Protests over inflation and currency collapse have spread across Iran, leading to clashes. President Trump has threatened U.S. intervention if protesters are violently suppressed, raising regional tensions.
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French and UK governments should approve and fund Eutelsat satellite terminals to give Iranians an alternative to Starlink during blackouts. This can provide critical communication tools, help document human rights abuses, and counter Tehran’s move toward a closed, China-model intranet.
The regime’s sophisticated blackout targets even domestic networks and Starlink signals, moving beyond temporary disruption toward a tiered, state-controlled internet. This long-term digital isolation strategy seeks to eliminate organized dissent and control all information flows within the country.
“Until regional states acknowledge their limitations and negotiate a regional arrangement they can all tolerate, the Middle East will remain trapped in recurring tensions… Stability is possible if regional powers acknowledge their structural limitations and recognize their mutual constraints.”
“The theocracy is rotting from within. It has become a tighter and tighter inner circle around the supreme leader that has detained and discredited many of its own kind in order to survive. The odds are not in its favor.”
“Sistani has occupied a central place in Iraqi Shi‘a politics, revered by all parties as a higher moral guide… By more clearly siding with the protestors, Sistani made one of his boldest moves yet, the outcome of which may determine the balance of power.”
“Shiism in Iraq is being subjected to internal contestation… It is torn between two contradictory impulses—its self-designation as a revolutionary force driven by the example of Hussein, and its newer role as a status quo doctrine, employed by Iraq’s ruling Shia oligarchy.”
“Sadr has managed to build and protect his religious power by maintaining a plurality of religious associations, benefiting from the legitimation of senior clerics while ensuring no single religious authority can rival his own within the Sadrist movement.
“Understanding Sadr’s authority primarily in religious, rather than political, terms can help here. The Sadrist base is not bound to its leader merely by transactional exchanges for material benefits, or by rationalist calculations about political utility or particular ideologies.”
“Why did Saddam sacrifice his long run in power, his regime, and ultimately his life for weapons he did not possess? My goal was to humanize Saddam without sanitizing him so that we could better understand how he acted.”