Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Mahdi Niksefat Motlagh
-
The war that failed to define Iran
Iran did not win the war. But it denied Washington and Tel Aviv the victory they needed most: the power to decide what the war had made of Iran. The recent US-Iran memorandum of understanding is important for that reason. It is designed to end the near four-month war, reopen…
-
When a ceasefire becomes an offensive system
Ceasefires are usually treated as the negative space of war: the moment when fire stops, diplomats return and the strategic temperature begins to fall. That reading is dangerously incomplete. In the present Iran-US-Israel confrontation, the ceasefire is not merely an interruption of violence. It is becoming a coercive architecture in…
-
Talks without balance: Why Tehran and Trump remain locked in escalation
Negotiation is being spoken of constantly, yet a meaningful settlement has rarely been farther away. In an existential war, talks are not a neutral return to reason. They become another theatre of the conflict itself. That is the central reality of the current war involving Iran, Israel and the US.…
-
The myth of a fractured Iran: Why pressure consolidates the civilisational state
This essay responds to a Washington Post argument that treats the fragmentation of Iran as a plausible, or even tolerable, endpoint of regional strategy. The premise is familiar. Iran is not a coherent nation state in the classical Westphalian sense. Its borders are historically contingent. External pressure may accelerate internal…
-
The chaos that calculates: Unveiling Tehran’s strategy of “managed ambiguity” against Israel
In the post-war strategic landscape of the Middle East, silence constitutes the most deceptive variable. While the balance of power appears to have shifted, security circles in Tel Aviv grapple with a reality far more complex than headlines suggest. Israeli strategists seemingly agree on one unwritten consensus: the “Iran issue”…