Worldcrunch
Citing the costly or disastrous cases of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as warnings to the West to steer clear of regime change in Iran is mistaken and cynical. If transitions failed before, it was for a lack of planning and vision, not because toppling tyrants is a bad idea.
In 1979, Iran was seduced by a cleric who promised freedom and delivered tyranny. In 2025, a chaotic U.S. president may be using lies of his own to help dismantle that same regime.
Like Spain after Franco, La Stampa’s Bernard Guetta argues, Iran faces a crucial choice between authoritarian decay and democratic renewal. Before time runs out.
After the bombs, Iran stands at a crossroads, torn between dynastic succession, military takeover and revolutionary implosion.
Benyamin Netanyahu made his point clear yesterday on ABC news: killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, “would not provoke an escalation. It would end the conflict” with Iran. Netanyahu reveals his end goal: the fall of the Tehran regime.
Members of the Tehran regime are cautiously broaching the question of who will be Iran’s next Supreme Leader, but is this of real public concern or a ploy to distract an exasperated population from the country’s dismal socio-economic conditions?
Iran’s 40-year policy of seeking the destruction of the Jewish state and “taking back” Jerusalem became the north star of the Tehran’s foreign policy. Now it may be its undoing.
Israel is keeping the Tehran regime and outside observers guessing on the scope and timing of its threatened strikes on Iranian territory. Some say it is seeking to win itself time to “finish up” in Lebanon and Gaza, others say a massive attack on Iran could help reorder the whole region.
Cuba is approaching a state of economic collapse and has turned to the UN for food assistance for the first time in its history. While Havana blames the U.S. embargo for its economic woes, the reality is quite the opposite.
The Left’s reluctance to denounce President Maduro’s fraudulent reelection in Venezuela may seem tactical or expedient to itself, but is nothing short of stabbing the very principle of democracy at a challenging juncture in modern history.
Fearing Europe’s shift to the right and a second Trump term, Tehran has dusted off its reformist credentials — with president-elect Masoud Pezeshkian and veteran diplomat Mohammed Javad Zarif — to show the West it is willing to talk. But this ploy will not work again.
Iran’s regime has selected six candidates for the presidential elections due in late June, and possibly even a winner, just as millions of Iranians may have made their own choice, to no longer vote in a dictatorship.
The Venezuelan opposition and its leader Corina Machado may yet end 25 years of socialist rule with an against-the-odds election win in July, which would bring to mind that of Corazon Aquino in 1986 that toppled the Marcos regime in the Philippines.
The BRICS economies’ inclusion of new members like Iran may not make business sense, but it fits with the Sino-Russian strategy of drawing states of the Global South into their orbit in open confrontation with the U.S. and the rest of the West.
Syria is positioned to return to the geopolitical fold in the Arab world, but the political structure inside the country is still fractured, facing protests from its citizens and the need to call in the Russian air force and Iranian backers.
Is it a Russian conspiracy or anti-Paris bias? Or a sign that democracy has never really taken root in post-colonial realities?
Just days after the military seized power in Niger last week, the new junta has already been the target of sanctions by Brussels and Washington. What that means for the 1,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Niger, among other things, remains unclear.
Iran can expect few real economic benefits from joining the China-dominated SCO, but its leaders hope China and Russia will help the regime tighten its grip at home.
Impatient to be rid of a 40-year dictatorship, many Iranians have sunk into despair at the failure of protests last year to topple the Islamic Republic. They must be patient and sober in their immediate expectations, before a longer, ongoing process of change turns Iran into a free nation with the rule of law.
Iran’s clerical regime has worked hard over 40 years to set Iranians against each other on multiple bases, and must now watch a nation united in opposition to itself and breaking its red lines, notably those set around gender, faith and even ethnicity.
Iran’s brazen meddling in Iraqi politics has provoked a parliamentary impasse and clashes between rival militias. And while Tehran may be losing influence in Iraq, it won’t let go easily.
The recent departure of a top Iranian military intelligence chief, supposedly over security lapses and bad decisions, reveals regime weakness in an area key to its survival: espionage and state intelligence.
After years of ignoring or downplaying domestic protests in Iran, Western states and media have begun to imagine — and even prepare for — the still slim but growing possibility of a regime change in Tehran.
Israel’s vocal support for Iranians protesting the regime will lay the grounds for ties with a future democratic Iran, whenever that may come.
Facing resurgent protests in several provinces, Iran’s clerical regime now relies on two defenses: brute force and Western appeasement. But its days may be numbered as younger Iranians are increasingly emboldened to demand a different future.
The desperation to leave Islamic Iran has spread from writers, dissidents and minority groups to hundreds of thousands of Iranians willing to live and work “anywhere that isn’t Iran.”
The targeted killing of a top Iranian scientist has increased pressures on Iran’s regime at a time of speculation about a renewal of dialogue with the United States.
Under pressure both at both home and abroad, the Islamic Republic’s clerical regime is using capital punishment to sow fear and force compliance.
The Covid-19 crisis is likely to reshape globalization while benefiting China and other ‘illiberal’ regimes.
The island nation hasn’t had a free election for more than 70 years. And yet, as millions take to the streets across the region, the Cuban regime keeps getting a pass.
Protesters in Lebanon and Iraq have been venting their fury at Iran, which is accused of practically running their countries. Tehran is not afraid to come down hard on its domestic opponents.
None should be more dismayed by Daniel Ortega’s despotic slide than those who hailed his revolution as a triumph of democratic socialism, some 40 years ago.
MOSCOW — Nicolas Maduro has been reelected as Venezuela’s president for a new six-year term. Alexei Kolesnikov in the Moscow-based independent magazine The New Times looks at international reaction to the election, specifically as it relates to Russia: “Last month’s election of Maduro was clearly flawed and not recognized as legitimate by neither the country’s […]
-OpEd- As the old saying goes, no situation is so bad that it can’t get worse. The cruel irony of Venezuela’s going from bad to worse is how the government of President Nicolás Maduro is incompetent at everything save keeping power. It is a power play designed to spread suffering further every day, while keeping […]
Enough with the praise the Left has shamelessly heaped on Fidel Castro. He was simply a dictator who deprived Cubans of their basic human rights. Looks the same from the right.
HAMBURG — The heat in the kitchens is getting hotter. Life for cooks and chefs around the Western world has grown ever more difficult since healthy diets that exclude everything from gluten to dairy became a super trend. “We are confronted with this on a daily basis,” says Tony Hohlfeld, head chef at Hamburg’s gourmet […]
War has compromised the mental health of millions of Syrians. The problem is also transcending borders, following people as they seek safety abroad.
-Analysis- BOGOTA — Cuba, in its effort to loosen the economy and move toward a partially free market system, may be borrowing a page from the history of another communist country, Vietnam. Starting in 1986, Vietnam implemented a series of economic reforms known collectively as Doi Moi. The changes were inspired by the industrialization drive […]
Over the past three years, most Egyptians have failed to see beyond the most immediate aspects of its crisis. Meanwhile, in the outside world, the most basic formulas have changed.
A writer in Damascus says Assad’s regime is trying every tactic to reduce its adversaries to something subhuman. “Kneel,” his soldiers laugh, “or you will go hungry …”