Iran
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2026 Iran War and the Gulf
Sbarrkum argues that Gulf states do not attack Iran because they are vulnerable: they host US bases, their oil and gas infrastructure is exposed, and some face restive Shia populations.…
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Modi Puts India Firmly in the Israel-US Camp
X.T.M cites journalist Bharat Bhushan’s view in Deccan Herald that Modi’s support for Israel and silence on the US-Israeli strikes on Iran put India firmly in the US-Israeli camp and…
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On Whose Side Is God?
X.T.M argues that planners of the Iran war misread Shia Islam, which honours death with dignity. He says killing Khamenei hands the system a martyr, and that the Pahlavist, secular-liberal…
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Zahak versus Husayni
X.T.M reads Reza Pahlavi’s statement on Khamenei’s death through the Shahnameh’s Zahhak against the Husayni archetype. He weighs contested data on Iranian religiosity and asks who Iran is, with the…
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Open Thread: Israel Strikes Iran
Open Thread on the Israel strike on Iran: Tehran bombed, 12 or more Shia protesters killed at the US consulate in Karachi, and Shia mourning in Kargil and Kashmir after…
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What Tehran and Harvard Have in Common; And Why Trump Is Letting Both Burn
X.T.M announces the return of the BRAHM newsletter, whose first piece argues Iranian clerics and US academia both traded moral authority for proximity to power, and that Trump is letting…
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Pakistan Does Not Need to Imitate India to Be Stable
X.T.M answers a call for Pakistan to turn secular and drop Kashmir. He argues that state failure comes from weak institutions rather than religious language, that Kashmir is foundational to…
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Iran and Pakistan Are Not the Same Kind of State
X.T.M argues that Iran cannot be analysed like Pakistan because it is a civilisation-state some three thousand years old. He says authority there rests on inherited ideas, from monarchy to…
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Listening to Iran
X.T.M reports what he heard from people in Iran: severe economic strain, worst in provincial towns, with no wide appetite for monarchy. He argues that China cannot absorb partners’ failures…
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Lord Zoroaster’s Fire Still Burns
X.T.M uses a Molla Nasreddin cartoon of Zoroaster to argue that Persian customs survived Islamisation. He holds that Iran is a civilisation-state, not a regime problem, so Western pressure is…
