Middle East

Wednesday

Jawad Iqbal

Pakistani politics is like a Monopoly game

The levels of cynicism and disillusionment surrounding the upcoming parliamentary elections in Pakistan – due to take place tomorrow – are remarkable, even for a country with a chequered democratic tradition. Few people believe the vote will be free or fair, with widespread speculation that the country’s all-powerful military has already decided the result and will stop at nothing to get its way. Put simply, the election is a charade.  This is how things stand. The country’s former prime minister, Imran Khan, is in jail. More on him later. Another former leader, Nawaz Sharif, who was in exile after his own spell in jail, has returned home, and all outstanding cases against

Monday

Jay Mens

Performative airstrikes against the Houthis will achieve nothing

Performative sanctions have long been the last refuge of the lazy policymaker looking to ‘do something’. Take, for instance, the sanctions that are slapped on unsavoury individuals from around the world on an almost-weekly basis: Turkish assassins, Iranian guerrilla commanders, Somali pirates, and Yemeni rebels are among those who have been whacked with the sanctions stick. Unsurprisingly, nobody has repented as a result of being listed, meaning that the sanctions roster is a government naughty list and little more. After more than a decade of performative sanctions, the public is slowly cottoning onto the fact that they don’t seem to offer much. Amidst this scrutiny, policymakers are increasingly drawn to

Tuesday

Jawad Iqbal

Why Jordan is in Iran’s sights

The drone attack on a US base in Jordan that killed three American troops and injured dozens risks bringing one more country into the orbit of the war between Israel and Hamas. US president Joe Biden has blamed ‘Tehran-backed militants’ operating in Syria and Iraq for the strike on Tower 22, a US base on Jordan’s border with Syria, and has promised reprisals. Iran has denied any involvement: Tehran prefers to let its proxies do its dirty work. Watching on nervously is Jordan. Iran, whatever its denials, has much to gain by sowing instability in Jordan Iranian-backed militias in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have now launched more than 150 attacks on US positions in

Monday

Jay Mens

Time is running out to crack down on Iran

Three American soldiers on the Syria-Jordan border were killed by Iranian drones on Sunday. Since October, Iranian drones and missiles have injured nearly two hundred American troops. The pipe dream that was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the Iran deal – could not seem more distant. The equation at the heart of the deal, more money for more Iranian concessions, vanished shortly after an agreement was concluded in 2015. In the years since, Iran’s funding to its regional proxies exploded, and its proxies’ attacks on Israel and the Gulf states continued unabated. The Houthis in Yemen, who emerged in earnest after the deal was struck, are now a

Friday

Hannah Tomes Hannah Tomes

What the UN court’s genocide verdict means for Israel

The International Court of Justice has handed down a preliminary ruling instructing Israel to prevent a genocide from happening in Gaza. Judge Donoghue, speaking at the court in The Hague, said the country must take ‘all measures within its power’ to prevent acts that breach the genocide convention and must ensure ‘with immediate effect’ that none of its soldiers are involved in any acts which contravene it. Israel was also ordered to take immediate action to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The convention defines genocide as acts committed ‘with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’. The ICJ ruling is legally

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Israel shows why conscription works

Take a step back and it’s a no-brainer: If you want a healthy society, you need a spirit of unity. As we saw in London during the Blitz – often romanticised for its fabled ability to ‘pull together’ – if citizens feel they are part of a national family, they can maintain their morale even in the face of great adversity. The same is true in modern times. It must surely be the case that, the more people feel a meaningful part of a nation, the less alienation, disenfranchisement, discrimination and resentment there will be. Deaths of despair from drug abuse or suicide will reduce, as will poverty, depression and

Thursday

Arash Azizi

Airstrikes won’t stop the Houthis’ Red Sea attacks

It was less than two weeks ago that the US and UK introduced a new element to the multi-faceted conflict in the Middle East. On 12 January they carried out joint strikes against the Houthis, a militia that controls Yemen’s capital Sanaa and large parts of Yemeni territory and is recognised as the country’s government by its main backer, Iran. The UK and US strikes came in response to weeks of Houthi attacks on ships passing through the Red Sea. The militia claimed its attacks were in response to Israel’s assault on Gaza but in practice it was targeting any and all shipping in the area as well as US

Jawad Iqbal

Is Saudi Arabia softening its booze ban?

Saudi Arabia, an Islamic nation where drinking alcohol is strictly forbidden, is to get its first official liquor store. There’s just one catch: only foreign diplomats will be able to buy booze there. The store in the capital Riyadh’s Diplomatic Quarter will remain off-limits to Muslims and, needless to say, ordinary Saudis. For a handful of lucky diplomats, the shop’s opening will spell an end to having to import alcohol via a diplomatic pouch or sealed official package. Yet the purchase of their favourite tipple won’t be straightforward. They will need to apply for clearance through a mobile app administered by Saudi officials. There will also be strict limits on how much

Saturday

Zoe Strimpel

How Israel is failed by its war of words

Sitting in a room at the Israel Defence Forces’ Hakirya base in Tel Aviv, I listened – along with a room full of delegates, mostly European MPs and members of the House of Lords – to a briefing from an IDF spokesman. He was a British-born reservist recruited back to the front lines of Israel’s communications war, and he did not inspire. He repeated basics about what happened on 7 October, and the horror of those events – something that everyone in that room, all there as pretty major fans of Israel, desirous to see it triumph in its hour of adversity, already appreciated. We wanted new information: dispassionately and

Friday

John Jenkins

Missiles alone won’t solve the problem of the Houthis

Eventually then, enough was enough. After months of Houthi drone and missile attacks on Israel and vessels in the Red Sea, the US and the UK launched retaliatory strikes in Yemen last week. But how did we get here? The Houthis have been a nuisance for at least 30 years, when they emerged as a clan-based opposition movement in the northernmost governorate of Yemen. They had a number of grievances: endemic poverty, government hostility and Saudi-funded attempts to spread Salafism in their Zaidi Shia stronghold. The last Zaidi ruler had been deposed in 1962. The subsequent civil war set the stage for more or less continuous domestic turmoil ever since.

Thursday

Jawad Iqbal

The clash between Iran and Pakistan is spiralling out of control

Pakistan’s retaliatory military strike on suspected militant bases in Iran – in response to Iranian attacks in Pakistani territory – can only escalate tensions between the two countries. It will also ring alarm bells elsewhere across an increasingly jittery Middle East but also further afield in India and China. The Chinese have friendly relations with both Pakistan and Iran. India, meanwhile, is always on high alert whenever Pakistan’s military forces flex their muscles. All in all, there is a real danger that more and more countries will be sucked into the volatile and unpredictable vortex of the Middle East conflict. The Pakistani military action follows Iran’s attacks on the Jaish ul-Adl, a

Wednesday

Jawad Iqbal

Iran’s attack on Pakistan shows how close the Middle East is to war

Iranian airstrikes on ‘militant bases’ in neighbouring Pakistan signal a dangerous and worrying escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. Details of what unfolded remain sketchy, but Iranian media reported that the strikes were aimed at the bases of a Sunni militant group, Jaish al-Adl. The missiles and drones landed in the Balochistan province, which lies along the 600-mile border between the two countries. Both countries have long bickered over the activities of Baloch separatists and other militant groups in the border region. All it would take is one misunderstanding or false move to spark all-out war Pakistan’s foreign ministry said two children were killed and three others were injured. The Pakistani

Monday

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Why the West should target Iran as well as the Houthis

Peace cannot always be won by peaceful means. This is a truth that is as tragic as it is perennial. When history forges an enemy that cannot be placated, the blind pursuit of ‘peace in our time’ only shores up an even more devastating conflict in the future. This lesson, learned so painfully by previous generations, has faded in the somnambulant years of postwar Britain. It is one that we are starting to remember. Today, the defence secretary Grant Shapps pledges 20,000 British personnel to take part in a major Nato exercise to prepare for a potential Russian invasion of Europe. His words are unvarnished. ‘We are in a new

Sunday

Zoe Strimpel

How Hamas radicalised Israel’s liberals

I have visited Israel three times in the past year. The first trip was in the spring, just as the anti-government protests – triggered by Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to control the Supreme Court – were beginning. The day before we travelled, protestors forced Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport to close, and a general strike was announced. Every Saturday night, out went the protestors – mostly liberal and secular, but not entirely, so widespread is frustration with the government. ‘You could not be seen sitting and drinking wine on a Saturday night’, Moran Alon, the owner of the Nilus bar in Tel Aviv told me. ‘People would wonder: why aren’t you at

Friday

Edward Stringer

What if the Houthi airstrikes fail?

The curse of air power is that air strikes always capture the public’s attention. The praise that follows their tactical brilliance can quickly swing to disappointment that they have not proven to be a political panacea. This is the risk that comes with the US and UK air strikes on the Houthi forces currently attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea. It is why James Heappey (Minister for the Armed Forces) was cautious during his media round, rightly stating we should await the battle damage assessment (BDA) before declaring the mission a success. The trouble is that BDA is a technical, military assessment of accuracy in mission execution – but

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The delusion of the Houthi pacifists

I see ‘Not in my name’ is trending on social media. It’s in response to the US and UK strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen. The tweeting classes want to make it clear to the world that such uncouth militarism has nothing to do with them. ‘My conscience is clean’, these time-rich signallers of rectitude are really saying. Has there ever been a slogan as smug, self-satisfied and outright narcissistic as ‘Not in my name’? It is notably not a political cry. It advances no programme, makes no demands. It is a world away from the catchy mottos of the Sixties, like ‘Hands off Vietnam!’ or ‘Vietnam for the Vietnamese!’

Thursday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Are the Tories cooling on their support for Israel?

The language in the government and parliament over Israel has changed a lot this week. Ministers are no longer mounting the full throttle defence of Israel or offering regular reminders to the Commons of what happened on 7 October. Lord Cameron’s evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday was just one example of that: the Foreign Secretary said that ‘of course’ he was ‘worried that Israel has taken action that might be in breach of international law’. He also repeated the line that ‘too many civilians have died’, and reminded Israel that it needed to do more to avert a famine in Gaza. Similarly, when Rishi Sunak was asked about

Ali Ansari

Iranians are blaming the regime for the Kerman terrorist attack

Two suicide bombs killed nearly 100 people and wounded many more in the Iranian province of Kerman on 3 January, as Iranians gathered to commemorate the anniversary of the assassination of IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani. It was the most devastating terrorist attack to hit Iran in many years.    Iranians are questioning why Soleimani’s family and the IRGC leadership missed their flight to Kerman, and so did not attend the commemoration There is little agreement in Iran over who was ultimately culpable for the attack. Opinions have sharply divided along political lines. The government quickly blamed the United States and Israel, suggesting the attack was an Israeli attempt to draw

Wednesday

Anshel Pfeffer

Has Iran lost control of its proxies?

During a press conference in Tehran at the end of last month, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Brigadier-General Ramezan Sharif claimed that ‘the Al-Aqsa Storm was one of the retaliations of the Axis of Resistance against the Zionists for the martyrdom of Qasem Soleimani’. It was an extraordinary statement. Iran had insisted that while it supported the Al-Aqsa Storm (what Hamas calls its 7 October attack), it wasn’t directly involved in its planning or execution. Israeli intelligence believes this to be true. Despite receiving significant Iranian weapons and training, Hamas had not informed Tehran in advance of its plans. So why was Sharif suddenly claiming Hamas acted as part ‘of

Sunday

James McGrath

The mystery of the Mandaeans, the gnostic sect that worships John the Baptist

Gnosticism – the belief that the creation of the material world was a mistake, and the creator deity a bungling lesser entity distinct from the supreme God – has been vigorously opposed by both Jews and Christians down the centuries. Yet even when censured, the gnostics’ views retained a certain appeal. They said that human beings have a spark of light from above and, with the right preparation for the journey, can hope to ascend beyond this broken material prison to the celestial realm of light. We can see the impact of that viewpoint in popular thought about the afterlife, even among those who reject Gnosticism’s other teachings as heresy.