Growing up in Iraq, I learned a great deal about the histories and struggles of other countries. But I knew surprisingly little about the people who lived alongside me.

My generation was raised under an educational system that emphasized Arab and regional causes while neglecting Iraq’s own extraordinary diversity. We could discuss events in distant countries but knew little about the Kurds, Turkmen, Yazidis, Mandaeans, Christians, Jews, Shabaks, and Afro-Iraqis who had shared our land for centuries.

Under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, decades of political repression and forced assimilation marginalized communities whose histories did not fit the state’s preferred national narrative. Our textbooks presented an incomplete picture of Iraq, leaving generations unaware of much of their own country’s heritage.

When I published Minorities in Iraq: Memory, Identity, and Challenges in 2013, the response surprised me. The book became my most frequently reprinted work. As it turned out, people had an enormous appetite for knowledge about communities that have historically received so little attention in Iraq’s public discourse.

In 2014, I gifted a copy to the Syrian intellectual Michel Kilo. The next day, he told me he had stayed up all night reading it. He was struck by how much Syria and other Arab societies suffered from the same problem: people knew remarkably little about the diversity within their own countries.

Consider Baghdad’s Jewish history. For centuries, the city was a major center of Jewish religious scholarship and cultural production. Iraqi Jews contributed enormously to the country’s commerce, literature, music, and modern institutions. Sassoon Eskell, a Jewish Iraqi, served as the first finance minister of the Iraqi Kingdom and helped establish the foundations of its financial system.

Many Iraqis today know little about this history.

Or consider the Sabian-Mandaeans, followers of an ancient religious tradition associated with John the Baptist. For centuries, their community has preserved distinctive rituals, language, and craftsmanship. Mandaean silversmiths were renowned for their intricate metalwork, including delicate filigree techniques that was woven into Iraq’s artistic heritage.

These communities matter regardless of their size. Even as their populations decline, their religious and cultural traditions in Iraq live on.

The same is true of Iraq’s Christians, whose contributions to medicine, education, printing, and publishing helped shape the country’s modern intellectual life. In Mosul, ancient Christian communities once lived alongside Muslim neighbors, their churches and traditions forming an inseparable part of the city’s character.

When these communities decline or disappear, Iraq loses languages, professions, artistic traditions, historical knowledge, and the people who carried them forward.

The departure of Iraqi Jews in the mid-twentieth century, followed by successive waves of Christian and other minority emigration, diminished the country’s intellectual and economic life. Neighborhoods that once contained churches, synagogues, and mosques became less diverse. Traditions passed down through generations grew increasingly difficult to sustain.

As these communities shrink, younger generations have fewer opportunities to learn about their histories and traditions firsthand.

I have spent much of my academic career trying to understand what happens when societies forget parts of themselves. One of the most troubling consequences is how easily ignorance transforms into prejudice.

When people know nothing about their neighbors’ beliefs or histories, rumors and conspiracy theories fill the vacuum. Religious communities become objects of suspicion. Differences that were once accepted as normal are increasingly portrayed as threats.

We have seen the devastating consequences of such thinking. In 2014, ISIS attacked Yazidi communities in Sinjar and targeted Christians and other minorities across northern Iraq. Its campaign of violence was accompanied by the destruction of historical sites and cultural heritage, including ancient monuments at Nineveh and Nimrud.

The persecution of minorities was part of a broader assault on Iraqi society. The violence that devastated Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains also threatened the country’s wider security and stability.

This is why I have long argued that the treatment of minorities is one of the clearest measures of a society’s political health. When the rights of its most vulnerable citizens can be violated with impunity, everyone else’s rights become less secure.

But the problem cannot be solved simply by asking the majority to tolerate minorities. Tolerance can still imply that one group holds the authority to decide how much freedom another deserves.

A democratic society requires something more fundamental: equal citizenship. A Christian, Yazidi, Mandaean, or Muslim should enjoy the same rights and opportunities, regardless of how many people share their faith. No citizen should depend on the goodwill of a religious or political majority to belong in their own country.

I once spoke with the head of Iraq’s Sabian-Mandaean community, who complained that he had spent three years unsuccessfully seeking a meeting with the prime minister. I told him that a single tribe in southern Iraq might command more votes than the entire Mandaean population.

In this political system, a community’s size often carries more weight than its rights or historical significance.

During a visit to Afro-Iraqi neighborhoods in Zubair, near Basra, I saw photographs of Barack Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. displayed on classroom walls. Obama’s 2008 election had inspired members of this community, who recognized in the American civil rights struggle something of their own aspirations for equality and recognition.

Among their advocates was Jalal Dhiyab, an Afro-Iraqi civil rights activist who campaigned peacefully against discrimination before being assassinated in 2013.

How many Iraqis learn about him in school? How many know the history of Afro-Iraqis, whose presence in southern Iraq dates back to the 9th century during the Abbasid Caliphate?

These omissions shape how younger generations understand who belongs in their country.

For years, my work focused on academic research and books. Eventually, my university students began encouraging me to share that knowledge through social media. They started turning excerpts from my lectures and interviews into short videos, showing me that younger audiences were eager to engage with these subjects when the material was accessible.

Through House of Wisdom 2.0, I now help bring the histories of Iraq’s overlooked communities to Arabic-speaking audiences through digital content. An episode about the Turkmen, for example, challenged viewers’ assumptions by exploring the community’s religious and cultural diversity, including the existence of Christian Turkmen.

These discoveries may seem small, but they challenge stereotypes that have persisted for generations.

We cannot recover the communities and traditions that have already been lost. We can, however, document those that remain, teach their histories, and ensure that younger Iraqis understand the country they have inherited.

Iraq’s future depends partly on whether we can build a shared understanding of our past. That means recognizing the contributions of communities whose numbers may be small but whose place in our history is immense.

If we continue teaching children an incomplete version of Iraq, we should not be surprised when they grow up with an incomplete understanding of one another.

Israelis went to the polls on Tuesday in extraordinary numbers. Turnout reached a reported 77.7 percent, the highest in a quarter-century. After four years of political upheaval, mass demonstrations, the Hamas-led invasion and massacres of October 7, wars on several fronts, and a succession of national traumas, many hoped the election would finally provide some resolution. Instead, the result has left Israel facing another predicament. Neither of the two principal political blocs has an obvious path to power.

The political picture remains unsettled, and developments in the coming days may render present calculations obsolete. Nevertheless, the broad outlines of the result are becoming clear. Benjamin Netanyahu has suffered a significant parliamentary defeat. Although Likud remains the largest party, his outgoing coalition is projected to fall from 68 seats to 53, well short of the 61 required for a majority. His opponents, taken together, have the numbers to replace him. Whether they can agree to govern together is another matter.

Several opposition leaders have ruled out governing with Arab parties, leaving Netanyahu in the peculiar position of having lost his parliamentary majority without necessarily having lost an opportunity to retain power. For those who voted in the hope of bringing his long premiership to an end, hope and despair have become difficult to separate.

Much of this predicament can be traced to perhaps the most consequential development of the election: the remarkable mobilization of Israel’s Arab citizens. In Nazareth, turnout rose from 48 percent in 2022 to more than 72 percent. In Umm al-Fahm, it increased from 38 percent to nearly 76 percent, while in the Bedouin city of Rahat it climbed from 61 to 82 percent.

Several factors drove this surge, with many rooted in the everyday concerns of Arab communities rather than Palestinian nationalism. Organized crime and gun violence have devastated towns and neighborhoods, with successive governments failing to contain the crisis. Inadequate public services, housing shortages and poor infrastructure have contributed to a longstanding sense of neglect.

The war in Gaza and Israeli policies in the West Bank provided further reasons to oppose the government. So too did the conduct of ministers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, whose rhetoric and policies are openly hostile to the Arab minority. The effect appears to have been the opposite of what such antagonism might have been expected to produce. Rather than retreating from the political system, Arab voters turned out in numbers sufficient to help deprive the government of its majority. The methods of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, whatever their intended purpose, appear to have backfired.

The Arab vote, however, should not be mistaken for the expression of a single political movement. The parties representing Arab citizens differ substantially in their ideological traditions, priorities and attitudes towards cooperation with Jewish parties. Mansour Abbas’s Islamist Ra’am has over recent years pursued a pragmatic course, concentrating on budgets, policing and improvements in Arab communities. His decision to parnter with Yoav Segalovitz, a Zionist politician and former senior police commander, was a striking illustration of this approach.

Balad, by contrast, is rooted in Palestinian nationalism, while Hadash emerged from the communist movement. Both are antizionist and have historically resisted formal participation in Zionist-led governments. These differences have considerable practical importance. A parliamentary majority that includes the Arab parties may exist on paper, but converting it into a functioning government requires agreements between politicians whose disagreements extend well beyond the usual disputes over economic or social policy.

Israel has encountered this problem before. Between 2019 and 2021, four successive elections demonstrated that a majority opposed to Netanyahu was not necessarily a majority capable of replacing him. In 2021, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid eventually assembled an unlikely coalition that included Abbas’s Ra’am, the first independent Arab party to formally enter an Israeli government. The arrangement survived for approximately a year before collapsing amid internal disputes and defections from both Arab and Jewish members. It established an important precedent for Jewish-Arab political cooperation, while exposing the fragility of a government held together largely by opposition to Netanyahu.

Recreating such an arrangement today would be considerably more difficult. October 7 and the wars that followed have transformed the political atmosphere. Bennett and Avigdor Liberman have rejected governing with Arab parties, while Yair Golan’s Democrats support their participation. Gadi Eisenkot has taken a more conditional position to the participation of any party, setting out requirements concerning recognition of Israel’s Jewish and democratic character, acceptance of the principles of its Declaration of Independence, national service, and an unequivocal commitment to the demilitarization of Gaza and the replacement of Hamas.

These demands reflect concerns that cannot be explained simply as a reluctance among Jewish politicians to share power with Arab representatives. For much of the Jewish electorate, the question of Hamas is inseparable from the experience of October 7. The massacres and the subsequent wars have given rise to questions of security and political loyalty that were less pronounced during the negotiations of 2021.

Much of the discussion since the election has therefore focused on whether Bennett, Liberman and other Jewish opposition leaders might reconsider their objections to Arab participation. Less attention has been given to the concessions that Arab parties themselves might be prepared to make. Any durable agreement would require not only a willingness among Jewish politicians to accept Arab partners, but also sufficient common ground on Hamas and national security to make cooperation credible to the wider electorate.

Netanyahu, for his part, has declared somewhat of a victory. Likud remains the largest party, and his existing coalition has won more seats than the Jewish opposition parties combined. He will seek a mandate from President Isaac Herzog to form a government, although the president is not required to give the first opportunity to the leader of the largest party. Without additional partners, Netanyahu cannot reach 61 seats. One possibility would be a national unity government involving Eisenkot’s Yashar, perhaps under an agreement to rotate the premiership.

There is an obvious difficulty with such an arrangement. In 2020, Eisenkot’s former partner Benny Gantz entered a unity government with Netanyahu under an agreement that was supposed to make him prime minister. The government collapsed after failing to pass a state budget, bringing about the dissolution of the Knesset before Gantz could take office. The episode remains fresh in the memories of Netanyahu’s political opponents. Eisenkot would be asked to trust a prime minister whose previous partner never received the position he had been promised.

For Eisenkot, the decision would also carry a deeply personal significance. His youngest son, Gal, a 25-year-old reservist, was killed fighting in Gaza in December 2023. Two of his nephews also died during the war. Eisenkot has repeatedly held Netanyahu responsible for the failures that preceded October 7, and the demand for accountability became a central part of his campaign. Entering a government led by Netanyahu would mean helping preserve the premiership of the man whose removal he has argued is necessary for Israel’s recovery.

Netanyahu’s opponents have spent years arguing that his continued leadership threatens Israeli democracy, deepens its divisions, and prevents the country from confronting the failures of October 7. Yet they may now prove incapable of acting on those convictions because the compromises required are politically unpalatable. The Arab parties face decisions of their own. Their voters have helped deprive Netanyahu of his majority, but translating those votes into political influence may require cooperation with politicians whose positions on fundamental questions of national identity, the Palestinians and security they oppose.

The electorate, taken as a whole, wants several mutually incompatible things and has voted accordingly. It has now produced a parliament that faithfully represents this incoherence, crystallized in the form of 120 MKs, no 61 of whom can agree on anything at all.

Much may change in the coming weeks. Old rivalries may be reconsidered between the opposition and Netanyahu, new alliances explored between Jews and Arabs, both of which means campaign promises will be sufficiently abandoned. Meaning every politician involved faces the same uncomfortable calculation: if negotiations fail and the country returns to another election, they will have to explain to their voters why the principles they insisted were non-negotiable suddenly became moveable. Few politicians relish having to ask voters for a renewed mandate after demonstrating how little their previous promises were worth.

On the afternoon of Friday, October 23, Jordanians were shocked by an armed attack on St. George’s Church in Hamoud, a village of 400 people in the Karak Governorate, about 118 kilometers south of Amman.

Three gunmen stepped out of a blue vehicle and opened fire at close range on mourners attending the funeral of a Christian woman. One of the attackers was masked and carrying a Kalashnikov rifle, while the other two were armed with handguns.

Nine civilians were killed, including a university professor, doctors, and prominent members of the local community. Dozens more were wounded.

The government condemned the assault as “an act of terrorism driven by extremist takfiri ideology.” In the Islamic world, “takfiri” refers to a radical practice similar to extreme excommunication. Adherents of this ideology arbitrarily declare other Muslims—and non-Muslims alike—to be “infidels” or apostates. Militant groups use this label as a theological loophole to strip targets of their legal and human rights and justify violence against anyone who disagrees with their rigid worldview.

King Abdullah II promised a firm response, declaring that “Jordanian blood is precious.” Condemnations followed from across Jordan and the Arab world, with officials and public figures rejecting attempts to undermine the country’s social cohesion and the national unity of its Muslim and Christian citizens.

Yesterday, Jordanian security forces arrested the three suspects after tracking them to an abandoned house in Karak. Three were wounded in a shootout with police before being taken into custody. Authorities say the investigation is ongoing.

I knew some of the victims personally. My friend Lour Adnan Madanat was attending the funeral with her mother and other female relatives when what should have been a final farewell to a family member suddenly became 15 minutes of terror.

Madanat told me how she and her relatives threw themselves to the floor, holding one another beneath the wooden pews as pieces of crumbling walls and shattered glass fell around them. People screamed in panic, she said. Families cried out for loved ones, searching for them among the blood and debris.

When the shooting stopped, Madanat and her relatives rushed to check on one another and help the wounded. Bodies lay scattered across the church courtyard. Residents of the small village worked together to provide whatever help they could before ambulances and security forces arrived about 45 minutes later.

Madanat says she will never forget what happened that afternoon. The images are etched into her memory like a nightmare she cannot wake from. But the suffering was real, and innocent people paid for it with their lives inside a place of worship.

King Abdullah II is well known for his opposition to terrorism and religious extremism. Through the Amman Message, Jordan has promoted a moderate interpretation of Islam, an approach that gained greater urgency after ISIS burned Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh alive on camera in February 2015.

Al-Kasasbeh’s murder fundamentally changed Jordan’s approach to counterterrorism. The government expanded its efforts to address the ideological and social conditions that allow extremism to spread, alongside its military and security operations.

Through the National Strategy for Countering Violent Extremism, our country has sought to confront radical ideology at its source. The measures include greater oversight of mosque sermons, training for religious preachers, and revisions to school curricula to promote citizenship and critical thinking.

The strategy also introduced ideological counseling programs inside correctional facilities, intended to challenge extremist interpretations of religion and rehabilitate inmates. Digital literacy and media education initiatives were launched to counter online recruitment and extremist propaganda targeting young people.

But was all of this enough? And has it actually worked?

I’m not so sure.

Since 2017, I’ve used satire and independent media to challenge religious extremism and intolerance in Jordan and across the Arab world. Through Shezomedia, the media company I founded, I’ve seen how difficult it can be to confront deeply entrenched beliefs, and how much work still needs to be done.

Every year, during Christian holidays in Jordan, social media fills with hateful comments attacking Christians and their religious celebrations. So what has the government’s counter-extremism strategy accomplished in practice?

Following the church attack, several hardline Islamic preachers attempted to offer messages of “tolerance.” But the language they chose to use revealed something troubling about how they view their Christian fellow citizens.

In a video, preacher Alaa Jaber declared that Christians in Jordan are a trust placed in the care of Muslims.

Salafi preacher Eyad Qunaibi wrote on Facebook that the “Nasara”—using the Quranic term rather than the ordinary Arabic word for Christians—inside the church were people entitled to protection of their lives, property, and honor. He argued that Muslims should invite them to the “true religion” rather than kill them.

But this same preacher previously declared it religiously forbidden to congratulate Christians on their holidays. He also refused to offer prayers for the soul of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh after she was killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank.

The Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Al-Ummah Party also issued a statement condemning the attack. It wished the wounded a speedy recovery but offered no prayers for those killed. The party described what happened as a “criminal incident” rather than a terrorist attack.

What connects these three responses is an underlying religious view of Christians as “ahl al-dhimma”—non-Muslims living under Muslim protection—rather than citizens who enjoy the same rights and carry the same responsibilities as everyone else.

This way of thinking does little to eliminate extremism. In one way or another, it may even help sustain it.

There is no denying the grief that has spread across Jordan, or the widespread expressions of human solidarity and national unity with the victims’ families. I have seen and experienced it myself.

But social media has also exposed a different side of the public reaction.

Extremist comments have prompted some Christian citizens, along with liberal and secular activists, to speak out against what they see as a failure to hold those who incite religious hatred accountable.

Christians are tired of hearing the usual language about “tolerance” and “coexistence,” and some have rejected these expressions as condescending.

Their objection is to what the words can imply: that Christians are people whom others graciously agree to tolerate, as though they occupy a lower position in religion, values, or social standing.

This growing polarization has prompted some Islamist activists to accuse secular critics of exploiting the tragedy to express their hostility toward Islam.

Some Jordanian media figures associated with Qatari media outlets have gone further, calling these critics “secular ISIS” and suggesting they are no different from the terrorists they condemn.

This comparison is both unfair and logically weak.

How can someone who murders another human being for holding different beliefs be compared to a secular thinker whose only action is to express an opinion?

In the same debate, Jordanian activist Rakan Sawalha published a statement titled “Citizenship Is Not a Favor,” which circulated widely among young Jordanians.

Sawalha emphasized that Christianity’s roots in Jordan extend deep into the country’s history and geography. Christians are neither guests nor beneficiaries of someone else’s generosity.

Citing Article 6 of the Jordanian Constitution, which establishes equality in rights and duties, he called for more than seasonal expressions of solidarity and polite gestures, and instead for implementing meaningful legal and institutional guarantees.

He urged revisions to school curricula so that Christian history is properly recognized as an integral part of Jordanian national identity and called for firm penalties against religious incitement and takfiri rhetoric, rather than using appeals to national unity as an excuse to stay silent.

Sawalha also rejected the tendency to confine young Christian voices to traditional community structures or parliamentary representation alone. Christians, he argued, should participate directly in policymaking and national decision-making, rather than being represented only through religious quotas.

So what needs to happen now?

Jordan needs to complete its efforts to revise school curricula and confront religious extremism in education.

Some parents have complained that their children are being exposed to extremist ideological messages from teachers outside the official curriculum. These concerns require closer oversight of classroom activities.

The next stage should involve identifying extremist material and removing it from educational content, while strengthening students’ critical thinking skills so they can recognize and resist ideological indoctrination.

Jordanian activists are also calling for an honest examination of any ideology that encourages hatred toward people because of their religion, beliefs, ideas, or culture.

They want a serious review of Islamist fundamentalist thought, including religious jurisprudence and traditional texts, and public accountability for preachers who promote extremist views.

The starting point, they argue, is honesty with ourselves.

In a country like Jordan, strengthening pluralism and learning to accept religious and cultural differences is hardly a liberal luxury. It is an urgent national necessity.

When ideas that justify killing in the name of religion exist among citizens, the response cannot be limited to polite expressions of goodwill. People’s lives are at stake.

The official response to the church attack, from the king, the government, and state media, was appropriate to the gravity of what happened. Public reactions naturally varied. But the king’s statements and the government’s directives helped establish a clear public rejection of the attack.

That response provides a foundation for the work ahead and for the hope of building a better future.

Here in Jordan, Muslims and Christians have a long history of living side by side, and I think we have good reason to be proud of that.

According to the Citizenship and Social Cohesion study conducted by the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies, 92 percent of Jordanians said Christians should enjoy full freedom to practice their religion. Another 89 percent agreed that citizenship rights and constitutional responsibilities apply equally, without religious discrimination.

These findings align with the 2022 Arab Barometer report on Jordan, in which more than 91 percent of respondents said religious affiliation had no effect on everyday relationships and social interactions.

The findings also point to an almost complete absence of sectarian tensions across the country’s governorates. Muslim-Christian coexistence here has a real social foundation. People practice it in their daily lives. Christianity is neither a recent arrival nor a foreign presence. It has been part of our country’s identity since the faith’s earliest days.

Jordan is home to some of the world’s oldest Christian sites.

Among them is Bethany Beyond the Jordan, the baptism site on the eastern bank of the Jordan River associated with the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry. Elsewhere are the remains of the ancient Aqaba Church, dating to approximately AD 293–300 and considered one of the oldest known buildings constructed specifically as a church.

Other important sites include the Byzantine churches and mosaics of Madaba, Umm ar-Rasas, and Rihab in Mafraq Governorate.

But the Christian presence in Jordan goes beyond archaeological sites. It is also deeply rooted in the country’s Arab tribal history.

Major Arab tribes, including the Ghassanids, Lakhmids, Judham, and Salih, formed part of the region’s population long before the Islamic conquests. Jordan’s Christian clans trace their ancestry to these longstanding Arab tribal communities.

Christians have been an integral part of Jordanian society for centuries. They defended their homeland, took part in the historical uprisings of Karak and Shoubak, and contributed to the development of the modern Jordanian state through its civilian, military, and cultural institutions.

Jordan’s national unity has deep roots, and I believe it is strong enough to withstand the tensions we are seeing today. Much of the anger and debate unfolding on social media reflects a country struggling to come to terms with a terrible tragedy.

In just fifteen minutes, nine lives were senselessly stolen, and countless others changed forever. We cannot undo what happened, but we can decide how we respond.

No one should have to fear for their life while mourning the death of a loved one. The people killed in that church were our fellow Jordanians, attending a funeral in their own community, in their own country. They had every right to feel safe there. If we are serious about preventing another tragedy like this, we need to confront the prejudices that make such violence possible and ensure that every Jordanian, regardless of religion, enjoys the same rights, dignity, and protection. That is what it should mean to belong to this country.

As soon as she turned 18, Romina Rahimi got a tattoo of a map of Iran on her neck. It was the only way their cousin, Masoud Nourmohammadi, was able to tell her apart from her twin sister Taraneh—something for which he was eternally grateful.

More than anything, the tattoo was a symbol, he says, of how Gen Z Iranians feel about their country, and the hope they still have for their future.

“This generation of Iranians has a deep love for the culture, for Iran, and their people,” says Nourmohammadi.

It seems tragic, then, that someone so patriotic has been languishing behind bars for the past 10 months.

The Rahimi girls, then 20, joined their compatriots at Isfahan’s Shoahada Square during the January uprising against the Islamic Republic.

On August 31, in Branch 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court, they were convicted of charges relating to moharebeh, or “waging war against God.”

Taraneh has been sentenced to death while Romina was given 25 years in prison.

“They are broken, mentally,” says Nourmohammadi.

Taraneh was the more extroverted, athletic of the two, he says. An equestrian, she dreamed of one day having her own stable.

“She was one of the kindest people you will ever meet. If you ever looked into her eyes, you would get that vibe,” he tells Middle East Uncovered from his home in Utah.

“Romina was more introverted. I could have deep conversations with her about philosophy for hours. She was really curious. She was really into music and shoes.”

While many people have lost hope in Iran, Nourmohammadi insisted that the young women were the opposite.

And so, full of hope for their future, they took to the streets among millions of other Iranians.

What began as demonstrations over economic hardship at the end of December 2025 escalated into open calls for regime change by January.

The security forces responded with widespread violence, with tens of thousands massacred by the state. The exact number has yet to be verified, but some estimates claim it could be as many as 40,000.

Two weeks later, the Rahimi twins were arrested by dozens of masked men in the middle of the night. Taraneh was staying with a friend while Romina was with her mother.

“We later found out they were IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps],” says Nourmohammadi. “They put a bag on Taraneh’s head and handcuffed her. A few hours later they did the same with Romina. My aunt was fighting back; she didn’t want them to take her daughter.”

With that, they were gone into the night. Their family had no idea where they were or what had happened to them. This period coincided with the nationwide internet blackout. The silence was agonizing.

“We thought they had killed the girls; they are certainly capable,” says Nourmohammadi.

One day, their mother, Marzieh, got a phone call to say the girls were in Dowlatabad Prison in Isfahan. It was four weeks later that she got an appointment to see her daughters—four months after they were abducted.

Marzieh couldn’t recognize them, says Nourmohammadi. The girls had bruises all over their bodies. Taraneh was limping. Both had chunks of hair missing from their heads, as they had been dragged from place to place.

The girls later told their lawyer that they had been sexually assaulted.

“The IRGC has something they call a ‘magic table’,” says Nourmohammadi. “They tie people to it and beat them for hours and hours until they confess.”

He pauses for a moment. “They are like animals. No, actually, animals are good. They are barbaric; they’re not even human beings.”

The prisoners were reportedly tortured in front of each other. Taraneh was beaten so badly that she was left with a broken skull, leading to an inner ear infection and a loss of balance.

Taraneh told her cousin that she would bite down on her teeth to prevent herself from screaming, as Romina was in the cell next to her.

“She broke all her teeth,” says Nourmohammadi. “They also said if you don’t sign this confession, we will rape your sister in front of you. And they would have done it.”

The “confession,” he says, is the only “evidence” the regime has against Taraneh.

Moharebeh carries the death sentence under Iranian law. Human rights groups report that it is a vague, catch-all charge used to suppress anyone—from political dissidents and ethnic minorities to anti-government protesters.

Taraneh and Romina were prosecuted alongside 14 other defendants over events surrounding the protests in Isfahan.

Ten of them, including Taraneh, were sentenced to death.

As the war between the US, Iran and Israel continues to dominate international attention, with much of the focus on the Strait of Hormuz and rising oil prices, Iranian authorities are pursuing executions of dozens of protesters arrested during January’s uprising.

At least 56 people have been executed on national security-related charges, including 27 individuals in cases linked to protests at the start of the year, according to the UN’s human rights office.

Mahboubeh Shabani, a civil engineer from Mashhad, was arrested in February after she was accused of helping injured demonstrators reach a hospital. She also faces accusations of “operational action to strengthen Israel, the United States and agents affiliated with Reza Pahlavi” under the new “Law on Intensifying the Punishment for Espionage and Cooperation with the Zionist Regime and Hostile States against National Security and Interests,” enacted in October 2025 following approval by parliament and the Guardian Council.

The Rahimi sisters turned 21 in prison. It is unclear why Taraneh has received the death sentence while Romina has not.

Nourmohammadi has a theory.

“There is a pattern with this regime. Taraneh is an athlete, and there are a lot of athletes being imprisoned,” he says. “They take the brightest, and they want to create fear.”

Shabani practiced martial arts—she was arrested violently and beaten in prison.

Taraneh and Romina’s family appealed to the Supreme Court. But the IRGC arrested their lawyer, Amirsalar Davoodi, on October 10. Any hope of justice is fading.

The prison conditions are excruciating. As well as torture, the Rahimis have to buy their own drinking water and are not allowed to receive fresh clothes or menstrual products. At one point, says their cousin, Taraneh was forced to eat other prisoners’ leftovers.

A date for Taraneh’s execution has not been set, but it could be any day now.

For their family, the wait is agonizing.

“Their mom is just terrible, like most of us. We’ve lost our minds,” says Nourmohammadi.

He feels powerless to do anything except to continue telling their story. Yet the father of three says he’s received death threats for speaking out.

“I received a text on Telegram saying, ‘We know where your kids go to school; one day we will pick them up’. I’ve reported it to the local police, but I was advised to tell the FBI.”

Nevertheless, he continues to speak out. He does it because the twins want him to be their voice.

“What happened in January was a massacre. The world needs to recognize that,” says Masoud Nourmohammadi. “It has not stopped. It’s still happening in prisons.”

Five hundred kilograms of explosives were traveling toward Beirut. Hezbollah claims they were intended for the “resistance” against Israel. The Lebanese government says it is investigating. And we are expected to take both at their word.

The seizure of explosives at the Dahr al-Baidar crossing (a high mountain pass and village sitting at an elevation of roughly 1,516 meters in Mount Lebanon) has prompted familiar headlines celebrating the return of the Lebanese state. Security forces intercepted a Dodge Caravan carrying roughly 250 kilograms of TNT and 250 kilograms of C4. Hezbollah admitted the explosives were its own and demanded them back. This time, the state broke its long-standing tradition and did not wave the cargo through.

Let’s set aside for a minute the irony that Hezbollah operatives were driving an American car while chanting “death to America.” This is a big development, even if it is not a good enough reason to trust the government.

The closer you look at this case, the less reassuring the official narrative becomes, starting with one glaring contradiction: the explosives were traveling in the wrong direction.

Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah says the shipment was intended for defensive fortifications in southern Lebanon. Yet investigators say it was traveling from Baalbek toward Beirut.

Last I checked, Israel is to the south, while Beirut is to the west. Perhaps Hezbollah threw away its compasses after its pagers exploded. Then again, this isn’t the first time Hezbollah has struggled with directions. Hassan Nasrallah once claimed that the road to Jerusalem passed through Syria.

Why was a shipment purportedly meant for the “southern front” being delivered to Hezbollah operatives in Beirut? What was going to happen to it there?

Then there is the checkpoint. Dahr al-Baidar is a longstanding security post that has been fixed there for decades. Anyone organizing the movement of hundreds of kilograms of explosives along that highway knew it was there.

Why risk that passage? Had the route worked before? Did the organizers expect preferential treatment, perhaps even assistance from within the security apparatus? These are valid questions, yet no one in Lebanon dares answer them.

Early reports raised that suspicion, and parliamentary sources leaked to a local news outlet that those suspicions surround some state actors. Investigators have indeed questioned checkpoint personnel, but an officer and ten security-force members were subsequently cleared. No mole has been identified, yet I do not think anyone is convinced… at least not yet. The organizers’ apparent confidence remains unexplained.

Given Lebanon’s history, the cargo itself raises another disturbing question. The discovery of hundreds of kilograms of military-grade explosives traveling toward Beirut brings back memories of the political assassinations that devastated Lebanon between 2005 and 2008. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon convicted three Hezbollah members for their roles in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam himself recalled Lebanon’s history of political assassinations when discussing the seized explosives. None of this proves the latest shipment was intended for another assassination. But it makes the government’s failure to provide a convincing account of its intended destination all the more troubling. Are the authorities preparing another cover-up?

The fact that the explosives have not been returned to Hezbollah is telling.

For example, in February 2006, twelve trucks transporting weapons for Hezbollah were discovered at a Lebanese checkpoint and were allowed to go through. A UN report recorded the army’s explanation: government policy regarded the movement of “resistance” ammunition as legitimate. Hezbollah’s military logistics effectively enjoyed a political exemption.

Today, security forces have retained the shipment and its transporters, and judicial authorities have moved to question two alleged organizers who are known only by their aliases. Hezbollah did demand the explosives back, but never got them.

It would be tempting to call this a new era, but state authority is not measured by how boldly officials speak once a case dominates the press headlines, but by how institutions behave when nobody is watching. That brings us to the most disturbing part.

Authorities seized the explosives days before the public learned about them. The government’s emphatic promises of accountability arrived only after the story broke.

Prominent Lebanese Journalist and political activist Riad Touq has questioned the seriousness of the initial handling, arguing that publicity changed the investigation’s trajectory. Lebanon24, citing a parliamentary source, reported suspicions that the incident was being contained and that the vehicle was expected to pass without a thorough search.

Security investigations sometimes require secrecy, but they always require transparency. If everything was handled properly from the beginning, why hasn’t the government provided a clear enough account to dispel these suspicions?

If the story had never reached the press, would the case have received the same attention? Did the state really get its act together, or did the story leak and force its hand?

If the government wants public confidence, it should explain the initial chain of command, the transfer of the case between agencies, the timing of investigative decisions, and how it handled alleged interference. It can do that without disclosing confidential evidence.

Instead, Lebanese citizens are left to choose between Hezbollah’s assurances and those of their government. Neither has earned their trust after decades of living under a militia that terrorizes citizens and a state that has bent its institutions to serve the militia’s agenda.

Yesterday, Justice Minister Adel Nassar requested that the case be referred to Lebanon’s Judicial Council, a special court that handles serious national security and terrorism-related crimes and whose verdicts generally cannot be appealed.

Hezbollah opposed the move through its representatives in the government, while its ally, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, reportedly pressured President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam to avoid a confrontation with the party.

During the cabinet meeting, Salam delivered a fiery speech defending the state’s monopoly on weapons, only to acquiesce to a political compromise that postponed a decision on the referral. Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc promptly welcomed the outcome.

Apparently, condemning Hezbollah’s weapons is one thing; taking judicial action that might upset the party is another. Salam managed to do the former while postponing the latter, proving once again that trusting the government to stand up to Hezbollah is like trusting an ashtray to enforce a no-smoking policy.

Those who intercepted the explosives deserve credit. But the state’s responsibility did not end with the seizure. The security agencies and judiciary owe the Lebanese public an account of what happened next, why the information was withheld, and why it took the press to bring the case to light. Above all, the government must explain its reluctance to treat the shipment as a threat to national security, let alone a potential act of terrorism.

At least 48 civilians are dead in eastern Mali as a result of a spate of jihadist violence over the weekend. Some victims were shot. Others died in fires after their homes were set ablaze.

Across the arid and sparsely populated Ménaka region in the Sahel, Islamic State-affiliated gunmen descended on villages—many of them remote settlements where semi-nomadic tribespeople herd sheep, goats, and cattle. They set fire to houses. They stole livestock. In their wake, hundreds of civilians—predominantly Muslims—fled towards the regional capital.

Mali has suffered greatly from outbreaks of jihadist violence for more than a decade now. After a rebellion by Tuareg separatists in 2012, groups of al-Qaeda-linked militants began to seize control of large parts of the country’s north, including Mali’s most famous landmark, the ancient mud-brick city of Timbuktu.

The French government intervened in 2013, driving the opportunistic jihadists from the major cities. But this did not overturn the insurgency. Violence has continued across the country and has even spread into neighboring ones. Various organizations, including those affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, have fought against the Malian government. But they have also fought amongst each other, as well as perpetrating attacks against civilian communities.

As a result of this continuing storm of violence, the country has been widely destabilized. Hundreds of thousands of Malians have been displaced. Massacres have become a recurring feature of life.

Across Africa, jihadist violence has claimed more than 165,000 lives in the past decade, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

In the neighboring countries of Burkina Faso and Niger, rural communities have been terrorized by militants affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Around northeastern Nigeria and Lake Chad, Boko Haram and another Islamic State-affiliated offshoot have been waging jihad for more than fifteen years. In Somalia, the jihadist piracy group al-Shabaab has continued a longstanding campaign against the Somali government.

And further south, militants who pledged allegiance to Islamic State have perpetrated massacres in both the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique.

The problem, of course, is not contained to Africa. Islamic State insurgencies remain active across both Syria and Iraq, even after the destruction of the group’s so-called caliphate established in 2014.

In Yemen, al-Qaeda established a foothold as a result of years of civil war and political instability. Large parts of the country have been seized by the Houthis (Ansar Allah), a Shia militant group which controls both the country’s capital of Sana’a as well as parts of the north and the border with Saudi Arabia.

In Lebanon and Gaza, Islamist militant groups have fought repeated wars with Israel, too.

Yet international media attention differs sharply across these conflicts.

The wars involving Hamas, Hezbollah, and Israel have attracted enormous levels of global attention—as well as high degrees of sympathy for civilians. The Houthis also became a major subject of international news when their attacks on Red Sea shipping impacted global trade routes and resulted in military responses from the United States and Britain.

And yet, the victims of jihadist violence across Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Mozambique, and more go unheard. The atrocities committed in the Sahel have not captured widespread public attention. The suffering of the civilians in these regions is not widely commented upon or recognized. There are no mass demonstrations in the West calling for an end to these insurgencies. Celebrities rarely tweet about or talk about such events. Nobody is shouting “free Mali” or “free Mozambique” during their concerts.

The difference isn’t that journalists are making no effort to report on these events. International news agencies like Reuters and Associated Press, as well as local correspondents, file stories on these matters all of the time.

But such reports receive relatively little attention, especially globally. And it’s difficult to garner much attention unless the events in question directly affect the military, political, or economic interests of people in Western countries.

This is quite understandable. American audiences tend to be interested predominantly in American events. The same is true for European audiences.

But the proliferation of jihadist violence throughout Africa and the Middle East should not be something that is ignored. It is a symptom of a violent and virulent ideology spreading, festering, and metastasizing. And the ideologies driving this violence do not respect national borders.

Nor are they only a threat to one specific group. Jihadism has killed Muslims, Christians, Jews, and people of many different groups.

We have already seen the effects of militant Islamism in Western countries on many occasions. Obviously, on 9/11. But also in the Bataclan attacks in Paris in November 2015, and in the bombing of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena in 2017. And on many more occasions.

With the large-scale spread of calls to “globalize the Intifada” since 2023, the risk of such violence has only grown.

The riots in France—which also took place over the weekend—illustrated the growing trend towards outbursts of Islamist violence (some of it petty, some of it more serious) on European streets.

While some of the rioters were undoubtedly just ignorant non-ideological opportunists seeking a chance to break into shops to steal luxury goods, and while many others talked of economic grievances, in one widely circulated video, a woman wearing Algerian nationalist-branded clothing blamed France’s problems on “Zionists,” and subsequently appeared among the rioters shouting religious slogans and making threats of violence.

Popular commentators like Mohamad Safa went even further. In regard to the unrest sweeping France, Italy, Belgium and Albania, Safa declared that Europe was experiencing a “European Spring” against “Zionism.”

The spread of jihad across Africa and the Middle East should serve as a warning—and especially because it is being so widely ignored. In most places where Islamist violence took root, there were no Zionists there, or anything like that. There were no Israeli settlements.

While Zionism and the existence of Israel are often cited as a motivation for jihadist violence in Palestine by groups including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and in Lebanon by Hezbollah, this does not explain the spread of such violence in Mali, or Mozambique, or Nigeria, or Yemen, or Afghanistan, and so forth.

To do that, you need to pay heed to the jihadists’ ideology, instead. They claim absolute religious authority. They believe that the only legitimate government is one based on their interpretation of Islam. And they want power.

A Muslim villager in Mali does not need to be a Zionist, an American, or against Islam to become a target. It’s enough simply to resist their claim to rule, or to cooperate with the government of Mali, or even just belong to a community that the jihadists regard as hostile. Their ideology provides all the justification they need.

During an invitation-only meeting with Syrian-Americans in New York in September, President Ahmad al-Sharaa gave his first direct answer to a question that has hovered over Syria’s transition from the beginning: Does he intend to remain in power after the transitional period ends?

His answer was conditional. If Syria reaches Barr al-Aman—the safe shore—he suggested that he would have no reason to seek office. If he believes he is still needed to finish the task, however, he will run.

What he said at least acknowledges that a transitional presidency is supposed to end. It places succession and the transfer of power, however tentatively, in the public conversation. It also gives Syrians an opportunity to demand greater clarity.

But it also exposes the problem. The decision is being framed as a matter of al-Sharaa’s individual judgment: he will decide whether Syria has reached “safety,” whether his work is finished, and whether the country still needs him, in his opinion.

But a transitional leader does not get to decide when the transition has succeeded. The process, the institutions, and the electorate must decide. His sincerity is secondary. Even a sincere promise to leave is not a valid succession mechanism.

And what, exactly, is Barr al-Aman? How will we recognize it when we reach it? By what standards will success be measured, and who gets to apply them? Those standards need to be acceptable to Syrians from their many different communal, regional, and political backgrounds. Developing them requires a national conversation about the country’s direction and the political order we are trying to build.

That conversation is not taking place in the People’s Assembly, despite the tightly managed selection process that gave it a veneer of electoral legitimacy. Nor is it happening through political parties, because none exist. Independent newspapers, private television stations, and organized political movements, aren’t talking about it either, because space for these remains severely limited.

Syrians can speak more freely today than they could under the Assad dynasty. That is not insignificant, but it is a painfully low bar. The right to complain as an individual is not the same as the right to organize, publish, mobilize, and influence policy. Critics may not be systematically targeted by the central authorities, but some still face frivolous lawsuits or arrest under ostensibly nonpolitical pretexts, only to be released after a sufficient public uproar or the prospect of international embarrassment.

That is not yet a functioning public sphere.

Al-Sharaa’s ambiguity initially served understandable purposes. It helped hold together a coalition containing former jihadis, revolutionaries, technocrats, and local armed groups while postponing a confrontation with religious hardliners. It reassured foreign governments without requiring him to repudiate his conservative base, and allowed moderates and minorities to read hopeful signs into his behavior while the government pursued diplomatic recognition, sanctions relief, and investment.

Both camps nevertheless became anxious. Moderates, secularists and minorities feared that his silence was permitting intimidation and gradual Islamization. Hardliners watched him attend concerts, allow his wife to assume a visible public role and decline to suppress everything they considered un-Islamic. They began to worry that his making practical compromises meant abandoning the principles their project was built on.

Perhaps this balancing act helped Syria avoid an early fracture. But what buys time in the first months of a transition can become a way to avoid accountability in the years that follow.

Syria is still governed by fear, but now it is multi-vector. Fear of the authorities may have declined in some circles, yet communities now fear one another. Neighborhoods fear neighboring districts. Towns and villages fear nearby towns and villages. People fear those with different political opinions, sectarian backgrounds, or ideas about the future.

No one knows the destination, so everyone invents one. The endgame is Islamism. Or radical Islamism. Or Sunni supremacism. Or subservience to Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United States or Israel. Give the rumor mill enough time, and we eventually arrive at the Zionist-Masonic cabal, the Martian overlords, and the lizard people.

The absurdity of some explanations does not make the underlying anxiety imaginary. When leaders refuse to describe the future, fear fills in the blanks.

I am not arguing that al-Sharaa has issued a secret blueprint for Islamizing Syria. The reality may be both less organized and more difficult to resist: an Islamic conception of the state increasingly operates as the default presumption behind administrative decisions.

Women have been excluded from most programs at the new defense and security universities. Damascus has restricted alcohol sales largely to predominantly Christian districts, effectively territorializing a personal freedom along sectarian lines. Douma’s city council attempted to regulate whether a groom could enter a wedding celebration attended by women. The prestigious Freedom Institute, established during the French mandate, separated male and female students above the primary level, although its administration insisted that this was an independent decision rather than a government directive.

None of these decisions, taken alone, defines the character of the new state. Together, however, they reveal which impulses may proceed without constitutional explanation. Restrictions introduced in the name of religion, morality or local preference are treated as natural. Those defending personal freedom are left to prove why an exception should be made. The burden of justification has been reversed.

This is Islamization by administrative accumulation. It requires no central decree or public proclamation. A municipal order here, an admissions rule there, a licensing restriction somewhere else: gradually, the state’s character emerges from decisions no one has openly debated.

Considering the ideology of the new rulers, it is hardly surprising that Islamism should provide the default. More revealing is the “we” of official rhetoric. “Our values,” “our culture,” “our ways,” and “our country” often seem to refer primarily to Sunni Islam, with a tinge of Arabism, and to a particular interpretation of both. Yet these expressions resonate very differently among Syria’s communities.

This is precisely why the country keeps generating new crises. Every faction that captures the state attempts to present its own worldview as a glorious national restoration. No one wants to admit that there is nothing to restore in quite that fashion. The task is to build something new—drawing on Syria’s multiple traditions and identities while remaining compatible with modern citizenship and universal rights.

Modern Syria may be a modern political creation, but it is ours: in law, memory, blood and responsibility. Its people possess different historical narratives explaining their presence and attachment to the land. None of those narratives gives one community a greater claim to citizenship than another.

After more than a century of turmoil, Syria has another chance to lay the foundations of a republic. This challenge is not limited to the last fifteen years of war or the previous fifty years of Assad rule. The country has been struggling to find its footing for more than a hundred years.

Meeting that challenge requires leaders ambitious enough to imagine something new, but modest enough to understand that they cannot create it alone. As many Syrians as possible must be included in charting the way forward.

Syria is not a prize awaiting its next set of takers. It is a responsibility shared by all its citizens. When we fail to understand that, we are not transitioning into anything. We are simply marching in place to the rhythm of all our previous failures.

For this, al-Sharaa cannot afford to stay silent on the issue of where the country is heading, nor can he avoid increasing sectarian and ethnic violence. Every killing, kidnapping, and act of communal retaliation touches everyone’s sense of security and belonging.

He needs to speak out—and he needs to allow others to speak, organize, and participate. Syria needs a national campaign against sectarian and ethnic violence, accompanied by a serious process of national reconciliation. Without such an effort, every other achievement of the transition is undermined.

Al-Sharaa does not need to promise that Syria will become a Western liberal democracy. He does need to tell Syrians what principles will govern their disagreements, what rights power cannot override, and how they may eventually replace him.

Al-Sharaa’s most important legacy will not be whether he chooses to leave. It will be whether leaving ceases to depend on the ruler’s choice.

The quiet is striking along the dusty roads of Ein el-Tal (Handarat), an unofficial Palestinian refugee camp near Aleppo once home to an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 people.

From the roof of a building, the scale of destruction is overwhelming. Below, abandoned cars dot the streets, and the occasional passerby is the only sign of life in the ghost town, where returnees live among the hollowed-out shells of buildings.

Perched on a hill 20 minutes northeast of Aleppo—a city scarred by the Syrian war—Handarat is a small community trying to rebuild with what remains after years of fierce fighting between the Syrian government forces and rebel factions.

Inside the camp’s Development Committee building, committee head Ibrahim Abu Hashim outlines a threadbare reality.

He says essential infrastructure hangs by a thread: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and the government provide limited schooling as well as a basic health center. However, 63-year-old volunteer nurse Majed Younis is the first person people call for local medical emergencies.

Damaged water pipes, a broken sewage network, no electricity, and three destroyed bakeries compound daily hardships. Beyond housing, Ibrahim’s immediate priority is clearing rubble and repairing damaged streets.

Though not a rebellion hotspot during the 2011 uprising, insurgents from the Free Syrian Army and Islamist factions seized the camp in 2013, turning it into a frontline given its strategic position overlooking rebel-held districts in eastern Aleppo. Relentless airstrikes by Syrian government forces and their Russian allies turned Handarat into a full-scale battleground, forcing residents to flee. Assad’s regime forces recaptured the camp in 2016.

In 2017, families began trickling back, driven by economic desperation after years of being repeatedly displaced elsewhere in Syria, and pulled back by the longing to reclaim a lost community.

Mohammad Alhawari

Mohammad Alhawari, a 73-year-old Palestinian, shares a two-room house with his family. A former day laborer, he lives with his disabled wife, Ibtisam, 70; his daughter-in-law, Yasmin, 40; and his son and grandchildren. “Our situation was really bad. People helped us financially—we were not able to work anymore because we were old,” he tells me, sitting on the edge of his twin bed, explaining that his wife lost her leg. Of his three sons, only one survived the war; two were killed in airstrikes.

Returning in 2023 to a destroyed house, they started to rebuild from scratch. Yet three years on, conditions are grim. The dimly lit home shelters 11 people—four adults and seven children—crammed into two rooms.

Displacement meant a decade of moving across Aleppo, until funds ran out. “We started to ask people to give us money to build the walls. We only had blankets.” Standing in the bare living space, it is hard to imagine enduring the winter. “We collect plastic from the garbage and burn it. Wood is too expensive.”

Like most of the camp, they lack grid electricity and rely on solar setups, while running water is all but nonexistent. “We have water for two or three hours every ten to fifteen days, and we store as much drinking water as we can,” they tell me.

Healthcare presents another hurdle. Mohammad cannot afford a prosthetic leg for his wife, and UNRWA support is minimal. “If you go to UNRWA sick, they don’t even have paracetamol, aspirin, or simple painkillers.”

Glancing at her mother-in-law, Yasmin notes how difficult routine care has become. “Once she needed a blood test, but with her leg amputated, she suffers, and it’s a struggle to take her there over these broken roads.” Her husband, working in garbage collection, also struggles with injury: “He was hit by a bullet, so his hand no longer works right.”

For daily supplies, residents must make the journey to Aleppo. Many rely on neighbors for rides, while mobile vendors bring bread back at inflated prices. “We only have two markets that sell vegetables in the mountain, and it’s really expensive.” Buying clothes requires another costly trip. “You need to make the decision, either if you want to buy clothes or to eat and survive,” she adds.

Families do what they can to prioritize children’s education, though costs create gaps. Older children attend the local UNRWA school, but Yasmin cannot afford kindergarten for her five-year-old. Agency aid has also shrunk, she says, with UNRWA halting free school supplies this year.

Yet Mohammad still sees UNRWA as a source of hope. “They are the ones to guarantee the right of return to our land,” he says. “We demand that they fulfill their duties. For us, they are the Ministry of Finance, Economy, Health, and Education.”

Asked what gives him the resolve to stay despite the conditions, Mohammad does not hesitate. “The first reason is that this is my house, but our main concern is to go back to our land in Palestine. Our problem won’t be solved unless we go back to our country.”

UNRWA’s funding crisis has made matters worse. In 2024, several donor countries suspended contributions after Israel accused some of the UNRWA staff of involvement in the October 7 attacks. The allegations triggered a financial crisis that severely disrupted the agency’s operations across the region.

Former UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini projected a $200 million shortfall entering 2026, while acting chief Christian Saunders recently warned of an ongoing $100 million deficit.

For Mohammad, the prospect of Syrian citizenship, as offered to Syrian Kurds, holds little appeal. “We reject any nationality except for the Palestinian,” he says. “We have no choice than our land.”

Thoraya Altayeh

Windows are a precious luxury for those whose walls are barely standing.

For 55-year-old Thoraya Altayeh, glass tops her wishlist before winter sets in. Until she can afford it, her family uses nylon sheeting to shield them from the elements.

She lives with her husband and one of her sons, relying on her husband as their sole provider, working with iron pipes to make ends meet.

Thoraya’s family fled Syria in 2014, taking refuge near the Turkish border. “Those years in displacement were not comfortable; we were homesick,” she recalls. “My husband was a daily worker, and me and my daughter were working in the fields.”

When the regime fell in 2024, they returned immediately. “My son said, ‘Syria is liberated, it’s safe, and we can return to our house.’” Yet walking back through her old streets brought overwhelming grief: “I broke down; I had a mental breakdown. I felt sorry for the whole camp.”

Like many returnees, she was met by the ruins of what used to be her home. Life had to be restored from the debris, but the rebuilding is far from finished. “The camp is dead,” Thoraya says.

She has watched UNRWA’s support dwindle; financial assistance was barely enough to rebuild a single room. Where the agency once distributed food baskets, that aid has now stopped entirely.

Basic provisions require careful budgeting. A single bottle of oil costing 30,000 SYP (roughly $2.20 USD) is a major expense. Donated solar panels offset the grid blackout, but running water comes through only twice weekly—some months pass with none at all. With water so scarce, cooking is difficult, so they often rely on snacks and processed meats.

Her daughter’s health weighs most heavily on the family. The young woman underwent surgery for a digestive condition causing severe abdominal swelling. She is still receiving daily medication to treat it.

Thoraya went into debt for the surgery. Covering ongoing medication is a struggle; much of the support comes from Majed, the local nurse.

As the daughter of a family displaced from Palestine in 1948, Thoraya was born in Syria and holds no personal memories of her homeland. Still, her sense of identity is unwavering. ”We are family with the Syrians, but this is their country. We have nothing here,” she says. “I hope to go back to Palestine.”

Jaydaa Mostafa

A deep sense of belonging drove 44-year-old Jaydaa Mostafa back to Handarat, where neighbors often pull out chairs to sit outside together. “It feels like a little Palestine. Returning felt like going back there,” says Jaydaa, who lives with her extended family.

Fleeing the war in 2013, they moved first into student accommodations in Aleppo and later to a kindergarten shelter in Latakia. When asked about those years, she pauses: “I don’t want to remember.” After ten years of displacement, the 2023 earthquake damaged their rented home, forcing them to return.

“As Palestinians, education is our priority,” Jaydaa emphasizes. Despite tight resources, her eldest son graduated, two daughters attend university, and her youngest attends high school in Aleppo.

Rebuilding has been a slow, collective effort. After initially taking shelter in a caravan, relatives handed over a house that lacked doors and windows for two years. Today, space is tight: her son, his wife, their toddler, and two-month-old baby share a single room.

With Jaydaa’s husband working as a public employee at the water company, the household survives on a meager wage.

Yet she remains grateful for the community around her. “A few days ago we had an event to award prizes to excellent students, and the whole camp took part,” she says. “When we have weddings, we invite each other. And we gather in front of our doors like today.”

Above all, she wants a local high school so camp youth do not have to travel far. When asked what else the camp needs, she smiles bitterly: “Everything. But first, fixing the scene. I would love for our children to leave for school without being affected by the destruction.”

Looking toward the future in Syria, Jaydaa echoes the camp’s collective conviction: “Even when we live with dignity anywhere in the world, it’s nothing like our country. We have faith and hope to go back someday.”

I’ve always thought of Bahrain, my home country, as a place where people of different beliefs and backgrounds can coexist. Our small island nation of around 1.5 million people has long prided itself on its tolerance, though we have never been completely free of extremist views or social tensions. On the morning of February 28, that coexistence faced an unprecedented test. Iran launched attacks on countries across the Gulf, and for the first time, the missiles were heading directly toward us.

While this was the first time Iran had attacked Bahrain directly, the threat posed by the Islamic Republic was hardly new. For 47 years, the Islamic Republic has been one of our most persistent external security concerns.

For over almost half a century, Bahrain has faced attempts to undermine the social cohesion that allows people of different religious beliefs, backgrounds, and political views to coexist. Many of the efforts were linked to Iran, including a foiled coup attempt in 1981 that sought to establish an Iranian-style republic, Iran-backed insurgents plotting to overthrow the government in the 1990s, the formation of Hezbollah Bahrain, and the stockpiling of weapons linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Each element brought social divisions to the surface, fanned by influential figures reviving provocative historical narratives that positioned Bahrain as Iran’s “14th province.” Many of us dismissed these claims as political rhetoric, but they fuelled a Sunni-Shia divide that became particularly acute during the political unrest of 2011, when opposition groups called for the overthrow of the monarchy.

The attacks on February 28 gave those old warnings a very different meaning. Whatever people thought about Iran before the war, missiles and drones striking Bahraini territory were now a terrifying reality.

Waking to the sound of sirens and explosions took the island by surprise. Some of us reacted with disbelief. Others had expected this aggression in some way or another. As strikes continued throughout March, hitting the Crowne Plaza hotel in Manama, Bahrain International Airport, and the Mina Salman port area, fears that a direct attack from Iran would cause Bahrain’s social fabric to fray mounted.

Bahrain has a sizeable Shia Muslim population, including elements that are sympathetic to the Islamic Republic and its system of religious leadership. The death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei threatened to unravel Bahrain’s uneasy security calculus. But the Iranian attacks changed a decades-old dynamic.

Over the ensuing months, more industrial, civilian, and military targets were hit amid further barrages as escalating tensions between the US, Israel, and Iran resulted in Iranian attacks across the Gulf. Bahrain, like many Gulf states, began publishing a regular tally of intercepted missiles and drones, reinforcing the population’s pride in our small island’s ability to defend itself against a powerful aggressor.

For some Shia Bahrainis, the attacks created a conflict between their religious allegiance to Iran’s leadership and their loyalty to Bahrain as a sovereign nation.

But the missiles did not distinguish between Sunni and Shia neighborhoods, political views, or religious beliefs. The onslaught transcended those distinctions, and people began to unite around the view that an attack on Bahrain was an attack on their country.

Shia MPs, journalists, public figures, and ordinary citizens alike condemned the aggression, with voices from across the Shia community distancing themselves from the actions of the Islamic Republic. Some continued to identify with the Iranian leadership, while Khamenei’s death prompted expressions of anger and protest. But they did not represent the broader response.

As ceasefires faltered and the missiles continued to bombard Bahrain, the simmering sectarian tension that many of us feared never materialized. Instead, Bahrainis largely stood together in the face of external aggression.

There are several possible explanations. Perhaps our society has matured. Maybe we are more aware of geopolitics and less willing to let regional conflicts shape our relations. Perhaps past experiences have taught us what division can do to a small country. And perhaps Bahrain’s history as a melting pot of cultures and beliefs is stronger than many realize.

Whatever the reason, when division was threatened, Bahrain chose unity.

The scale of the attacks Bahrain endured, which killed three civilians and injured 465 people, including women and children, has reshaped attitudes toward Iran. Whatever sympathy the Islamic Republic may once have enjoyed has been largely dismantled by the targeting of Bahraini territory and the damage to civilian areas and critical infrastructure.

We heard the explosions and endured the uncertainty of being under attack, watching as missiles were intercepted above us. The war changed how many of us in Bahrain view our country’s ability to defend itself. We saw an effective defense system in action that protected our way of life. By July 2, Bahrain had recorded 808 Iranian attacks since the beginning of the war: 203 ballistic missiles and 605 drones. For a country of Bahrain’s size and population density, those figures could have produced a catastrophe on a far greater scale.

The experience also changed how we understood national security. Military preparedness and regional security partnerships were no longer subjects discussed only by officials and analysts. We could see why they mattered. Despite the danger, life stayed remarkably close to normal for much of the conflict. Government institutions continued functioning and essential services remained available. Businesses stayed open, and people adapted to regular alerts.

The war has taken a toll. Bahrain has lost lives, civilians have been injured, homes have been damaged, and we have experienced attacks we never expected to face on our own soil. Yet the war has also revealed something exceptional about our country.

Many expected the attacks to expose divisions within Bahraini society, particularly along sectarian lines. Instead, I saw people stand together. That does not mean our political, religious, and social differences have disappeared. Bahrainis have disagreed before and will disagree again. But February 28 gave us a shared experience that cut across those differences. Whatever our disagreements, when Bahrain came under attack, we stood together as Bahrainis.

Lebanon appears to have found a remarkably efficient way to produce “expertise.” Years of study in computer science, statistics, machine learning, or software engineering may no longer be necessary. According to the Lebanese Prime Minister, three hours of training should suffice.

In September, Nawaf Salam officially announced an initiative with the extraordinary promise of producing “one million Lebanese AI experts.” The program, launched in cooperation with the United Arab Emirates, aims to train one million people in artificial intelligence. The government described it as an investment in Lebanon’s digital capabilities and future workforce.

On paper, the initiative sounds promising. A closer look at the details makes it considerably less impressive.

According to the Lebanese government, participants will acquire “fundamental and practical skills” in generative AI and prompt engineering. This essentially means they will learn how to formulate instructions and use AI tools more effectively in everyday life and work. A bit less lucrative than training experts, but beneficial nonetheless.

Then the Minister of Technology and Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Kamal Shehadi, clarified further. The program consists of general training lasting roughly three hours, he said.

A three-hour introductory course may build basic prompting skills, but it does not confer expertise. Calling its participants “AI experts” looks more like propaganda with a certificate attached. This is AI-washing.

The technology minister’s explanation divided Lebanon’s AI ambitions into two categories. Roughly one million “prompters,” or ordinary users, will learn how to interact effectively with LLMs (the UAE-backed program). Then there’s a much smaller group of a few thousand “builders” capable of creating digital services and AI-based solutions.

That is a far more honest description than the Prime Minister’s. Prompting is useful; workers who know how to use generative AI can be more efficient if they use it properly, but learning how to input prompts into ChatGPT or Claude does not make someone an AI expert any more than knowing how to search Google makes them a computer scientist.

These exaggerated claims are unnecessary. The country already has a relatively high AI adoption rate. In fact, 27.7 percent of the population uses AI, placing Lebanon fifth in the region despite its economic woes.

Teaching hundreds of thousands of Lebanese how to use GenAI more effectively could be useful, especially when the program is offered for free and backed by a country like the UAE, which continues to provide Lebanon with support it badly needs. That alone should have been enough for the government to present the initiative as a worthwhile investment in digital literacy.

Instead, the Prime Minister wants us to believe that, thanks to his government, Lebanon will magically produce one million AI experts. In three hours.

The government’s draft National AI Strategy promises that, within five years, AI will contribute $4 billion to GDP, generate $2 billion in AI-enabled exports, and produce thousands of “production-grade AI builders.” According to the document, these efforts aim to place Lebanon among the world’s top 30 countries for digital government, and make 80 percent of government transactions digital and AI-enabled.

The targets are ambitious, but Lebanon is still far from meeting the basic requirements to achieve them.

According to the government’s own administrative reform office, 72 percent of Lebanese government services are still not digitized, casting doubt on the state’s readiness to embrace such extensive AI growth.

It is difficult to imagine a digital-first Lebanon when civil status records, including births, marriages, divorces, and deaths, are still preserved in handwritten registry books. During this year’s war, authorities had to physically evacuate millions of these records from southern Lebanon to Beirut to save them from destruction.

Identity checks are still in-person events in which the local civil registrar, known as the “mukhtar,” compares people’s faces with their ID cards to confirm they are the same person. Applications must be physically stamped, and all files transferred between different registry offices before approvals are granted. It is difficult to imagine how the Lebanese government plans to implement an AI economy in four years while the system still depends on shuffling papers from desk to desk.

Somewhere between the handwritten birth certificate and the AI-enabled economy, a step is missing… or several flights of steps.

This technological revolution requires certain infrastructure.

Electricité du Liban said in July that the average state electricity supply stood at roughly four hours per day (the situation is much worse at the time of writing). It also warned that generation instability meant a nationwide blackout remained a daily possibility. The statistic is so embarrassing that the government made sure it was only available in Arabic.

Any AI revolution will have to work around Lebanon’s fickle electricity supply.

Lebanon’s schools still teach a curriculum that was developed in 1997, before Google even existed. It seems a heavy lift to expect one million AI experts to come out of that system. Can a country that took 30 years to realize that school curricula need updating really build an AI economy by 2030?

And how can a country still struggling to digitize its files, modernize its schools, and keep the electricity on honestly gauge how many billions artificial intelligence will contribute to GDP by 2030? None of this means Lebanon should abandon its AI ambitions. Quite the opposite.

The UAE-backed training initiative is very useful. Lebanon has strong human capital, a decent level of AI adoption, and every reason to invest aggressively in digital skills. The national strategy also contains serious ideas about digital identity, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and online public services.

The problem is confusing the destination with the starting line. A three-hour prompting course is not AI expertise, and publishing enormous targets does not make the institutions needed to achieve them suddenly materialize out of thin air.

Perhaps Lebanon will reach those targets. But before becoming “AI by design,” as the strategy puts it, becoming digitally literate across institutions may be a useful first step. The Prime Minister’s announcement suggests that producing one million AI experts takes three hours. In reality, it will likely require a little longer.

Twelve years ago in August, ISIS fighters surrounded Sinjar in northern Iraq and set out to erase the Yazidis, an ancient religious minority. In its latest count, the Kurdistan Regional Government says 5,000 Yazidis were killed and 6,417 abducted. Of those taken, 3,595 have been rescued. That leaves 2,526 people whose families do not know whether they are alive.

Advocates estimate that about 1,300 of the missing were children when they were seized. A boy taken at eight is a grown man of twenty now, and a tender girl abducted at ten has spent more than half her life in someone else’s house, under conditions that can only amount to unthinkable. Researchers say there is no coordinated, systematic effort to find them, only sporadic rescues. That isn’t a plan; that is a flimsy grapple with hope.

Sadly, no one can say for certain where the missing Yazidis are. Investigators typically point to two possibilities: they are dead, or they were hidden. Some are dead. About 190 mass graves dot Sinjar, and most have never been exhumed.

One grave between Tel Afar and Mosul is said to hold seventy women whom ISIS judged too old to sell. Others may have been killed in coalition airstrikes on ISIS-held ground, and others concealed from reach.

Investigators believe captives were held in Syria, including in camps housing ISIS families, and even across Turkey. Intelligence trackers have told me that ISIS families forged passports and Arabic names, scattering abductees across the Middle East and North Africa. A child given a new name, a new language, and a heavy dose of indoctrination is very hard to find.

The cruelest possibility is that some of the missing no longer think of themselves as missing. ISIS took Yazidi boys to turn them into fighters. It gave them new names, drilled in them a new faith and, in some cases, erased even their native language, Kurmanji. A child abducted at eight is now twenty, having spent more than half his life under indoctrination and grown accustomed to a life he may not want to leave.

When I met Captain Khatoon Khider of the all-women Sun Ladies battalion eleven years ago, she was still waiting for her people to come home. She told me what frightened her most.

“We now have terrorist Yazidis, something that never used to be,” she tells me, her voice heavy.

These are children who were taken apart and rebuilt by their captors. By the time anyone comes looking, the boy in question may be a grown man who does not want to be found. Or he may not be alive to be found. Iraq hanged ten people on terrorism charges in just one week in September, and under its anti-terrorism law the offense carries the death penalty whether or not the defendant ever fired a weapon. A Yazidi boy conscripted at six and arrested at eighteen could face that same courtroom.

Women are no different. Investigative Judge al-Hussein Chfat al-Tameemi, who handles ISIS trials in Baghdad, tells me of survivors who beg authorities not to arrest their captors, even after watching those men murder their parents. Some Yazidis, once reunited with relatives in Sinjar, have fled back to ISIS-held areas, unable to live apart from the children they bore in slavery.

Rescue is not the end of the story, and that is part of why the search has gone quiet. Yazidi doctrine requires both parents to be Yazidi. Religious leaders broke with tradition and welcomed survivors home as victims, but their children by ISIS fighters are not welcome.

“The families accept the survivors, but only if they return without children,” Wansa Shamoon, a communications officer for the Coalition for Just Reparations, tells me. Some women are pressured into abortions, even in the final weeks of pregnancy. Others stay in captivity to keep their babies.

The top Yazidi spiritual leader, Baba Sheik, did not soften it.

“Our religion does not accept children unless both parents are Yazidi,” he said. “That is our law and our shame.”

Under Iraqi law, a child takes the father’s religion, which here means Islam. Yazidi mothers refuse to register their children as Muslim, so the children have no legal identity. They cannot enroll in school or see a doctor. Inside the camps, other children call them “ISIS kids.”

Imagine being a mother in that position, weighing a return home against a child she cannot bring with her. Now imagine the families who know all this and still wait by the phone.

There is some justice, even if it pales in comparison to the scale of the crimes.

France convicted a former ISIS member of crimes against Yazidi women and children this March, in absentia, and at least 18 more French nationals are under investigation. Germany was the first country to convict ISIS members of genocide against the Yazidis. Yet, the vast majority of perpetrators in Iraq have been prosecuted only under terrorism laws, not for genocide, so the crimes against the Yazidis have never been formally acknowledged in court.

Still, none of this brings anyone home. Years ago in Duhok, a survivor named Zana asked whether telling her story would make a difference.

“Yes,” I lied. I told her that because I could not bear to say what I knew, which is that atrocities do not stop because we documented the last one.

Zana’s sisters are still missing. So is the daughter of a man named Murad, whom I met in a crumbling home near Lalish, the holiest site in the Yazidi faith. ISIS held his daughter for two years. When I met her, she could not speak or sit up, and she lay folded into a fetal ball on the floor. “Her mind has gone somewhere else,” her father said, his eyes cast down.

Another anniversary statement will not move the needle. Each year, fewer cameras show up at the commemorations, fewer governments ask about the missing, and the plight of the Yazidis ever so slowly fades from our consciousness.

The window is closing. Witnesses age, memories fade, and the children who can still be found grow older and harder to identify. Rescuing them needs what the missing have always lacked: an organized, funded, international search with the same urgency we would bring to any other hostage crisis.

“The world has forgotten us,” an elderly Yazidi woman told me on a recent trip, her voice barely a whisper.

Middle East Uncovered: What role does Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada perform that the Iraqi state cannot fulfill?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: Our current role is one of jihad, aimed at doing all possible good for Iraq and making sacrifices for its sake. We regard the American and Turkish presence as an occupation, in contrast to the position adopted by the government. This approach extends from our struggle against the former regime, when we went to the gallows in defense of our religion, sect, and homeland, to the present stage, in which occupation is not limited to the military sphere but also encompasses political occupation, control over Iraqi decision-making, and interference in domestic affairs, investment, and the economy.

Middle East Uncovered: Do you believe you have the support of the Iraqi public? What evidence would you point to?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: Yes, we enjoy substantial support and backing among the Iraqi public, with a broad support base among certain segments of society and within the political and social spheres.

Middle East Uncovered: Who better represents the Iraqi public: your movement or the Sadrist movement?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: All parts of the political landscape deserve respect. The Sadrist movement is a large popular movement whose role, influence, and supporters cannot be denied or overlooked. The factions have a prominent role in protecting the political system and fighting terrorism, just as the Sadrist movement played a crucial, pivotal role in the events of 2006.

Middle East Uncovered: Hadi al-Amiri described the October 2019 protest movement—known as Tishreen—as “fitna,” or strife. How would you describe it?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: As for the Tishreen Revolution, Hajj al-Amiri’s remarks were misunderstood. He may have expressed himself poorly, or his speech may have been drafted imprecisely. He believed that some individuals had behaved improperly within the revolution, which changed much of the Iraqi reality and corrected its course. In our view, Tishreen comprises poor people in need of services, degree holders, and members of the Popular Mobilization Forces, alongside political forces that have withdrawn and ideologically driven individuals. There is genuine fear within the Coordination Framework that it could recur, despite the lack of political success of its representatives. We also affirm our pride in belonging to this revolution.

Middle East Uncovered: How do you assess the Iraqi government’s performance?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: As for assessing the current government, judging its performance in both service delivery and institutional affairs seems difficult and unfair, given that it is operating with only half a cabinet, in addition to the circumstances of the war, the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the unsettled regional situation, and the economic crisis. Nevertheless, it deserves credit for successfully averting intra-Shia fighting, protecting Iraq from international isolation.

We consider the judiciary an important pillar of the state and of Shiite governance. It has also contributed significantly to preserving the current political system. Nor do we forget its major role in combating terrorism and corruption.

Middle East Uncovered: In your view, has the experience of Shia-led governing coalitions—from the United Iraqi Alliance to the Coordination Framework—been successful? If not, what needs to change?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: The political forces and parties have evolved in stages, from the Shiite Alliance to the Coordination Framework, which has demonstrated success over six years in forming governments quickly and navigating pivotal periods. Its future survival is nevertheless in doubt because representation within the Framework is determined by the number of parliamentary seats held.

Middle East Uncovered: The Iraqi prime minister has repeatedly said that your weapons must be handed over to the state and that those who refuse are operating outside the law. How do you respond? By that definition, would you consider yourselves outside the law? Are you prepared to disarm, and what conditions would you set for handing over your weapons to the Iraqi state?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: We have complied with the decisions of the Quadripartite Committee and the provisions of the Sovereignty Document, conditional on the other party’s compliance.

Middle East Uncovered: Do you believe in Iraqi patriotism? In your view, is an Iraqi official’s allegiance to Iran’s leadership on religious grounds compatible with loyalty to Iraq?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: We believe in patriotism and in a relationship grounded in religious legitimacy that does not conflict with it, as well as in supporting the supreme religious authority in holy Najaf. One example is the defense of the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab. We see no contradiction between patriotism and religious legitimacy, and our belief in borders is a secondary matter.

Middle East Uncovered: How would you describe your relationship with Iran? Is it one of complete subordination, religious allegiance, financial support, or something else?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: Our relationship with Iran is historical, religious, and sectarian. We see Iran as a neighbor and a friend. It provided support in every form during the war against ISIS, from logistical support, training, and weapons to the participation of Iranian personnel. This is a deeply rooted relationship based on religion and neighborly ties that cannot be severed. Our blood has mingled on the same battlefields and in the same trench in the fight against the enemies of our homeland, religion, and sect. Our most recent martyr was also alongside Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah’s escort; they were assassinated by Israeli aircraft immediately after leaving Iraq for Iran.

Middle East Uncovered: If Iran came under attack, would you consider yourselves obliged to intervene militarily?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: Our approach to regional conflicts is to participate in defense of the Shiite community’s existence as a whole. If Iran faces a genuine threat to its existence, we will certainly participate in that battle. If the threat is not existential, however, we will not participate, as we demonstrated during the recent war against Iran.

Middle East Uncovered: How would you describe the role of the American embassy in Iraq?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: With regard to the United States, we consider the American embassy a source of evil that blatantly interferes in Iraqi political decision-making and exerts pressure on political forces. It lacks popular acceptance, despite the welcome it received when the Americans entered at the outset of regime change. American forces have been defeated militarily in Iraq as a result of major operations and are no longer able to protect themselves.

Middle East Uncovered: Do you believe that armed factions aligned with Iran, such as yours, could ever have a normal relationship with the United States? What would it take?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: Relations with the United States will never be normal as long as it is regarded as the “Great Satan” and continues policies that harm Iraq. There is also a clear message to Kurdish and Sunni parties: America will abandon them, just as it abandoned the SDF, Afghanistan, and others.

Middle East Uncovered: What is your view of the American withdrawal from Iraq? Do you see it as a goodwill gesture toward your factions?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: We believe the American withdrawal is intended to create a vacuum, destabilize Iraq’s security, and drag us into infighting and instability. We believe that the Americans did not withdraw but were defeated in Iraq. As evidence, during the forty-day war they acknowledged that resistance factions had carried out 600 military operations against them and their bases. We say the number is much higher, perhaps twice as high. We point to Masoud Barzani’s statement that the Kurdistan Region had been subjected to more than 1,000 operations. Nor should we forget our operations against American bases in neighboring countries: Syria, Jordan, and Kuwait. Our operations pursued them even beyond their bases, following them to hotels and homes after they left those bases.

Middle East Uncovered: Do you see Syria as a potential adversary? In assessing Ahmed al-Sharaa, do you give more weight to his past or to his conduct today? Do you believe his transformation is genuine?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: It is important to point out that Syrians are not adversaries of Iraqis or of Iraq. We hope Syria remains a unified state and is not subjected to territorial or sectarian partition, because dealing with a stable state with clearly defined institutions remains better for Iraq than dealing with multiple groups, whatever their orientations or ideological foundations.

We also reject any renewed Shiite–Sunni fighting because of the tragedies it caused in the past, and we emphasize our refusal to become involved in Syria again. Syrian Islamist groups must also be approached with caution, and their ability to make a rapid democratic transition overnight must be questioned in light of their past conduct. We prefer to deal with a unified Syrian state as a better guarantee for Iraq.

As Islamists, we believe in judging by outward conduct, and we believe that a person can change and move from one condition to another. With regard to Ahmed al-Sharaa, moving from a long experience in armed Islamist movements to running a state and its institutions is a process that, by its very nature, requires time and accumulated experience in political and institutional practice.

The Iraqi experience is one example. Even after more than twenty years, it still faces challenges in consolidating democratic practice and building institutions. Such transformations do not happen quickly; they require time and gradual changes in approach, ideas, and practice.

From this perspective, we believe it is still too early to judge al-Sharaa’s experience. The next few years, including how issues involving the Alawites, the Druze, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are handled, as well as the building of state institutions, will provide an important indication of the nature of this transformation.

Middle East Uncovered: Are you concerned that Iraq is gradually alienating the Arab world, particularly following repeated attacks attributed to armed factions against Arab countries? Given that Iraq is a majority-Arab country, what could it possibly gain from losing the trust of its Arab neighbors?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: In regional and international relations, building trust with neighbors takes a long time, particularly with those who were involved in sending suicide bombers or allowing bases to be used to bomb Iraq. The government must use its official relations to build solid, strong partnerships.

Middle East Uncovered: What concrete steps would you be willing to take to build a genuine relationship of trust with Arab countries?

Abu Alaa al-Walai: Building trust takes time, whereas destroying it happens quickly. We urge the government to continue building trust with Iraq’s neighbors and establishing solid, clearly defined relations based on mutual interests, reciprocal support for one another’s positions, and respect. We support the government’s efforts in this direction. As a faction, we have no intention of building relations outside the framework of the state.

On the U.S. Reward

Al-Walai also addressed the U.S. reward offered for information about him:

“As for my being wanted by the Americans, with a large reward offered for me, this has not curtailed my activities or movements. Nor has it diminished my role in bringing opposing views closer together, defusing crises at times, and preventing conflicts and disputes from escalating, particularly between the government and certain factions.

“Recently, we have worked hard to bridge differences and reach a final agreement acceptable to all parties, putting the interests of the homeland and the people above all other interests.”

On Factions Holding Government Positions

Al-Walai also criticized U.S. efforts to prevent certain Iraqi factions from holding executive positions:

“The Americans are playing a negative role by preventing certain factions with parliamentary representation from taking executive positions in the government. The members of parliament belonging to those factions entered parliament through their voters’ ballots and the ballot box, not by using weapons.

“We reject this interference, which infringes on Iraq’s sovereignty and the independence of its decision-making.”

Who is Abu Alaa al-Walai?

Hashim Finyan Rahim al-Sarraji, known as Abu Alaa al-Walai, is the secretary-general of Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, an Iraqi armed group founded in 2013 and active in Iraq and Syria. The group’s affiliated brigade operates within Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces.

Al-Walai was born in Baghdad and began his political and religious activities before 2003. Accounts of his life indicate that he was arrested during the 1990s by security services under Ba’ath Party rule and released in 2002.

After 2003, he became involved with Shiite armed factions and was associated at an early stage with Kata’ib Hezbollah. American forces later arrested him in connection with his armed activities. He spent several years in detention before being released in 2010.

He subsequently became associated with the establishment and development of Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, which became particularly active during the Syrian war before expanding its military and political presence in Iraq. Al-Walai assumed leadership of the group after its founder, Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani.

Politically, al-Walai appears at meetings and events associated with Iraq’s Coordination Framework alongside his role leading the armed faction.

The United States accuses al-Walai and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada of close ties to Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force and of participating in attacks against American forces and facilities in Iraq and Syria. Washington placed al-Walai and the group under terrorism-related designations in November 2023 and designated Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada a Foreign Terrorist Organization in September 2025.

In 2026, the U.S. Rewards for Justice program announced a reward of up to $10 million for information about al-Walai.

By 8 am, chatter fills the dining room as people swap stories over breakfast at the Medi Convalescence Center in northeast Tunisia. Tucking into a spread of bread, jams, olive oil, cheese, yogurt, eggs, and fruit, the residents of the center fill the room with memories, sharing snapshots of their lives across the decades. Some move with a walking stick or wheelchair, but all share a sense of independence that life at home could no longer offer them. “I gave them autonomy and value. They are living a respectable life,” says Mahdi Oueslati, who owns two care homes for the elderly in Tunisia.

Maison de la Sérénité and Medi Convalescence Center are respectable care homes housing middle-class residents, but many Tunisians would be ashamed to venture inside. In a country where elderly care is traditionally provided within families, paying for these services is viewed with suspicion. “People look at those left in care homes as abandoned by their families,” says Oueslati, whose father accused him of helping people forfeit their duty when he opened his first care home in 2022.

As a physical therapist, Oueslati believes the opposite is true. Visiting the homes of older clients with mobility challenges, he heard about long days spent waiting for relatives to return from work so they could go out or cook a meal.

Oueslati saw a gap in the market for at-home carers and a glaring need for private homes to accommodate an aging population. But first, he would need to confront the stigma surrounding an elderly care model that’s standard in the West but taboo in Tunisia and many other countries across the Middle East. “I started doing videos explaining to others that putting elderly relatives in care homes is not abandonment. What’s abandoning them is leaving them alone while you go to work all day,” Oueslati says.

As in much of the MENA region, Tunisia’s bulging youth population dominates debates over education, jobs and housing, but the country faces an urgent challenge from another segment of the population. People aged over 60 now account for 17 percent of the population, up from 11.4 percent a decade ago.

Declining birth rates and shifting social norms are straining intergenerational care patterns. With life expectancy increasing and fertility declining, Tunisia is undergoing a rapid demographic transition, as the trend towards smaller families leaves fewer relatives at home to support elderly dependents.

Increasing women’s participation in the workforce could boost economic growth, but it also reduces their availability to care for elderly relatives in societies where women typically perform the majority of unpaid care work. As families become smaller and public resources struggle to meet the mounting bill for senior care, demand for alternative arrangements is likely to grow.

In Tunisia, where state-funded care homes are widely viewed as a last resort, Oueslati believes the private sector could widen the choice for retirees and reframe the debate surrounding elderly accommodation. “People are becoming more enlightened and educated about it,” says the 37-year-old, who cites highly trained staff and the availability of one-to-one support among the attractions of the country’s emerging care home sector.

There are currently 15 residents across his two properties, where group activities, including yoga and singing, contribute to the communal atmosphere. While larger facilities risk feeling impersonal, the close-knit environment at these residences resembles a family home with shared meals and group games. Residents often begin with a trial period, but “after a while they all want to live here,” Oueslati says.

European retirees have also been drawn to Tunisia, where the financial benefits and Mediterranean climate present an attractive alternative to more expensive options at home. Oueslati knows several French and German pensioners who have chosen Tunisian care homes. “They receive fantastic care and are treated as one of the family,” he says.

For these European pensioners, the savings can be considerable. All-inclusive monthly rents at The Medi Convalescence Center range from 800 euros a month for a double-occupancy room to 1,200 euros for a single room. Prices are typically higher in Europe, with the average monthly cost of a nursing home stay in Germany running to 3,248 euros.

But for the majority of ordinary Tunisians, the cost of private care homes can still be prohibitive. While entrepreneurs like Oueslati invest in Tunisia’s emerging silver economy and challenge the stigma surrounding paid-for care, they say greater government support is needed to open the sector up to different sections of the market. “European centers receive subsidies, but in Tunisia there’s nothing, which does limit our ability to expand and provide the best care,” he says.

Government policy has instead focused largely on expanding pension coverage and support programs for the most impoverished households. Tunisia has one of the region’s more robust pension systems, with around 75 percent of workers covered by some form of social security pension. However, with people over 65 expected to account for almost one in five Tunisians by 2043, pressure is mounting to expand private provision to meet the needs of a rapidly aging population.

“It’s an untapped market. The competition is still very mild,” says Oueslati, who also founded LR MOVE to provide transport solutions for people with reduced mobility.

Elsewhere in the region, countries like the UAE are already investing heavily in the silver economy. Dubai has so far cushioned demographic pressures through its large expatriate workforce. The city recently launched the Dubai Longevity Authority and offers several senior-friendly policies, including retirement visas and wellness tourism packages targeting older visitors, as it prepares for longer-term population change.

In Morocco, government policies are reshaping care as an economic sector with the capacity to create jobs and boost growth. In July, it became the first Arab country to adopt a national strategy that aims “to transform care from a responsibility borne primarily by families, particularly women, into a shared responsibility,” said Naïma Ben Yahia, Morocco’s Minister of Solidarity, Social Integration and Family.

As evening approaches at The Medi Convalescence Center, the sound of the television drifts over the gentle hum of conversation between residents and staff. These relationships reinforce the debate surrounding private care, showing that it’s not where a person spends their days but the people surrounding them who matter most. For Oueslati, formal care is not a substitute for family, but rather an extension of the support network needed to enable everyone to lead a full life. “I created this kind of family environment for them, and they feel like valued members of society. That’s what I’m most proud of,” he says.

Sudan’s army stands accused of dropping chlorine on its enemies. Washington says it did and has imposed sanctions. Yet the two governments with the most sway over that army, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have not publicly backed America’s demand that inspectors be let in to check.

The war began on April 15, 2023, when the army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) exchanged fire in Khartoum. Once, the men giving the orders ruled together. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan leads the army, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, leads the paramilitary. It has been more than three years since millions of civilians fled their homes, and neither side has prevailed.

Burhan’s army presents itself as the legitimate state defending the nation against a rebel militia. Washington no longer accepts that description, and the chlorine allegations deepen the doubt.

So, who should demand proof when a military stands accused of gassing its enemies? The countries that sway it most have not publicly joined that call.

Omar al-Bashir, the dictator who had run Sudan for thirty years, fell in April 2019 after months of street protests. Generals and civilians then agreed to govern together until elections. That arrangement ended on October 25, 2021, when Burhan dissolved the ruling council and detained the civilian prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok. Dagalo stood with him.

Since then, the army has fought alongside allies from Bashir’s old Islamist movement, which the revolution had tried to push out of politics. The largest is the Al-Bara' ibn Malik Battalion, a militia that grew out of Bashir’s Popular Defense Forces. The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the brigade last September, citing Iranian training and more than 20,000 fighters.

In March, the State Department designated the brigade and its political parent, which Washington calls the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization.

Washington’s language toward the army has also hardened. Massad Boulos, President Trump’s senior advisor for Arab and African affairs, says America does not recognize the current Sudanese government. American officials also withheld a visa Burhan needed for the United Nations General Assembly, linking it to a ceasefire proposal. He responded that Sudan cannot be blackmailed.

Let’s start with what the evidence shows.

Chlorine is a common chemical used to purify drinking water. Released as a gas from a bomb, it burns the lungs and can kill. Washington concluded in May 2025 that Sudan’s government used chemical weapons in 2024, and it has since imposed sanctions.

Two investigations published on September 5 add details. Built on leaked military material supplied by a regional intelligence service, they describe hundreds of chlorine-filled bombs, tests in the desert, chlorine apparently diverted from civilian water treatment, and efforts to scrub a storage base afterward. Intercepted messages suggest Burhan knew of the program.

Port Sudan, the Red Sea city where the army-run government has operated since the fighting reached Khartoum, denies the allegations. It says it is willing to work with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Hague-based treaty watchdog known as the OPCW, and that its own investigative committee was never meant to replace it. Outside experts call the dossier consistent with a weapons program but say only inspectors on the ground can settle the question. Washington has asked Sudan to grant access without conditions.

Neither Egypt nor Saudi Arabia has publicly joined that demand. Both belong, with America and the United Arab Emirates, to “the Quad,” the four-nation group trying to broker a ceasefire.

Egypt, which has deep military ties to the army, never joined the Chemical Weapons Convention. Saudi Arabia did, and holds a seat on the OPCW’s governing council through 2027, as Sudan itself does. Riyadh also co-hosted the 2023 Jeddah ceasefire talks, and in April Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman received Burhan there. Under the treaty, any member can request a challenge inspection of another. Blocking one takes a three-quarters vote of the council.

Several countries have asked the OPCW to seek clarification from Sudan. The OPCW has not named all of them. Former OPCW investigators warn that physical evidence fades with every month of delay.

Burhan’s recent Foreign Policy essay asks the world to trust Sudan to engineer its own peace. It calls for a single national army and treats the RSF as a rebel militia. The paramilitary grew out of the Janjaweed, the Arab militias Bashir’s government unleashed in western Sudan’s Darfur region to fight a rebellion that began in 2003. The United Nations says 300,000 people were killed.

Burhan was in Darfur then, too. He was sent there as the army’s regional commander, and researchers say he coordinated army and militia attacks on civilians. He denies wrongdoing and has never been charged.

None of this absolves the RSF. After they took the Darfur city of El Fasher last October, following an 18-month siege, United Nations investigators found hallmarks of genocide against the Zaghawa and Fur communities. Last month in Geneva, the same fact-finding mission told the Human Rights Council it has reasonable grounds to believe both sides committed serious violations that may amount to war crimes.

Washington’s refusal to confer legitimacy is welcome, but words alone change little. The Quad’s plan calls for a three-month humanitarian truce, and it needs enforcement. Washington has asked the Security Council to extend to all of Sudan the embargo on weapons shipments that has covered Darfur since 2004. That would squeeze both armies and the foreign governments supplying them. The United Nations says it is ready to investigate the chemical weapons claims if member states grant a mandate.

Civilians also need a seat at the peace table. Abdalla Hamdok, the former prime minister detained by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in 2021, now leads Sumud, a civilian coalition that says it supports neither side in the war.

Neither Burhan nor Dagalo should be allowed to trade a ceasefire for a claim to power. Sudanese took to the streets in 2019 to end rule by generals. A peace written by the men who ended that revolution would betray them.

At noon today, a group of students at Queen Mary University of London is due to gather to rally “for Palestine,” marking what they describe as “three years of steadfastness and resistance.”

The date is October 7.

Three years ago today, southern Israel was still under attack.

Bodies lay mangled on roads. Families desperately phoned their loved ones to check if they were okay. Many such calls went unanswered.

At 6:30am local time, Hamas-led militants tore down the border between Gaza and Israel and poured into southern Israel, rampaging through more than 20 towns and villages, military bases, and the Nova music festival, which had been going on overnight.

Civilians were shot with rifles and RPGs. Some were burned alive. Some were brutally sexually assaulted. A Thai agricultural worker was beheaded with a garden hoe. 251 people were kidnapped. Most were Israeli, but 35 of the hostages taken were foreign nationals: 31 Thais, one Filipino, one Nepalese, one Tanzanian, and one Franco-Mexican.

Israelis remember men in Hamas headbands breaking into homes, families trapped inside their safe rooms, some burned alive when their houses were set on fire, and victims left bloodied or burned. They remember hostages being driven into Gaza on pickup trucks and motorcycles. They remember the fear and the smoke.

For Palestinians, the war may have started that day in Israel, but it did not stay there for long.

They remember homes and entire neighborhoods destroyed by bombing, thousands killed, and families displaced again and again. They remember the rubble, the hunger, and the desperation.

Recent polling suggests that many Palestinians have come to view October 7 as a mistake. In a September 2025 survey in the West Bank, 46 percent told surveyors Hamas had been wrong to launch the attack, compared with 26 percent who said the decision was right. A majority—57 percent—also said that kidnapping Israeli civilians had not advanced Palestinian national goals.

And yet, parts of the Western left have become increasingly sympathetic to the attackers themselves, even as Palestinians have been left to grapple with the devastating consequences and many have come to view the attack as a mistake.

At the University of Washington, the student group SUPER-UW has described October 7 as a “victory for the resistance” and referred to Yahya Sinwar—the now-deceased Hamas leader, and one of the principal architects of the attack—as “our martyr leader.” The group later joined a coalition promoting a walkout under the slogan “LONG LIVE OCT 7th.”

At an anti-Israel rally in New York in October 2025, protesters displayed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad flags alongside a sign reading “Glory to the Axis of Resistance” and images of militant leaders including Sinwar. A Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) flyer advertising the event also featured Sinwar’s image.

At Barnard College that same year, activists associated with Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia University Apartheid Divest distributed a Hamas document defending the October 7 attack and offered stickers depicting Sinwar and former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. At Wayne State University, an SJP account argued that Hamas should not be considered a terrorist organization.

This goes far beyond demanding Palestinian statehood, condemning Israel, or calling for humanitarian aid. These are explicit attempts to portray Hamas as heroes, and October 7 as a heroic act. Somewhere along the way, some Western activists appear to have started fancying themselves as would-be jihadis, only without any of the personal risk that usually comes with the job.

There was nothing heroic about October 7.

That day did not liberate Gaza. It did not achieve Palestinian statehood, end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, or resolve the conflict. It began with the murder and kidnapping of innocent Israelis and was followed by a war in which Palestinians have suffered enormously.

Three years later, Israeli families are still grieving the people killed that day. Communities attacked on October 7 are still living with what happened to them. Some hostages lost months or years of their lives in captivity that they will never get back, and those who survived have returned home carrying the effects of what was done to them. Some October 7 survivors have struggled so severely with the trauma that they later took their own lives. Families who survived the attack have had to rebuild homes and lives that were destroyed in a matter of hours.

In Gaza, families are grieving their own dead, and many are still waiting for the remains of loved ones to be recovered from beneath the rubble. More than 60 percent of the population has lost their home, and approximately 1.9 million people have been displaced. Entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, hospitals and schools have been damaged or put out of service, and families who survived the bombing have spent months or years living in tents or shelters. For many children, three years that should have been spent in school and growing up like any other child have instead been spent moving from one shelter to another, going without enough food, and mourning parents, siblings, or friends.

So what exactly is being celebrated when someone thousands of miles away says “long live October 7”?

There is a huge difference between living through terrorism and political violence and cheering it on from somewhere safe. October 7 is easier to call a victory when you were not hiding from gunmen, waiting to find out whether someone you loved was dead or alive, or losing your home in the war that followed.

Three years later, Israelis and Palestinians are still living with the consequences. The people celebrating October 7 from campuses abroad never had to bear them.

If the celebration is supposedly an expression of solidarity with Palestinians, the past three years should have put that idea to rest. October 7 brought Palestinians no closer to freedom or statehood. It brought devastation. And none of that changes what happened in Israel that morning: civilians were murdered, kidnapped, raped, and terrorized.

Three years later, there is nothing about October 7, 2023, to celebrate. There never was, and there never will be.

This article was produced in partnership with the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University, where Sergio Altuna is a Senior Research Fellow.

In June 2025, al-Qaeda released a lengthy video calling for jihad over Gaza. But one of the religious authorities it turned to for support was not an al-Qaeda cleric. It was the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a Doha-based scholarly institution closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

IUMS had declared jihad an obligation for Muslim governments and armies, and al-Qaeda seized on the ruling. “Did anyone answer the call?” it asked in the video, released by its media arm, al-Saḥāb. It then took a jab at IUMS itself, describing it as the organization “located next to the American al-Udeid base in Qatar.”

Al-Qaeda did not need IUMS to make the case for jihad. It has spent decades developing its own religious arguments for armed struggle. So why was it turning to scholars associated with another Islamist movement to strengthen its own call?

This was not the first time al-Qaeda had drawn on an IUMS figure to make its case. In al-Qaeda Central’s first statement on the war, published only days after the attacks of October 7, 2023, the terrorist organization explicitly praised a fatwa from Mauritanian scholar Muhammad al-Hassan Ould al-Dedew, who serves as IUMS vice president.

Al-Qaeda introduced al-Dedew as “the distinguished Mauritanian scholar Sheikh Muhammad al-Hassan Ould al-Dedew—may God preserve him.” For a cleric outside the jihadist movement, the language was strikingly warm. It then praised his fatwa and reproduced a substantial portion of it in quotation marks. Al-Dedew argued that the whole Muslim Umma had an obligation to support Gaza and work for the liberation of al-Aqsa.

Al-Qaeda also directed readers to where the ruling had been broadcast: al-Aqsa TV, a television network the U.S. Treasury designated as being financed and controlled by Hamas. The sequence shows how the ruling traveled between the groups. The IUMS vice president issued the fatwa, a Hamas media outlet broadcast it, and al-Qaeda then cited it to support its own call for mobilization.

IUMS matters because it sits at the center of the Muslim Brotherhood’s transnational scholarly infrastructure. Created in 2004 under Qaradawi’s leadership, it has developed over the years into one of the most prominent transnational platforms for religious authority associated with the Brotherhood. Its leadership has consistently included prominent Brotherhood figures, while Qaradawi himself spent decades at the center of the movement’s intellectual universe. Qatar has been central to IUMS’ rise.

IUMS has been headquartered in Doha since 2010; former Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani sponsored its creation; and its senior leadership has long maintained deep ties to Qatari universities, financial institutions, and other parts of the country’s religious establishment.

The Brotherhood connection also runs directly through Hamas. Founded in late 1987, Hamas emerged as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—and its relationship with IUMS became especially visible after October 7. IUMS reacted little more than an hour after the attacks, publishing a stream of Gaza-related material that same day. Its secretary general, Ali al-Qaradaghi, prayed for God to “help our mujahideen brothers and grant them victory.”

Within twenty-four hours, IUMS organized an online event in support of “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’s name for its assault on Israel. More than a dozen scholars participated, with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh appearing as the guest of honor. Formal fatwas calling for jihad soon followed.

Against that backdrop, al-Qaeda’s June 2025 reference most likely points to a fatwa issued by IUMS just months earlier. The text explicitly declares jihad an individual obligation (fard ‘ayn) for every capable Muslim. It also makes military intervention and the provision of weapons, expertise, and intelligence a binding duty, first on Palestinians and neighboring countries and then on the wider Arab and Muslim world. Muslim governments, the fatwa reads, have an immediate obligation to intervene militarily, economically, and politically. It also declares “financial jihad” obligatory, calls on wealthy Muslims to help equip the mujahidin, and instructs scholars to pressure governments, armies, and institutions to act.

In one of its harshest provisions, the fatwa states that providing certain forms of support to Israel with the intention of weakening “the resistance” amounts to apostasy. When al-Qaeda later summarized IUMS’s position as having made jihad incumbent on armies and governments, it was closely tracking the language and substance of this ruling.

Al-Qaeda’s reliance on these rulings is striking after decades of hostility toward the Brotherhood’s political methods.

The two traditions share important parts of the same intellectual genealogy, but the Brotherhood’s gradualism, electoral politics and approach to governance, among others, have long been targets of jihadist criticism.

Gaza has opened a narrow area of overlap.

On this issue, Brotherhood-linked scholars are producing religious arguments that al-Qaeda can use directly. Hamas sits at the center of both moments. Its attack on October 7 created the immediate context; its television channel transmitted al-Dedew’s ruling; and IUMS provided a stream of religious arguments that presented the fighting as legitimate jihad, made support for it a religious duty, and placed the obligation to act on individual Muslims, governments and armies alike.

Qatar cannot be left out of this picture. IUMS issues these rulings openly within an institutional environment that Qatar helped create and has continued to support. The Union’s calls for jihad, military intervention, financial support to fighters, and pressure on Muslim armies have been public and repeated. These are formal religious rulings issued by a Doha-based institution with longstanding Qatari sponsorship and deep institutional ties to the state. The al-Udeid reference captures the contradiction al-Qaeda wants its audience to see.

So why is al-Qaeda quoting Muslim Brotherhood scholars on Gaza?

Because an al-Qaeda cleric calling for jihad is unlikely to persuade anyone who does not already accept al-Qaeda’s worldview. A fatwa from a prominent scholarly organization with an audience far beyond al-Qaeda is more useful. Al-Qaeda can hold it up and say, in effect, that this is not just our argument. Other Muslim scholars are saying it too.

That does not mean IUMS and al-Qaeda are the same organization, share the same political strategy, or have suddenly become allies. Their differences are real, and al-Qaeda has spent decades attacking the Brotherhood’s approach to politics.

But Gaza has created an area where some of their arguments now overlap. IUMS scholars have called jihad a religious obligation, urged Muslim governments and armies to act, called for financial support for fighters, and placed religious pressure on Muslims to support the war against Israel. Al-Qaeda does not have to invent or reinterpret those arguments. It can quote them.

That is why these fatwas matter beyond IUMS itself. Once published, they do not stay within the audience or political movement that produced them. Al-Qaeda can lift the same religious arguments, place them inside its own propaganda, and use the credibility of scholars outside the jihadist movement to strengthen its message.

The troubling part is not that al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood have become the same. They have not. It is that on Gaza, a Brotherhood-linked scholarly institution is producing religious arguments that al-Qaeda finds useful enough to quote.

Anas AlKharboutli raises his head briefly as colleagues approach shouting his name. Fogging obscures the wound sustained moments earlier when a missile strike severed his legs. He is still clutching his camera, which would reveal a blurry photograph of the aircraft that killed him on December 4, 2024, days before the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime marked the end of the Syrian civil war.

The 32-year-old photojournalist was on his way to cover the liberation of Hama with four other journalists when he sensed the danger overhead. Advising his colleagues to spread out, he raised his camera to capture evidence for the last time.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) recorded the killing of 183 journalists at the hands of the Assad regime and its allies since the start of the civil war in 2011. AlKharboutli would be the last. Almost two years later, the risks he confronted to document government violations and the suffering of displaced Syrians have receded, but journalists say new impediments still limit their freedom to report.

In an interview from March 2023, he explained: “My project is to bear witness to the events in Syria until the end of this war. I don’t know if I’ll still be alive by then, but my goal remains to document it.”

The footage appears in an RSF documentary on journalists hunted down by former President Bashar Al-Assad. Under his rule, Syria became one of the most dangerous countries in the world for reporters. Critics of the regime were regularly detained and interrogated by the feared mukhabarat (the Arabic term for intelligence), and the fates of dozens of journalists who disappeared are still unknown.

The rebel offensive that overthrew the former dictator on December 8, 2024 dismantled this machinery of state repression. In the chaotic aftermath of his fall, journalists began pouring back into the country, taking advantage of the unprecedented freedom to expose the horrors hidden by the Syrian state.

Iraqi photojournalist Osama Al Maqdoni took pictures of cells and interrogation rooms at Sednaya Prison, known as the “human slaughterhouse” and part of a vast network of detention facilities where torture was applied on an industrial scale. Covering the first days after the fall of the regime for international media outlets, he witnessed the extraordinary vacuum left by 53 years of Assad family rule.

“I traveled freely through different cities across Syria, but there was an underlying sense of fear, knowing that I was moving through a country where there was no real authority in place,” he said. “There was a sense of joy at his removal, but it was mixed with fear, uncertainty, and anxiety about what lay ahead.”

For journalists working under Assad’s authoritarian regime, the red lines were sharply defined. Covering government abuses and institutional failures risked imprisonment, exile, or worse. Now, the boundaries have blurred as the Syrian government recalibrates its relationship with the media, proclaiming a new era of press freedom after almost 14 years of civil war.

“The spaces for work are wider; more journalists are daring to use their names, and more are daring to do investigations…but that doesn’t mean that journalists feel safe to cover any topic that is in the public interest,” said Zaina Erhaim, a Syrian Journalist working as a consultant and journalism trainer across the region.

In a year when press freedom is at a 25-year low, RSF reported a 36-place rise in Syria’s position on its World Press Freedom Index, marking the largest improvement of any country in 2026.

Progress was identified across all five of the indicators RSF uses to gather data, boosting Syria’s standing from 177^th out of 180 countries and territories on the index to 141^st globally, above Jordan, the UAE, Egypt, and Turkey. Despite this impressive ascent, Syria remains in RSF’s “very serious” category.

“It’s a huge achievement, and it’s important to celebrate it. But the situation is still very difficult,” said Jonathan Dagher, head of the Middle East Desk at RSF. The biggest factor behind the rise was the regime change, he added, comparing the scope of work under the current government with the “no-go zones for the press” that existed under Assad.

For Syria’s transitional government, media liberalization has become a litmus test for its commitment to a more open and pluralistic Syria. Today, media freedoms unimaginable under Assad rule have been written into the country’s new Constitutional Declaration, while Interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa has promised “wide media freedom with few restrictions.”

In early September, Information Minister Khaled Zaarour announced the completion of a new draft media law that, according to the ministry, would guarantee journalists access to information, protect the confidentiality of sources, and replace imprisonment for media-law violations with financial penalties.

The world is waiting to see how far these promises translate into greater freedoms on the ground. Journalists and international organizations describe “genuine liberalization” but point out that the bar for improvement was extremely low. For media freedom to be guaranteed, they say, government promises must be backed by enforceable rights that let journalists access information and protect their sources.

“Under Assad, independent journalism was virtually impossible inside government-controlled Syria, and hundreds of journalists were killed, imprisoned, disappeared, or forced into exile over decades. Moving from that environment produces a dramatic statistical improvement even before strong institutions protecting press freedom have been established,” The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said.

Greater freedom of movement, less direct censorship, and far more room to report critically are among the improvements cited in CPJ’s December 2025 report, which balances this progress against the risks of reporting in a fragmented environment where dangers shift and rules remain unclear. “Journalists described freedoms they had not experienced for decades, while warning that the foundations of genuine press freedom were not yet secure,” CPJ told Middle East Uncovered.

Permits and accreditation are often cited as barriers to impartial reporting. Access to information and events can hinge on subject matter and location as well as a journalist’s gender or ethnicity, their affiliations, and the interests of the local authority in control.

Covering northeastern Syria, Kurdish journalist Akhtain Asaad has found that bureaucratic barriers can determine which stories are covered. His efforts to investigate oil-burning pits near the Al-Yarubiyah border crossing were blocked when he couldn’t obtain the necessary permits. “I am not free enough, though things are better than before, [but] the requirement for security clearances and approvals for media organizations in Syria remains an obstacle to a free press.”

Away from the checkpoints, obstacles also emerge when reporters request information. Pursuing a report on the Syrian Petroleum Company, Rasha Naddaf, a journalist with Al Jumhuriya, followed up on promises by its executive director to issue the company’s final organizational structure.

The paper contacted the Ministry of Information’s public-relations office, which referred them to the press office. “The press office said the questions were technical and referred us to the public-relations office at the Ministry of Energy, which then referred us to the Syrian Petroleum Company’s public-relations office,” Naddaf said. The company did not respond before the report was published.

“Press freedom begins with access to information, yet this right is not available in practice,” she said. “When no institution is responsible, when there is no deadline for a response, and when there is no effective right to access public information, journalism is obstructed without the need for a written censorship order.”

Naddaf left Syria in 2018, after her pseudonym was exposed. The last story she reported inside the country covered the attacks by ISIS on Suwayda, examining whether the Assad regime bore any political or security responsibility for the atrocities committed against the local Druze minority.

Her article held those in power to account at a time when questioning the state was extremely dangerous. For journalists from minority communities in particular, the government’s expressed commitments to press freedom have not yet translated into a feeling of safety or equal access to work.

A report by the Coalition of Women Journalists recounts the “precarious reality” faced by female Alawite reporters, whose gender and identity expose them to multiple layers of risk.

Lara describes the pressures of self-censorship for Alawite reporters as “intense,” and steers clear of some stories to avoid being perceived as “a mouthpiece for her sect.” Another reporter, Zein, says the pressure comes from within her community. “If I work on cases like Ghazal Ghazal, I might lose the people around me. “I cannot criticize anything in my community in a professional way.”

The coastal violence in March 2025 marked a turning point for some. One reporter, Doaa, felt able to “breathe again” after Assad’s fall because she no longer feared arrest. The massacres that killed over 1,000 Alawites changed that, and she was unable to write for three months. “My entire life stalled, and I experienced panic attacks.” She now uses a pseudonym to publish certain stories.

The practicalities of reporting can also prove more complicated for minority journalists, with identity shaping their freedom of movement, access to sources, personal safety, and how their work is perceived.

Naddaf had hoped to go back to Syria after Assad’s fall but said that, as a Druze journalist, the conditions required for a safe return do not yet exist. To feel secure, she said journalists of all backgrounds need equal protection under the law, regardless of sectarian identity, region or political position. She also pointed to the need for transitional justice and accountability for past abuses, without which new protections will be difficult to trust.

Uncertainty surrounding the future structure of Syria’s laws and the mechanisms to implement them remains a fundamental barrier to a free press. For now, repression has not disappeared; it has become more diffused, taking new forms that disproportionately affect certain reporters and outlets.

Radio Rozana is among several independent media outlets, alongside Enab Baladi and Al Jumhuriya, that are reestablishing a presence in Syria following the fall of the Assad regime. Their ability to report in Syria again clearly signals that space has opened up, but the parameters of that freedom are hard to define.

Co-founder Loujein Haj Youssef was frustrated when Rozana received a one-year license, despite paying fees to cover five. “Each time, a different justification was given for not granting the license for the requested period,” she said.

Meanwhile, reports have emerged of preferential treatment for government-aligned influencers and media outlets, which were given privileged access to officials and information. Three journalists were detained while trying to cover government clashes with Kurdish forces in Aleppo last January, while select outlets were afforded greater access to work.

The changes in Syria’s media landscape are part of a broader transition as the country emerges from decades of authoritarian rule and a divisive civil war. A new space has emerged for journalists to play a role in building a “healthy society,” but the institutions needed to uphold press freedom regardless of who is in power are not yet in place. For Syrian journalists, many vital questions remain unanswered.

The test, CPJ said, comes “when independent reporting becomes uncomfortable for those in authority—when journalists investigate security-force abuses, corruption, treatment of minorities, conflict operations, or failures of government policy.” For reporters such as Naddaf, that is not yet the case. “I do not see Syria today as a freer country for journalists, and I do not describe it simply as less repressive than it was under Assad. I see it as more arbitrary and less institutionalized,” she said.

A recent United Nations report paints a troubling picture of life for women and girls in Gaza. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) documents rising levels of gender-based violence, including an increase in forced and child marriages.

The report notes:

“Adolescent girls aged 12 to 17 are increasingly facing forced marriage, sexual exploitation, and abuse.”

One of those girls is Bissan. She was just 16 when she was forced to marry:

“My father was killed during the war, and we lost our home and all support. We were displaced and struggling to survive. Soon after, I was forced to marry because my family believed it was the only way to protect and provide for us. I was expected to become a wife overnight. When I tried to escape, I was forced to return. I did not want this life.”

Bissan is not alone. Reported cases of gender-based violence in Gaza rose by 60 percent during the first six months of 2026.

Meanwhile, reports of forced and child marriage increased by 123 percent between January and June.

In part, the increase may reflect improved reporting. Before the ceasefire last October, the war made it difficult for many cases of gender-based violence, forced marriage, and child marriage to be reported at all.

But the effects are clearly spreading, and as reconstruction stalls, women and girls are paying the price.

According to UN Protection Cluster monitoring for the first quarter of 2026, gender based violence affected 53 percent of those who they assessed. Meanwhile, child marriage affected 46 percent of assessed households.

The war in Gaza has left its people in a very tough predicament. As of this month, 65 percent of households are still living in tents or makeshift shelters. Hundreds of thousands are living in low-lying displacement sites near the shoreline, vulnerable to flooding when it rains in winter.

The economic picture is similarly bleak. Gaza’s unemployment rate stood at 78 percent last year, according to UNCTAD data. That’s the highest unemployment rate anywhere in the world.

According to a report from Al Jazeera earlier this year:

For many young men and women, jobs are nowhere to be found, forcing them to pace the streets or wait endlessly for a chance to work.

“I’ve been looking for a job for months,” Mohammed Shatat told Al Jazeera. “Even temporary work is hard to find. Every day feels the same… I go from place to place, asking, hoping, but there’s nothing.”

And although the ceasefire meant that significantly more food and humanitarian aid started entering Gaza—with aid entering the strip increasing over 50% according to the World Health Organization—the latest IPC assessment still projects that more than 1.4 million people—around 67 percent of Gaza’s population are facing crisis levels of food insecurity.

And yet, in recent months, a very different picture of Gaza has increasingly been presented.

Since the ceasefire took effect late last year, a number of Israeli officials and commentators have argued that the scale of Gaza’s hunger crisis was exaggerated—and in some cases that the famine declared in 2025 never really existed at all.

That argument gained momentum after a nutrition survey conducted in June found relatively low levels of acute malnutrition among children in areas of Gaza researchers could access. Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon said the findings showed that the “false narrative” of famine was falling apart.

The trouble is that not only does this narrative not match up with the statistics on food security from the IPC, but it also doesn’t fit with the horrific reality of women and girls being traded for food, either.

And the issue isn’t solely about getting more food into Gaza. It’s also about making sure that the food that gets in is properly distributed, and not stolen by Hamas or other militant groups.

In July this year, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, Ramiz Alakbarov, accused Hamas of obstructing humanitarian operations. He said armed personnel affiliated with Hamas had forcibly entered a food distribution point in Jabalia and a World Food Programme warehouse, where two truck drivers were reportedly assaulted. Alakbarov said the episode was not isolated, but reflected an “increasingly dangerous pattern” of intimidation, obstruction and attempted smuggling.

Gaza desperately needs serious progress on reconstruction and economic revitalization today.

With a competent government—including the end of Hamas rule and the full implementation of the Board of Peace transition plan—I believe most of Gaza’s problems are fully addressable.

For women and adolescent girls, Gaza’s widespread mismanagement has had brutal, deeply personal consequences.

When families have no stable home, little income, and not enough food, dependence on others for basic survival can leave women and girls more vulnerable to coercion and abuse. The rise in forced and child marriage is a direct byproduct of that reality.

None of this excuses what is happening. Desperation may help explain why forced and child marriage is increasing, but it does not justify it. Poverty does not excuse forcing a child into marriage. Neither does hunger or displacement. No matter how desperate the circumstances, forcing a girl to marry is an unconscionable abuse committed against her—those responsible must be held accountable for the harm they inflict.

But laws and prosecutions alone cannot address the conditions that are making them so vulnerable in the first place.

Gaza needs functioning government, reconstruction, jobs, secure housing, and a system capable of protecting its people. Without that, families will continue making desperate decisions under desperate circumstances, and girls like Bissan will continue paying the price.

She was 16 years old when she lost her father and her home. Then she was forced to marry. She was a child, too young to consent to what was being done to her. When she tried to escape, she was forced to return. That is what these statistics look like in the life of one girl. And if Gaza is left in its current state, there will be more like her.

On September 12, Turkish authorities launched a nationwide operation called “My Family Is Safe,” part of a government campaign presented as an effort to protect traditional family values. Within days, authorities had blocked more than 180 social media accounts. The crackdown began with LGBTQ organizations and university groups, but quickly expanded to include journalists and Amnesty International Turkey. Women’s rights organizations that had publicly expressed solidarity with those targeted were soon caught up in it as well.

If the goal were simply to silence LGBTQ organizations, there was no need for a nationwide operation. They have had almost zero public visibility for years, and Istanbul Pride has been banned for over a decade. So why now?

The timing was no coincidence. Within days, Erdoğan’s inner circle was making the government’s intentions clear.

On September 17, chief presidential adviser Mehmet Uçum announced that Erdoğan would run “one last time” and floated April 16, 2028, as the election date. There is, however, the rather inconvenient matter of Turkey’s constitution: presidents are limited to two terms, and Erdoğan is already serving his second.

The next day, Justice Minister Akın Gürlek told party members that the next election would be held “to re-elect our president,” rather neatly settling the question of its intended outcome.

The raids came first; the statement five days later. In Turkish politics, that sequence is rarely an accident.

Read together, it feels as if the next election season has just kicked off. But why start it this way? To understand that, we need to look more closely at Erdoğan’s peculiar position.

The next election will decide whether Erdoğan’s era continues into a fourth decade. He enters it at his strongest in terms of control over the institutions, and at his weakest in terms of popular support. Things did not look great for him, even before the last election. In 2023, despite near-total control of the state and the media, a questionable rival, and a pre-election spending spree so large that the country is still paying for it, he barely made it, falling short of 50 percent in the first round and winning only in a runoff.

Now, three years later, he finds himself in even more dire straits, with the latest poll averages putting his governing bloc at around 41 percent of parliamentary support. Even after three years of (semi-)austerity, inflation still sits above 30 percent, so he can no longer afford the same playbook, at least not at the same scale. And the cracks within his own ranks, driven by the failing economy, are widening.

The most dramatic change since 2023 has come from Erdoğan’s main opposition. After losing the presidential election that year, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) made a striking comeback under its new leader, Özgür Özel. In the March 2024 local elections, it won eight of Turkey’s 10 largest cities and dealt Erdoğan’s ruling party its worst electoral defeat in more than two decades.

Then the courts intervened. On May 21 of this year, an appeals court annulled the party congress that had elected Özel and reinstated Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, his predecessor and the man Erdoğan defeated in 2023. Three days later, riot police raided the CHP’s headquarters. The fight eventually split the opposition, with Özel and 90 lawmakers leaving to form the New Party. Prosecutors are now seeking to strip Özel of his parliamentary immunity.

The 2024 local elections gave the opposition control of Turkey’s largest municipalities and their budgets. Today, more than 40 opposition mayors have been arrested, removed from office, or replaced by government-appointed trustees, and at least 17 elected on the CHP ticket have defected to Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), often after investigations were opened against them. As we head into the next election, many of the cities voters handed to the opposition in 2024 will be run by people they did not elect.

And the defections are still coming. Just last night, nine more opposition mayors joined the AKP, including five from the CHP. Erdoğan personally welcomed them into the party and pinned AKP badges to their jackets.

Then there is the constitutional question. Erdoğan can run again only if parliament calls an early election, which requires 360 votes. His alliance is roughly 30 short.

Uçum’s plan relies on a technicality. Parliament would call an early election in February 2028, with the vote on April 16, only weeks before the regularly scheduled date. Because the constitution sets no minimum on how early an early election must be, as long as parliament acts before the regular election calendar begins, that is enough to give Erdoğan another run. Technically, parliament would be cutting his second term short after four years and eleven months, and the constitution would compensate him for this “injustice” with another run. It would also allow the government to go to the polls with a fresh 2028 budget, as Uçum openly admitted.

The missing votes are not hard to find. The opposition has demanded early elections for months; it can hardly vote against one now. The trap is built into the rules: every opposition “yes” hands Erdoğan his eligibility, and every “no” looks like fear of the ballot box. Calling the election is the easy part. Winning it is the problem.

Taken one by one, each of these cases has its own legal file and official explanation. Taken together, they show the machinery of the state being used to cripple Erdoğan’s opponents before voters ever reach the ballot box.

This is where the LGBTQ crackdown fits in. It does two jobs at once. First, it gives Erdoğan a rallying cry for his conservative base. Pro-government newspapers have already framed the issue as a fight to defend the Turkish family against decadence imported from Europe. The message is designed to bring back conservative voters who have drifted away from Erdoğan, largely because of the economy.

Second, it exploits a country already in survival mode. Two years of arrests, trustees, and court cases have pushed nearly every independent actor in Turkey into triage. The New Party is vying for survival, and its leader is fighting to stay out of court. Mayors are wondering who is next on the chopping block. Civil society groups are navigating investigations and frozen accounts, and while journalists increasingly have to weigh every word before they publish.

Everyone is busy saving themselves. In this environment, who has the strength to defend a group with little electoral weight? That is precisely why LGBTQ organizations were chosen. Defending them is costly, and the political payoff is small. The card was played at exactly the right moment.

The women’s movement is a different case. It is one of the most organized forces in Turkey’s independent civil society. When more than 120 women’s organizations signed a declaration opposing the raids, authorities blocked their accounts too. The crackdown had expanded from the original targets to organizations that objected to their treatment.

Ankara also knows that the outside world is no longer paying attention. In July, Europe’s leaders came to Ankara for the NATO summit, shook Erdoğan’s hand, and left. None of them publicly mentioned Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Istanbul mayor and the opposition’s presidential candidate, who has been in prison since March 2025. With a war next door in Iran and another still raging in Ukraine, Turkey has become too useful to criticize. If an imprisoned presidential candidate did not merit a mention, Ankara has little reason to expect one over a few blocked accounts. It has rarely operated in a more comfortable international environment.

But the real prize is what disappears from the conversation. Annual inflation stood at 31.5 percent in August, more than three years into an austerity program meant to bring it down. Rent, wages, and pensions should be the country’s focus. This is the issue that could cost Erdoğan the election, and it is the one no one has the energy to talk about.

The next steps are easy to predict. Around the New Year, the government will likely announce generous raises for minimum wage earners and pensioners, perhaps with a gift for those caught in the retirement calendar. The sequence is simple, yet it has worked historically in Turkey: exhaust, silence, sweeten, then vote.

The opposition carries its share of the blame for how well this is working. After İmamoğlu’s arrest last year, I wrote that the balance of courage in Turkey had shifted, and it had. Crowds filled the square outside Istanbul City Hall night after night, and some 15 million people cast ballots in the CHP’s symbolic primary to say İmamoğlu was their candidate. That was an extraordinary reservoir of energy, much of it from citizens who belong to no party but care deeply about democracy.

The opposition failed to turn it into anything lasting.

That energy has since largely depleted, and many of those who once filled the squares have tuned out. By the time riot police fired tear gas inside the headquarters of the party that founded the Republic, only a fraction of those crowds came out.

The government’s latest move lands on that fatigue. Its answer to last year’s courage is not more intimidation, but instead relies on the people’s exhaustion. A society too busy surviving to argue, or to hold on to each other. And a ready-made campaign line: look at them, they can barely manage their own affairs; how could they run a country?

Last year, Turks proved they could still find their courage. The question for 2028 is whether they will still have the energy to use it.

Last week, President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived at the United Nations carrying photographs of dead Iranian children.

He spoke of a school bombed in Minab and civilians killed by American and Israeli attacks, rejecting Donald Trump’s description of the Islamic Republic as a terrorist state and turning the accusation back on the accusers: “We have been the victims of terrorism.”

“We have only defended ourselves,” Pezeshkian said. He spoke of “our innocent people” and ended by declaring that Iran had been hit but had not “bent the knee.”

But who exactly is “we”?

Mere months ago, Iranians took to the streets not to defend the Islamic Republic, but to challenge it. Far from demonstrating against the United States or its allies, they were confronting the very political system Pezeshkian represents. At the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, he intentionally collapsed that distinction. Government, country, and people merged into the same pronouns: “we,” “us,” and “our people.”

Pezeshkian warned of a world in which military power overtakes politics and force becomes a substitute for diplomacy. Yet the political system he represents has allowed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to grow far beyond the role of a conventional military. The Guards wield enormous influence over Iran’s politics, economy, internal security, and foreign policy. The stunning irony is that Pezeshkian was warning against military power encroaching on politics while representing a system in which it already has.

For Iranians, the contradiction is familiar. The same government warning the world about the dangers of military force has repeatedly used its own security forces to crush dissent at home. And that use of force has not stopped at Iran’s borders.

Much of that activity has been carried out through the IRGC’s Quds Force and its network of armed groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.

But the Islamic Republic has not always worked through proxies.

In June 2022, Turkish authorities arrested five Iranian nationals suspected of planning attacks against Israelis in Istanbul. Turkish media reported that police seized pistols and silencers from houses and hotels used by the suspects. The alleged targets were Israeli tourists and businesspeople. Iran did not immediately respond to the allegations.

This was not an isolated incident. In a 2024 investigation, Reuters identified at least 33 assassination or abduction attempts since 2020 in Europe and the United States that authorities alleged were connected in some way to Iran, Iranian operatives, or people closely linked to the country.

Despite that history, Pezeshkian told the General Assembly:

“No one in this region will enjoy security alone. Either we will build security together, or we will endure insecurity together.”

He chose his words carefully. The statement could be naively read as an appeal for collective security. But coming from the head of a state with a long history of projecting coercive power abroad, that interpretation falls flat.

Pezeshkian framed his message around diplomacy while making the underlying threat unmistakable. If Iran feels insecure, it is prepared to make that insecurity everyone else’s problem.

This is one of the central contradictions of the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy. It demands respect for Iran’s sovereignty while interfering in other countries through armed groups and its own security apparatus. It condemns military pressure while using military and paramilitary power to pursue its interests across the region.

The same double standard applies to how the Islamic Republic talks about the Iranian people. It now points to their resistance to foreign attacks as evidence of support for the state.

The Islamic Republic wants to have it both ways. When Iranians rise against it, they become rioters, terrorists, or agents of foreign powers. When Iran comes under attack from abroad, those same Iranians are suddenly folded back into the nation, their opposition erased so the state can speak on their behalf.

But a nation’s people and its government are not the same thing. To take the suffering of Iranians under foreign attack and use it as evidence of loyalty to the Islamic Republic is more than dishonest. It turns their pain into political propaganda and their refusal to abandon their country into an endorsement of the state that rules it.

For decades, Iranians have fought their own government for sovereignty over the most basic parts of their lives: their bodies, their clothing, their speech, what they read, what they learn, how they live, and who gets to govern them. That is what makes Pezeshkian casting the Islamic Republic as a defender of Iranian sovereignty so bitterly ironic.

War gives the Islamic Republic cover to redraw the line between loyalty to Iran and loyalty to the regime. Under foreign attack, dissent can be recast as disloyalty, and opponents as allies of the enemy.

But Pezeshkian’s portrait of “our people” conveniently omits the brave Iranians who have spent years demanding something different from the state that claims to represent them. It leaves out the women who took to the streets during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, removing their hijabs and risking arrest, imprisonment, and worse for the right to control their own bodies and lives. It leaves out the protesters killed by security forces, the dissidents and protesters executed by the state, the political prisoners still behind bars, the journalists and activists punished for speaking openly, and the families who have spent years demanding answers for loved ones killed by the government.

These people are not somehow less Iranian because they oppose the Islamic Republic. Their courage, grief, and demands belong to Iran’s story just as much as the suffering Pezeshkian chose to display at the United Nations.

Any claim to speak for “our people” has to include them too.

I lived for decades under the political system Pezeshkian represents. So I hear his words differently than someone listening in New York, London, Paris, or Berlin might.

I understand why parts of his speech can be compelling abroad. Here is the president of a country at war, standing at the United Nations and denouncing American and Israeli power. He speaks of sovereignty and equality. He holds up photographs of dead children and condemns a world in which military force determines who gets heard. To some Western audiences, it can sound like the familiar language of resistance to imperial power.

But Iranians have heard these words before. We have heard the government speak of “resistance” while imprisoning and executing those who resist it. We have heard it defend Iranian sovereignty while denying its own citizens control over their bodies, speech, and lives. We have heard it condemn foreign violence after turning violence on its fellow Iranians, and denounce foreign interference while its own security apparatus wreaks havoc across the Middle East.

That is why the photographs Pezeshkian did not hold up at the United Nations matter as much as those he did.

The people killed in foreign attacks are Iranian. So were the protesters killed for challenging the Islamic Republic. So were those executed by the state. The political prisoners still behind bars are Iranian. So are the women who refused to cover their hair, the families demanding justice for their children, and the millions of people who want a different future for their country.

Iran is bigger than the Islamic Republic. Its people cannot be reduced to the government that rules them.

The Islamic Republic does not get to claim their suffering as proof of their loyalty. And it does not get to turn their love for their country into consent.