The depressing durability of dictatorships
Authoritarian regimes that have emerged out of violent social revolutions have survived on average three times as long as their non-revolutionary counterparts
Edward Luttwak, the uncontained strategist
“Christ, Edward! No!” Edward Luttwak has just lunged at me with a knife in the study of the house he…
Putin’s mistake was to discard the velvet glove
To study international politics since the turn of the century has been, in large part, to study the changing nature…
The romance and rebellion of an Iranian picnic
Iranians adore a picnic. During the country’s most ancient festival, Nowruz, the Persian new year, they brandish baskets of food…
Iran and Russia are probing Biden’s weaknesses
The world seems to have got a lot more dangerous since Joe Biden took office last January. It wasn’t long…
Ukrainians are living through a hell on earth
‘Live long enough and you watch everyone go mad,’ the man said to me gloomily. It was around 2009, and…
What Bernard-Henri Lévy sees for the West
I meet Bernard-Henri Lévy at his apartment in central Paris on a chilly autumn afternoon. Considerations of security prohibit me from…
Is Russia preparing to invade Ukraine?
I can still hear the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Just a mile or so from us, thousands of Russian troops…
How drones are transforming modern conflicts
Last week’s announcement that US officials believe Iran was behind the October drone strike on the al-Tanf US base in…
Iran is an immediate winner of the Taliban takeover
A staple of observing politics is watching rhetoric curdle into reality. Operation Enduring Freedom, thought up and slapped together in…
Pakistan is the true winner from the Afghan debacle
‘Everyone is getting out – and fast’, the man tells me over a crackling line. He is tired, clearly subdued.…
My roots burnt with Greece
On 11 March this year my father passed away from prostate cancer after several weeks in a hospital in central…
Iran is running out of water
It’s far from an exact science, but if you want to get a sense of where the world is heading…
The tragedy of Lebanon — from safe haven to bankruptcy
Mountains are humanity’s most comforting topographical feature. Wherever you find them you will also find those who have flocked to…
Tehran is repeating the Shah's mistakes
The Iranian province of Khuzestan is oil-rich but water-poor. At the best of times, the southwestern region is a problem…
The dark past of Iran's new presidential favourite
‘Each vote counts…come and vote and choose your president. This is important for the future of your country.’ These were…
Israel's shadow war with Iran explodes into 'nuclear terrorism'
If time flows at an even pace, then history does not. Joe Biden may still be new in the job,…
Greece and Britain’s long history of fighting autocracy
As I write, it is mid-morning in Athens and fighter jets are roaring overhead. My windows rattle, the sky splinters,…
Walls go up after the Berlin Wall comes down
In her 2017 travelogue Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, the writer and poet Kapka Kassabova meets Emel,…
Iran’s missile diplomacy
It’s a time for delivering messages in the Middle East, where messages rarely come without their near constant attendant: violence.…
The toxic side-effect of the Trump Twitter ban
Almost two weeks on from the storming of the US Capitol it’s becoming plainer that the most substantive changes to…
Iran's people will pay a heavy price for Khamenei's vaccine politics
The Middle East is changing. Israelis now splurge at Gucci and Rolex in Dubai. Saudi women speed down desert highways;…
John le Carré’s London of exiles is alive and well
‘I’m an Englishman born and bred, almost.’ So says Karim Amir, protagonist of Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of…
Why Egypt's brutal regime is cracking down on critics
History is accelerating in the Middle East once more. Nuclear scientists are dying in Iran; and again, in Egypt, the…
Why Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed now
Yesterday afternoon someone assassinated yet another scientist working on Iran’s nuclear programme. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh headed up the ministry of defence’s…
