Arab News: The demographic battle for East Jerusalem

By Osama Al-Sharif.

In the decades-long Palestinian struggle for self-determination, one issue towers above the rest: the fate of Arab East Jerusalem, with the Old City at its heart.

Israel swiftly annexed East Jerusalem following the 1967 occupation, declaring it the unified, eternal capital of the Jewish people. Yet annexation failed to resolve Israel’s core challenge: demographics. Palestinians formed the vast majority in the Old City and surrounding Arab neighborhoods, with their population within Jerusalem’s municipal borders growing from 68,000 in 1967 to about 330,000 by 2016. Today, roughly 350,000 Muslims and 11,241 Christians comprise East Jerusalem’s Palestinian population.

This Arab majority posed a crucial question for Israeli policymakers: How to alter the demographic balance in East Jerusalem? In the post-Oslo period, under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, Israel floated scenarios granting Palestinians limited sovereignty over parts of the city. Palestinians rejected these offers and no such proposals have resurfaced since.

Israel’s current far-right government has abandoned compromise, intensifying earlier strategies. It severs territorial links between East Jerusalem and the West Bank through settlement expansion while deploying planning, legal and economic pressures aimed at forcing Palestinians out and establishing a Jewish majority.

This demographic struggle unfolds through economic pressures, the denial of building permits, home demolitions, residency revocations and security measures. Since 1967, more than 14,000 East Jerusalem Palestinians have lost residency rights. Confined to just 13 percent of municipal land, with 87 percent reserved for Israeli development, Palestinians often build without permits to accommodate natural population growth — resulting in demolition orders for an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 units in Palestinian areas by 2004 alone.

Settlement construction intensifies these pressures, expropriating land to isolate East Jerusalem from the West Bank. Two plans exemplify this approach: the confiscation of hundreds of dunums from the Qalandiya airport area for Jewish settlements, severing Ramallah’s connection to the city; and plans to demolish thousands of homes in Silwan — adjacent to Al-Aqsa Mosque and home to more than 30,000 Palestinians — to build what proponents call the “City of David.” Thousands in Silwan face eviction.

Official Israeli planning documents have reportedly targeted a 70:30 Jewish-Arab ratio, requiring the displacement of substantial Palestinian populations through sustained pressure. Critics argue such forced displacement violates international law.

With East Jerusalem’s demographics remaining contested, Israel’s far-right Cabinet has prioritized West Bank settlement expansion alongside the city’s “Judaization.” Demolitions in Silwan and property takeovers in Sheikh Jarrah reflect efforts to alter the demographic balance in favor of Jewish settlers.

International consensus holds that a viable Palestinian state requires East Jerusalem as its capital. Israeli leaders who reject Palestinian sovereignty over the city prioritize on-the-ground demographic changes over international recognition of Palestinian statehood. Palestinians remain the primary obstacle to these plans — but the pressure intensifies daily.

The reality is stark: Israel is advancing toward displacing tens of thousands. The two-state solution appears increasingly distant. East Jerusalem faces what critics describe as demographic engineering, its transformation proceeding largely unchallenged. The heart of Palestinian identity hangs in the balance.

Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Levant’s Agora.

Original source: https://www.arabnews.com/node/2629306

History.com: This Day In History (January 17-1820): English author Anne Brontë is born

By History.com Editors.

On January 17, 1820, Anne Brontë, the youngest of the six Brontë children, is born in Yorkshire, England. Their mother died when Anne was still an infant, and the children were left largely to their own devices in the bleak parsonage in Haworth, a remote village in Yorkshire, where their father was a clergyman. Anne’s four older sisters all went to boarding school, but the two eldest died, and Emily and Charlotte returned home. The girls, along with their brother Branwell, read voraciously and created their own elaborate stories about mythical lands.

Anne Brontë was educated at home and worked as a governess from 1841 to 1845, during which time Emily and Charlotte went to Brussels to study school administration with the hopes of opening a school in Haworth. The school idea failed, but another project took its place: poetry. In 1845, Charlotte came across some poems Emily had written, and the three sisters discovered they had all been secretly writing verse. They self-published Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell in 1846. Although the book sold only two copies, the sisters continued writing. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre appeared in 1847, an instant success. Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s Agnes Grey were printed later that year. Anne’s next novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), explored the effects of a young man’s unchecked debauchery. Anne died of tuberculosis in 1849, at the age of 29.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Levant’s Agora.

Original source: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-17/anne-bronte-is-born

RIAC: Will Iraqi Militias Truly Disarm?

By Fahil Abdulbasit Abdulkareem.

For the first time, several well-known armed groups in Iraq have released statements supporting the idea of “the state’s monopoly on the use of force,” This idea calls for these groups to turn over their weapons to the government, dissolve their groups or merge with the military and security forces, and engage in political involvement. These statements were made in response to the election results, which showed that members of armed groups had won around 100 seats. At the same time, the United States was putting further pressure on Iraq to create a government that would not include militias, to increase economic sanctions to encompass official Iraqi institutions, and to initiate military strikes against militia groups. It also happened at a time when Iran’s clout to influence Iraq’s domestic politics was waning.

The following analysis delves into the reasons behind the militias’ actions, its potential for actual implementation on the ground, and how it relates to the nature of the upcoming Iraqi government, whose job will be to either put these statements into practice or deal with the possibility of direct confrontation with the militants.

Political Shift: Iraqi Militias Support State’s Control of Force

In recent days, the leaders of five significant armed groups claimed that they had adopted the idea of “the state’s monopoly on the use of force.” Among these leaders were Qais al-Khazali, who led Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq; Shibl al-Zaidi, who led Kata’ib al-Imam Ali; Ahmed al-Asadi, who led Kata’ib Jund al-Imam; Abu Ala’ al-Walai, who led Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada; and Haider al-Gharawi, who led Ansar Allah al-Awfiya. Most leaders in the dominant “Coordination Framework” on the political scene made similar sentiments, albeit in different ways, emphasizing the need to assist the state in the upcoming period. Judge Faiq Zaidan, the head of the Supreme Judicial Council, expressed gratitude to the groups for “responding to his advice regarding the necessity of joint cooperation to enforce the rule of law, monopolize weapons in the hands of the state, and transition to political action now that the national need for military action has passed.” Several political forces also made similar declarations of support for these groups.

In contrast to the conventional rhetoric of earlier years that sought to sanctify the militias’ armament, the armed factions’ endorsement of the state’s right to a monopoly on weapons is, in theory, a significant shift. This acknowledgment may also be seen as a subtle departure from the Iranian axis, which promotes the creation of armed organizations outside of regional state frameworks. As a result, proposals for the surrender of weapons were flatly rejected by other armed groups, including the two most dangerous and heavily equipped, Kataib Hezbollah, commanded by Ahmed Mohsen Faraj al-Hamidawi, and Harakat al-Nujaba, led by Akram al-Kaabi. However, the media and political organizations associated with these two groups focused on disparaging other groups, using the US presence in Iraq as a justification for their ongoing actions. It further stated that any discussion of a disarmament accord with the government can only occur following the full evacuation of Turkish and NATO occupation forces from Iraqi territory.

A Potential Split or Superficial Division

Two different hypotheses are raised by this obvious difference in the positions of the armed factions. The first is that it is a true and fundamental split, raising the possibility that it will turn into a direct conflict between factions backed by the state and the United States and other factions backed by Iran. According to the second hypothesis, it is a planned and superficial division intended to distribute duties and buy time until the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election cause changes in the US political scene.

Both of the above changes are supported by the current political landscape. On the one hand, constitutional and electoral law provisions that forbid the political wings of armed militias from participating in elections have led to legal and public opposition to the acquisition of numerous parliamentary seats by political forces representing armed factions. However, communications from the United States to the Iraqi government and the forces under the “Coordination Framework” have emphasized Washington’s urgency in finding a solution to the militia challenge through a variety of channels, even going so far as to threaten permitting Israel to do so militarily.

Militia objectives for complete integration into the state and the surrender of their weapons in order to maintain their gains is supported by their electoral triumph, which came after the construction of extensive economic infrastructure, as well as their concerns about a possible US-Israeli threat. These same factors, however, also force them to move at this point, particularly since they are fully aware of how crucial their weapons are to securing their political and economic gains and that giving them up would expose them to legal prosecution, economic penalties, and a reduction in the popular base that allowed them to win parliamentary seats.

U.S. Military Presence in Iraq: The Path to Withdrawal and Disarmament

The armed groups who declared their intention to turn in their weapons had started negotiations with the US months ago through middlemen, according to leaks from knowledgeable Iraqi political sources. Guarantees pertaining to the political transition were the main topic of these discussions. These discussions eventually represent ongoing communication between the two parties in a variety of forms, levels, and tactics over the previous few years, even though the extent, scope, and results are unknown.

The focus of US pressure has shifted as a result of the regional shifts that followed the Israeli wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and then Iran, as well as the recent events in Syria and their impacts on the Middle East’s geopolitical balance. Rather than being restricted to militias endangering US personnel or interests in Iraq, this threat now encompasses the Iraqi government and the political parties involved, as they are occasionally perceived as allies or even complicit in defending those groups. The recent extension of economic sanctions to official state banking and oil entities has been justified by this turn of events.

However, based only on the previously listed elements, it is challenging to explain the US strategic setting in the Middle East, of which Iraq is a crucial axis, requiring a return to an earlier background. Tensions between US forces and Iranian-backed Iraqi militias increased during US President Donald Trump’s first term (2017–2020). This culminated in Washington’s assassinassion of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in the known airport operation on January 3, 2020. Iran then launched a missile attack on the US Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq on January 8. While President Trump claimed at the time that he had received a call from Iran asking for his consent before to the strike—a claim that Iran disputed through an advisor to the Supreme Leader—Washington simply announced the attack without taking any further action.

Iran and the United States both faced the possibility of escalation at that crucial point, and they investigated the unspoken mechanisms for field understandings that had been frequently used during the twelve-day conflict (June 13–24, 2025) between Iran and Israel and the United States. This was well illustrated by the Iranian bombardment of the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where they also found ways to manage the threat posed by Iraqi militias, whether they were under Iranian or US control.

The United States started pressing on the necessity to control its military presence in Iraq after Iran bombed Ain al-Asad Air Base in 2020. This change might have been brought about by a suggestion made by French President Emmanuel Macron while he was in Iraq in September of that year. To ensure Iraqi sovereignty, the idea suggested setting deadlines for both the disarmament of militias and the US withdrawal from the country. At the time, Macron stressed that “the greatest challenge facing Iraq is foreign interference, and Iraqi officials must build their country’s sovereignty.”

The United States accelerated its commitment to start rounds of “strategic dialogue” with the new Iraqi government led by Mustafa al-Kadhimi due to US concerns about the situation in Iraq and possibly worries about growing French influence there. In order to assess Iraq’s security requirements and establish a withdrawal schedule, these rounds sought to establish technical military committees. Iraq’s training and capacity-building requirements were estimated by a joint high-level technical committee of the US Department of Defense (the Pentagon) and the Iraqi army to take five years, to be implemented in stages, until 2026. According to a number of sources, the US brought up the topic of the future of militias in Iraq during these dialogue rounds, which took place on a regular basis and coincided with the withdrawal of “combat troops,” connecting the successful execution of the withdrawal plan to the elimination of the role of Iraqi armed factions and the consolidation of weapons under state control.

In September 2024, Washington and Baghdad announced an agreement for a two-phase US withdrawal, reaffirming the previously agreed-upon timeframe. The US and Iraqi parties continued to communicate throughout 2021 and 2022. The withdrawals from Ain al-Asad Air Base in Anbar province in November 2025 and Harir Air Base in Erbil province in November 2026 included the first and second phases, respectively. The US still has a minor combat force at Ain al-Asad even though it has removed the most of its troops and training operations. However, it appears that a departure from Harir Air Base is unlikely to happen before the deadline.

Backtracking on the implementation of the aforementioned agreement without an official and fully stated Iraqi appeal would be an embarrassment to the US and would put pressure on the status of US forces inside Iraq, even though recent events in the Middle East and their security implications may have forced adjustments to US withdrawal priorities.

Understanding the historical background is crucial to placing the current US pressure in its appropriate context. This pressure is a reaction to the initial understandings surrounding the US withdrawal, which have always been connected, if subtly and indirectly, to the need to dissolve militias and resolve their status in order to allow Iraq to ensure its sovereignty and total control over weapons outside of the state. Recalling the terms of the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement, which continues to be the only legal framework controlling the two parties’ interaction, is crucial in this context. This agreement addresses the US obligation to protect Iraq’s security and territorial integrity as well as to uphold democratic institutions, both of which are obviously irreconcilable with the state apparatus’s ongoing use of armed militias.

Two Different Hypotheses on the US Withdrawal from Iraq

Two hypotheses can be raised in this regard. First, there is a sincere desire on the part of the United States to withdraw from Iraq in accordance with the timeframes that have been set, and that the increased pressure on the government, political forces, and armed groups is intended to create an atmosphere in Iraq that is conducive to withdrawal. The second hypothesis is predicated on the fact that the overall US withdrawal strategy has been altered, as well as the belief that no official Iraqi party can fully satisfy the demands for the disbandment of the militias and the resolution of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) at stake. As a result, a revised withdrawal schedule that is directly connected to the progress of militia disbandment is required.

There seem to be logical reasons favoring both hypotheses. The second hypothesis appears to have widespread support, as evidenced by the fact that half of the armed factions agreed to the disarmament demands while the other half rejected them. This suggests a mutual acceptance of reviving earlier agreements and creating guidelines connecting the new timetables to the mechanisms for dismantling the militias that the expected Iraqi government will offer in the upcoming months. In this regard, on Wednesday, December 24, 2025, Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Organization, reaffirmed that the choice to disarm must be made entirely by Iraqis, refusing any outside intervention. He underlined that before the international coalition can restrict weaponry to the state, its role in Iraq must be terminated.

Iranian Influence in Iraq Post-Twelve-Day War

Iranian influence decreased as a result of the Twelve-Day War on a number of fronts, chief among them being Iraq, where Iranian political influence in the establishment of the new government was less than in the past. However, considering the organizational, ideological, and economic connections that solidify the Iranian presence at the core of the numerous armed factions, it appears implausible to assume that Iran’s influence over the militias themselves has diminished.

From the standpoint of Iranian interests, the current split between the factions over the monopoly of armaments seems to be related to two contexts: According to the first, Iran’s control over its affiliated militias is already eroding, enabling some of them to rebel and make their own decisions. However, this perspective is not supported by recent developments, including as Iran’s encouragement of militias to take part in elections and the rhetorical alignment of faction leaders with Iranian rhetoric both during and after the war. The second context, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq with 27 seats, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada with 12 seats, Kata’ib al-Imam Ali with 12 seats, Ansar Allah al-Awfiya with 5 seats, and the Badr Organization with 21 seats are just a few examples of the armed factions that Iran has accepted reorganizing their roles within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). While the strongest groups (such Kata’ib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba) continue to function as a military arm for potential future maneuvering with the US, this acceptance means incorporating these factions into political life as an alternative to the current Shiite government.

The second scenario posits a strategic Iranian change in controlling the instruments of influence in Iraq and the region, with the various factions keeping their status and modifying their military roles, whereas the first scenario implies an eventual confrontation between the factions.

Iraq’s Path to Government Formation: A Complex Political Landscape

The primary movement is toward the formation of a government with certain characteristics, notwithstanding the obvious disparities in the stances of the “Coordination Framework” forces regarding the procedures and standards for establishing the new government and its intended objectives. To enable a safe transition for the armed factions, this government intends to reach a settlement regarding the status and future of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), establish timelines and procedures for their gradual disarmament, and start a conversation about the future of these factions with the US.

It is unlikely that the factions will uphold their disarmament pledges and encourage communication with Washington through a government headed by a political party that can subsequently take advantage of the “weapons control” agreements and the concessions required to achieve them for partisan, political, or private gain. It seems improbable that any individual with substantial party or legislative power, including all former prime ministers, will be able to create the new government based on this essential requirement. Rather, the odds are in favor of individuals who are not affiliated with any party or parliamentary and who have no plans to gain such power in the future.

There is a belief that ongoing tensions with Washington and the extension of US sanctions on civilian and governmental institutions will not only make it impossible for Iraq to deal with the current economic challenges, but will also put the entire political system in jeopardy due to the anticipated escalation of popular unrest. This is especially true given the state’s incapacity to meet its financial obligations, particularly securing the salaries of employees and retirees, which make up the majority of the annual budget.

Conclusions

A number of Iraqi armed factions have recently made statements that are more serious than a simple political ploy to guarantee their involvement in the government or to prevent attacks by the United States and Israel. These statements promise to adhere to the standard of restricting weapons to the state and the conditions for turning over their various weapons to official authorities. All of these variables depend on a number of factors, including the type of weapons to be delivered (all types or just heavy and medium weapons), the timing of the delivery (immediate or scheduled), the recipient entity (the army and police or the Popular Mobilization Forces), the presence of these factions within the state (are they part of the government and the political establishment or are they restricted to the Popular Mobilization Forces), and the future of the Popular Mobilization Forces themselves (will they be dissolved and abolished, integrated into the army, or restructured? After discussions with the factions, Washington, and Tehran, as well as internal political discussions, the incoming Iraqi government will be responsible for addressing these criteria and turning them into operational mechanisms.

Given the serious difficulties Iraq faces, certain faction recognition of the “state” notion is a step in a positive direction, albeit a small one and possibly reversible. These difficulties include militia refusal to disarm and the degree to which the newly elected government will be able to either confront or incorporate them into planned agreements. Iran’s stance also affects the situation; it may opt to escalate and further destabilize Iraq, or it may choose de-escalation to maintain the current peace with Washington and Israel. This also covers the strategic stance of the United States with regard to following the announced withdrawal schedule or possibly renegotiating it.

Fahil Abdulbasit Abdulkareem: Juris Doctor, Researcher and lecturer at Duhok Polytechnic University, Iraqi Kurdistan Region.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Levant’s Agora.

Original source: https://russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics-and-comments/columns/middle-east-policy/will-iraqi-militias-truly-disarm/

Live Science: What’s the oldest river in the world?

By Victoria Atkinson.

The oldest river predates the dinosaurs. But how do we know this?

​​Rivers may seem as old as the hills, but they have life cycles just like other natural features do. Many grow and make their meandering mark on the landscape, before ultimately drying up. Some rivers last longer than others, however. So which river is the oldest in the world today?

The Finke River in Australia (or Larapinta in the Indigenous Arrernte language) is the oldest known river in the world that still exists today. (Image credit: Posnov/Getty Images)

The winner is older than the dinosaurs: The Finke River in Australia, or Larapinta in the Indigenous Arrernte language, is between 300 million and 400 million years old.

This network of streams and channels extends more than 400 miles (640 kilometers) across Northern Territory and South Australia. The arid conditions in the center of the continent mean the river flows only intermittently; most of the year, it exists as a string of isolated water holes. However, a combination of geological records, weathering profiles and radionuclide measurements in the surrounding sediments and rocks has enabled scientists to date this river system to the Devonian (419 million to 359 million) or Carboniferous (359 million to 299 million) period.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence for its ancient age is a geological anomaly called cross-axial drainage, said Victor Baker, a geomorphologist at the University of Arizona. Rather than flowing parallel to resistant rock structures, such as quartzite, the Finke River cuts across these tough mineral formations as it passes through the MacDonnell Ranges in central Australia.

Flowing water always takes the easiest path, making it counterintuitive that a river would flow against these hard rocks rather than alongside them. Consequently, the presence and origin of this cross-axial drainage reveal crucial details about the historic course of the Finke.

“There is some suggestion that there was a preexisting drainage that was flowing as this range was building up,” Baker told Live Science. “It’s called antecedence — basically, the river is there before the mountains form and as the crust is being thrust up, the river is cutting down.”

The Finke River cuts into a sand dune at the edge of the Simpson Desert in Australia’s Northern Territory. (Image credit: Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The MacDonnell Ranges (or Tjoritja in Arrernte) formed as part of the Alice Springs Orogeny — a tectonic mountain-building event that occurred 300 million to 400 million years ago — making the Finke at least as old as these mountains.

Later evidence comes from erosion and weathering, which generate specific chemical profiles. This information indicates how and where the surface interacted with the atmosphere and water flow through time. Using the radioactive signatures of certain isotopes (elements with different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei), scientists can also infer the ages of these rocks. Because radioactive isotopes decay at a fixed rate, it’s possible to estimate when rocks formed by working backward from the relative proportions of different isotopes. Together these data points create a roadmap for piecing together the history and evolution of the Finke River.

But rivers are constantly in flux, with some growing bigger from year to year and others drying up completely. So why has the Finke system lasted so long?

The New River, seen here at New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia, is about 300 million years old. (Image credit: Eli Wilson/Getty Images)

“Rivers can disappear if a massive influx of sediment overwhelms them (e.g., volcanic eruptions) or if topography changes so dramatically that the flowing water takes a new course across the landscape (e.g., glacial advance and retreat),” Ellen Wohl, a geologist at Colorado State University, told Live Science in an email.

Additionally, “rivers can cease to flow because of climate change and/or human consumptive use of water,” Wohl said. “Long duration is promoted by tectonic stability and lack of glaciation during the Pleistocene” (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago).

In the case of the Finke, Australia has been an unusually stable landscape for a very long time. Resting in the middle of the Australian Plate, the continent has experienced virtually no significant tectonic activity for the past several 100 million years, Baker explained. Consequently, the Finke River system has been able to develop and expand almost uninterrupted for most of its history.

As for the future, it’s difficult to say how much longer the Finke will last.

“Long-persisting [rivers] will probably continue to persist,” Wohl said. However, “many rivers in dry lands” — such as the Finke — “are highly altered by human consumptive water use.”

This, she added, “is likely to increase in future as global water consumption continues to rise and global warming makes many dry regions even drier.”

If the Finke ever dries up, the runner up may be the New River, which today is about 300 million years old, Baker said, and runs through Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina.

Victoria Atkinson is a freelance science journalist, specializing in chemistry and its interface with the natural and human-made worlds. Currently based in York (UK), she formerly worked as a science content developer at the University of Oxford, and later as a member of the Chemistry World editorial team. Since becoming a freelancer, Victoria has expanded her focus to explore topics from across the sciences and has also worked with Chemistry Review, Neon Squid Publishing and the Open University, amongst others. She has a DPhil in organic chemistry from the University of Oxford.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Levant’s Agora.

Original source: https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/rivers-oceans/whats-the-oldest-river-in-the-world

Asharq Al-Awsat: Iran… an Opening Toward a Transformative Process

By Samir Al-Taqi.

Developments in Iran have been evolving rapidly since late December 2025, taking a dangerous direction that cannot be reduced to “livelihood grievances.”

The current wave of protests seems like a serious test for the political system, not only because the streets have filled but also because the very rules of the game have shifted profoundly. When the players on the domestic stage – the authorities, protesters, wavering elites, coercive apparatuses, and corruption networks – change, the dispute goes from being a debate over prices to a challenge of the state model as a whole.

Here, the significance of the location is greater than that of slogans. This time, Tehran’s Grand Bazaar lit the fuse. It is not merely a market but a node in the social contract underpinning the regime. The bazaar’s role has shifted from being a social “release valve” to becoming the very “stage of protest,” signaling that the economy is no longer a neutral arena, and that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp’s dominance over trade and finance has pushed small and medium businesses to the margins and left them unable to withstand inflation and sanctions.

Thus, the conflict advances from the periphery to the core: the core of revenues, interest networks, and legitimacy.

Iran’s fragility is compounded by recent memories. The June 2025 war, as well as the subsequent US strikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, created a massive rupture. Not only did it undermine Iran’s deterrence; it also repudiated the regime’s triumphant national legitimizing narrative.

Domestically, it has become difficult to market Iran’s proxies as a successful investment when citizens see the state failing to protect the country with those proxies effectively finished.

Applying game theory, possessing deterrence is not enough; they must be credible in the eyes of others, both domestically and externally. The war broadly shed doubt about Iran’s “credibility and commitment”.

Then came the media blackout, further complicating assessment. While the near-total internet shutdown disrupts popular coordination, it also amplifies rumors and prevents the formation of “shared common knowledge” that would allow for a peaceful exit from the crisis. In crises, a lack of information can be no less dangerous than excessive information, and a single major breach or image can flip survival expectations, turning obedience into hesitation, and hesitation into contagion.

Nonetheless, the regime still possesses a solid base underpinned by rents, ideology, and elite cohesion. Rent flows persist through oil revenues that line the pockets of the regime and the IRGC, but it is sanctioned rent whose capacity to buy loyalty has shrunk under the weight of sanctions, war damage, and currency collapse.

While ideology continues to mobilize the core of the regime’s base and justify repression, it is eroding as the economy and services, as well as national deterrence, decline. Elite cohesion, despite factional differences, appears durable for now, as Iranian elites prefer “organized repression” to chaotic collapse.

Here, the paradox of power comes into play: repression secures temporary control, but grievances that fuel implosion down the line. While protesters have latent power through strikes, revenue disruption, and the depletion of “loyalty capital,” they are weakened by poor organization and limited commitment in the absence of unified leadership and a credible vision for the day after, hindering those who are hesitant from taking to the streets.

The decisive factor remains the “agents” on the ground: the security services. The relationship between the leadership and field operatives is a classic “principal–agent” dynamic; the higher the personal cost (economically, in future prospects, and reputationally), the greater the likelihood of discontent. That is, the equilibrium does not typically collapse due to the sheer number of protesters alone but also because confidence of survival within the system erodes.

Experience shows that direct military intervention at the peak of protests serves the regime’s nationalist narratives, whereas soft tools – supporting communications, targeted sanctions, and multilateral pressure – allow protests to grow without granting the authorities the pretext of fighting the “enemy.” In the background, Russia plays the role of “regime stabilizer,” diplomatically and in terms of security, while keeping its options open in anticipation of sudden change.

Over the next 6 to 18 months, developments could follow one of four trajectories, and we can estimate the probability of each one: short-term containment with chronic instability (about 55 percent); a managed transition through elite splits, with difficult guarantees (about 25 percent); accelerated collapse amid broad defections from security apparatuses (about 10 percent); and the escalating internationalization of the crisis that entangled foreign actors (about 10 percent).

Accordingly, we can say that Iran is currently on a path of transformation in which time, not slogans, will be the most ruthless and decisive player.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Levant’s Agora.

Original source: https://english.aawsat.com/opinion/5229689-iran%E2%80%A6-opening-toward-transformative-process

The Jordan Times: Hamas, and the politics of survival

By Mohammad Abu Rumman.

Despite the harsh and difficult circumstances confronting Hamas—particularly in the Gaza Strip—this has not delayed the movement’s internal and supplementary organisational elections aimed at rebuilding its leadership ranks following Israel’s assassination of several of its leaders. A new head of the movement and a new Political Bureau are expected to be selected in the coming days.

The two main candidates for the leadership are Khaled Meshaal, the former head of Hamas, and Khalil Al Hayya, the deputy head of the movement in Gaza. These elections are, by necessity, far from normal or conventional contests between two individuals or rival factions. Rather, they represent the most critical turning point in the movement’s history, one that will shape its strategic direction in the coming phase, at an exceptional and decisive moment—especially in the aftermath of the war of annihilation on Gaza, with the future of the Strip still suspended between American plans, Israel’s occupation of nearly half of it, and a regional–international decision preventing Hamas from returning to govern Gaza.

Khalil Al Hayya has traditionally been associated with the current led by Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, which held the greatest weight in Gaza and believed firmly in alliance with Iran and the so-called “axis of resistance.” This current had been critical of Khaled Meshaal’s policies during his previous leadership, particularly after the Arab Spring and regarding his stance on the Syrian revolution. Meshaal, by contrast, represents a second line within the movement—one more inclined towards pragmatism and political flexibility. He enjoys strong relations with Turkey and seeks to build bridges with Arab governments and states, in order to prevent Hamas from sliding into deeper regional isolation.

The options available to both candidates are extremely limited, whether in Gaza or at the regional level. Militarily, Israel’s demand is clear: Disarmament and the dismantling of Hamas’s political and military structures. Politically, there are intense pressures to eliminate the movement altogether—and even to target Islamist currents associated with it. This places a central question before both contenders: What is the strategic exit from the current existential impasse?

At present, Al Hayya appears to lack a clear answer, at least in the short term. He remains tied to a current that wagered on the “axis of resistance” and the unity of arenas—a current that played the dominant role in leading Hamas in recent years, especially during and after the “Al Aqsa Flood” .Yet, this axis has all but unraveled: Much of Hizbollah’s military capacity has been destroyed; Israeli-American conditions now revolve around dismantling its weapons; the party is under intense pressure within Lebanon’s internal equation; and Iran itself is grappling with deep economic and domestic crises, alongside widespread protests in its cities.

Meshaal, on the other hand, while fully aware of the severity of the current phase, proposes strengthening Hamas’s relations with Turkey and the Arab environment, and maintaining the highest possible degree of flexibility and adaptation in order to navigate this critical juncture and preserve the movement’s survival. His approach seeks to balance keeping the option of resistance alive while expanding the political dimension of Hamas’s discourse and its relations with Arab states in the coming period.

It is true that the path before Meshaal is far from smooth in terms of forging a new trajectory for the movement and reorganising its internal and regional standing. However, regional instability and the policies of Netanyahu’s government may offer Hamas opportunities for political breakthroughs. Al Hayya, by contrast, appears to have no alternative strategic options to offer, nor does he propose a departure from the current course.

According to sources and analyses close to Hamas circles, the competition between the two men is fierce and their chances are nearly equal. Yet a new and different tendency seems to be emerging within Gaza’s Hamas circles—particularly among Izza Al Din Haddad, the new commander of the movement’s military wing, the Izz Al Din Al Qassam Brigades. This tendency favours granting Meshaal’s current a greater political and regional role, in an effort to ease the pressure on Hamas in Gaza, which faces bitter choices between efforts to eliminate it, a catastrophic humanitarian situation, and the continued presence of forced displacement on the agenda of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government—and possibly that of President Trump—while nearly half of the Strip remains under Israeli occupation and reconstruction faces immense and complex obstacles.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Levant’s Agora.

Original source: https://jordantimes.com/opinion/mohammad-abu-rumman/hamas-and-the-politics-of-survival

The Grayzone: Western media whitewashes deadly riots in Iran, relying on US govt-funded regime change NGOs

By Blumenthal and Wyatt Reed.

As protesters burn Iranian cities, Western media ignores the shocking wave of violence, relying on U.S.-funded NGOs for data. The one-sided portrayal has helped push Trump to the brink of renewed U.S. attacks.

Western media has ignored a growing trove of video evidence showing terrorist tactics deployed across Iran by protesters described by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as “largely peaceful.” 

Recent videos published both by Iranian state media and anti-government forces reveal public lynchings of unarmed guards, the torching of mosques, arson attacks on municipal buildings, marketplaces and fire stations and mobs of armed gunmen opening fire in the heart of Iranian cities.

Instead, Western media has focused almost exclusively on violence attributed to the Iranian government. In doing so, they have primarily relied on death counts compiled by Iranian diaspora groups funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the regime change arm of the U.S. government, and whose boards of directors are filled with committed neoconservatives.

The NED has taken credit for advancing the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests which filled Iranian cities throughout 2023 — and which also featured gruesome acts of violence ignored by Western media and human rights NGOs. Today, the NED is far from alone among the intelligence-aligned actors seeking to fuel the chaos inside Iran.

The Israeli spying and assassination agency known as Mossad issued a message from its official Farsi language account on Twitter/X urging Iranians to escalate their regime change activities, pledging that it would be supporting them on the ground.

“Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” Mossad instructed Iranians. “We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”

Toppling Tehran Through Terror

Protests began in Iran early this month when merchants took to the streets to demonstrate against rising inflation rates triggered by Western sanctions. Iran’s government responded sympathetically to the bazaar protests, providing them with police protection. 

However, these demonstrations quickly dissolved, as an amorphous mass of anti-government elements seized the moment to launch a violent insurrection encouraged by governments from Israel to the U.S. — and by self-proclaimed “Crown Prince” Reza Pahlavi, who has branded government workers and state media outlets as “legitimate targets.”

On Jan. 9, the city of Mashhad became the scene of some of the most intense riots, as anti-government forces torched fire stations, burning fire fighters alive, while setting fire to buses, attacking city workers, vandalizing Metro stations and causing over $18 million in damage, according to local municipal authorities.

In Kermanshah, where anti-government rioters shot and killed 3-year-old Melina Asadi, groups of militants were filmed firing automatic weapons at police. In cities from Hamedan to Lorestan, rioters have filmed themselves beating unarmed security guards to death for attempting to impede their rampages.

Footage has emerged from the central Iranian city of rioters attacking a public bus and setting it aflame on Jan. 10.

In Tehran, meanwhile, mobs of rioters have attacked the historic Abazar Mosque, burning its interior, while others conducted arson attacks and burning copies of the Quran inside the Grand Mosque of Sarableh and the Muhammad ibn Musa al-Kadhim shrine in Kuzestan.

Rioters have set fire to a large municipal building in the heart of the city of Karaj, while burning the marketplace to the ground in central Rasht. In Borujen, anti-government hooligans reportedly torched a historic library filled with ancient texts during a night of looting and destruction.

None of these incidents have elicited any reaction from Western media outlets or governments, even after the Iranian foreign ministry obliged ambassadors from Britain, France, Germany and Italy to view footage of the violence carried out by rioters firsthand.

[Likewise, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a statement condemning only government violence.]

According to the Iranian government, over 100 police and security officers have been killed during the unrest. However, a pair of Iranian NGOs based in Washington and funded by the U.S. government has set the death toll on the government’s side at a much lower figure. These groups have become the go-to source for Western media on the protests.

Regime-Change Lobbyists Set Agenda

In assessing the death toll in Iran, outlets throughout the U.S. and Europe have depended on two NGOs based in Washington and funded by the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy: the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran and Human Rights Activists in Iran.

A 2024 press release by the NED explicitly described the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran as “a partner of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).”

Elsewhere, a 2021 statement from Human Rights Activists in Iran states that the group “expanded its network and decided to start receiving financial aid from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a non-governmental and non-profit organization based in the United States” after it was accused by the Iran government of ties to the C.I.A. in 2010.

The NED was created under the watch of the Reagan administration’s C.I.A. director, William Casey, to enable the government to continue meddling abroad despite widespread distrust in U.S. intelligence services. One of its founders, Allen Weinstein, famously admitted, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the C.I.A.”

While failing to acknowledge the NGO’s funding from NED, The Washington Post and ABC News have cited the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center prominently in their coverage of Iranian protests. Seated on the Center’s board of directors is Francis Fukuyama, the ideologue who signed the Project for a New American Century’s founding letter — perhaps the most important manifesto of modern neoconservatism.

Figures from the suggestively-named “Human Rights Activists in Iran” have circulated even more widely, with the NGO’s recent estimated death toll of 544 people cited by dozens of U.S. and Israeli mainstream outlets across the political spectrum, as well as by Dropsite.

The “shadow C.I.A.” intelligence firm Stratfor has also cited the NGO in an article entitled, “Protests in Iran Provide a Window for U.S. and/or Israeli Intervention.”

With the precise number of casualties from the protests still difficult to ascertain, a motley crew of online influencers has filled the information void with overblown, dubiously sourced claims.

These propagandists include the noted Jewish supremacist Trump confidant Laura Loomer, who crowed that “the death count of Iranian protesters killed by the Islamic regimes’ forces is now over 6,000!,” citing a supposed “source in the Intel community.”

The digital casino Polymarket also inflated the death toll, claiming without sourcing that “over 10,000” people had been killed by “Iranian Forces [using] Automatic Rifles on Protesters,” and falsely stating that Iran had “lost nearly all control” of “three of its five largest cities.”

In recent months, Polymarket has become notorious for allowing insiders to abuse advanced knowledge of political developments — such as the recent U.S. military assault on Caracas and their abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro — to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The self-described “world’s largest prediction market” was established with a major investment from AI warlord Peter Thiel, and now features Donald Trump Jr. as an advisor.

By spreading clearly inflated death tolls, regime change activists and Trump cronies are apparently goading the notoriously gullible president into launching another military assault on Tehran.

In a Jan. 7 assessment of the protests, Stratfor described the chaos in Iran’s streets as an enticing opportunity for war, writing,

“While unlikely to collapse the regime, the ongoing unrest could open the door for Israel or the United States to conduct covert or overt activities aimed at further destabilizing the Iranian government, either indirectly by encouraging the protests or directly via military action against Iranian leaders.”

However, the C.I.A. contractor acknowledged that “renewed military strikes on Iran would also likely put an end to the current protest movement by leading instead to a wider display of Iranian nationalism and unity, a pattern observed after U.S. and Israeli strikes in 2025.”

‘Locked & Loaded’

Iran’s latest round of anti-government protests has predictably received hearty endorsements from a host of Western leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump.

“If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump announced. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

Days later, Trump threatened Iran again: “You better not start shooting [protesters] — because we’ll start shooting too.” Then, on Jan. 12, Trump decreed that any country caught trading with Iran would face a 25 percent tariff on goods exchanged with the U.S.

Now, Trump is reportedly mulling an attack, considering options ranging from cyber-warfare to airstrikes. However, the pace of the anti-government protests appears to have slowed, with relative calm returning to major cities.

As the dust clears, millions of Iranian citizens are pouring into the streets of cities from Tehran to Mashhad to express their indignation at the riots, to denounce the foreign elements that helped spur the regime change rampage, and to proclaim their support for the government.

But in newsrooms across the West, giving voice to these masses of Iranian demonstrators seems forbidden.

The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

Wyatt Reed is the managing editor of The Grayzone. As an international correspondent, he covers stories in more than a dozen countries. Follow him on Twitter at @wyattreed13 .

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Levant’s Agora.

Original source: https://consortiumnews.com/2026/01/14/western-media-whitewashes-deadly-riots-in-iran/

Daily Sabah: The Middle East: The time of armed non-state actors is over

By Doğan Eşkinat.

Syria’s recovery depends on restoring a single, sovereign authority by ending the era of armed non-state power

Anyone who has been to Syria, whether before the war, during its darkest years or as the country struggles to recover from one of the most devastating conflicts of our time, knows that it possesses extraordinary human capital. It has resilient communities, skilled labor, deep commercial instincts and a cultural memory of coexistence and statehood. From my perspective, Syria’s tragedy was never a lack of potential. It was the systematic destruction of the institutions capable of channeling that potential into a shared future.

Today, the question of how to rebuild state capacity stands at the center of Syria’s recovery. Over the past year, Damascus has accomplished something that seemed improbable not long ago. The Syrian leadership has reasserted itself as a legitimate interlocutor regionally and internationally, as President Ahmed al-Shaara distinguished himself from other post-conflict leaders through consolidation rather than rhetoric. His government rapidly restored diplomatic channels, re-engaged neighbors and projected a sense of institutional continuity instead of revolutionary uncertainty. Without this growing credibility, no reconstruction on the economic, political or social level would have been possible.

Normalization, however, has a hard ceiling. And that ceiling is the unresolved status of armed non-state actors. At this point, since the Dec. 31 deadline under the March 2025 agreement to integrate the SDF, the so-called armed branch of the PKK’s Syrian wing YPG, into the national armed forces has already expired, the issue has ceased to be technical and has become the single most consequential obstacle to Syria’s stabilization. That a deadline agreed upon months ago was allowed to lapse reflects a continued attempt by the YPG leadership to delay or reinterpret its commitments out of unwillingness, not caution.

Recent events in Aleppo illustrate why this moment matters. Syrian security forces carried out a limited and targeted operation in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods – areas long treated as exceptional zones under de facto parallel authority. The operation was neither indiscriminate nor symbolic. It was precise, enforcing previously negotiated arrangements regarding heavy weapons and internal security. The message was unmistakable: Syria will no longer tolerate armed enclaves operating as states within the state.

To be clear, this is textbook state-building. Max Weber famously defined the modern state as the entity that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory. Without this monopoly, sovereignty becomes performative and governance fragmentary. Syria’s experience since 2011 is a textbook case of what happens when that monopoly collapses: militias replace institutions, loyalty displaces law and violence becomes a political currency.

Rebuilding Syria, therefore, requires more than reconstruction funds or humanitarian corridors. It requires, as a precondition, the restoration of a single, accountable security architecture. Pluralistic or otherwise, no country can function while armed groups retain veto power over state authority.

Some frame this reality as hostility toward Kurds. This is both false and intellectually dishonest. Kurds are an integral part of Syria’s social fabric, and their rights are not advanced by militarized separatism or foreign dependency. In fact, no community has suffered more from prolonged militarization than the Kurds themselves, displaced, instrumentalized and isolated by organizations whose survival depends on perpetual conflict. It should also be recalled that the YPG targeted several groups, including Kurdish groups, during the Syrian civil war, at times in collaboration with or in parallel to the Assad regime.

The window that once empowered armed non-state actors opened during the chaos following Daesh’s advance on Mosul has closed. Foreign fighters, once treated as strategic assets, are now liabilities. The Syrian state has both the capacity and the will to manage this challenge. Going forward, any meaningful political process requires actors with organic ties to Syria, not transnational militancy.

This is where Türkiye’s role becomes central. The recent visit to Damascus by Türkiye’s foreign minister, defense minister and intelligence chief just ahead of the SDF integration deadline was not routine diplomacy. It was a coordinated signal that fragmentation is no longer an option. In other words, regional powers, possibly and notably with the exception of Israel, are aligning around stability, not managed disorder.

Just before the deadline expired, Damascus itself reflected this shift. The Hamidiye Bazaar was alive again. Families shopped, children roamed, and churches displayed Christmas decorations alongside the centuries-old Umayyad Mosque, a masterpiece of Islamic culture and civilization. Across the old center of the Islamic world, there was a palpable sense of resilience. Yet resilience alone will not rebuild Syria.

A strong and stable Syria is indispensable to the emerging Middle East. If the U.S. truly wishes to reduce its regional footprint and focus elsewhere, empowering sovereign states, rather than perpetuating armed ambiguity, is the only viable strategy. Syria’s future depends on a simple but difficult truth: human capital flourishes only where authority is clear, institutions function, and violence is monopolized by the state. Without this foundation, coexistence becomes fragile and recovery illusory.

Syria does not need another experiment in fragmentation. It needs a functioning state that is capable of signaling to millions of Syrian refugees abroad that it is time to come home and build a brighter future together.

Doğan Eşkinat is an Istanbul-based communicator, translator, and all-around word wrangler. After a decade in civil service, he returns to Daily Sabah as an occasional contributor.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Levant’s Agora.

Original source: https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/the-middle-east-the-time-of-armed-non-state-actors-is-over

Responsible Statecraft: Iran regime is brittle, but don’t count out killer instinct to survive

By Sina Azodi.

Every violent protest — of which there have been several over the last decade — takes a little more away from the government’s legitimacy

Political and economic protests have long been woven into Iran’s political fabric. From the Tobacco Movement of the 1890s which ultimately created the first democratic constitution in the Middle East, to labor strikes under the Pahlavi monarchy, to student activism and localized economic unrest in the Islamic Republic, street mobilization has repeatedly served as a vehicle for political expression.

What is new, however, is the increase in frequency, geographic spread, and persistence of protests since 2019, an episode which took the lives of more than 300 Iranians. That year marked a turning point, with nationwide anti-government demonstrations erupting across Iran in response to fuel price hikes, followed by repeated waves of unrest over economic hardship, and political repression.

This cycle reached its most visible and sustained form with the Mahsa Amini movement, which transformed a single act of state violence into a months-long national uprising, during which 551 people were killed and many others injured in the process, according to theUN Human Rights Council.

What distinguishes today’s protests in Iran is their scale, acceleration and volatility, and the government’s unprecedented level of violence against its own citizens.

In late December 2025, shopkeepers in northern Tehran closed their stores in response to wild currency fluctuations and the rapid devaluation of the Iranian rial against the U.S. dollar. What began as an economic grievance quickly spilled into the streets, evolving into broader political demonstrations that targeted the core of the Islamic Republic itself, with protesters openly chanting anti-establishment slogans, demanding an end to the Islamic Republic.

The government, while initially displaying some level of restraint and acknowledging the people’s rights to protest, quickly resorted to brute force to quell the demonstrations. Reports indicate that hundreds of people — if not thousands — have been killed in the past few days. As of this writing the country is under a complete communications blackout with intermittent videos and reports getting out to the international audience.

At no point in the history of the Islamic Republic has confronted so many crises simultaneously. At home, Tehran faces a deep and widening popularity deficit. Iranian youth who have spent most of their lives under sanctions demand economic prosperity, personal freedom, and normalized relations with the outside world, goals that increasingly clash with the ideological foundations of the system. This disconnect is reflected not only in the change in culture and frequency of street protests, but also in steadily declining voter participation in national elections, where growing abstention has become a powerful signal of political disengagement and eroding legitimacy.

But beyond political acceptance, environmental and energy crises are also undermining the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy. Years of drought, declining groundwater levels, and mismanaged dam and irrigation projects have causedwater scarcity in major urban centers including the capital, Tehran. Additionally, despite possessing some of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves, Iran over the past few years has faced recurring electricity blackouts and gas shortages, particularly during peak summer and winter months further demonstrating the government’s inability to meet the needs of the population.

Overlaying these environmental and infrastructural failures is a prolonged economic crisis rooted in Western sanctions, structural distortion, and elite mismanagement. According to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), the inflation has reached the unprecedented rate of 52%, and the Iranian currency between January 2025 and January 2026, depreciated by roughly 63 percent against the U.S. dollar on the open market, falling from around 890,000 rials per dollar in early 2025 to approximately 1.45 million rials by January 2026.

At the same time, the Islamic Republic’s long-standing external security narrative has shattered. The Islamic Republic can no longer claim that its massive investments in non-state actors, and foreign intervention has brought “security” for Iran. On the contrary, the terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, set off a chain of regional events that not only deteriorated Iran’s region position, but for the first time since the end of Iran-Iraq war in 1988, brought conflict to the Iranian territory, manifested in the June 12-day war with Israel.

Notwithstanding these serious crises, the Islamic Republic retains coercive capacity, and its security forces have demonstrated their willingness and ability to suppress unrest. In the past few years, the security forces primarily consisted of Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) and plain clothes agents, have remained loyal to the regime and been carrying out their orders.

This stands in contrast to the Shah’s security forces who during the fateful months of 1978, not only refused to crackdown on their compatriots, but defected en masse, leaving only the officer corps of the army loyal to the monarchy. The Shah’s regime melted like snow, as one of the Shah’s generals put it.

Yet repression functions as a short-term tactic rather than a sustainable strategy. While the Islamic Republic has thus far managed to suppress protests through brute force and limited concessions, each crackdown deepens public alienation, fuels grievances, and lays the groundwork for future unrest.

Reform, meanwhile, carries its own risks: meaningful political or economic opening could weaken entrenched power centers and unsettle the regime’s delicate internal balance. The leadership thus finds itself caught between two unattractive options, unable to pursue either decisively. This dynamic helps explain why protests in Iran have become recurrent rather than exceptional. While protesters may differ in ideology, leadership, and end goals, they increasingly converge on a shared diagnosis: the Islamic Republic is incapable of addressing the problems it has helped create.

An important caveat must nevertheless be considered. Expectations of imminent regime collapse routinely overestimate protest capacity while underestimating the resilience of authoritarian systems. Although the current protests are unprecedented in scale and Iranians have displayed remarkable bravery, premature conclusions grounded in wishful thinking rarely survive empirical reality.

Born of a popular revolution and hardened in the crucible of the Iran-Iraq War, the regime — unlike the Shah’s, which remained sensitive to U.S. criticism — has demonstrated a far greater willingness to brutalize its own citizens to ensure survival. At the same time, equating repressive capacity with stability ignores the long-term corrosive effects of governance failure. The Islamic Republic occupies an uneasy middle ground: durable enough to absorb repeated shocks, yet increasingly brittle and less capable of offering meaningful solutions to the crises it faces.

As of this writing, the Islamic Republic is not on the brink of collapse. Yet it is moving down a one-way road, in which each unresolved crisis further narrows the space for meaningful course correction. The protest cycles of recent years are not aberrations, but symptoms of a governing system that retains the capacity to suppress dissent while steadily losing the ability to govern convincingly.

Ultimately, the trajectory of unrest in Iran will be determined on the ground — by the balance between the state’s willingness and ability to deploy coercive force and protesters’ capacity to sustain mobilization, impose political costs, and challenge authority.

The Islamic Republic will likely succeed in quashing this most recent battle with protestors, , but will ultimately lose the war to its people.

Sina Azodi is an Assistant Professor of Middle East Politics and the Director of Middle East Studies Program at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. He is the author of “Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran and the Nuclear Question.”

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Levant’s Agora.

Original source: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-protests-regime/

Al Jazeera: Integration of armed factions remains one of Syria’s biggest challenges

By Charles Lister.

It is also at the centre of the post-war state building project.

When Syria’s civil conflict ended in December 2024 with the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, hundreds of thousands of citizens were still bearing arms. Throughout the nearly 14 years of war, armed factions proliferated: from the broad spectrum of armed opposition factions in the northwest and the regime’s array of military and militia forces in central and western Syria, to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeast and a complex network of militias throughout the south, and not to forget the likes of ISIS and al-Qaeda.

In this context, the task of demilitarising society and reunifying the country has posed a truly formidable challenge for Syria’s transitional authority. Indeed, the process of disarming, demobilising, and reintegrating armed groups while simultaneously establishing new armed forces and a reformed security sector stands at the core of Syria’s transitional state building project. Days of heavy conflict between government forces and the SDF in Aleppo this past week highlighted the consequences of a failure to resolve the integration challenge.

As a first step in December 2024, the al-Assad regime’s armed forces were swiftly dissolved and a process of status settlement was initiated, whereby all previous soldiers – both officers and conscripts – could register using their national ID and apply for release to civilian life or to re-enlist in the new army.

Thousands of men chose to undertake this settlement process across the country, to clear their names and start life anew. But thousands of others abstained, especially in the coastal region, where the Alawite minority dominates. While many of those who avoided the process melted back into rural communities, hundreds ended up forming anti-government factions that conducted low-level attacks on government forces, culminating in a huge coordinated campaign on March 6 that killed more than 100 government personnel – triggering a chaotic and brutal week of violence that left more than 1,000 people dead.

In the months since, several thousand former regime personnel have undergone training and joined Syria’s new security forces across the country. Nevertheless, the fighting persists, due in part to financial support from prominent al-Assad regime figures now in exile in neighbouring Lebanon, as well as in Russia.

That continues to undermine Syria’s ability to heal ties with Lebanon and Russia, but also complicates the geopolitical standing of such countries among the wider region, which has stood squarely behind the new government in Damascus in the hope of transforming Syria into a base of stability and prosperity.

Meanwhile, Syria’s transitional government is also seeking to rebuild the Ministry of Defence (MOD) with an army, navy and air force and the Ministry of Interior (MOI) with provincial public security directorates, and dedicated “counterterrorism”, counternarcotics and cyber forces.

In this transitional phase, the MOD has emerged as the umbrella under which the broad spectrum of opposition armed factions have been folded. While all former opposition groups have technically dissolved, some remain largely in form, constituting the army’s nearly 20 divisions. Those factions with longstanding ties to Turkiye – particularly from the northern Aleppo-based Syrian National Army (SNA) – appear to have benefitted from greater levels of military support and arms supplies than others previously based in Idlib. Some have leaders with controversial pasts, including outstanding international sanctions designations for violent crimes and corruption.

In the earlier phases of Syria’s transition, the MOD was the force tasked with responding to security challenges and with securing territory through checkpoints and local deployments. This was not an effective “post-war” approach to security, and the ministry’s serious shortcomings in terms of discipline, cohesion and command and control gave way to grievous errors of judgement and restraint – most notoriously on the coast in March 2025, but also in Suwayda in July, when MOD forces intervened in bloody clashes between local Druze and Bedouin communities.

Through the second half of 2025, the MOD took a back seat when it came to domestic security and was replaced by the MOI, whose public security forces have assumed responsibility for local security across the country.

Unlike the MOD’s divisions, the MOI’s forces are dominated by newly recruited men from across the country. While the MOI’s specialist units remain dominated by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) personnel, the relative lack of previous factional affiliations in the broader public security forces has led to significant improvements in some of the most challenging environments.

In fact, Syria’s coastal region has transformed from being the most consistently dangerous and deadly region of the country in the first half of 2025 to the most stable and least violent region at the end of the year – even with a low-level rebellion continuing. That is almost entirely due to the MOI’s assumption of security responsibility, and a months-long effort to engage and build trust with local communities.

The most strategically significant challenge Syria’s transition faces today is from its unresolved territorial issues in the northeast with the Kurdish-dominated SDF and in the southern Druze-majority governorate of Suwayda. In both regions, armed groups are presenting themselves as alternatives to Damascus’s rule – and both are resulting in persistent tensions and conflict.

While the United States government has worked intensively to facilitate and mediate talks to achieve the SDF’s integration into Syria, those negotiations have yet to bear fruit. With multiple deadlines for such a deal now passed, tensions have been sky-high for weeks.

An SDF drone attack on a checkpoint manned by government forces in eastern rural Aleppo late on January 5 triggered a spiral of hostilities that ended in the expulsion of SDF-linked militia from northwestern districts of Aleppo city by January 10. This latest bout of fighting has dealt a blow to integration talks, but also highlighted the consequences of their failure. The very real prospect of hostilities now spreading to front lines in eastern Aleppo could kill the talks altogether.

In Suwayda, a tense standoff remains after the violence in July that killed more than 1,400 people. Druze militias have united under a “National Guard” that is receiving support from Israel. The dominant role played by former al-Assad regime officers within this formation’s leadership has driven a more than 400 percent rise in drug trafficking towards Jordan, according to data collected by the Syria Weekly media outlet – triggering Jordanian air strikes in late December.

Persistent reports of inter-factional violence within the National Guard and increasing numbers of extrajudicial attacks on Druze figures willing to criticise Suwayda’s new de facto authorities suggest the status quo does not offer stability.

It is in Suwayda where geopolitics have proven to be most acute – with Israel’s backing of Druze authorities presenting a direct challenge not just to Syria’s transition, but to Jordanian security, to regional support for Damascus, and to the desire of US President Donald Trump’s administration to see Syria’s new government assume nationwide control.

The de facto Druze leader in Suwayda, Hikmat al-Hijri, is also in regular contact with SDF leaders in northeast Syria, with both sides appearing at times to be coordinating their positions vis-a-vis Damascus. Alawite figures on the coast, meanwhile, including protest leader Ghazal Ghazal, have also been in communication with both the SDF and al-Hijri in an attempt to unite behind a political vision that stands in opposition to Damascus.

Ultimately, Syria’s process of resolving the challenges of armed factions is intrinsically political and tied both to the civil war and to the tensions and challenges that have emerged out of the transition itself. The fact that a vast majority of the international community has united in support of Syria’s transitional government has helped to provide the time and space for dissolving and integrating armed factions and fighters across the country. However, as long as geopolitical challenges to the transition remain, the process of integration will remain incomplete and continue to be a source of instability.

Charles Lister is a senior fellow and the director of the Syria Initiative at the Middle East Institute (MEI). He is also the founder of Syria Weekly and a Senior Consultant with Karam Shaar Advisory.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Levant’s Agora.

Original source: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/1/12/integration-of-armed-factions-remains-one-of-syrias-biggest-challenges

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