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.
  • India’s “Cockroaches” Crack Modi’s Political Armor
    Maria Tavernini 26 August 2026
    One image will be remembered as the poster of the massive “Cockroach movement” in India. A lady standing in front of a police van full of freshly arrested protesters, one hand stretched out against the metal hood: she refused to move, for 40 minutes, under heavy monsoon rain in Mumbai. The image broke the internet and went viral, capturing the essence of the protest that forced Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make one of his Union ministers step down after public uproar, for the first time in 12 years. A movement that has become a pain in the neck for the Indian PM, who has to deal with the fallout from one of the hardest challenges his government had to face in years.
  • Sudan: Civilian Sieges and the Slow Descent into an Africa Mega-War
    Ruth Hanau Santini 7 August 2026
    Since April 2023, Sudan has entered a brutal war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) fighting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), both hitting civilians across the country, manipulating and weaponizing pre-existing communal tensions. The power struggle between the two former allies, which removed the Al Bashir regime in 2019, was in the making since 2021, when they derailed the civilian-led transition. While the two sides cooperated in the past, after more than three years of all-out war and intense violence within a zero-sum game logic between their elites, their reciprocal demonization and their transformation into existential enemies seems hard to reverse.
  • John L. Esposito: The Dean of Islamic Studies in the West – A Tribute
    Mohammed Hashas 24 July 2026
    Understanding faith traditions—their civilizational and cultural histories and contributions—wins further clarity and recognition if the scholar comes to the field equipped with knowledge of other faith traditions as well as profound spiritual experience. This is the case of John Louis Esposito, an American of Italian origins who intended to become a priest, and ended up building bridges between the so-called Muslim world and the West.
  • The Limits of China’s New Ethnic Unity Law under International Law
    Gaetano Pentassuglia 21 July 2026
    As many in the West embrace the ideal of the world with progressively weaker—or even obsolete—states, China’s legal entrenchment of national unity may look odd or counterintuitive, perhaps anti-historical, considering China’s own keenness to engage with the world through trade and wider cooperation. In reality, China’s declared pursuit of social cohesion speaks to underlying issues of national identity and self-perception affecting the contemporary fabric of most societies. China’s move, however, reveals significant tensions with the requirements of international law for any viable national concept to be sustainable.
  • Lebanon and the Shadow of Permanent Occupation
    Claudia De Martino 19 July 2026
    On Friday, June 26, Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement—mediated by the United States—ending the conflict that began last March. The agreement covers several decisive points, including active US involvement in its implementation and in financing Lebanon’s armed forces (LAF), while also accommodating firm positions held by both sides.  The Lebanese government emerges politically legitimized, while Israel retains considerable room to maneuver in Lebanon. Yet Israel itself is among the parties that may prove an unreliable partner when it comes to the agreement holding.
  • The End of the Hezbollah Ambiguity? Lebanon’s Negotiating Moment
    Riccardo Cristiano 25 June 2026
    Small, economically hollowed out by years of devastating crisis and torn apart by a war that is slowly erasing its southern flank, Lebanon has never mattered more to the world than it does right now. With only weeks left to settle their accounts, the Americans and Iranians opened their Swiss negotiations with a bitter, hours-long quarrel—over Lebanon. Only once Iran had extracted something on the Lebanese front—a tacit acknowledgment of its role as the country’s patron—did the two sides find a way to get to the matters that were really theirs to discuss. Tehran clearly sees Lebanon as an extension of itself: proof of its regional reach, recognition of which it is determined to secure—and to some degree, it has.
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