When Turkey decided to join the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq in July 2015, Ankara’s real target were not IS militants, but the Syrian Kurdish forces. Turkey aimed at avoiding the establishment of Kurdish self-ruled areas in northern Syria, close to its southern border. After almost four years, this remains its main objective in Syria.
Five years of Islamic State (IS) rule across Iraq and Syria have wrecked the shared border between the two countries and created a fragile security situation in the area commonly known as “Syraq”.
This month last year, the Kuwaiti government hosted a ‘Conference for the Reconstruction of Iraq’. It was attended by the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, along with dozens of foreign ministers and large numbers of other government and business representatives. The timing was perfect for Iraq. The country had recently announced the military defeat of the Islamic State (IS) and was enjoying an unprecedented level of optimism and all-round international good will.
A new group paper published by the Brookings Institution explains how the United States can reinvigorate its engagement with the reconstruction of Libya by pursuing a city-centered approach that empowers local governments and actors. It explains the various incentives that can be used to bring local militias and political actors under greater control and how rejuvenated cities can eventually be stitched together into national institutions.
When in 1979 a revolutionary mass movement in Iran ousted Shah Reza Pahlavi to establish the Islamic Republic of Iran, political leaders in Iran’s immediate neighbourhood became anxious about the potential appeal of the Islamic Revolution on their own populations. Not only had one of the key aims of the revolution been to empower the “downtrodden” (mostaz’afin) — a notion many Arab leaders saw as being directed at different strata of their societies.
The Islamic Republic, whose survival nobody would have betted on, still lives on. No matter what John Bolton predicted last year – “the Islamic Republic will not last until its 40th birthday” – or what common sense suggested in the early days of the revolution, when very few people thought it would have lasted more than six months.
Of the many challenges that Iran has faced over the 40 years since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah and established the Islamic Republic, one was dead on arrival: the impossible fight against time by the generation who fought the revolution. Four decades later, of that circle of combatant clergy fewer and fewer members are still alive and in power.
The establishment of official diplomatic relations between China and Iran dates back only to 1971. Nevertheless, the two countries share a web of economic and cultural interactions rooted in history, which finds in the ancient Silk Road its idealised apogee. A flourishing past, a shared sense of national humiliation, and the idea of a possible alternative world order frame the narrative that backs the Sino-Iranian axis.
As the anniversary of the 1979 revolution in Iran was approaching, the head of Iran’s international trade center, Mohammad Reza Sabzalipour, said that the impact of sanctions on Iran’s economy does not exceed 20 percent of the country’s problems, while 80 percent of problems are attributed to the mismanagement of President Hassan Rouhani’s consecutive governments. Sabzalipour’s response came after President Hassan Rouhani blamed US sanctions for the unprecedented pressure the economy is facing.
Who can speak about Iranian society without speaking for it? How can one engage in critical reflection on the Iranian revolution at forty, without claiming the right to force Iranians’ will into crystallized categories and fallacious lines of reasoning?
