposition figures. Turkey’s sudden support for Iran is not born of friendship. Over the past two decades, the two countries have repeatedly found themselves on opposing sides. In the Syrian civil war, Iran sent Shi’a proxies to prop up the dictator Bashar al-Assad, while Turkey armed and trained Sunni rebel groups. Ankara’s push for dialogue is driven

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

The censors are winning

They say you should never meet your heroes, a rule that is not always correct. But I did have a salutary session some years ago when a friend in New York asked me if I wanted to meet a comedian I really do admire. I had been looking forward to the meeting, but unfortunately it took place during the summer of 2020. If you remember those far-distant days, this was a time when America was obsessing over the story of alleged disproportionate police violence against black Americans. One of the cases was that of a woman named Breonna Taylor. Although the case for the police’s actions and the victim’s innocence

Monday

Mickey Down

Mickey Down, Charlie Gammell, Sean Thomas & Douglas Murray

32 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Mickey Down, co-creator of Industry, reads his diary for the week; Charlie Gammell argues that US intervention could push Iran into civil war and terrorism – warning that there are more possibilities than just revolution or regime survival; false dichotomy at the heart of; Sean Thomas bemoans the bittersweet liberation from his libido; and, Douglas Murray believes Britain has a growing obsession with race. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Friday

Tim Shipman

Iran’s useful idiots, Gordon Brown’s second term & the Right’s race obsession

43 min listen

As the world watches events in Iran, and wonders whether the US will intervene, the Spectator’s cover this week examines ‘British complicity in Tehran’s terror’. When thinking about what could happen next in the crisis, there is a false dichotomy presented between regime survival and revolution; the reality is more complicated, though there is no doubt that this is the biggest threat to the theocratic regime in decades.  For this week’s Edition, host Lara Prendergast is joined by political editor Tim Shipman, columnist Rachel Johnson and features editor – and Edition co-host – William Moore. They commend the bravery of Iran’s protestors but criticise the ‘inept, naive and wrong’ response of the Foreign Office.

Damian Thompson

Iran: why theocracies survive – with Peter Frankopan

25 min listen

In the 21st century, the theocratic nature of the Iranian regime – ruled by senior Shia clerics – appears to be a rarity. The constitutional role of religion is perhaps matched only by the Vatican City and Afghanistan, though these vary in terms of autocracy – as evidenced by the brutal suppression of protests across Iran in the past few weeks. The regime, installed following the 1979 revolution and led first by Ayatollah Khomeini and now Ayatollah Khameini, has proven remarkably resilient; how has it survived so long? Peter Frankopan – professor of global history at Oxford University – joins Damian Thompson to discuss the tensions associated with state control

Wednesday

William Atkinson

Iran’s cheerleaders are on borrowed time

Predictions ageing poorly is an occupational hazard for journalists and commentators. But few have gone as sour as those made by Roger Cooper in this magazine, in February 1979, days after the last Shah of Iran had fled. In a piece titled ‘Is Khomeini the leader for Iran?’, Cooper speculated that ‘the prospect… of an Iranian Islamic republic… must surely be more alluring to all but the most stubborn defenders of an ancient regime’. The Ayatollah, he suggested, offered Iranians ‘the chance to resume their true national and cultural identity’. No suggestion was made of imminent death squads, mass imprisonments or looming theocratic repression and economic hardship.  Cooper can be

Charlie Gammell

The rule of the Ayatollahs is broken. What happens now?

‘Help is on the way,’ promised Donald Trump to the people of Iran defying the Islamic Republic. In the same social media post, the US President, characteristically light on detail, also urged Iranian protestors to take over the institutions of the Islamic Republic (presumably by force) and to keep a note of the names and numbers of their oppressors for retribution’s sake. Whatever these words presage – be it air strikes on Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij facilities, or cyberattacks on Iran’s intelligence agencies, to blind the regime as the regime has blinded protestors by shutting down the internet – it remains to be seen if such an

John Jenkins

Iran’s useful idiots: British complicity in Tehran’s terror

It is still unclear what will happen next in Iran. I fervently hope the current protests will cause the tyrants of Tehran to fall. It would be ideal if they were replaced by an order that allowed the population of 90 million to choose who governs them and build a country that reflects joy, hope and modernity rather than Ali Khamenei’s brutal Islamist fever dream. I also know how unlikely that is. Revolutions tend to produce disorder and repression, not order and freedom. After the failure of the Constitutional Revolution in 1911, there was a decade of chaos, fragmentation and insurgency in Iran until Reza Khan seized power and founded

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Digital IDs ditched, unrest in Iran and an app to check you’re not dead

Home The government dropped plans to make digital ID compulsory to work in Britain. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, called it ‘disgraceful’ that Grok, the online tool on Elon Musk’s X, could undress pictures of people. X limited the function to subscribers, but Liz Kendall, the Technology Secretary, said that the government would back Ofcom if it decided to block X in Britain. ‘They just want to suppress free speech,’ Mr Musk wrote on X. Sir Keir, due to visit China this month, was warned by some Labour MPs not to approve a vast new Chinese embassy in London. The government signalled a U-turn on increases to business rates

Pegah Banihashemi

Can Iran’s protestors keep going?

As Iran enters the third week of nationwide protests, the pace of events has become dizzying. News breaks by the minute, and, as Persians say: ‘One eye is filled with tears, the other with blood.’ We are all waiting anxiously for a change that feels both inevitable and profoundly uncertain. For five to six consecutive days now, the Iranian regime has completely severed the country’s communication with the outside world. Not only has internet access been cut, but even ordinary landlines and direct mobile phone calls to and from Iran have become impossible. In a digital age in which nearly every aspect of daily life depends on connectivity, the blackout

Michael Gove

Why Nadhim Zahawi (and Reform) are making a mistake

50 min listen

This week on Quite right!, Michael and Maddie examine Nadhim Zahawi’s dramatic defection to Reform UK and ask whether it strengthens the party’s insurgent credentials or exposes a deeper strategic mistake. Is Reform becoming a genuine outsider movement, or simply a refuge for disaffected Tories? And what does the pattern of Boris-era defections reveal about credibility, competence and the challenge of turning populist energy into a governing force? Then, Iran: mass protests against the regime have erupted onto the streets of Tehran and beyond. Are these demonstrations the prelude to real regime change – or another brutal crackdown waiting to happen? And what role should the West, and the United

Saturday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

What the Iranian uprising means for the Middle East

The Middle East has long been organised around two competing logics: pragmatic alignment and ideological alignment. Before the 7 October war, these logics produced two regional blocs that structured most political, diplomatic and security behaviour. The Palestinian attack and invasion that triggered the war ruptured both systems. Incentives shifted, alliances frayed, and assumptions collapsed. What followed has not been the emergence of a calmer order, but a reconfiguration in which ideology has returned in new forms and pragmatism has narrowed, and hardened, requiring deliberate encouragement and support to survive. For more than a decade, regional politics moved along these two tracks. Pragmatic alliances rested on interests that could be negotiated,