Sunday 1 March 2026 The reported death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Iran, marks the most consequential rupture in the Islamic Republic’s political structure since 1989. For more than three and a half decades he embodied the fusion of religious authority and state power that defines the post-revolutionary order. If his death in recent military strikes is confirmed beyond doubt, the implications will extend far beyond Tehran — into the Levant, the Gulf, Wash

Saturday 28 February 2026 The long confrontation between Israel, the United States and Iran has often been described as a shadow war — fought through proxies, cyber operations, covert strikes and economic sanctions. Yet in recent years it has come perilously close to open regional conflict. To understand why Israel and the United States have come to view Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes as sufficiently grave to justify starting a major war today, one must place

Saturday 28 February 2026 The division between Shia and Sunni Muslims is at once ancient and contemporary — theological in origin yet political in expression — doctrinal in argument yet often national in consequence. It is one of the defining fault lines of the Islamic world. To understand it requires neither sensationalism nor fatalism, but rather a patient examination of its origins in seventh-century Arabia and its evolution across empires, revolutions and modern states. T

Saturday 28 February 2026 We flatter ourselves that we inhabit an enlightened age. We possess instantaneous communications, international institutions, the rhetoric of universal human rights, and arsenals capable of annihilating civilisation in a single afternoon. Yet the headlines speak of invasion and insurgency, massacre and repression, cities reduced to rubble and families scattered across continents. One cannot easily escape the impression that we live in violent times.