Charlie Gammell is a historian and former diplomat who was on the Iran desk at the Foreign Office. He is the author of The Pearl of Khorasan
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
The talks are still alive. Just. Iranian and US diplomats, engaging indirectly through Omani intermediaries, have yet to make any substantive progress towards a framework of understanding that governs further talks – as Kafkaesque as that might sound – but they are talking, and that is the best that the diplomats can hope for right
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
‘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
24 min listen
Spectator contributor and author Charlie Gammell and Freddy Gray discuss what is really happening as protests play out on the streets of Iran. They discuss imams turning on the Shah, whether Trump could actually be seeking talks rather than war, what the Middle East wants from a fractured Iran, and what issues could arise from
‘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
On the afternoon of the 28 December in a Tehran electronics bazaar, shopkeepers (known as bazaaris) shuttered their shops and walked out, outraged at a planned gas price rise and crippled at the continuing slide in the value of the Iranian currency and the government’s powerlessness to shepherd Iran’s economy towards something better than corruption,
From our US edition
The Islamic Republic today is a markedly different entity from that of ten years ago
It was bound to happen. Leaving aside, for the moment, the burning question of whether the US strikes on Iran will have set back Tehran’s nuclear programme by weeks, months or years, this moment feels in many ways like an apotheosis of sorts. The Omega (or perhaps Alpha depending on your sense of ontology) of US attempts at talking
From our US edition
Western leaders fail to grasp this important point
The world is watching Donald Trump to see if he will give his military the green light to use one of America’s most deadly weapons, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (Mop), to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities at Fordow. As a man with a seemingly inexhaustible need for attention, this is a gratifying position for him
In October 2023, the mullahs of the Islamic Republic could look within Iran’s borders, and beyond, and be content with the worlds they had created. After all, they had weathered the storm of the Women, Life, Freedom protests by terrorising their own people, and could rest assured in the strength of their proxy networks, feared
Amongst a swirl of pronouncements from Tel Aviv, Washington and Tehran – and against the dramatic backdrop of an Iranian TV presenter’s rather tired fire and fury being interrupted by the sound of bombs – Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that Israel is close to “victory.” Yet despite Ayatollah Khamenei being hidden in a bunker, experiencing regular panic
20 min listen
Relations between Iran and Israel are deteriorating rapidly, with comparisons being drawn to Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be advocating for regime change in Tehran, reportedly encouraging the United States to take military action. Donald Trump, who previously came close to authorising a strike, is
The clue is in the name of Israel’s operation. ‘Operation Rising Lion’ is a direct reference to the Pahlavi flag used by Iran before the Islamic revolution, which shows a lion standing proud against the backdrop of a glowing orb, the sun. In Persian this is called the ‘Shir-e Khorshid.’ For many years now, Netanyahu has sought to speak directly
‘They are scared. You can hear it in their voices,’ someone wrote to me on Friday from Tehran. And in this case the ‘they’ is what’s left of the Iranian military and intelligence commanders. And perhaps Khamenei, too (strikingly absent from the air waves since a speech on Friday morning). Israel’s strikes, yet another show
From our US edition
The US has moderated its demands
From our US edition
Ayatollah Khamenei suspects that the US and Israel are not seeing eye to eye
29 min listen
President Trump is an America Firster, but he has an undeniable affinity for the Arab world. He would have made a good sheik: he doesn’t drink, he loves developing flashy properties to show off his power and wealth, and he’s brutally realistic about the role of oil (and other commodities) in world politics. On his
This weekend in Muscat, US and Iranian diplomats held a fourth round of talks, continuing their efforts to find a way through an impasse that has bedevilled US-Iran relations since 1979. By all accounts, the negotiations so far have been a mixed bag. The overall picture remains slightly confused, particularly around the issue of uranium
