The rise, fall and contested future of Hizbullah
On the night the Middle East changed, Abdulrazaq al-Masri was at home with his wife and children in the Syrian town of Qusayr, glued to social media. It was December 7th 2024, and his Twitter feed was full of astonishing rumours. Rebels were said to be advancing on Damascus; the president, Bashar al-Assad, had supposedly fled the country. Masri glanced out of his window – it was eerily quiet. Just after midnight, he decided to venture outside to see what was happening. The Assad dynasty was indeed falling that night, but Masri was about to witness the crumbling of a different regime.
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New Statesman
a day ago
- New Statesman
What happens if the Iranian regime falls?
Photo byWhat will happen in Iran if the Islamic Republic's regime falls? Would Iran descend into instability? This is a question — perhaps the question — often posed about Middle Eastern countries facing potential political transition. The thinking often goes that while dictatorships may be unpalatable, at least they guarantee stability. And that stability is better for the international community even if it comes at the expense of the people under oppression. It is time to abandon this problematic approach to the Middle East. Syria provides some hard lessons. In 2011, the Syrian people protested peacefully against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. It was Iran and its main proxy Hezbollah that swiftly advised Assad that making concessions to the protesters would be a projection of weakness. After all, just two years earlier Iran had witnessed the Green Movement —peaceful protests calling for regime change, sparked by popular rejection of the results of that year's presidential elections, which granted then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term. The Iranian authorities violently and quickly cracked down on the protesters. Assad heeded Tehran's advice. With Iran and Hezbollah's help, the Assad regime brutally attacked the Syrian protesters. Despite this, many in the international community expressed worry that were Assad to go, Syria would descend into war like what happened next door in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 or in Libya in 2011 after the ousting of Muammar Qaddafi. This line of thinking ignored that neither in Iraq nor in Libya was there a viable stabilisation and transition plan in place for the day after. It is not that the end of dictatorships automatically brings chaos. Chaos happens when there are no sober pre-emptive plans for handling obvious challenges like weak social cohesion or the absence of state institutions; deeply flawed, externally incubated governance formulas are parachuted on countries in transition; the voices of the local population are ignored; and foreign actors enter the picture as spoilers. The result in Syria was not regime change but a conflict that lasted almost a decade and a half and which would have been preventable had the international community not largely regarded Assad as the lesser of two evils — the dictator vs the unknown. Following the harrowing scenes from Assad's prisons that flooded the public domain after he was finally ousted in December last year, the world can now clearly see that virtually nothing could have been worse for Syrians than the continuation of Assad in power. In clinging to his position throughout the Syrian conflict, Assad was following the Iranian regime's playbook. He sacrificed the Syrian economy, state institutions, and the Syrian people for the sake of survival. The Islamic Republic is the same in its pursuit of regime preservation. Iran has been under sanctions for years and yet it has not modified its behaviour (such as funding foreign proxies) so that its economy can recover. Iran's prisons may not be getting much attention from the international media, but they are rife with torture. The justice system is not independent, with many imprisoned or executed without a fair trial. The Tehran regime would rather see large numbers of Iranian citizens suffer than give up power. The Assad regime was never defined by stability. Assad manipulated Islamist jihadists to cross the border into Iraq to attack British and American troops after 2003 and in 2011 he released many imprisoned jihadists to frame the uprising against him as an Islamist terrorist plot, paving the way for the emergence of Isis. He also allowed Hezbollah and Iran to use Syria as a thoroughfare for funds and weapons and a site for the training of militias. Anyone worried today about instability spilling over were the Tehran regime to fall must remember that the spillover has already happened and has been going on for decades. Iran has been the Middle East's main cause of instability since the birth of the Islamic Republic in 1979 and this threat has extended beyond the region. Iran has been cooperating tactically with al-Qaeda and Isis across the Middle East and Africa, in addition to supporting Shia militias in Iraq and Lebanon among others. Iran and Hezbollah have conducted numerous terrorist operations worldwide including in Latin America and Europe. And Iran bears part of the responsibility for Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The Syrian people suffered unnecessarily because the international community selectively ignored Assad's role in fostering terrorism both in the region and worldwide; was paralyzed by concern about who would rule Syria after Assad; and was not forthcoming about providing Syrians with the international assistance necessary for political transition. The Iranian people have been suffering for decades and deserve to be trusted to lead their country into a better future. But as the Iraq, Libya, and Syria scenarios demonstrate, the Iranian people need thoughtful and adequate international support in managing the transition. If the regime were to fall, the international community needs to abandon cliched thinking about the Middle East and work together with the Iranian people so that both Iranians and the world can recover from the ills of the Islamic Republic. [See more: Will Iran surrender?] Related
The National
2 days ago
- The National
Israel's aggression makes mockery of self defence claims
And the UK Government, without blinking – or indeed referring to its international legal obligations – falls in line behind it all like the well-behaved subservient that it is. Last week, Israel carried out massive air strikes on Iran – a full-scale military assault that, despite Israeli assurances of targets being exclusively military-based, in fact hit residential areas. We've naturally heard a lot about Israel's right to defend itself in the wake of it. We can all hear Keir Starmer and David Lammy bleating that sentence in our sleep by now, but this was not a response to anything. It was an act of war, a sovereign nation being attacked without cause – to rapturous applause from our overlords in Westminster. And before we go any further, no the 'we need to stop them from developing a nuclear programme' isn't the immediate cause. It's not even factually true. READ MORE: Keir Starmer to chair emergency Cobra meeting on Middle East Yet again, we're watching Britain flail under the leadership of a Labour Government that claims to be principled, foaming at the mouth for military aggression. Feels familiar doesn't it? Armed with the same nonsensical justifications they fed us in the Iraq War days. How are we, 22 years later, back here again? It's almost as if being tied to Westminster affords us an infinite number of groundhog days. Without missing a beat, RAF jets have already been deployed to the Middle East, poised and ready to line up behind the single biggest aggressor and threat to global instability in the world, without a shred of justification. The moral amnesia is nauseating. When Russia invaded Ukraine, we rallied around principles of sovereignty, international law, and the right of a nation to defend itself. Sanctions came in hard and fast, billions were provided in arms and aid budgets, Ukrainian flags were flown from official buildings and posted relentlessly on official social media channels – and it was the right thing to do. What Russia have undertaken in Ukraine is barbaric. Yet, when Israel commits the same violations – and not for the first time – we're assured that it's more complicated. It's not complicated at all actually. Israel has a long and bloody track record of aggression in the Middle East – from their full self-integration in the Syrian civil war, to attacks in Lebanon to the brutal occupation of Palestine and the ongoing genocide in Gaza that has culminated in some of the worst atrocities the world has seen since the Holocaust being perpetrated against Palestinians. Entire bloodlines have been wiped out, schools flattened, hospitals and healthcare systems decimated, an entire population starved in an outdoor prison for months while bombs rain down on their heads. Crimes so heinous they will serve as a warning to the high school history classes of future generations – once, of course, we have all vowed that they will never happen again. READ MORE: 'We demand life and hope': Madleen crew invites public to sign global declaration Every single time, Israel says the same thing – we're defending ourselves. We have a right to defend ourselves. Defending themselves from what exactly? The starving people the IDF shot dead at an aid distribution centre that had been hoping to find some flour after they had been systematically starved for the last three months? It is beyond parody. Defence doesn't look like decades of illegal occupation, apartheid and land theft. It doesn't look like firing hundreds of bullets into a car with a six-year-old girl trapped inside begging for her life, and it certainly doesn't look like dropping bombs on residential areas in capital cities whenever you please. Israel is out of control, and because they have been given carte blanche to carry out whatever atrocities Benjamin Netanyahu feels like on any given day, we're facing a global instability of proportions not seen in decades. Where is Starmer, the so-called human rights lawyer? International law is being shredded in real-time and the only place he can be found is nuzzled into Netanyahu and Trump, it's utterly pathetic. He knows, or at least his education and decades of experience in human rights law should allow us to make that assumption; that this is wrong. But what we've seen with Starmer is a time-served political trope whereby power supersedes everything else – including humanity. His party waited a long time to get the keys to Number 10 back in their clutches and in his desperation to hold on to political relevance, and in fear of losing favour in Washington and having to answer to the lunatic that occupies the Oval Office, Starmer has sold himself, his principles and the legal credibility he spent decades acquiring down the river. It's not foreign policy or effective leadership in the face of a crisis, it's cowardice. And the irony is that all this will do is ensure he loses the premiership at the next opportunity the electorate have and damage the Labour Party beyond repair. More importantly for us, the consequences of his ineptitude, and that of the Labour Party more widely, means we're not only facing global crisis – but we're staring a Nigel Farage takeover in 2029 in the face. A man who is openly threatening to close our national parliament. And once again, Scotland is being dragged into a geopolitical crisis we didn't vote for, don't want and have no say in. It's not a new phenomenon, we have been here before; Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. Westminster signs us up for endless war, we are expected to swallow it, rinse and repeat. But it doesn't have to be this way. How much longer are we willing to be railroaded into crisis when it comes to foreign policy driven by Westminster cowardice and centred on Washington's interests? If Scotland had the power to speak for itself on the world stage, would we be sending fighter jets to support war crimes and civilian casualties? Would we be silent as international law is torn to shreds? I don't for a second believe that we would. I believe we'd stand for peace, for fairness and importantly and what seems to be long lost – for restraint. Even when it's politically inconvenient. Scotland has a proud history of standing up for justice; supporting Palestinian rights, opposing imperialism in all its forms, and of believing that diplomacy and dialogue are worth more than bombs and bravado. READ MORE: 'I may do it, I may not': Donald Trump on whether US will strike Iran We might not yet have embassies around the world or our own foreign policy – or the ability to set our own foreign policy should I say – but we can't sit around and passively accept more of this destruction in our name and with our taxes. Enough is enough. This isn't about picking sides in some abstract regional dispute far away from our realities. It's about standing up for the basic principles that Scotland's history is rooted in; sovereignty, self-determination, peace – and refusing to let our leaders play games with the lives of innocent people under the guise of our national security. It does nothing to protect Scotland to support the interests of a rogue state whose leader is an internationally wanted war criminal. In fact, it puts Scotland at direct risk. Israel's attack wasn't defence, it was strategy – calculated and intentionally provocative. They are the aggressor, they have always been the aggressor and the UK should have the guts to say so. With a moral compass somewhat absent behind the door of Number 10, it's time for Scotland to stand on its own – before we are once again dragged into another shameful chapter in history with no ability to eject ourselves. History is repeating itself – this time let it not be in our name.
New Statesman
13-06-2025
- New Statesman
Israel vs Iran is a new headache for Keir Starmer
Photo by Jordan Pettitt -. For decades the Middle East has haunted British politics: the Iraq war, the Syrian civil war and the war in Gaza. In his 2010 memoir A Journey, Tony Blair writes of his refusal to call for a ceasefire during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war: '[It] probably did me more damage than anything since Iraq. It showed how far I had swung from the mainstream of conventional Western media wisdom and from my own people.' As the election of four independent pro-Palestinian MPs last year proved, the boundary between the foreign and the domestic has become increasingly blurred. Israel's long-anticipated strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities on Friday mark a dramatic new phase in the region (more than 200 jets were involved in raids on at least 100 targets). No 10 has said that the UK did not provide military support for the action or help down the Iranian drones that targeted Israel in a counterattack this morning. This stance prompted condemnation from Conservative MPs with Suella Braverman declaring that 'the UK government has shamefully decided to try and appease the despotic mullahs in Iran rather than support our close ally and only liberal democracy in the Middle East'. But in a statement following a call between Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, No 10 emphasised the leaders' 'long-held grave concerns about Iran's nuclear programme' and 'called on all sides to refrain from further escalation that could further destabilise the region'. It added: 'The leaders reaffirmed Israel's right to self-defence, and agreed that a diplomatic resolution, rather than military action, was the way forward.' The UK's position contrasts with that taken last October – when British fighter jets defended Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles – but it mirrors a wider shift in government policy. Earlier this week the UK, along with countries including Australia and Canada, placed sanctions on two Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, for 'repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities' (a move that resulted in a rare split between the US and the UK). Britain has also suspended trade talks with Israel, an act that the Business and Trade Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, defended at a Parliamentary Press Gallery lunch yesterday. 'We took the decision to suspend the aspiration to have a new and wider and deeper trade agreement with Israel, because, frankly, to be in a position where we've had to impose arms export [controls] on Israel and then sanction members of the Israeli cabinet… it's just not realistic or practical to do that,' he said. But pressure for the UK to go further will endure with demands from MPs to impose a full arms embargo – as Margaret Thatcher did following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon – or to label Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide (a subject Starmer refuses to be drawn on in his interview with Tom McTague in this week's New Statesman). Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe For the UK, a new period of tumult in the Middle East also threatens further global economic instability. The oil price has today increased at its fastest rate since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 with Brent crude rising by 13 per cent to more than $78 a barrel. Higher inflation would intensify Labour's already daunting economic challenges. Once again, Rachel Reeves, whose first Budget was followed by Donald Trump's election and whose Spring Statement was followed by the tariffs of 'Liberation Day', has proved to be an unlucky Chancellor. [See more: Netanyahu realises his lifelong dream] Related
