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Iran’s Regime Is Plotting Its Comeback — Do Not Let It Happen by Majid Rafizadeh

By on August 9th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21821/iran-plotting-comeback

Iran’s regime is built on the belief that it must export its revolutionary Islamist vision, overthrow secular governments, and unify the Muslim world under a single Shiite Islamist state. This project is its purpose. It is what gives the Islamic Republic of Iran its identity. Its constitution enshrines that vision, and its institutions — from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to its intelligence services — are structured around advancing this goal.

A regime built on these foundations does not abandon its mission when it suffers setbacks. It adapts, regroups and strikes again when the world is distracted or divided. It is important not misread its current weakness as evidence of defeat.

This danger is not limited to the Middle East. It is now reaching deep into Europe and North America. Recently, the United States, joined by thirteen NATO members and Austria, issued a joint statement accusing Iran of carrying out a growing number of plots on Western soil…. The goal is clear: to silence critics, spread fear and expand Iran’s ability to operate with impunity on foreign soil.

Iran is not a normal country acting in pursuit of its people’s national interest. It is a fundamentalist theocratic regime committed to conquest. It thrives on conflict. Every dollar that flows into its coffers is a dollar that funds terrorism. Every embassy it maintains abroad is a potential command post for espionage and assassination. Every day the West relaxes its vigilance is a day the Iranian regime uses to regroup and retaliate. That is why the international community must stay united and focused — not just on holding Iran to account for past behavior, but on thwarting its future plots.

Iran must not be allowed to rearm under this regime. It must not be allowed to continue its campaign of terror. This objective means keeping “maximum pressure” in place. It means cutting off Iran’s oil exports. It means denying it access to the global economy. It means shutting down its diplomatic outposts, which serve as centers of espionage. It means reimposing UN sanctions and enforcing them without compromise.

The world cannot afford another mirage of Iranian “reform” or “moderation.” Iran is rebuilding its war machine. The mission to stop it must continue, relentlessly and without apology.

The Iranian regime does not think in terms of four-year election cycles or short-term political wins. It thinks in decades and acts on long-term strategic objectives. Its leadership, unelected, is essentially permanent. Iran is ruled by a Supreme Leader, who occupies the office for life, and by a military and clerical elite who are driven not by pragmatism but by an Islamist revolutionary ideology.

Over the past 46 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has become a primary source of instability in the Middle East, a hub of global terrorism, and a headache for Western democracies. The Iranian regime’s survival has been the result of relentless ideological focus, brutal repression, and an ability to exploit the weaknesses and short-term thinking of its adversaries.

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Is Popular Regime Change in Iran a Myth? by Nima Gholam Ali Pour

By on August 8th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21820/iran-popular-regime-change

A successful popular uprising without external support is not possible in Iran: The mullahs have repeatedly shown that they are willing to kill as many people as necessary to stay in power.

During the Twelve-Day War, when Iran’s regime was forced to confront an armed adversary, the enforcers who usually beat and abuse unarmed Iranians went into hiding. Their commanders went into hiding. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei went into hiding. This is what the beginning of regime change looks like.

The one scenario that is completely unrealistic, and has never happened, is that unarmed Iranian civilians, without any military support, could overthrow a regime that can even bring in militias from Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen to crush an uprising. When unarmed people confront armed forces, the armed forces win…. There is nothing wrong with overthrowing tyranny with the help of external support, especially when a tyrannical regime is spreading war and chaos throughout the region.

During the Twelve-Day War, Iran’s regime came closer to collapse than ever before. What was missing was an active agent to carry out the regime change. Iran’s ruling mullahs will never become pro-Western or peaceful…. Countries such as the United States and Israel have a crucial role to play in planning for a successful regime change and mobilizing countries that support such a goal….

A successful popular uprising without external support is not possible in Iran: The mullahs have repeatedly shown that they are willing to kill as many people as necessary to stay in power. 

The Twelve-Day War between Iran and Israel is a wake-up call for everyone who has finally had enough of the Iranian regime.

Until now, the Iranian opposition-in-exile and all those hoping for regime change have been waiting for some form of popular uprising from the Iranian people. Such waves of protests have taken place in past years, but each time, the mullahs’ regime has become more adept at crushing these revolts, regardless of how much support they received from the international community.

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Meet the Zyklon B heiress who is sailing to Gaza Her forebears profited from the gas used to exterminate Jewish people. Now she rages against the Jewish state. Brendan O’Neill

By on August 7th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/06/meet-the-zyklon-b-heiress-who-is-sailing-to-gaza/

Sometimes something so perfect happens you find yourself Googling furiously to make sure it’s really true. The news that one Marlene Engelhorn from Austria is joining the next flotilla to Gaza is one such story. For Ms Engelhorn is an heiress of a German industrial dynasty that profited from the production of Zyklon B, the cyanide that was used to gas and slaughter millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Her family profited from the Nazi extermination of the Jewish people and now she rages against the Jewish State – who was it who said history doesn’t repeat itself but it sometimes rhymes?

Ms Engelhorn inherited $27.1million from her family’s coffers. And some of that generational wealth has pretty disgusting origins. She is a descendant of Friedrich Engelhorn, who founded the German chemicals giant, BASF. In the 1920s, BASF merged with IG Farben. Some readers may have heard of that latter chemical conglomerate – its name lives in infamy as the producer of the poisonous gas the Nazis used to try to wipe the Jews from the face of the Earth. When her grandmother died in 2022, Ms Engelhorn got millions of Euros from this dynasty with a dark history.

And now she keeps herself busy by pontificating about the Jewish State. She’s been a key figure in Europe’s anti-Israel protests and next month she’ll set sail on the latest watery virtue-signal headed to Gaza to expose Israel’s ‘genocide’. Hen Mazzig put it best: so this is a ‘white, privileged, nepo baby’ whose family wealth comes in part from Nazi Germany’s ‘mass murder of Jews’ and she is ‘also anti-Israel’? ‘I did not see that coming’, he quipped, with excellent sarcasm.

Look, I am not for one minute suggesting Ms Engelhorn inherited her ancestors’ Nazi tendencies as well as their cash. And she is far from the first privileged white lady, or even the first nepo baby, to wang on morning, noon and night about the wickedness of Israel. The ‘pro-Palestine’ movement is lousy with aristocrats and leftists from Old Money and the overeducated middle classes who believe Israel is committing genocide as fervently as they believe you can have a todger and be a lesbian. Britain is especially bad. We’re overrun with Posh Twats for Palestine. Honestly, not since the days of Unity Mitford have I heard so many cut-glass voices hold forth on the ‘Jewish problem’.

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Israeli MKs: Taiwan Must Be Included in International Organizations by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

By on August 6th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21815/israel-taiwan-china

The MKs are calling for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in global bodies, with a particular emphasis on health, transportation, environmental protection, and human rights.

The declaration, signed at the end of July, praises Taiwan as “a vibrant democracy committed to promoting the values of freedom, equality, human rights, and the rule of law, all in a challenging geopolitical environment.” It highlights Taiwan’s “impressive contributions during times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, during which Taiwan was a global leader in finding solutions and assisting other countries,” and arguing that its exclusion from organizations such as the World Health Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is both “unjustified and irresponsible.”

This is the first and important step to counter the “one-China” policy. To break this “one-China” policy — a policy that leaves the door open for China’s military to attack Taiwan — members of parliament from other countries, as many as possible, would do well immediately to band together and issue similar declarations. Such a move in a large number of countries at the same time could prevent a great deal of bloodshed down the road.

In a significant diplomatic gesture, 72 Israeli Members of Knesset (MKs), representing parties from both the ruling coalition and the opposition, have signed a declaration advocating for Taiwan’s inclusion in international organizations. This unprecedented cross-party initiative underscores a growing sentiment of solidarity with Taiwan, particularly in light of its steadfast support for Israel following the massacre of October 7, 2023.

The declaration, spearheaded by MK Boaz Toporovsky (Yesh Atid), chair of the Israel–Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, and joined by MK Ohad Tal (Religious Zionist Party), chair of the Israel–US Relations Caucus, explicitly states that “Taiwan’s systematic exclusion from international forums is unjustified.” The MKs are calling for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in global bodies, with a particular emphasis on health, transportation, environmental protection, and human rights.

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Rewarding Hamas Major Western countries set to formally recognize a Palestinian state. by Joseph Klein

By on August 6th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/rewarding-hamas/

In a disgusting display of moral cowardice, three of America’s major Western allies have indicated their intention to formally recognize a separate state of Palestine – France, the United Kingdom, and Canada. They will be rewarding the Hamas terrorists, who started the Gaza war with their unprovoked genocidal attack inside Israel on October 7, 2023 and are responsible for its perpetuation. Hamas can end the war in Gaza immediately by disarming and releasing all the remaining hostages. But Hamas has no incentive to do so. The terrorists would rather exploit the acute humanitarian crisis spawned by the war that they started as a cynical propaganda ploy to rally even more international support against Israel, while stealing vital humanitarian aid for themselves.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognize Palestine as a state in its own right. He intends to make an announcement of formal recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly session this September that many world leaders will be attending.

British Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer declared that the United Kingdom will also recognize a Palestinian state this September, unless the Israeli government takes what he called “substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza.” Starmer’s government brushed aside a subsequent letter to UK’s Attorney General Lord Hermer, written by a group of eminent lawyers who are members of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords, explaining that such a move would violate international law.

In addition to uncertainty over final borders that clearly define where the Palestinian territory comprising a hypothetical state would begin and end, the writers of the letter pointed to the lack of a “functioning single government.” Governance of the territory where most Palestinians live is divided between two intensely conflicting entities – the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. “The former has failed to hold elections for decades, and the latter is a terrorist organization, neither of which could enter into relations with other states,” the letter’s authors said. The Starmer government’s response was that recognizing a Palestinian state would be in line with most UN member states that have already taken that step – i.e., a herd mentality justification.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that Canada would formally recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September on certain conditions. Canada wants the Palestinian Authority to commit to holding an election in 2026 and to make other democratic reforms.

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Niall Ferguson Talks to Javier Milei At the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires, Argentina’s president explains his radical plan to make Argentina ‘the world’s freest country.’

By on August 6th, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-talks-to-javier-milei

The prerequisite for an economic miracle is an economic disaster. As I wrote in these pages late last month, Argentine president Javier Milei inherited just such a disaster from his Peronist predecessor in December 2023: a currency on the brink of hyperinflation, a contracting economy, a government reliant on the International Monetary Fund.

What he has achieved in the subsequent year and a half is one of the wonders of the world economy today. (Read here; it really is a miracle.)

But—as he himself acknowledged during our conversation last week at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires—it is too early to celebrate an Argentine economic miracle. Political obstacles remain, not just sustaining his achievement thus far, but also launching the next and crucial phase of his radical plan to make Argentina “the world’s freest country.”

The Milei I met was not what I had expected. On social media, he presents himself as a rock star, cavorting onstage, yelling into the mic, tossing his mop of dark hair. Most profiles emphasize his eccentricities, most famously the pack of cloned dogs he has named after his favorite economists.

In the crepuscular light of the presidential office in the Casa Rosada (the Pink House), where the shutters are kept closed as he dislikes bright light, he cuts a very different figure. He is soberly dressed in a dark suit and blue tie. He has a smooth routine for greeting visitors, pointing out the chainsaw that has become the symbol of his drastic cuts in government spending—as if it were time-honored presidential regalia. Photographs are taken and we sit down at a large, glass-topped table.

Only when Milei begins to answer my questions does it become clear that he is no ordinary president.

To call Milei professorial would be an insult. He has always been too much of a dissident—too libertarian on economics, too conservative on social questions—to have played any part in modern academic life. But he is, first and foremost, an intellectual, a man so in love with ideas that nothing excites him as much—certainly not the formal trappings of presidential authority. Yet he is also a man of the people, who relishes his occasional lapses into profane language. And he is learning, late in life, the realities of South American politics.

I spent an hour and a half talking to President Milei. Below is our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:

Niall Ferguson: What have you learned since becoming president that you didn’t know before?

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Edinburgh University’s war on the Enlightenment The ‘decolonisation’ movement is desperate to discredit the great thinkers of the past. Hugo Timms

By on August 4th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/03/edinburgh-universitys-war-on-the-enlightenment/

Few events have done more for human freedom and prosperity than the rise of secularism, capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Scotland, and in particular its universities, was pivotal in their incubation and eventual flourishing. This period, beginning in the mid-18th century and known as the Scottish Enlightenment, was once considered to be a key achievement of civilisation, a hinge that allowed the history of the West to swing in a more liberal direction. But according to a new report commissioned by Edinburgh University, arguably the epicentre of this movement, this period is supposedly nothing to celebrate.

Apparently, the Scottish Enlightenment and Edinburgh University, in particular, were instead wellsprings of racism. Or, in the words of the report – co-authored by US academic Tommy J Curry – Edinburgh was a ‘haven’ for white supremacy. In particular, it blames the university for the discredited discipline of phrenology and it claims it played an ‘outsized role in developing racial pseudosciences’.

These accusations are levelled at the university in Decolonised Transformations, a report published this month that was commissioned by Edinburgh in 2021 in response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Curry – a philosophy professor at Edinburgh, who lists critical race theory as his speciality – appears to have clutched at every conceivable straw to justify his findings and to taint his university.

One of the report’s prime targets is 18th-century philosopher David Hume, initially a student and later a librarian at Edinburgh. Despite Hume’s published works exceeding 5,000 pages, the report focusses on a solitary footnote from 1753 in which he described ‘Negroes’ as ‘inferior to whites’. It is undoubtedly an unpleasant comment, but it is hardly proof that Hume contributed to the ‘intellectual justification’ for ‘transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of African people’, as the report wants us to believe.

The report goes on to claim Edinburgh played a ‘central role’ in promulgating the theory of phrenology. But again, the evidence it provides for this claim is distinctly threadbare. It appears to rely almost solely on the presence of two skulls in the university’s Anatomical Museum, which belonged to half-Barbadian students at Edinburgh in the 19th century. The report said it can ‘be assumed’ the students’ status as ‘mullato’ (of mixed white and black ancestry) ‘is what aroused interest’ in the skulls at the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. Well, perhaps it was. But it doesn’t exactly prove the university was ‘central’ in ‘assert[ing] the existence of the hierarchy of human races’, as the report claims.

In what must have been a moment of true desperation, the report turns its attention to James Sutherland, Edinburgh’s first professor of botany. After reading the heading, ‘Research Finding 3’ alongside ‘Empire’ and ‘Enslavement’, one might expect to discover that this quiet plant enthusiast had some sort of connection to the slave trade. Instead, we learn that his position was merely at the head of a ‘global network of botanisers’ who acquired seeds from the West Indies. We are left to infer that this is an unforgivable sin that we should still be atoning for, more than 300 years after his death. If only there were a statue of Sutherland to smear in red paint.

Curry’s determination to discredit his university doesn’t stop at 17th-century botany. In what is no doubt news to Israelis and Palestinians, Curry’s report also gives Edinburgh University a leading role in the current Gaza war, and the many conflicts preceding it. The basis for this imperceptibly tenuous link is the fact that Arthur Balfour, who in 1917 signed the Balfour Declaration in support of the creation of the Jewish State, was also chancellor of Edinburgh University. To atone for these supposed past sins and its alleged ‘ongoing entanglement’ with the war today, Curry suggests the university should repudiate its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, and create a dedicated ‘Palestine Studies Centre’ while it’s at it.

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The war of moral inversion being waged through the western mind Why Hamas released those obscene images Melanie Phillips

By on August 3rd, 2025

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/

Hamas released the cruel images of the starved and skeletal Israeli hostages for two reasons.

The first was to demonstrate the triumph of its diabolical strategy to turn the Holocaust into a weapon to exterminate the nation that was reborn out of its ashes.

Releasing these terrible images of starved Jews, who look like inmates of the Nazi death camps, was designed to throw the Holocaust into the Jews’ faces by saying “Look, here it is again but now the world doesn’t care and is blaming you instead for being the Nazis”. It was a triumphant taunt that Israel was powerless to prevent the second Holocaust that Hamas never stops announcing it is planning.

It’s no accident that these images were released just days after Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, announced that the UK would recognise a state of Palestine unless the Israelis ceased fire in Gaza.

Along with French president Emanuel Macron and Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney, who have also declared they will recognise “Palestine”, Starmer thus put rocket fuel behind the lie that Israel is starving the people of Gaza to death and that Israel, not Hamas, is to blame for Gaza’s plight.

This lie has been assiduously spread throughout the west by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian Authority, which has been promoting for decades the monstrous claim that the Israelis are Nazis bent on genocide — a stupendous inversion aimed to conceal the PA’s own Nazi roots.

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Edinburgh’s shameful cancellation of Jewish comedians Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon were dropped by venues over ‘safety’ concerns and pro-Israel social-media posts. Nicole Lampert

By on August 1st, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/07/31/edinburghs-shameful-cancellation-of-jewish-comedians/

Two Jewish comedians, Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon, had their Edinburgh Fringe Festival slots cancelled last week thanks to alleged ‘safety concerns’. Simon was also dropped from a second venue in Edinburgh for his social-media posts calling, among other things, for the return of the Israeli hostages.

I wish I was making this up, but in 2025, being Jewish is considered a safety risk. Whistlebinkles, the venue that was slated to host Creeger and Simon’s gigs, decided to cancel the shows when bar staff expressed fears of feeling ‘unsafe’. These concerns were reportedly raised when the venue was told it would need extra police protection to guarantee the safety of Jewish acts.

Rachel is a friend of mine. I’ve seen her show, Ultimate Jewish Mother, and it mainly features laughs about motherhood and how to make good chicken soup. She is the only female Orthodox Jew on the comedy circuit and the only dangerous thing about her is that she may drown you in love and cuddles. Each year at the Edinburgh Fringe, she hosts Friday night dinners for other Jews and makes sure there is kosher food for everyone who needs it. It makes me sick to think her presence at a comedy venue might lead to anyone feeling ‘unsafe’.

Philip Simon was not only taken off the line-up at Whistlebinkles, he was then barred from the Banshee Labyrinth, too. The management cited its ‘duty of care to our customers and staff members’. Having monitored his social media, the venue said it was ‘inappropriate’ to host anyone whose ‘views and actions align with the rhetoric and symbology of groups associated with humanitarian violations’ – ie, Israel. The supposedly offending tweets included images from a vigil for Israeli hostages, a call to ‘stand strong against terror’ and a plea not to forget the rape victims of 7 October 2023. All demands for peace, in other words.

‘I am still processing the concept that in 2025 I can be cancelled just for being Jewish’, Simon said in a statement on Saturday. His and Creeger’s cancellations are the obvious, if alarming, outgrowth of the campaigns to cancel anyone with any connections to Israel.

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The Rise of Radical Islamism in Bangladesh: A New Theocratic State? by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

By on August 1st, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21790/the-rise-of-radical-islamism-in-bangladesh-a-new

The rise of radical Islamic influence under Yunus’s watch threatens to transform Bangladesh from a secular democracy into a theocratic state.

The passive response of Mohamad Yunus’s interim government’s to these demands signals either weakness or tacit approval of the country’s Islamization.

Yunus’s interim government lifted the bans imposed on Jamaat-e-Islami, its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir, and “all associated organizations.” At the same time, the interim government banned Sheikh Hasina’s secular Awami League party. Yunus also freed hundreds of jihadists, and in the post-Hasina era, Islamist flags and “Islamic State” banners have been seen on the streets of Dhaka.

Islamist candidates from Jamaat-e-Islami will be allowed to run in the next elections, but not the secular Awami candidates.

The new Cyber Security Ordinance 2025, which has been criticized for potentially suppressing dissent, and the amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act, which have enabled the banning of all activities of the Awami League, demonstrate how quickly the country is descending into chaos.

Even with Bangladesh Bank’s desperate measure of raising the policy rate to 10%, citizens continue to bear the brunt of economic mismanagement. The promise of economic recovery under a Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist, who has been a darling of the American Democratic administrations, has turned into a nightmare for millions of Bangladeshis who struggle with basic necessities as their purchasing power decreases daily.

Meanwhile, [Yunus’s] courtship of China and Pakistan, reveals a foreign policy that lacks strategic thinking. In April 2025, Yunus invited China to establish an economic base in Bangladesh, stressing that Dhaka is the “sole guardian of the ocean” in the subcontinent…. On June 19, 2025, China hosted a first trilateral meeting with Bangladesh and Pakistan, aimed at enhancing cooperation in trade, and revealing an intent to isolate India in the subcontinent.

The economic indicators paint a grim picture of Bangladesh under Yunus’ stewardship.

The political situation under Yunus reveals a government sliding into being another failed state, ripe for terrorists, and unable to chart a constructive course.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamad Yunus’s transition from economist to head of Bangladesh’s interim government has proven fatal for Bangladesh. Since assuming power in August 2024, Yunus has presided over a nation sliding into political chaos, radical Islamism, economic distress, and social fragmentation. Bangladesh has devolved into a governance crisis that threatens Bangladesh’s economic stability and democratic future.

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