PERSPECTIVES

By James Hood Amid the headline-grabbing clash of titans between Iran and the USA, a revival of a longstanding regional conflict in the Middle East is beginning to become increasingly apparent to the world. The Middle East, with its vital strategic shipping routes and export of globally indispensable resources, rarely sees a conflict without reverberations across the world. This time in Yemen, it's no different. The setting of these concerns, Yemen, is a large nation on th

On October 8, the Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband announced that the British Consulate in Occupied East Jerusalem would begin operating under a new name as the ‘UK Mission, Jerusalem’. Whilst the change may seem benign, it symbolises what has become another significant tension between London and Tel Aviv, centred around the violence that has erupted around Israeli West Bank settlements, and a plan that has been described by some as aiming to ‘bury the idea of a Palestinian sta

By: Onara Perera In Shahrekord, a young woman stands alone before a water cannon, arms at her sides, unflinching. In Mashhad, teenage girls form the majority of demonstrators, their voices rising above tear gas with chants of "Death to the Dictator." In Tehran's Naziabad district, a woman holds a handwritten sign that reads simply: "I am not a rioter." The are scenes from the streets of Iran after a month of extensive and violent protests against the Iranian Regime. Iran’s wo

By Jack Keen Pointless, Counterproductive, and Disastrous. The only ways to describe Trump-Iranian Foreign Policy. In his first term, President Trump withdrew from a functioning The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement negotiated by President Barack Obama. Iran subsequently expanded its enrichment programme. Then, more recently, on 28 February 2026, the US and Israel began a new war by striking Iran and its senior leadership. The latest development, 16

By Lucas Nahal In the last few weeks, the Islamic Republic regime has undergone its gravest challenge since the revolution of 1979. On December 28 2025, a small group of shopkeepers and merchants in Tehran went on strike to protest Iran’s worsening economic conditions. By the advent of the New Year, the demonstrations had spread to almost every major city, featuring a massive coalition of students, merchants and the previously dormant Iranian middle class. It is estimated tha

By: Meera Nair When Goli Kouhkan, an Iranian child-bride sentenced to death for killing her husband, was spared her life earlier this month, headlines spoke of mercy and hope for other Iranian girls. However, this rare reprieve is not representative of a shift in Iran’s stance on child marriages, nor of the wider humanitarian crisis facing the country, and indeed, other parts of the globe. Although in Iran, forced marriages are illegal, this has not stopped the ongoing trend

By Axel Mallet A lavish arrival awaited Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, at the steps of the White House in mid-November. A procession of soldiers on horseback carrying Saudi flags followed his ascension on the red carpet-laden steps of the presidential residence. Seven years after ordering the murder of a Washington Post columnist, MBS seemed to have little to worry about– except how ridiculously asymmetrical the ‘deals’ with Trump could become

The most recently signed peace deal does not mark a resolution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Not now, when Israel appears to have already broken it. Rather, such agreements serve as a temporary pause to a cycle of violence that has defined the past two years, offering at best a tentative roadmap toward broader regional peace. Conflicts as deep-rooted rarely resolve on their own. In an ideal world, lasting peace would take the form of a two-state solution - with Israel a

Following two years of relentless conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 68,000 Gazans since October 2023, a ceasefire has finally been brokered between Israel and Hamas. At the heart of the agreement lies U.S. President Trump’s 20-point plan which promises to deliver a “strong, durable, and everlasting peace.” Although the world was quick to celebrate what seems to be the end of destruction across the region, its sustainability remains uncertain. Does this ceasef

By Ilsa Nawaz Two years on from the October 7 Attacks, the Israel-Palestine genocide is one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of the twenty first century. It parallels previous apartheid states, such as South Africa, but with violence on a much larger scale. Despite ceasefire negotiations, global outrage including protests, and a push towards resolutions, foreign intervention has failed to achieve any lasting peace. Instead, foreign intervention has been merely virtue s