Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Jasim Al-Azzawi
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Iraq: A gaping enigma and a global laughingstock
The Joke That Wrote Itself There is a particular category of political absurdity that defies satire, not because it is too subtle to mock, but because it is so shameless that any satirist attempting to embellish it would only shrink it. Iraq has once again gifted the world with such…
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When words become weapons
On Easter morning, April 5, 2026, the President of the United States reached, not for diplomacy, but for the obscenity. His message to Iran, broadcast to the world in the language of a street brawl, read like a threat scrawled on a prison wall: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy…
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Operational suicide? Inside the military revolt against a ground war in Iran
The dismissal that tells the story Gen. Randy George, the US Army’s Chief of Staff, was removed from his post by War Secretary Pete Hegseth and ordered to retire immediately last week. Ostensibly, the sacking seemed like one more entry on a long list of Pentagon house cleanings. It was…
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The inevitable decline and fall of Zionism
There is a moment in the moral life of nations when the lies that sustained them can no longer hold. Israel is living through that moment. The images that came out of Gaza were not evidence of war’s brutality. They are the autopsy of the painstakingly constructed myth of Israel…
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Two leaders, two quagmires
The unravelling of America’s Iran policy began with a single act of demolition. When Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in May 2018, he dismantled a framework that — whatever its imperfections — had extended Iran’s nuclear breakout time from two to three months to well over…
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The death of denial: Why the Middle East’s “Gray Zone” just vanished
Three weeks ago, this region operated under a set of assumptions that had held, more or less, for forty years. Iran would threaten. Proxies would fight. Oil would flow. And everyone would continue doing what they do best. For 30 years, the Middle East operated in what strategists called the…
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“Schadenfreude, how sweet it is”
There is a word that describes what is unfolding across screens in the Middle East at night: Schadenfreude. The feeling of immense, indescribable pleasure to see your enemy suffer pain, destruction, and death. When Iranian missiles arc across the skies over Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Eilat—trails of fire cutting through…
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No exit: The global stakes of the Iran-Israel war
The war consuming the Middle East is, at its core, a zero-sum contest between two incompatible survival imperatives. Israel’s long-term security, as defined by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, requires not merely the degradation of Iran’s proxies but the dismemberment of the Iranian state itself — a fragmentation into six or…
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The relentless war on Iraq
For months, a war has been unfolding across Iraq with little of the fanfare that once accompanied American military campaigns in the region. There are no embedded journalists photographing convoys rolling through the desert, no prime-time presidential addresses. Instead, American warplanes and drones have been systematically dismantling the infrastructure of…
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Iran’s strike near Dimona raises old questions about Israel’s nuclear secrets
Iran’s missile strike near Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility on Saturday night was more than a dramatic escalation in the shadow war between the two nations. It was a reminder of the fragility of Israel’s decades-long policy of “nuclear ambiguity,” a strategy designed to keep adversaries guessing about the country’s ultimate…
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Cui bono: Six months into the Gulf War
The war in the Gulf has entered a decisive phase. Six months from now, the strategic landscape will look markedly different, shaped not only by the immediate destruction but by the recalibration of alliances, energy markets, and global power balances. The question before us is simple yet profound: Cui bono?…
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The original sin: How Churchill’s oil and Khomeini’s vision fuelled decades of Middle East turmoil
The war in Iran did not begin with a missile strike or a declaration. It began in the sweltering August of 1953, in the offices of a CIA operative named Kermit Roosevelt Jr., grandson of a president, architect of a coup d’état. It began when American and British intelligence agencies…
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The four drivers of the Iran War: Rhetoric, miscalculation, hubris, and two conflicting clocks
The United States and Israel did not stumble into war with Iran. They were driven into it — by the relentless drumbeat of political rhetoric, by catastrophic miscalculation, by the outsized egos of two narcissistic leaders who fancied themselves military geniuses, and by two clocks ticking to entirely different rhythms.…
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Netanyahu’s lifelong obsession with striking Iran and his looming spectacular defeat
For almost four decades, Benjamin Netanyahu has defined his politics by his singular, animating idea: that Iran poses an existential threat to Israel, and only he possesses the vision and courage to confront it head-on. On February 28, 2026, in front of television cameras in Jerusalem, he made it official:…
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The Epstein Files: Blackmail, power, and geopolitical shadows
The infamous Epstein files do not merely pulse with the sordid details of one man’s depravity; they are the autopsy report of a dying moral order. This was never a solitary enterprise of vice. It was a sprawling, subterranean web of influence and compromise that snared the world’s self-anointed gods—royals,…
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Shatter Iran, inherit the whirlwind
The Whirlwind Begins There is a dangerous, academic notion currently haunting the halls of Washington and Tel Aviv: the idea that a fractured Iran, carved into a half-dozen ethnic mini-states, would be safer than the one we have known. It is a theory that has clearly found a home in…
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The General who swallowed his truth
General Dan Cain, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered a private warning to President Trump with the bluntness that democracies depend upon and empires routinely ignore: “We don’t have enough ammunition to win this war. It would not be pretty.” This was not timidity. This was the solitary…
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Hizballah’s last stand: Disarmament, defiance, and Tehran’s shadow over Lebanon
As Lebanon approaches parliamentary elections in May 2026, the country stands at a crossroads. Hizballah, the mighty image of Lebanese politics and Middle Eastern resistance, has been left battered and isolated politically after its latest confrontation with Israel. But even in its weakened position, the organization remains defiant—retaining its weapons…
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Daylight strike shatters Tehran’s inner circle
The strike on Tehran was not just another exchange in the long shadow war between Israel and Iran. It was a precision operation timed to coincide with the rare convergence of Iran’s most senior leadership. What made it extraordinary was not only the audacity of striking in daylight, but also…
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From Munich to Tehran: Echoes of appeasement and lessons of power drift
The uneasy negotiations between the United States and Iran are unfolding under the shadow of a long historical truth: great-power systems rarely collapse in a single dramatic moment. They erode. They drift. They unravel—through hesitation, miscalculation, and the quiet accumulation of small crises that go unanswered until answering them becomes…
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The price of truth: Tucker Carlson, Piers Morgan, and the Gaza reckoning
There are moments when the edifice of propaganda collapses, when the images of emaciated children, pulverised neighbourhoods, and mass graves pierce the armour of denial. For Tucker Carlson and Piers Morgan, two men once counted among Israel’s most ardent defenders, Gaza became that moment. Their transformations—Carlson from a “rabid Zionist”…
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The Strait of Hormuz: Where geography becomes a weapon
For decades, American military planners have operated on a simple assumption: that overwhelming force, applied decisively, could resolve almost any crisis in the Persian Gulf. Iran, it turns out, has spent years making that assumption obsolete — not by building a navy capable of matching America’s, but by turning a…
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The digital high commissioner: Trump’s Maliki threat and the illusion of Iraqi sovereignty
When President Donald Trump took to social media to demand that former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki withdraw his bid for a return to power, the message landed with explosive force. Within days, Maliki’s coalition Coordination Framework crumbled, withdrawing support under the weight of American pressure. What might have seemed…
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Turkey as Israel’s “next Iran”? A strategic rivalry reconsidered
When former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that Turkey, with the support of Qatar, was replacing Iran as Israel’s major strategic threat, his words were not just another warning about another enemy. Instead, his remarks reflected a broader anxiety: Israel could be entering a period of renewed conflict with…