I first read Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis the year I turned fourteen. I’m sure, at that age, a lot of her prose had gone over my head; rich musings which described intricate political theory were as understandable to me as a foreign language. Her accompanying black and white illustrations of a childhood and early adulthood spent in post-Islamic Revolution Tehran had stood out to me the most – a powerful amalgamation of religious conflict, gender politics and punk music. I rev

Long gone are the days of muskets, bayonets, and line infantry. Throughout history, the nature of conflict has consistently evolved. Both World Wars drove major advances and a growing reliance on radio communications, aircraft, and tanks, and ultimately culminated in the birth of the nuclear bomb. The Cold War era saw an increased use of precision guided missiles (PGMs), satellite GPS, and surveillance. Today, artificial intelligence, especially drones, is reshaping moder

How “slopaganda” is reshaping the information battlefield Despite America’s tech dominance, Explosive Media , reportedly an Iranian outlet, seems to grasp the American psyche better than current U.S. messaging. This gap is becoming clear as AI-generated content expands. In recent months, Explosive Media’s wave of AI-generated videos has circulated across platforms like X and TikTok. Many are styled with bright, Lego-like animation , paired with English-language rap or narrati

The Iran war has reached the European Union’s back yard, with European warships crowding Cyprus’ shores and drone attacks striking RAF Akrotiri last month. While Europe insists this is not a war, the security of this small island member state is the security of the Union. A few hundred kilometres from the Levant, Europe is quietly building a defensive perimeter around Cyprus – whether it admits it or not. The UK has cleared its bases to facilitate US “defensive strikes” on

Lying recumbent and wrecked, roughly 130 kilometres to the North of the glittering Saudi city of Medina, rests the rusted hull of a century-old Ottoman locomotive. Targeted by British Intelligence Officer T. E. Lawrence and future King Faisal I of Iraq’s small cadre of Arab fighters, the sun-baked cadaver exists as a relic of the First World War guerrilla campaign that buckled the formidable Ottoman Empire’s control over the Hejaz, turning the tide of the theatre’s conflict,

International law was created to act as a check on unrestrained power, yet in practice is only effective at controlling states who are willing to conform, leaving those states whom international law was intended to control practically untouched by it. Out of the ruins of the Second World War came the concept of enforceable international law, followed by the creation of the United Nations and the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . International law promise

As this article goes to press, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has reportedly been killed in a joint U.S.–Israeli airstrike. His death marks the most dramatic escalation in U.S.–Iran tensions since the 1979 revolution and introduces a new variable: succession instability at the apex of the Islamic Republic. Yet even this unprecedented development does not make a war with Tehran comparable to Iraq in 2003 or Afghanistan in 2001, both of which share borders with Iran. Ge

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The geopolitical landscape shifted dramatically on April 14, after Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel. The largest...