Analyses
Protests in Iran: A Reflection of the Islamic Republic’s Institutional Crisis
Nicola Pedde 22 January 2026
The history of the Islamic Republic of Iran—established in 1979 following the revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi—is marked by a dense sequence of developments that have progressively altered its political and institutional configuration. These changes, however, have only sporadically been recognized by Western analyses, which have instead tended to perpetuate a more functional and instrumental stereotype based on the image of a monolithic, highly verticalized religious autocracy. While such a characterization was broadly accurate during the first decade of the Islamic Republic, it has undergone a profound transformation since 1989.
  • Gaza Stuck in a Limbo of Trump’s New Personalist Global Order
    Claudia De Martino 31 March 2026
    In an article published in January in Foreign Affairs, two researchers analyze the extreme volatility of the current global order, arguing that in the age of personalist politics key foreign policy decisions—especially those involving great powers and nuclear-armed states—depend largely on the whims and obsessions of individual leaders, rather than on stable institutions or long-term strategies. In this new global order, instability is the norm, because decisions no longer correspond to long-term strategic expectations and interests, but are the result of impulsive choices unconstrained by institutional considerations and commitments. This dynamic is illustrated by what is not happening in Gaza, which has officially entered the ‘phase two’ of the twenty-point peace plan launched by US President Donald Trump—a plan that was supposed to ensure the Strip’s demilitarization, a technocratic government, and the long-awaited beginning of reconstruction.
  • New Arab Intellectual Producers Redefining the Vocabulary of Critique
    Alaa Badr 30 March 2026
    Writing about post-revolutionary intellectuals in Egypt and beyond, I once borrowed Zeina Halabi’s notion of the “aftermath.” An aftermath of a Naksa twice removed—first the 1967 defeat, then that of 2011—even if the content of critique differed greatly. Can one extend the definition of the 2011 aftermath to the post-October 7 world? Certainly, if not only due to their belonging to the same historical period, then it is because they share ontological and epistemological roots. The post-October 7 can be described as the aftermath of the aftermath, a time suspended, where the old (tools of critiques and references of universalism) is dead, and the new is stillborn—a present that is perpetually “condemned to become.”
  • The Poison in the System Behind Cases Like Jeffrey Epstein
    Jim Sleeper 27 March 2026
    You may think that Americans have heard more than enough by now about how the influence peddler and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein “networked” with accomplices, victims, and their apologists. But all the tawdry cravings for money, sex, power, and, later, conspiratorial dealings by this country’s plutocracy-serving elite have been merely symptoms of a deeper, more dangerous craving that we need to understand. No matter whether we characterize that craving as pathological or as sinful in the nature of our divided human hearts, it has been poisoning the country since long before Epstein and Trump began riding and accelerating it in an ever-widening gyre. I came to it nearly half a century ago, when I got to know a practitioner of sinuous methods and morals that anticipated Epstein’s and Trump’s decades later.
  • War with Pakistan Marks the Taliban’s Weakest Moment Since 2021
    Vittorio Sandalli 27 March 2026
    While international attention is focused on the war with Iran—due to its implications for the global energy market and the threat of a potentially devastating escalation—fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan has resumed with unprecedented intensity in the adjacent region. Such a clash would have been unthinkable when the Taliban returned to power on August 15, 2021, reestablishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, in part thanks to Islamabad’s support.
  • The Discovery of the Public Sphere and the Break with Adorno
    Giancarlo Bosetti 17 March 2026
    Despite the weight and authority of his school of origin—the “critical theory” of Adorno and Horkheimer—the philosophy of Jürgen Habermas established itself from the outset as a distinct and independent theoretical undertaking. The young doctoral student from Düsseldorf, working on his dissertation on the “public sphere,” was carving out his own direction in rethinking the relationship with the Enlightenment legacy, with Kant, Hegel, and Marx. That direction required a break with negative thought and with the radical critique of the Enlightenment—in which the Frankfurt masters saw the paradoxical source of calculative reason, of a distorted instrumentalization of human relations, and of the monstrosities of fascism and communism, of Hitler and Stalin.
  • The Paradox of Trump’s War: Against Iran and Common Sense
    Ramin Jahanbegloo 12 March 2026
    What, then, can humanity do in the face of this lack of common sense on both sides? Perhaps the only way to stop this war and the spread of violence across the Middle East is a shared commitment to peace and to the value of human life, whether Muslim, Jewish, or Christian. We need a minimal morality that could inspire opposition to Iranian tyranny, alongside a strong turn toward common sense—on that recalls the American tradition of civic virtue: the dedication of citizens to the common good and placing public duty above self-interest. Believe it or not, Iranian civil society today is closer to some of the values of the American Revolution than some of those who work in Washington, D.C. and wage wars to expand their capacity to make war. If the 2003 war in Iraq was unjust, the war against Iran is a war against common sense—and against the civic virtues of the Iranian people.
  • A U.S. Attack on Iran Would Redefine Global Shiism
    Pasquale Annicchino 24 February 2026
    The recent large-scale deployment of U.S. forces in the Middle East and Europe has led many analysts to question whether a military intervention in Iran is on the horizon—and what its short- and long-term consequences might be. An action capable of bringing about the collapse of the Islamic Republic would open political and religious scenarios with global ramifications.
  • Shifting the Geopolitical Narrative to World-Minus-One
    Seán Golden 19 February 2026
    While Vladimir Putin’s regime and Donald Trump’s illiberal regression gallop backward toward a nineteenth-century narrative of Great Power empire-building, and the Global South tentatively lays the foundation for a twenty-first-century alternative, Europe seems mired in nostalgia for mid-twentieth-century neoliberal obsolescence. This year’s World Economic Forum in Davos might mark a point of inflection in this process.
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