Arbaeen Program, – The twelfth session of Truth Promoters’ Shahada (Witness) series turned on Friday from the survivors of Karbala to the question their survival forces: if the road Sayyidah Zaynab (AS) walked is our road, what form of witness is actually available to an ordinary believer, in an ordinary life?

The evening’s answer came from a man who had every other weapon taken from him. Imam Ali ibn al-Husain Zain al-Abideen (AS) came off the field of Karbala the one surviving man of the House, was marched in an iron collar from the killing-ground to Kufa to Damascus, and then lived thirty-four years under the eye of an empire that had already shown him exactly what it would do.

He never held a sword again. So he held the line with the one thing a tyranny cannot ban without revealing itself: he taught his community how to pray.

Through Quranic recitation, poetic reflection, a lecture by Sheikh Shabbir Hassanally, maqtal narration, lamentation, a full recitation of the Supplication for the People of the Frontiers, and Ziyarat Arbaeen, the evening opened the twenty-seventh supplication of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya — and found inside it a theology of murabata, the holding of a line, described as the most available grade of witness there is.

Quran and Poetic Reflection

The evening opened with Quranic recitation setting the frame for a night given to the guarding of a seam — the permission granted to those who are fought against because they have been wronged, and the divine promise that the earth belongs to God, who bequeaths it to whom He wills.

The accompanying reflection, Becoming a Zainabi, carried the previous night’s charge directly into the present one — and asked the question the lecture would spend two hours answering:

“Must I too face the sword, or stand before a tyrant’s court? Or has my own time, my own place, its own battle to be fought?”

Its answer was the pivot into the whole evening: that the path runs through Imam Zain al-Abideen (AS), and through prayer — a struggle that begins within, where the frontier between truth and falsehood must first be guarded in the heart.

“The work before me is not to conquer the world, but to conquer myself. To loosen the grip of worldly attachment becomes the first act of resistance.”

The Man Who Wrote a Curriculum in a Cell

In his lecture, Sheikh Shabbir Hassanally began not with the text but with the conditions of the man who composed it.

Every word Imam Zain al-Abideen (AS) spoke in public was carried back to Damascus. The open teaching his grandfather the Commander of the Faithful (AS) had done from the pulpit of Kufa was, for him, impossible; a teaching circle that looked political would have ended in his death and the end of the line.

So he took the one form of speech a tyranny cannot easily forbid — because to forbid it is to be seen forbidding a man from speaking to God — and poured the whole curriculum into it. Theology, ethics, statecraft, the rights one soul owes another: all of it smuggled past the censor inside supplication.

“It is the prayer that had to carry a curriculum, because the man who wrote it was not allowed to teach.”

The lecture drew out the point that gives the night its shape: the Supplication for the People of the Frontiers is not merely a text about holding a line under occupation. It is the act of holding a line under occupation. Imam Khamenei’s description of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya as the great ocean of Islamic teachings was cited, along with the fact that he opened his own treatment of the collection with this very supplication.

What the Wall Is Actually Guarding

The lecture then opened the word itself. Drawing on Sayyid Ali Khan al-Madani’s classical commentary Riyad al-Salikin, it explained that a thaghr is the vulnerable place, the gap, the point through which an enemy is feared to enter — and that the Arabs use the same word for the mouth, because the mouth is the opening through which a thing passes into the body. The frontier is the mouth of the land.

But the supplication’s first petition, the lecture stressed, does not ask for a higher wall. It asks God to fortify the frontiers through Your might — because, as al-Madani writes, every fortress other than His fortification is prone to collapse. A people can have the highest walls on earth and be defenceless; a people can have no wall at all and be a fortress.

The one who holds the thaghr is a murabit — from the root rabt, to tie, to bind. The frontier-guard is, by his very name, the one who is tethered to the seam and will not be pulled off it.

Shaheed Mutahhari was cited from his study Jihad to complete the move: that the borders of Islam are not lines drawn on a map but creedal frontiers, and that if the whole earth belongs to God, the true frontier is the dividing line between truth and falsehood, wherever on this earth it may fall.

The lecture then turned to the supplication’s own thesis-verse: the petition that God make the defenders forget, when they meet the enemy, the deceiving world; that He erase from their hearts khatarat al-mal al-futun, the whispering thought of seductive wealth; and that He place the Garden before their eyes.

The order of operations, the lecture observed, is deliberate. Before the sword meets the sword, the supplication asks God to clear the world out of the defender’s heart — because men do not break and run when the enemy is strong; they break when there is something in their own chest they are still holding onto. Imam Khamenei was cited on this exact phrase: the worst fitna is the one inside the human heart.

Then the sentence the lecture identified as the most important in the whole supplication — the petition that God relieve the guardians of fighting so they may worship, so that none be worshipped in the regions of the earth except You, and no forehead of theirs be rubbed in the dust for less than You.

“The frontier exists to keep the sujud safe. The line is held so that the testimony can keep being made.”

The forehead on the ground, the lecture argued, is itself the witness — the body’s own shahada, saying without words that there is no god but God. Which makes murabata not a detour into military history but a grade of witness in its own right: the witness who guards the place where witness happens.

The lecture also addressed, directly and without softening, the imprecations against the enemy army that appear further into the supplication. These were placed in their proper genre — war-imprecation against a combatant aggressor in an age of total siege warfare — and identified as bara’a, the disavowal of an oppressing power, never baghd, the hatred of a people. Ayatullah Shaykh Mohsen Araki was cited on the principle the supplication establishes: that jihad is not sacred chaos, but a bounded ethical order.

The Line Runs Through Every People

Having moved the frontier off the map, the lecture turned to the borders we actually live inside — and to who drew them.

It set out the three contradictory promises of the First World War period: the McMahon–Hussein correspondence promising the Arabs independence; the secret Sykes–Picot agreement of May 1916 dividing the same lands between Britain and France; and the Balfour Declaration of November 1917. Three promises, to three parties, over one land, none compatible with the others — and the Arabs learned of the secret carve-up only because the Russian revolutionaries found the treaty in the Tsar’s archives and published it.

The lecture then did something the popular telling does not: it corrected the myth in our own favour. Sykes–Picot did not draw today’s borders; most of its lines did not survive, and some later boundaries followed older Ottoman administrative divisions rather than European whim. But what survives the correction, the lecture argued, is more damning, not less.

“They did not draw our borders with a ruler. They presumed to own us.”

And then the turn that gives the section its integrity. The instant one says the British did this, the lecture warned, one has taken the sin of judging a whole people — the sin done to us — and simply aimed it back. Empire was not a people; it was a clique and its chartered companies. The same century that produced the East India Company produced the Lancashire mill-workers who, with unemployment near sixty per cent and their families facing eviction, refused to touch slave-picked Confederate cotton — the English working poor choosing solidarity with the enslaved over their own survival. The Irish, in the same century, were London’s own colonial victims.

The Quranic rule was cited as the governing principle: no bearer of burdens shall bear the burden of another (Surah Al An’aam, Chapter 6, The Cattle, Verse 164). Collective guilt is forbidden. The oppressor, therefore, is never a nation and never a race — it is a system, which the Quran calls istikbar, arrogance made into power, and that system has citizens in every land, including ours.

“The frontier is the seam between oppressor and oppressed — and it runs through London as surely as it runs through Karbala. It does not run between peoples. It runs through every one of them.”

The Quranic diagnosis was made explicit through Surah al-Qasas (Chapter 28, The Narrative, Verse 4): Pharaoh exalted himself in the land, made its people into factions, and kept a group of them weak. Three moves in one verse — istikbar, divide-and-rule, and the deliberate manufacture of the mustad’afin. Divide-and-rule, the lecture noted, has a Quranic name, and it is Pharaoh’s.

Allamah Tabataba’i was cited from al-Mizan on the corollary: that the true boundaries of the earth are not the political lines drawn by tyrants but those separating the Party of God from the party of Satan — so that wherever an oppressed one resists a tyrant, the thaghr is actualised. Imam Khomeini’s formulation closed the section: wherever there is oppression and an oppressed one stands against the oppressor, there is Karbala, and there is the frontier of Islam.

The Fortress and the Breach

Who, then, holds the line today? The lecture’s answer, drawn from a hadith of Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (AS) preserved in al-Ihtijaj and Bihar al-Anwar, was that most frontier-guards carry no weapon at all: the scholars among our Shia are the murabitun, stationed at the frontier that faces Iblis and his defiant ones, preventing them from coming out against the weak among our Shia.

The weapon on that frontier is the clear word that keeps a believer from being overrun by confusion. And the lecture noted the implication for the room it was being delivered in: the work of tabyeen — clarification — is itself the holding of a line.

But the hadith was immediately turned into a question, and the question was the hardest of the evening: which scholar? Because the turban is not the frontier, and the title is not the wall.

Imam Musa al-Kadhim (AS) was cited from al-Kafi: when a believing jurist dies, a breach is opened in Islam that nothing can fill, for the believing jurists are the fortresses of Islam as a city’s wall is a fortress for it. The lecture put both halves together into a warning:

“A wall with a rotten stone in it is more dangerous than no wall at all — because the people behind it believe they are protected, and they are not. The imposter in the scholar’s robe is not a harmless disappointment. He is a breach that everyone has mistaken for the wall.”

Imam Khomeini was cited from his Forty Hadith, warning the seminarians that this knowledge is either a proof for you or a proof against you, and that carried by a man who has not purified himself its consequence is dire — for him and for his community. Ayatullah Jawadi-Amoli was cited on the hijab akbar, the greatest veil: the one who has memorised the words but never guarded them from his own lower self issues verdicts and writes books, yet produces only confusion and darkness. The pastoral cost was named plainly: a young person already struggling watches a brittle argument snap on the pulpit and concludes not that the speaker was weak, but that the religion was.

The lecture offered a single test for distinguishing the guard from the imposter — and it was not how much a man knows. Citing Imam Ali (AS) from Ghurar al-Hikam: saying “I do not know” is half of knowledge. The true guard can say it because he fears God more than the silence in the room. The imposter cannot, because his standing depends on the performance that he has every answer.

The Sheikh then explicitly placed himself under the same measure — that the hadith is not a medal any speaker pins on his own chest, but a weight, a fear, and a prayer; that the frontier is held by the one who trembles at the responsibility of it and lost by the one who has learned to enjoy it.

The Reward Handed to Those Who Never Fight

The most consequential movement of the evening came from the supplication’s final turn.

Having prayed for the army and for the individual warrior, Imam Zain al-Abideen (AS) turns to everyone else — and hands them the reward of the frontier anyway. The one who takes a fighter’s place at home. The one who looks after the family he left. The one who gives a little of his wealth. The one who guards his honour in his absence. And the one who only made a supplication for him.

Of all of these, the Imam asks God to grant the like of the warrior’s own reward, weight for weight, and like for like.

And then further still — to the believer who fully intended to go and was simply prevented, by weakness or poverty or the closing of every road: write his name among the worshippers, make the reward of the strugglers fall due to him, and place him firmly in the ranks of the martyrs and the righteous.

“Intention is the witness. The grade is God’s to assign. You do not have to die to be counted among those who bore witness. You have to be willing — truly willing — and then to hold the line that is given to you.”

From there the lecture named the frontiers actually available to those listening: the workplace or the group chat where a lie about Islam or about the oppressed is comfortable and the truth is costly; the home where children will either come to love the Ahl al-Bayt (AS) or quietly drift, and where the line is held not in one heroic moment but in ten thousand unwitnessed ones; and, before either of those, the heart.

The supplication’s petition for the individual warrior was cited to make the point complete: that God remove from him hypocrisy and purify him from the seeking of fame. Ayatullah Jawadi-Amoli’s summary was quoted — that in the logic of the Sahifa, the monotheist soldier must be armed with sincerity before he is armed with iron.

“The truest witness is the one no one will ever livestream. The frontier most faithfully held is almost always the one with no camera on it.”

The lecture also carried a discipline that has run through the series: that the shielding of a brother means neither exposing his weakness nor covering his wrong. Citing Surah al-Tawbah (Chapter 9, The Repentance, Verse 71) — that the believers are awliya of one another precisely in that they enjoin right and forbid wrong — and Surah al-Ma’idah (Chapter 5, The Table Spread, Verse 2) on the prohibition of cooperating in sin, alongside the Prophet’s instruction to help a brother who is a wrongdoer by restraining him from his wrongdoing, it distinguished the concealing of a private failing from any licence over the right of the wronged. Al-Naraqi’s Jami’ al-Sa’adat was cited on the manner of it: conceal from the crowd, counsel in private, and bear the harm that comes of it.

The section closed on a man of our own century. Hajj Qasem Soleimani’s letter to his daughter Fatema — published as Why Do I Fight? — was read as the definition of murabata in a father’s own words: that he had looked at every road available to him and found that commerce ends in shiny coins and a few houses which have no effect on his destiny; that even the love of his children could not cure the fear of losing them; and that therefore I had to tether myself to Someone who could cure me of this, and He is none other than God.

The word he used was muttasil — bound, tied, connected. The murabit is by his very name the one who is tied; and the frontier-guard of our own age defined it, in a letter to his child, as being tied to God and to nothing else.

The Prayer Was the Weapon of the Occupied

The evening’s maqtal, The Prayer for the Frontiers, was again narrated in the voice of Imam al-Mahdi (AJ), and placed beside the candle a single new object: a string of prayer beads.

It carried the survival of the fever-stricken Imam at Karbala — the order given to kill him on his sickbed, and Sayyidah Zaynab (AS) throwing herself across his body — and made the theological point plainly: he did not survive because he was spared. He survived because God kept him, on purpose, against the whole intention of the empire, so that the thing the swords were sent to end would not end.

“They cut down every man who could fight. They did not understand that the one they almost overlooked, the fevered boy in the tent, was the one who would carry the whole of it forward. The empire counts swords. It does not know how to count a line.”

The narration kept the Damascus court deliberately brief, having given it in full the night before, and spent its weight instead on what came after: the return to Medina under surveillance, every road of open teaching closed, and the decision that defines him.

“So when he could no longer raise a sword — he raised his hands. He hid a curriculum inside a book of prayers.”

The maqtal closed on the line’s continuation — from the fourth Imam to his son, down the Imams of guidance, through the scholars who guarded his prayers under every passing tyrant, to the room in which it was being recited — and handed over the series’ recurring question in its Night 12 form: he held the line that I am coming to complete. He is in every prayer you say from his book.

Lamentation, the Supplication, and Ziyarat Arbaeen

The evening’s lamentation, Zayn al-Abedeen, mourned the survivor of Karbala — the sick young man in the iron collar who carried the Proof of God through the cities of the people who had killed his father.

Uniquely among the fifteen nights of the series, the programme then departed from its usual sequence to carry a full recitation of Du’a Ahl ath-Thughur — the Supplication for the People of the Frontiers — in its own segment, because the supplication is the very heart of the evening rather than an illustration within it.

The programme concluded, as each Arbaeen night does, with the poetic English rendering of Ziyarat Arbaeen.

Taken together, the evening made an argument that reframes the whole question of what a witness is permitted to be. If the frontier were only a border, then witness would belong to soldiers and the rest of us would be spectators. But the supplication itself hands the guardian’s reward to the one who supported him, to the one who guarded his honour, to the one who only prayed — and to the one who intended the whole of it and was prevented.

Which means the frontier is not somewhere else. It is the workplace where the lie is comfortable, the home where the next generation is being formed, and the chamber of one’s own heart — and every believer is already standing at one, whether or not they have named it.

The lecture’s closing charge was that we hold that line the way the Household held theirs: by knowing, not by dividing; naming the system and never the people; refusing the manufactured fear of any people as the technique it is; and doing the disavowing first in the dark, where no one is filming.

The Chimerical Peacemaker

In the theatre of Western politics, few narratives have been as aggressively marketed as Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed status as a “peacemaker.” His supporters and sympathetic media outlets frequently repeat the mantra that he “did not start any new wars,” pointing to his transactional diplomacy and occasional rhetoric about withdrawing US troops. However, this narrative relies on a dangerously narrow, 20th-century definition of warfare.

To the nations and peoples of the Global South, and specifically the Axis of Resistance, the reality is starkly different. His approach to international relations often mirrors an insidious, predatory tactic: delivering a venomous bite to the global order, then feigning a soothing breath to numb the immediate pain, only for the deep, systemic toxin of instability to spread and cripple the victim long after the encounter. He sparks conflicts and fractures alliances with chaotic recklessness, only to posture as the indispensable arbiter of the very crises he engineered.

The Trump administration did not bring peace; it merely rebranded imperial aggression. By shifting from large-scale ground invasions to a doctrine of maximum pressure, targeted state terrorism, and unleashed proxy violence, his tenure orchestrated a profound escalation of conflict that continues to destabilise West Asia and beyond.

The Assassination Doctrine: Brinkmanship as Policy

The most glaring refutation of the “peacemaker” myth occurred in the early hours of January 3, 2020, on a road near Baghdad International Airport. The US drone assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, a revered commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and their companions, was not an act of peace. It was an unprecedented act of state terrorism.

This was not a defensive measure; it was a deliberate, calculated escalation that brought the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran to the very brink of direct, all-out war. By violating Iraqi sovereignty and eliminating a key architect of regional stability against ISIS, the administration demonstrated a willingness to ignite a regional conflagration for domestic political posturing. Peace is not forged by murdering foreign officials on sovereign soil.

Economic Warfare and Global Destabilisation

If one expands the definition of war to include its true, devastating impact on civilian populations, the concept of “economic warfare” must be centred. The Trump administration’s “Maximum Pressure” campaign against Iran was not diplomacy; it was a comprehensive siege designed to induce state collapse and popular suffering. By unilaterally tearing up the JCPOA (Iran Nuclear Deal) and imposing crushing secondary sanctions, the administration weaponised the global financial system.

Crucially, this economic warfare is not confined to declared adversaries; it bleeds into the global financial system, creating shockwaves that even US allies cannot escape. As recent reports, Japan and South Korea have been forced into rare, coordinated interventions to prop up the yen and the won amid US monetary coordination

This is not a sign of American economic leadership, but of American economic destabilisation. By weaponising the US dollar and exporting financial volatility, Washington forces even allied nations into defensive, desperate manoeuvres, proving that its economic policies act as a blunt instrument of global disruption.

Fuelling the Fire: Record Arms Sales and Proxy Complicity

A true peacemaker restricts the flow of weapons to conflict zones. The Trump administration did the exact opposite. His tenure oversaw some of the largest arms deals in modern history, most notably the unchecked, billion-dollar flow of advanced weaponry to the Saudi-UAE coalition.

This military pipeline directly enabled the ongoing genocide in Yemen, where Western-made bombs fell on school buses, weddings, and hospitals. Furthermore, his administration’s unwavering, blank-check support for the Zionist entity—including the relocation of the US embassy to occupied Al-Quds and the brokering of the Abraham Accords—was not a peace process. It was the normalisation of occupation and a strategic attempt to isolate the Palestinian resistance by building an anti-Iran alliance. It entrenched apartheid rather than dismantling it.

The Shadow War: Relaxed Rules of Engagement

While touting troop withdrawals, the administration simultaneously relaxed the rules of engagement for US military operations in Africa and the Middle East. The result was a surge in covert drone strikes and special operations raids, particularly in Somalia, Yemen, and Syria.

This “light footprint” strategy outsources violence to the shadows. It disproportionately results in civilian casualties, fuels anti-American sentiment, and creates the very vacuum that extremist groups exploit. Delegating war to unmanned aerial vehicles does not end conflict; it merely sanitises it for the Western public while terrorising communities abroad.

Conclusion: The Illusion of Peace

The assertion that Donald Trump “stopped wars” is a semantic trick. It confuses the absence of a declared, large-scale ground invasion with the presence of peace.

True peace requires justice, respect for sovereignty, and diplomatic good faith. The Trump doctrine offered none of these. Instead, it delivered a masterclass in asymmetric imperial aggression: assassinating leaders, starving populations through sanctions, arming regional hegemonies, and expanding the drone war.

For the Axis of Resistance and the oppressed peoples of the world, the lesson is clear. The face of empire may change, and its methods may shift from boots on the ground to financial blockades and drone strikes, but its objective remains the same: domination. Recognising this reality is the first step in dismantling the myth and building a truly just and liberated future.

TEHRAN — Before the curtain rises, the sound of ta’zieh fills the hall. The audience is placed in the atmosphere of Muharram before a single word is spoken — though the story that follows begins neither on a battlefield nor with any of the familiar retellings of Ashura.

“The Cherry Tree,” a puppet-and-live performance directed by Sharareh Tayyar, is running at the Mehr Theatre of Tehran’s Art Bureau. Taking an allegorical approach to freedom and resistance to oppression, it translates those themes into a visual and narrative language shaped for children and adolescents.

Birds, and a bully

The story centres on a beautiful tree that offers sanctuary to a community of birds. Their peace is broken by the arrival of a bullying woodpecker, whose presence spreads distress through the branches. Only when a nightingale arrives do the birds find the inspiration — and the unity — to stand together and defend their home.

The script draws on a story from Why? Why? Why? by Claire Jobert, the Tehran-based French writer and illustrator of children’s books, whose original text retells the life of Imam Hussein (AS) and the events of Ashura for young readers. The play follows the same instinct, using symbolic storytelling to carry moral and spiritual values to an audience that might struggle with the history told directly.

Born in a philosophy classroom

By the director’s own account, the production began not in a rehearsal room but in her teaching. Tayyar works in the field of philosophy for children, and says strengthening critical thinking in young audiences matters greatly to her; she tries to build every production around three kinds of thinking — creative, caring, and critical — and to be clear about which one a given show is reaching for.

That intention shapes the allegory. Alongside standing up to a bully, the play asks its audience to question, to think for themselves, and not simply to believe whatever they are told.

Now in its third consecutive year staged during Muharram, “The Cherry Tree” was remounted under commission from the Omid House of Theatre after a well-received earlier run at Talar-e Honar. It was written by Sharareh Tayyar and Mohammad Hossein Habibi, with puppets and set designed by Mohammad Reza Bahr-al-Olumi and puppetry by Fahimeh Baroutchi, Amir Hossein Ensafi, Sharareh Tayyar, and Amir Mohammad Ensafi. Ammar Tafti narrates, with voice acting by Paria Tayyar. Amir Hossein Ensafi composed the songs and music, Hassan Mahdavi created the animation, Mohammad Reza Shamloufard designed the lighting, and Zahra Nasrollah and Bahram Hedayat served as assistant directors.

The events behind the allegory

Ashura falls on the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, and marks the martyrdom of Imam Hussein (AS), grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (S). In 680 CE, the Imam led a small group of family members and companions against the vast army of the Umayyad caliph Yazid I on the plains of Karbala, in present-day Iraq.

The confrontation was not a contest for power but a moral stand against tyranny. Outnumbered and denied access to water for days, Imam Hussein and his companions held to their principles until their martyrdom.

The legacy of that stand has long since outgrown its time and place, enduring as a symbol of the struggle between truth and falsehood. For millions, Imam Hussein remains the Prince of Martyrs and a lasting figure of courage, sacrifice, and integrity; his refusal to pledge allegiance to a corrupt ruler, at the cost of his own life and those of his loved ones, continues to inspire movements for liberation and human rights. Ashura is commemorated each year through mourning rituals, processions, and reflection on the victory of the oppressed over the oppressor.

“The Cherry Tree” runs at the Mehr Theatre until 7 August, Wednesdays to Fridays at 18:30.

Reference: Tehran Times

The Echoes of History in West Asia

As tensions escalate in West Asia, the world’s attention is fixed on the Strait of Hormuz and the precarious future of global energy markets. Yet, beneath the surface of military posturing lies a more fundamental question: Can the United States actually win a war against Iran?

Despite possessing the world’s largest economy, a global network of military bases, and unparalleled conventional firepower, the United States has a well-documented history of losing wars. Its defeats have not come at the hands of rival superpowers, but against determined nations and resistance movements with a fraction of its economic and military capacity. By examining the Vietnam War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War, a clear historical pattern emerges—one that suggests any future US aggression against Iran is destined to repeat the same catastrophic failures.

The Illusion of Justification

Every modern US military intervention has been launched under a fabricated or highly questionable pretext. In Vietnam, the Gulf of Tonkin incident was later revealed to be a manufactured justification for escalation. In Iraq, the entire 2003 invasion was predicated on the false claim of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Today, the stated justification for hostility toward Iran is its nuclear program. Yet, this argument collapses under the weight of its own hypocrisy: the United States and its regional proxy, the Zionist entity, possess vast, undeclared nuclear arsenals, yet demand that Iran forfeit its sovereign right to peaceful nuclear technology. This double standard has eroded Washington’s credibility on the global stage, ensuring that any military strike would be widely condemned as an illegitimate act of imperial aggression, likely driven by Tel Aviv’s strategic anxieties rather than genuine global security concerns.

The Geography of Resistance

Geography has consistently been the great equaliser against technologically superior invading forces. In Vietnam, dense jungles neutralised US armour and air power. In Afghanistan, the rugged mountainous terrain earned the country its moniker as the “graveyard of empires,” crippling supply lines for both the British and the Soviets, and later, the Americans.

Iran presents an even more formidable geographic challenge. Its vast landscape of high plateaus and fortified mountain ranges makes a ground invasion a logistical nightmare. Furthermore, Iran has strategically weaponised its geography through the Strait of Hormuz. With approximately 20% of the world’s crude oil transiting this narrow chokepoint, any prolonged conflict would allow Iran to dictate the pace of the war, drawing the entire global economy into the conflict and turning international opinion decisively against the aggressor.

The Asymmetric Advantage

The United States is optimised for conventional, state-on-state warfare. However, its adversaries have consistently employed asymmetric warfare to bleed the American war machine. In Vietnam, it was the Cu Chi tunnel networks; in Iraq, it was the devastating use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

Today, Iran has mastered the modern asymmetric battlefield. The Islamic Republic’s drone program, for instance, represents a devastating cost-exchange imbalance. An Iranian attack drone may cost around $20,000 to produce, while the advanced US missile required to intercept it costs upwards of $2 million. Similarly, the deployment of advanced naval mines—costing mere thousands of dollars—can threaten or disable oil tankers carrying hundreds of millions of dollars in cargo. In a protracted conflict, this economic asymmetry will rapidly exhaust US resources and morale.

The Domestic Fracture

No empire can sustain a war without the consent, or at least the acquiescence, of its domestic population. In Vietnam, televised horrors and mounting casualties sparked a massive anti-war movement. In Afghanistan, the “endless war” drained over $2 trillion, leading to profound war fatigue. In Iraq, the failure to find WMDs caused President George W. Bush’s approval ratings to plummet from 91% to 25%.

Currently, the United States is grappling with severe domestic inflation and a soaring cost of living. A new war in the Middle East would inevitably trigger a spike in global oil prices, exacerbating economic hardship for the American working class. The resulting domestic backlash would become a primary catalyst for forcing a US withdrawal, just as it has in the past.

The Mirage of State-Building

Military occupation is only the first phase; the true challenge is political consolidation. In Vietnam, the US-backed Republic of Vietnam collapsed due to corruption and a lack of popular legitimacy. In Iraq, the reckless de-Ba’athification policy created a power vacuum that directly facilitated the rise of ISIS.

In Iran, the prospect of US-imposed “regime change” is a historical impossibility. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was a profound, popular rejection of Western hegemony and the US-backed Pahlavi monarchy. Any attempt to reinstall a figure like Reza Pahlavi or establish a “Western-friendly” provisional government would be immediately recognised as an illegitimate puppet regime. The deep-rooted anti-imperialist consciousness of the Iranian people would guarantee relentless internal resistance, making stable state-building an unachievable fantasy.

Winning Battles, Losing Wars

History provides a clear metric for victory and defeat. The United States has frequently achieved short-term tactical victories—capturing Saigon’s periphery, toppling the Taliban in weeks, or marching into Baghdad. However, it has consistently failed to achieve its long-term political objectives, ultimately retreating in defeat.

The pattern is undeniable: a short-term military advantage followed by a long-term political collapse. Should the United States choose the path of war against Iran, it will not be confronting a fragile state, but a deeply entrenched, ideologically driven, and strategically sophisticated Axis of Resistance. The laws of history are unforgiving, and they dictate that imperial overreach will, once again, meet its inevitable defeat.

Reference: Zeinab AL Saffar

The Seismic Shift of Al-Aqsa Flood

On October 7, 2023, the geopolitical landscape of West Asia was fundamentally altered. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was not merely a military maneuver; it was, as Martyr Ismail Haniyeh profoundly articulated, “the beginning of the disappearance of the occupation of our land.” For decades, the Palestinian people endured an open-air prison, systemic apartheid, and relentless humiliation. The resistance shattered that paradigm, moving the battle into the heart of the Zionist entity and declaring, unequivocally, that the cycle of subjugation had ended.

The Myth of Invincibility and Western Complicity

In the months leading up to his martyrdom in Tehran on July 31, 2024, Haniyeh provided a masterful analysis of the unfolding genocide in Gaza. He refused to let the world obscure the truth: the Zionist regime’s barbarism was entirely enabled by Western hegemony. “The United States is the main axis of the Israeli war on Gaza,” he stated, pointing to the relentless flow of American weaponry and the diplomatic shielding provided through repeated UN Security Council vetoes.

Yet, Haniyeh also recognised the strategic silver lining in this global complicity. The overwhelming international condemnation, including historic UN General Assembly votes demanding a ceasefire, signalled a profound political victory. It demonstrated that the US-led unipolar order was irreversibly fracturing, and the moral bankruptcy of the so-called “rules-based international order” was exposed to the world.

The Strategic Failure of the Zionist Project

Despite the unprecedented scale of destruction—dropping more explosives on Gaza than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima—Haniyeh correctly diagnosed the Zionist regime’s actions as the thrashing of a trapped enemy. The stated goals of the war were clear: eliminate the resistance, retrieve captives by force, and forcibly displace the Palestinian population.

Two years on, the verdict is in. The enemy has failed on all fronts. Hamas and the broader Palestinian resistance remain intact and operationally capable. The displaced have refused to leave their land, and the regime’s moral standing has been obliterated on the global stage. As Haniyeh warned, “The massacres being committed... are a clear manifestation of the quagmire that the occupying regime and its ground forces are bogged down in.”

The Price of Steadfastness (Sumud)

What elevated Haniyeh’s leadership was not just his political acumen, but his profound personal sacrifice. He did not lead from a distance; he shared the blood and tears of his people. After losing nearly 60 family members to Israeli airstrikes, including three of his sons and three grandchildren in a single strike, his response was not despair, but transcendent defiance.

“I thank Allah for this honour,” he declared, transforming personal grief into a collective vow. “With this pain and blood, we create hope, a future, and freedom for our people, our cause, and our nation.” This is the essence of Sumud (steadfastness)—a conviction that the blood of martyrs is the seed of liberation.

The Axis of Resistance: A Unified Front

Haniyeh’s vision extended far beyond the borders of historic Palestine. He understood that the battle for Al-Quds was the central front in a broader regional struggle against imperialism. He consistently and gratefully acknowledged the indispensable role of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Ansarullah, and the Islamic resistance in Iraq and Syria.

“This underscores the critical strategy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in supporting resistance and countering the influence of regional representations of arrogance,” he noted. The Axis of Resistance has proven that it is not a collection of fragmented factions, but a cohesive, strategic front capable of absorbing leadership losses and emerging stronger. As the saying goes, leaders may be targeted, but the resistance is an idea—and ideas are bulletproof.

Conclusion: The Road to Liberation

Martyr Ismail Haniyeh left behind no room for false compromises. He was clear that any negotiation must guarantee a complete cessation of aggression, total Israeli withdrawal, the lifting of the siege, and the right of return for displaced Palestinians. He rejected any post-war arrangement that excluded the resistance, calling such illusions “castles that will not fall.”

Two years after his assassination, the Zionist regime remains isolated, its economy strained, and its society fractured. Meanwhile, the flame of resistance burns brighter than ever. Haniyeh’s legacy is not one of mourning, but of mobilisation. He taught us that a movement which offers its leaders and founders as martyrs for the dignity of its people will never be defeated.

The road to liberation is long, but as Martyr Haniyeh affirmed with his final breath: the resistance is the sole solution, and ultimate victory is inevitable.

Reference: PressTv

The global race for Artificial Intelligence dominance is no longer confined to the sterile laboratories of Silicon Valley or the server farms of tech giants. It has officially entered the realm of high-stakes international diplomacy.

The recent announcement that Iran has officially joined the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (WAICO) as a founding member is a stark indicator that the future of global AI governance will not be a monolith, but a multipolar contest.

Initiated by China and headquartered in Shanghai, WAICO was established in mid-July 2026 as an independent intergovernmental body. Its stated goal is to promote international AI cooperation, ensure equitable development, and establish a framework for global AI governance.

On the surface, these sound like the standard, optimistic talking points of any new international cooperative. However, reading between the lines of Iran’s swift inclusion reveals a much deeper geopolitical strategy.

For the past several years, the West has attempted to corner the market on AI ethics, safety, and regulation. Through initiatives like the EU’s sweeping AI Act, the Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit, and various UN resolutions driven by the US and Europe, Western democracies have sought to build a regulatory “walled garden.”

This approach inherently dictates who gets access to the most powerful models, how AI can be utilised, and what ethical frameworks must govern its application.

China’s establishment of WAICO is a direct counterweight to this Western hegemony. By creating its own intergovernmental AI organisation, Beijing is effectively offering a parallel technological architecture to the Global South and Eastern bloc.

It is a powerful signal to nations historically alienated or sanctioned by the West:

For Iran, becoming a founding member of WAICO is a massive strategic victory. Heavily sanctioned and economically isolated by the US and its allies, Tehran has long struggled to keep pace with next-generation technological infrastructure. By locking arms with China in WAICO, Iran gains a critical backdoor to advanced AI research, applied technologies, and international data-sharing mechanisms. As Iranian Ambassador Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli aptly noted during his meeting with Chinese officials, Iran is positioning itself to “utilise the capacities of artificial intelligence for the sustainable development and progress of societies.”

Beyond mere technology transfer, this move solidifies the expanding Sino-Iranian strategic partnership. It proves that the 25-year cooperation agreement signed between the two nations in 2021 is extending rapidly into the digital frontier.

For China, elevating Iran to a founding member of WAICO helps legitimise the organization as a truly international, intergovernmental body, rather than just a domestic Chinese initiative.

Ultimately, Iran’s integration into WAICO underscores a critical reality for the coming decade:

AI is not just a tool for economic productivity; it is the fundamental infrastructure of national security and geopolitical leverage. The world is witnessing the bifurcation of global AI governance. As the digital iron curtain descends, nations are being forced to choose their technological alliances, and Iran has just planted its flag firmly in the East.

Original News Item from IRNA

Glossary of Organisations and Acronym

• WAICO (World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization): A newly formed (July 2026) independent intergovernmental organization initiated by China. Headquartered in Shanghai, its stated mandate is to create an international framework for AI governance, ensure developing nations have equitable access to AI technology, and set global safety and ethical standards outside of Western-dominated tech frameworks.

• WAIC (World Artificial Intelligence Conference): An annual technology summit held in Shanghai. It serves as a premier global platform for AI developers, tech companies, and governments to showcase advancements and discuss AI policies. WAICO was officially launched during the 2026 iteration of this conference.

• IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency): The official, state-run news agency of the government of Iran, which published the original report of this diplomatic meeting. (Original Link — in Farsi)

Arbaeen Program, – The Arbaeen segment of Truth Promoters’ Shahada (Witness) series opened on Thursday with the eleventh session of the fifteen-night programme, returning to Karbala not at the hour of the killing but in the silence that followed it.

Ten nights of Muharram had ended at noon on Ashura, at a body in a field. The eleventh began at the same place — and asked what the previous ten had left unasked: what happens to a testimony when the one bearing it has been silenced?

Through Quranic recitation, poetic reflection, a lecture by Sheikh Shabbir Hassanally, maqtal narration, lamentation, and Ziyarat Arbaeen, the evening argued that the answer is found in the two survivors of the House — Sayyidah Zainab (as) and Imam Ali ibn al-Husain Zain al-Abideen (as) — and in a station our tradition rarely names: the theology of the one who is left.

The full event page can be found at Truth Promoters

Quran and Poetic Reflection

The evening opened with a recitation of Surah al-Ahzab (33:35) — the verse in which every station of faith is named twice, once for the men and once for the women. The submitting men and the submitting women. The truthful men and the truthful women. The patient men and the patient women.

The selection was deliberate. On a night given to a woman’s witness, the Quran had named her station before she was born.

The accompanying reflection set the frame the whole evening would work within:

“If Husain is the Master of Witnesses, then Zainab is the Witness after the Witness. One gave the truth its body. The other carried its voice when that body fell silent.”

The reflection closed on the charge the night would spend two hours earning: that the chain of witness did not end at Karbala, did not end in Kufa, did not end in Damascus — and that today the call of Sayyidah Zainab (as) rests in our hands.

The Work That Begins at the Body

In his lecture, Sheikh Shabbir Hassanally opened on a distinction the tradition has not often drawn: that there are two kinds of work at Karbala, and only one of them ends at the sword.

The martyr’s work, he said, is finished when he falls. The survivor’s work begins there.

Mercy, that afternoon, would have been to die. Sayyidah Zainab (as) had lost her brother the Imam, her nephews, and her own two sons, sent out that morning by her own hand. To go on living was not the easy path. She refused the mercy of dying, the lecture argued, because she understood something the empire did not: that if she died, the testimony died with her, and Karbala became one more massacre in a century full of them.

The lecture traced her first act as a survivor — not private grief, but public indictment. From a rise of ground overlooking the field she called out to the commander of the army killing her brother by name. Umar ibn Sa’d wept into his beard, the chronicles record, and did not stop his soldiers.

“The very first act of the survivor was not private weeping. It was public testimony, naming the guilty to his face.”

Then the act the lecture presented as definitive. Walking out across the field to her brother’s body, she did not name what had happened as the enemy had named it. Ibn Ziyad and Yazid had a word for Karbala: a rebellion put down. Standing over the worst thing that had ever happened to a human family, she reached past their word and gave it God’s word — an offering, a qurban, lifted toward the heavens.

The lecture was careful here, in keeping with the series’ stated method: the exact wording is carried in the husayniyya mourning tradition rather than traced to the earliest chains, and it was presented as such. But the act itself, whatever the precise phrasing, was unmistakable — the refusal to let the enemy define the meaning of what it had just done.

“The empire may hold the field. It certainly does not get to hold the meaning.”

The Chains Became a Pulpit

The lecture then turned to the reversal at the centre of the night.

The Umayyad state intended the captive caravan as a spectacle of humiliation — the family of the Prophet (saw) driven through the cities of Iraq and Syria in chains, with the heads of the martyrs carried on spears ahead of them, as proof that resistance was finished. The lecture argued that they had, without understanding it, escorted the prosecution into their own house. Every town became a courtroom. Every crowd gathered to stare became a jury.

In Kufa — the city of the eighteen thousand letters that had invited Imam Husain (as) and then abandoned his ambassador — the people wept as the column passed. Sayyidah Zainab (as) raised her hand and a whole city fell silent before a single captive woman. She did not thank them for their tears. Citing the Quran’s own image from Surah al-Nahl (16:92), she named them as the woman who unravels her own yarn after she has firmly spun it, and asked how they would ever wash away the murder of the grandson of the Seal of the Prophets.

Brought then before Ubaydullah ibn Ziyad, who asked her to her face how she had found what God did to her brother and her house, she gave the answer that has outlasted his name and his city:

“I saw nothing but beauty.”

The lecture was insistent that this be heard correctly. She did not say she saw beauty instead of the horror; she had carried the horror in her own two hands. She was naming what the horror could not reach — a covenant kept, an offering accepted, a witness that would outlive the empire that made it. This, the lecture said, is rida bi’l-qada — contentment with the decree — which is not the numbness of one who feels no pain, but the refusal to let the pain have the last word.

In the throne room at Damascus, before the nobles of Syria and the ambassadors of foreign kings, she rose unveiled and exhausted and dismantled Yazid where he sat. She raised no weapon. She raised his genealogy — O son of the freed ones — reminding the entire court that his family were the tulaqa, those pardoned by the Prophet (saw) at the conquest of Makkah by a mercy they had done nothing to earn. She then recited to him the Quran’s warning to the tyrant who mistakes God’s patience for God’s approval (3:178), and for her own dead the verse that turns every one of them from a corpse into a living thing (3:169).

Beside her, chained and gravely ill, Imam Zain al-Abideen (as) asked for the pulpit of the empire — and took the room apart from it, not by argument but by naming his own lineage link by link, until the hall understood whose sons had been paraded before them in chains. When Yazid, alarmed at his own court, ordered the call to prayer to cut him off, the Imam turned at the words I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God and asked: this Muhammad — is he your grandfather, or mine?

The chronicles record that men stood and walked out of that hall rather than pray behind Yazid.

“The most dangerous thing a tyranny can face is not an army. It is a captive who refuses to be ashamed.”

They had nothing, the lecture summarised — no army, no freedom, no allies, not even the veils taken from their heads. With a clear voice, the truth, and the refusal to be ashamed, they brought down the moral authority of a dynasty that held armies, gold, and an empire.

Grace, Not a Cage

From the survivors’ witness the lecture turned to a doctrinal question the series had been building toward: what rank was Sayyidah Zainab (as) given?

Our tradition describes her as mahfuzatun ‘an al-khata — protected from error. The lecture drew the line carefully. She is not one of the Fourteen Infallibles; the intrinsic, total infallibility of al-’ismah al-kubra belongs to the Prophet (saw), Sayyidah Fatimah al-Zahra (as), and the twelve Imams (as), and to no one else. What the tradition attributes to her is hifz — a God-given guarding of tongue and judgement, laid upon a soul purified almost to that summit, for the carrying of a particular trust. Imam Zain al-Abideen (as) himself testified to its source, addressing her in Kufa as a knower untaught, one who comprehends without being instructed.

The lecture then opened the doctrine of ‘ismah itself — drawing on Shaykh al-Mufid, Allamah al-Hilli, Allamah Tabataba’i and Ayatullah Jawadi-Amoli — and made the argument that matters most for those listening.

Infallibility, it stressed, is not the suspension of free will, and not a metaphysical inability to sin. If it were, the Infallibles would deserve no praise for their obedience: a door earns no honour for staying shut when it has no power to open. It is lutf — divine grace: an abundance of the knowledge and love of God so total that, while the full capacity to sin remains, the desire to sin carries no weight against it. Shaykh al-Mufid’s formulation was cited directly: a grace by which disobedience becomes impossible from him while he still possesses the power over both.

Ayatullah Misbah-Yazdi’s image was used to make it concrete: a glass of poison set before a person in their right mind. The hand is free; no one restrains it. And yet it will never lift the glass — not because it is forced, but because the certainty of what the poison would do makes the thought unthinkable.

“The Ma’sumin are not a different species of being. They are the human being as God designed the human being to be — the perfected end of the very road every one of us is invited to walk.”

The lecture closed this section on the most hopeful point of the evening: citing Ayatullah Jawadi-Amoli, that the door of al-’ismah al-iktisabiyya — an acquired protection, earned through the long labour of purifying the self — is closed to no one.

The lecture was equally precise about what Sayyidah Zainab (as) did not do. She did not become the Imam, and the Imamate did not pass through her; it belonged, by explicit divine designation, to Imam Zain al-Abideen (as) from the day of Ashura. What she did was guard him — and she made it unmistakable who the authority now was. When the tents were set alight and the women had to choose between the fire and the open desert, she turned to that young, ill man and asked for his ruling. O aunt, he answered, you must flee. She obeyed on the instant.

The Method Is Part of the Witness

The final movement of the lecture drew a line the series has returned to repeatedly: that how a witness is carried is itself part of the witness.

Neither Sayyidah Zainab (as) nor Imam Zain al-Abideen (as), the lecture observed, sent a knife into Ibn Ziyad’s hall in the night. Imam Husain (as) had not sent an assassin into Kufa before Karbala to remove the governor and solve the problem. The House of the Prophet (saw) fought, when it fought, face to face — and otherwise testified with the open voice.

The lecture set out the jurisprudence behind this: the prohibition of fatk and ghilah — killing by stealth, while a man feels safe — and of ghadr, the breaking of a covenant of safety. These are forbidden in their essence, by the consensus of our jurists from the classical age to the maraji’ of Qum and Najaf today, and forbidden even against an enemy combatant.

The decisive text was cited from al-Kafi: Abu al-Sabbah al-Kinani asking Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (as) whether he might assassinate a neighbour who openly cursed the Commander of the Faithful (as), and the Imam’s reply — this is assassination, and the Messenger of God forbade assassination. Islam has shackled assassination. The Quranic foundation was Surah al-Anfal (8:58), which forbids even ending a treaty by stealth: if you fear treachery, throw the treaty back openly, on equal terms.

Imam Ali (as) was cited from Nahj al-Balagha as the living embodiment of the rule — by God, Mu’awiyah is no more cunning than I am, but he is treacherous — alongside his maxim that stands against every man who has excused a crime by claiming he followed orders: there is no obedience to any creature in disobedience to the Creator.

The lecture connected this directly to Muslim ibn Aqil (as), who had refused to strike Ibn Ziyad unguarded in the house of Hani, citing this very teaching — and to Shaheed Mutahhari’s rule that in Islam the end does not make the means permissible.

“Assassination is not the weapon of the strong. It is the confession of the defeated. A power that has to kill in the dark is a power that knows it has already lost the argument in the daylight.”

The principle was then carried into the present, through the example of Hajj Imad Mughniyeh — who, as Dr Hossein Akbari records, began with tazkiyat al-nafs and the religious sciences before any of the outer work — and through an incident in southern Lebanon in which an operation against a senior figure of the occupying regime was aborted at the final moment, on the order of Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, because a child and non-combatants were present. The reasoning given was that in this theology there is no such category as collateral damage; any soul killed is a burden the killers must answer for before God, and Surah al-Ma’idah (5:32) settles the matter.

Turned onto the present, the lecture posed the question it left unanswered because it has no answer: what is the excuse for killing a professor of physics, a cancer researcher, a scholar in his car with his family beside him? That, it said, is the killing of knowledge itself — and the confession of a power that cannot stand in the daylight.

The Voice That Borrowed Its Strength

The evening’s maqtal, The Witness After the Witness, was presented — as the whole series has been — as a devotional narration in the voice of Imam al-Mahdi (aj), looking back across the veils of the occultation.

It carried the aftermath from the mound to the body to the chains to the two courts. But its distinguishing feature was structural rather than narrative. The voice of the narration had broken on the tenth night, at the trampling, and had not been whole since. Across this maqtal it audibly recovers — and the narration names exactly where the strength comes from:

“It was not my own endurance that taught my voice how to go on after the trampling. It was her word. The strength you hear returning to this voice tonight — it is borrowed. I borrowed it from my aunt.”

Beside the candle that has stood through every night of the series, the maqtal placed a single new object: a torn length of dark cloth — the veil pulled from the heads of the women of the House.

The narration closed by handing the series’ recurring question to those listening, in its sharpest form yet. Where is your brother? He is here. He is in every mouth that still says his name.

Lamentation and Ziyarat Arbaeen

The evening’s lamentation, Ya Zaynab, turned the night’s argument into elegy — honouring the daughter of Imam Ali (as) who watched what no sister should be asked to watch, and who carried the message of Karbala out of the desert and into the courts of the men who had made it.

The programme concluded with a full poetic English rendering of Ziyarat Arbaeen — the visitation Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (AS) taught to Safwan al-Jammal, recited across the five Arbaeen nights of the series. Unlike Ziyarat Ashura, it does not close in grief. It closes in a pledge: our help is made ready for you, until God gives you leave — so, with you, with you, and never with your enemy.

Taken together, the evening’s Quranic reflection, poetry, lecture, maqtal, lamentation and ziyarah made a single argument: that the killing of a witness is not the end of the witness, and that everything which happened after the sword at Karbala was decided by what the survivors chose to do with what they had been left.

The regime could behead the witness. It could not behead the witness-after-the-witness. And the evening closed by naming the inheritance plainly: that the chain of testimony Sayyidah Zainab (AS) opened in the market of Kufa has never once closed — that it ran from her to Imam Zain al-Abideen (AS), through the Imams of guidance to the Imam of our age (AJ), and through the scholars who preserved it under every passing tyranny, until it reached the room in which it was being recited.

We are the witnesses after the witness now.

Hundreds of Jordanian politicians, lawyers, academics, and civil society figures have signed an open letter calling for the withdrawal of US military forces from Jordan, in a rare public challenge to the kingdom’s authorities.

The signatories argue that the American presence threatens Jordanian sovereignty and raises the risk of the country being pulled into a wider regional war. “We maintain that their presence exposes Jordan to security, political and economic risks that serve no national interest,” the letter states, “and increases the likelihood of our country being dragged into a regional conflict to which it is not a party.” Those who signed said they had acted from a sense of national responsibility.

‘We do not accept the government’s policies’

Sufyan al-Tell, a 90-year-old political activist, said he signed to show that many Jordanians oppose their government’s close ties with the United States and Israel. “We as Jordanian people do not accept the government’s policies or its use of Jordan and its capabilities in one way or another to defend Israel,” he said.

Al-Tell, who was detained in 2022 after planning to criticise King Abdullah II publicly, said hundreds more had signed despite fear of reprisal. “The authorities’ response is to open the prison doors and take us to prison one by one,” he said. He also argued that the US presence itself endangers Jordanians, pointing to debris from Iranian missiles intercepted over the kingdom by American air defences.

A kingdom in the middle

Jordan hosts around 4,000 US troops and has served as a hub for the American campaign against Iran, with its security partnership reinforced by roughly $1.65 billion in US economic and military assistance last year.

The letter arrives as Iranian missile and drone attacks on US military sites in Jordan have intensified, setting off air raid sirens across the country and deepening fears that the kingdom is being drawn further into the war. The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps issued a message to the Jordanian people on Thursday praising the growing opposition, saying the positions taken by Jordanian intellectuals had narrowed the enemy’s room for manoeuvre. In a separate message last week, the IRGC asserted a right to strike US bases used as launchpads against Iranian territory.

Tensions have surfaced in parliament. According to The New York Times, lawmakers clashed after MP Ali al-Khalayleh proposed offering condolences for US soldiers killed in Iranian strikes, with one member responding that the US military was killing children, women, and the elderly.

A letter no outlet will print

Though the letter has circulated widely on social media, no Jordanian media organisation has published it — a silence analysts attribute to government restrictions and widespread self-censorship.

That comes against a broader tightening of expression. Rights organisations have criticised legislation introduced in 2023 imposing strict penalties for offences such as “spreading fake news” and “endangering social peace,” which they say has been used against journalists, activists, and critics of the government. Aaron Magid, author of The Most American King: Abdullah of Jordan, notes that Jordanians have been prosecuted not only for criticising their own government but for criticising its allies. Authorities banned the Muslim Brotherhood last year, accusing it of plotting attacks inside the country.

Reference: PressTv

The UK Supreme Court has granted permission for Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori to challenge a Court of Appeal ruling that upheld the government’s ban on the group.

The court said the appeal may proceed, with a hearing expected in the final quarter of 2026. “We will be arguing in the Supreme Court that the ban is unlawful, as it is disproportionate to free speech and the right to protest,” Ammori wrote on X. “The fight continues.”

The ban and its consequences

The case concerns the government’s decision last July to proscribe Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act. The group was banned after members entered a Royal Air Force base and spray-painted two aircraft, causing what police put at £7 million ($9.4 million) in damage.

Since the proscription, hundreds of pro-Palestine activists have been arrested across the country, with authorities applying terrorism legislation to those accused of supporting or demonstrating in favour of the group. The Defend Our Juries campaign said 70 people had been arrested under terrorism laws outside Westminster Magistrates Court.

Courts divided

The appeal follows a series of conflicting judgments. In February, the High Court ruled that designating Palestine Action a terrorist organisation was disproportionate and unlawful. That decision was overturned last month by the Court of Appeal, leaving the ban in force.

Human rights organisations and UN experts have criticised the government’s handling of pro-Palestine protest, warning that the crackdown risks undermining freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly. They have urged ministers to reverse the ban, arguing that restrictions on protest must meet international human rights standards.

Reference: Al-Mayadeen

Kenyan wildlife authorities have opened an investigation after 15 elephants died in the areas surrounding Amboseli National Park over the course of a single month, with early findings pointing to possible exposure to a toxic substance, The Guardian has reported.

The Kenya Wildlife Service said 10 of the animals showed partial paralysis shortly before dying, each within roughly two days of the first symptoms appearing. Investigators could not establish whether the remaining five had suffered the same condition, as their remains were either badly decomposed or had been scavenged.

The deaths occurred in the Kimana Sanctuary and on Kuku Ranch, both close to the park. Most of the dead were females and calves; only one adult male was among them.

Two laboratories, two answers

Samples taken from the carcasses were sent for analysis. Tests at the University of Nairobi identified what authorities described as a possible toxic substance — but further examinations at a government laboratory detected none of the toxins covered by its testing process, leaving the cause unresolved.

The Kenya Wildlife Service said laboratory work was continuing, alongside efforts to determine whether the animals had encountered a shared environmental contaminant. “Environmental investigations are also being undertaken, including the analysis of water sources and other potential environmental contaminants within the affected areas, to establish whether the elephants were exposed to a common source,” the authority said.

Kenya has recorded elephant poisonings before, in cases linked to poaching and to conflict between local communities and wildlife. Authorities said there was no indication the condition was infectious or posed any danger to people.

Amboseli, near the Tanzanian border and known for its large herds and views of Mount Kilimanjaro, is thought to support a population of around 2,000 elephants.

Reference: Al-Mayadeen

Yemen’s Ansarullah leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi has condemned joint US-Saudi military action against Iraq, arguing that the strikes form part of a wider American-Israeli project to reshape West Asia and establish a “Greater Israel.”

In a televised address on Thursday, al-Houthi expressed full solidarity with the Iraqi people. “We denounce and condemn the unjust US-Saudi aggression, and we affirm our complete solidarity with the dear Iraqi people, its security institutions, and its esteemed mujahideen at all levels of support and stance,” he said. He also vowed to maintain Yemen’s “siege for a siege” strategy against Saudi Arabia.

A warning to the Gulf

The central message of the speech was directed at Arab governments aligned with Washington. “The Zionist plan is undoubtedly a danger to the entire Ummah,” al-Houthi said. “It makes no exceptions whatsoever, not even for those who serve America.”

He characterised alignment with the enemy — whether military, economic, or in the media sphere — as a deviant path amounting to apostasy and regression, and one that overturns Islamic values and principles.

Al-Houthi called on the Islamic Ummah to recognise what he described as the “clear, exposed, and explicit” nature of the threat, urging Muslim nations to act according to their religious principles and ethics rather than following those he said had chosen the other side.

‘Dangerous indicators’ beneath al-Aqsa

The Ansarullah leader also warned of what he called dangerous indicators that Israel is preparing to bring about the indirect destruction of parts of the al-Aqsa Mosque through extensive excavation work beneath the site.

Complicit regional governments, he alleged, are being relied upon to dilute global outrage over the matter through media distortion.

The remarks extend a line of argument al-Houthi has developed across recent addresses, in which he has cast the war on Iran, the pressure on Syria and Lebanon, and now the strikes on Iraq as connected elements of a single regional design — and has repeatedly warned Gulf states hosting American bases that their cooperation offers them no protection from it.

Reference: PressTv

The British government has announced an £8.4 billion ($11.2 billion) investment in the next phase of its Dreadnought-class nuclear submarine programme, prompting sharp criticism from Jeremy Corbyn days before the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham was due to unveil the funding at BAE Systems’ shipyard in Barrow, north-west England, with Downing Street framing it as “a major £8.4bn investment in the UK’s nuclear deterrent, delivering jobs and opportunity for young people for years to come.” The framing is deliberate: Burnham’s new administration has made rising youth unemployment a central priority.

‘Imagine if we spent that money on social care’

Corbyn, now leader of This is Your Party, condemned the announcement in a post on X. “Next week is the anniversary of Hiroshima,” he wrote. “Today, the Prime Minister has announced more investment in weapons of mass destruction.”

“The UK spends £12,000 every minute on nuclear weapons,” he added. “Imagine if we spent that money on social care, schools and the NHS instead.”

What the money buys

BAE Systems has been contracted to deliver four Dreadnought-class submarines as part of Britain’s nuclear deterrent, and will receive £5.9 billion ($7.87 billion) of the total, with the remainder going to the wider supply chain.

Downing Street said the funding would help the first vessel, HMS Dreadnought, complete sea trials and enter service with the Royal Navy in the early 2030s, allow the second, HMS Valiant, to reach sea trials, and carry the third and fourth boats forward through construction.

Burnham said the programme would support 47,000 jobs and apprenticeships. The submarines “will protect Britain for decades to come, and the 47,000 jobs and apprenticeships will change lives both in this town and in dozens of places like it,” he was expected to tell workers at Barrow. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said the investment “secures our commitment to deliver Dreadnought Class submarines by backing British industry.”

Pressure from Washington and Brussels

The announcement forms part of a wider commitment of more than £63 billion ($84 billion) over the next four years to fund the nuclear deterrent under the government’s Defence Investment Plan — a figure that also covers the attack submarines being developed under the AUKUS alliance with Australia and the United States.

Burnham is under pressure from the US and NATO allies to raise military spending while simultaneously confronting a £4.7 billion ($6.27 billion) shortfall in the defence plan over the same period.

Reference: Al-Mayadeen

Grand Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli has reaffirmed the bond between the Iranian people and the culture of Ashura, saying the spirit of Imam Husayn’s uprising (AS) remains alive among them today.

The senior cleric was speaking in a video message to a commemoration ceremony in the northern city of Amol for 398 martyrs of the Iranian Army. He paid tribute to all of them, singling out Major General Sayyed Masoud Monfared Niyaki — a freethinking and widely respected figure from Amol’s Sadat lineage who, he said, pursued a military career and ultimately attained martyrdom.

The culture of sacrifice is not confined to any one region, he said: “The Iranian nation has never initiated aggression, but it will give no quarter to any invader.” He recalled the 1981 uprising in Amol, when residents defended their city, and forty were killed after an enemy attack — an episode recorded in Imam Khomeini’s political-divine testament.

‘Islam is a religion of chivalry’

Much of the message concerned the conduct of war. Citing a narration from Imam Sadiq (AS) that the Prophet Muhammad (AS) never launched surprise night raids on his enemies, Ayatollah Javadi Amoli said:

“We are students of a divine school unparalleled in time and space. The Holy Prophet, despite facing enemies intent on killing him, never launched a night raid. Islam is a religion of chivalry and nobility, instructing us to fight even disbelievers with integrity, never deviating from humane and divine principles.”

He noted that Imam Ali (AS) would delay the start of battle as long as possible through dialogue and negotiation, preferring to begin later in the day so that the noon hour of divine mercy and the approach of night might limit the bloodshed — unless the enemy struck first and defence became imperative.

The presence and sacrifice of ordinary people in defending the country, he said, was a manifestation of divine support, citing the Quranic verse “It is He who supported you with His help and with the believers” (al-Anfal, Chapter 8, The Spoils of War, Verse 62). The spontaneous mobilisation of men, women, the young and the old, he said, was that promise made visible.

The magnetism of Ashura

“Our country and nation are Husayni,” the Grand Ayatollah affirmed. “The spirit that manifested in Imam Husayn’s uprising is alive and flowing among our people today.”

He recounted the sacrifice of Saeed ibn Abdullah Hanafi on the Day of Ashura as an enduring example of loyalty to Wilayah and the defence of truth, saying the secret of Ashura’s endurance lies in the sincerity and self-sacrifice of the Imam’s companions — a magnetic force that still draws millions to the Arbaeen pilgrimage.

He thanked the people for their steadfastness: “We appreciate each and every one of you — elders, brothers, sisters, daughters, and sons — who have held the ground,” adding his gratitude to the officials who had safeguarded the struggle.

A friendship of seventy years

In the message’s most affecting passage, the Grand Ayatollah — visibly choked with emotion — spoke of his friendship with the martyred Leader of the Revolution.

“We express our gratitude to the Supreme Leader and pray for our own martyr,” he said. “This dear friend of ours — from the day I entered Qom seventy years ago, despite a slight age difference, we were friends until now. A 70-year companionship is not a small thing. For a person to lose a friend of seventy years, it is no small loss.”

He closed by underlining the importance of security, calm, and national unity as the country’s most pressing needs. “God forbid we take a path that lacks divine approval,” he urged. “Never let a displeasing word leave your pure lips. If there is an opinion or a plan, it must be voiced in a friendly atmosphere. Let this country be administered with total calm and security, so that we may deliver this Islamic system to its true owner.”

He ended with prayers for the martyrs, for Imam Khomeini and the late president, asking God to resurrect all martyrs with Imam Husayn (AS) and to bestow special grace upon their mothers and families.

Reference: ABNA24

Claims that a young Iranian woman had been shot dead during disturbances in Isfahan collapsed within hours on Tuesday when she appeared in a video confirming she was alive and announcing legal action against those who had spread the report.

The allegation surfaced in the early hours of Tuesday, following the execution of two men convicted over the killing of four police officers during unrest in the city in January. As disturbances broke out near the site, social media accounts and several Persian-language outlets based outside Iran began circulating claims that a woman — named in some posts as Anahita Azarshab, in others as Anita Azarshah — had been shot near Alikhani Square.

“Unfortunately, news has been circulated claiming that I was killed in Isfahan province,” she said in the video. “I completely deny this report, and I have filed a legal complaint against the individual or individuals who published this false news.”

How the claim spread

The story was amplified rapidly across Persian- and English-language accounts on X, a number of them openly pro-Israel or advocating foreign intervention in Iran, before any evidence had emerged.

One user describing herself as a journalist wrote that the woman had been shot dead by “an Islamic regime sniper” for protesting the executions. A verified account attributed the killing to “IRGC snipers.” A UK-based activist repeated the claim and called on President Donald Trump to “stop talking and act.”

Isfahan’s provincial police information centre issued a detailed rejection, stating that no report or case matching the claims had been registered, that comprehensive investigations had found the allegations unsupported by any evidence, and that the reports appeared intended to create psychological insecurity and shape public opinion. Police said they would continue monitoring for those responsible for fabricated reports.

A documented pattern

The episode follows a series of similar cases in which images and identities have been misattributed.

In one widely shared post, a photograph said to show a 28-year-old protester killed “in her father’s arms demanding freedom” was identified by users as an image of the Turkish actress Tuba Büyüküstün; the post was deleted. Another photograph, presented as an Iranian woman fatally shot in Tehran, was traced to the Pakistani actress and model Asma Kamran. Images of the American actress Jenna Ortega and other public figures have likewise been recycled and presented as Iranian casualties.

The pattern has also been documented by researchers. The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab reported last year on a network of fake X accounts, dubbed “PRISONBREAK,” which it linked to Israeli backing and said used AI and coordinated messaging to spread disinformation aimed at encouraging unrest inside Iran. Israel’s own Haaretz reported separately on a covert campaign of fake accounts and AI-generated content promoting the exiled Reza Pahlavi.

An analysis by Al Jazeera found that of more than 4,300 posts examined around the unrest, 94 percent were reposts, with fewer than 170 accounts generating the original content that eventually reached over 18 million users — a distribution pattern the researchers characterised as astroturfing, in which a small number of coordinated actors manufacture the appearance of broad consensus.

The disputed backdrop

The executions that preceded Tuesday’s disturbances remain contested. According to Iranian judicial documents, the two men were convicted of direct roles in an attack on 8 January in Isfahan’s Malekshahr district, in which a mob attacked public property and four unarmed police officers were killed. Court records described both men as armed participants and set out detailed allegations of their conduct; both were sentenced to death.

Iranian authorities maintain that the January demonstrations began as peaceful protests over economic hardship worsened by years of Western sanctions, before being hijacked by organised groups they say were armed and supported by intelligence services linked to the United States and Israel. According to Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, 3,117 people died during the unrest.

Those characterisations — of the protests, of the executed men, and of the death toll — are disputed by Iranian opposition groups and international rights organisations, which have raised concerns about the executions and about the treatment of detainees. Iranian officials counter that casualty figures circulated abroad during the unrest were dramatically inflated, noting that several people reported dead subsequently appeared in public alive.

Whatever the wider dispute, the immediate claim in this case was contradicted within hours by the woman herself.

Reference: PressTv

The 2026 war in Lebanon marked a decisive shift in Israeli military doctrine: the movement from limited, specialist use of remotely operated machines to a structural reliance on autonomous systems, culminating in the creation of a new military branch — the Robot Corps.

The contrast with the 2024 campaign is instructive. Then, remotely piloted robots were deployed sparingly and by elite units, and suffered persistent tactical shortcomings, most notably the loss of communications underground in tunnel environments. By 2026 the approach had been rebuilt around autonomy and artificial intelligence rather than remote control.

The doctrine of the empty first line

The driver was demographic and political rather than technological. Israeli society’s acute sensitivity to military fatalities produced a doctrine of minimising human casualties, which in turn generated what became known as the robotic frontline: machines placed in the first line of engagement to absorb the shock of ambushes in place of soldiers.

The arsenal deployed to that end was extensive. It included unmanned D9 “Panda” bulldozers; M113 armoured personnel carriers converted into remotely operated explosive vehicles for tunnel work; Talon and Roni reconnaissance robots; and SMASH automated firing systems used against drones, improvised explosive devices, and snipers. Edge computing algorithms and an integrated chatbot system were layered on top to preserve machine autonomy and compress decision-making cycles without human intervention.

Where the machines met the ambush

On the ground, this architecture ran into the adaptability of the Islamic Resistance, which proved able to neutralise the systems to a significant degree through asymmetric methods.

At Haddatha, the explosive-laden carriers were destroyed before reaching their objectives. In the Al-Muhaysibat–Al-Qantara engagement, resistance fighters simply declined to engage the reconnaissance robots sent ahead as bait, waiting instead for the armoured vehicles that followed — turning the machines’ own role as advance scouts into a liability. At Yuhmor al-Shaqif, the principle was inverted altogether, with attack drones used to destroy Israeli engineering robots.

Desperation, not dominance

The conclusion the campaign supports is not that Israel achieved a preemptive technological advantage, but something closer to the opposite: the scale of automation reflected an operational inability to fight at zero range. Machines were sent forward because soldiers could not be.

The wider implication points toward frontlines increasingly emptied of human presence — a development that will compel resistance movements to build counter-doctrines around asymmetric electronic warfare, deceptive traps, and cyber operations.

The experience of 2026 suggests the limits of the automated approach. Algorithmic and robotic superiority carries real destructive capability, but it remains vulnerable to being read, deceived, and defeated by the will and improvisation of irregular warfare.

Reference: Zeinab Al Saffar | The Lines

Professor Jamileh Alamolhoda, a university academic and the widow of former Iranian president Ebrahim Raeisi, has praised Iranian women for their insight and wisdom, saying they have forged a new union of reason and emotion in an age of estrangement.

In a message issued on Monday, she marked what she called the 150th day of the Iranian people’s presence across the arenas of public life during the US-Israeli war against the country — a movement she said began with the martyrdom of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution on 28 February, and which she placed within a longer historical and spiritual continuum.

“Noble Iranian women have truly given meaning to womanhood,” she wrote, saying they had shown a cold and spiritless world that the warmth of sacrifice and epic endeavour has its source in the warmth of the family. In an era of human estrangement, she said, they had written new chapters in the union of reason and emotion.

The street as classroom

Much of her message concerned the transformation of public space. The street, she argued, is no longer merely a thoroughfare for indifferent or impatient passers-by; religious democracy has changed its character, making it a venue for gatherings that raise awareness and inspire hope.

She described such assemblies as “universities of relearning” — places where ordinary people, alongside philosophers, intellectuals, and scholars, come to understand that the path of development and the path of salvation are one and the same. “They learn that happiness and salvation are not attained through seclusion, stillness, or mystical withdrawal,” she wrote. “Instead, they realise that true perfection is achieved through presence, taking risks, self-sacrifice, and serving God’s creation.”

The participation of women alongside other family members, particularly children, had been vital in changing the nature of the street and reviving an ethic of sacrifice, she said.

Justice and sacrifice

Drawing a comparison with developed countries, Alamolhoda argued that their experience shows neither social cohesion nor development is possible without justice — while cautioning that standing for justice requires devotion and self-sacrifice. “It is only the combination of justice and sacrifice that can guarantee comprehensive development and genuine human progress,” she said.

Women, she added, have been at the forefront of struggles against injustice, oppression, cultural imperialism, and organised violence. In the present awakening, she said, they had once again succeeded — clearly, precisely, and through their actions — in unveiling one of the great mysteries of creation.

“They have shown that the ascent toward the divine depends upon the fire of God’s love, which ignites in the home, spreads to the streets, moves into the public square, and ultimately rises to the heavens,” she wrote, closing with a call for steadfastness in defence not only of ideals but of homes and families.

Reference: PressTv

Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with Donald Trump in Washington is shaping up as an attempt to define the next phase of American regional strategy, with Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, and normalisation increasingly handled as interlocking parts of a single framework rather than separate files.

The Israeli prime minister is expected to press for any future agreement with Iran to reach well beyond the nuclear question. His demands are reported to centre on two points: strict limits on Iran’s ballistic missile programme, and an end to Iranian support for the region’s resistance movements.

Also on the agenda are the framework agreement on Lebanon, the situation in Gaza, and the possible expansion of the Abraham Accords.

Where the partners diverge

For all the strategic alignment between them, the two leaders are not pulling in the same direction. Trump is reported to favour a temporary diplomatic pause to open space for negotiations. Netanyahu continues to prefer sustained military pressure.

That divergence is sharpened by domestic circumstance on both sides. Trump faces mounting political and economic difficulties ahead of November’s midterm elections. Netanyahu is manoeuvring between shifting regional realities and intensifying pressure at home.

A single geopolitical package

The strategic significance of the meeting lies in that consolidation. What is under discussion is not a series of discrete negotiations but the treatment of Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, and Gulf normalisation as components of one interconnected settlement — with concessions in one arena traded against movement in another.

For Tehran, the implication is direct. An agreement structured this way would require Iran to accept constraints on its missile capability and to abandon its regional partners as the price of any nuclear understanding — terms that go considerably further than anything previously on the table, and which Iranian officials have consistently rejected.

Reference: The Observer

At least 30 people have been killed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir over the past two days as security forces intensified a crackdown on protests over disputed regional elections, according to local activists.

The Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), a local civil society group, said Pakistani security forces opened fire on tens of thousands of peaceful protesters, killing 25 on Monday and five more on Tuesday.

JAAC spokesman Sardar Aman Khan said forces fired on unarmed demonstrators in Mirpur on Tuesday, following deadly clashes the previous day. He further alleged that authorities had removed bodies from hospitals and streets to conceal the scale of the killings.

Pakistani authorities have denied responsibility for the deaths. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has called for an investigation into the violence.

The dispute over reserved seats

The unrest centres on the first phase of regional elections, which local groups say are skewed in favour of the central government through a system of parliamentary seats reserved for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir living elsewhere in Pakistan.

JAAC supporters have urged residents to boycott the vote, arguing that those seats are used by Pakistan’s major parties to shape the local parliament in favour of candidates who mostly live outside the region. The group wants the reserved seats reassigned to residents of the territory — a change the central government says would require a constitutional amendment.

Information Minister Attaullah Tarar accused India of backing the protests, alleging demonstrators had received “funds and instructions” from New Delhi. JAAC rejected the claim, saying the movement is driven by local demands for political representation and reform.

Two months of protest

The demonstrations began in early June, with sit-ins, strikes, and rallies demanding electoral reform ahead of the regional parliamentary elections, which opened on Monday and run in three phases until 10 August.

JAAC has campaigned in the past for lower food prices and for greater political and economic rights for local residents. Protests have turned deadly in previous years, including in 2024 and 2025, but the current unrest appears to be the bloodiest since the group was founded in 2023.

Pakistan-administered Kashmir forms part of the disputed Himalayan region claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan.

Reference: PressTv

Dozens of Palestinian women and children remain trapped in Gaza despite the British Foreign Office stating it is prepared to evacuate them, according to a report in The Guardian, which found the Home Office is actively working to prevent their arrival in Britain.

The Home Office suspended refugee family reunion applications last September, promising stricter replacement rules by the spring. Nearly a year on, no new framework has appeared, and the suspension remains in place. Families who applied before the freeze, hoping to join relatives already settled in the UK, have been left in bureaucratic limbo even though their applications were technically accepted for processing.

Willing at one end, resistant at the other

Evacuations from Gaza do take place via Jordan for those with a legal right to leave. But the Home Office has withheld the onward travel assurance families need to continue to the UK, and has reportedly mounted legal challenges to prevent reunification — at times fielding several senior barristers against a single case.

This is despite the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office confirming its willingness to carry out the evacuations, and despite Belgium, France, Italy, and Ireland already facilitating comparable transfers for families resident in those countries.

Lawyers acting for the families argue that Palestinian applicants face harsher scrutiny than refugees from other conflict zones. In some cases, officials have cited the fact that applicants — including young children — come from “a territory where terrorists operate” as grounds for concern.

‘Compelling circumstances’

The Guardian reported the case of PhD student Bassem Abudagga, whose family’s evacuation has been agreed by the Foreign Office, yet who has been told by the Home Office that no decision on an onward travel assurance will come before December. When his lawyers described the unsanitary, infested conditions his relatives are living in and the bombardment they face, officials replied that such conditions alone do not meet the threshold of “compelling circumstances.”

Another Palestinian refugee in Britain remains separated from his wife, his three children, and an orphaned teenage nephew the family had adopted. He said the government had promised to help his family and then abandoned them, asking how a mother and her children could be regarded as a security threat.

Sarah Crowe, a solicitor at Leigh Day representing several of the families, said the government had abandoned vulnerable families in Gaza after promising assistance, and that the Home Office was blocking reunification even as the Foreign Office stood ready and willing to evacuate them.

A Home Office spokesperson defended the freeze, saying the reforms mean family reunion will no longer be automatic and that applicants must meet tougher criteria in future.

Reference: Al-Mayadeen

The Israeli newspaper Maariv has likened Israel’s condition in the summer of 2026 to that of a patient in intensive care, citing widening internal divisions, military exhaustion, and compounding security, social, and economic crises as serious threats to the country’s future.

Were an X-ray of Israel to be taken, the paper wrote in an analytical report, the result would be “a horrifying picture of a state of emergency.”

Millions of Israelis, it said, are living with uncertainty and anxiety about what lies ahead, still fearing the possibility of an Iranian attack and the Israeli military response that would follow — a condition that has disrupted ordinary life and weighed heavily on businesses and economic activity.

A society turning on itself

Maariv described a deep social and political rift, writing that Israeli society has fractured into hostile groups and factions amid a spreading wave of internal hatred, crime, and violence. The rise in killings and general insecurity, it argued, means internal threats have become as dangerous as external ones.

The paper was equally stark about the military, describing the army as worn out and exhausted, with forces on alert along every border even as their capability and readiness have severely deteriorated.

Blame, and a warning about elections

Maariv accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of irresponsibility, arguing that the policies of recent years have brought the country to a condition whose effects are now plainly visible.

It closed with a warning that holding elections in the present atmosphere could deepen the divisions further, calling instead for a halt to tension-generating processes and a focus on resolving the crises facing the army, the economy, education, health, and society.

Israel’s survival in the face of regional threats, the paper concluded, requires a united and capable society — something that, by its own assessment, appears more distant now than ever.

Reference: ABNA24