Middle EastWhy Iran

Aug 26, 2024 | thespectator.com | David Loyn |Klaus Dodds |Middle EastWhy Iran |Jonathan Spyer

The Taliban have always had a strange misogynist world view, weirdly preoccupied by sex. The first time they were in power in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the governor of the western province Herat banned women from walking or talking in the street outside his office, in case he was distracted by footsteps “or hearing the sound of their laughter.” The Taliban attempted to control every aspect of life.

Aug 26, 2024 | thespectator.com | Klaus Dodds |Middle EastWhy Iran |Jonathan Spyer |Douglas Murray

In the years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the west has been forced to tackle the question of national defense with a renewed sense of urgency. As Cold War strategic planners appreciated in the last century, hostile forces can approach not just from underwater, land, sea and air, but also through space. On August 9 in the US, Elon Musk’s Space X launched a Falcon 9 rocket from a space force base located in California.

Aug 26, 2024 | thespectator.com | Jonathan Spyer |Douglas Murray |Charles Lipson |Middle EastWhy Iran

Hezbollah’s response to the killing of senior official Fuad Shukr, when it finally came, was a more minor event than anticipated. For weeks, both the Lebanese Shia Islamist group and its Iranian patron have been threatening a terrible revenge for the recent assassinations in Beirut and Tehran. It is now clear, however, that neither Hezbollah or Iran wishes to risk a descent to all put war at the present time.

Aug 19, 2024 | thespectator.com | Philip Womack |David Loyn |Klaus Dodds |Middle EastWhy Iran

Rachel Kushner’s ambitious, intelligent and gripping latest novel, Creation Lake, concerns the eternal human capacity for delusion, while wondering whether utopian ideals can ever be realized without serious compromise. And it manages all this within the form of an expertly slick thriller, set against the backdrop of contemporary rural France, its history, politics and class system, all carefully woven in alongside an account of the rise and fall of the Neanderthals.

Aug 19, 2024 | thespectator.com | Amber Duke |David Loyn |Klaus Dodds |Middle EastWhy Iran

Nearly two decades ago, District Attorney Kamala Harris of San Francisco launched a criminal justice reform program called “Back on Track” that attempted to keep low-level drug dealers out of prison. San Francisco resident Amanda Kiefer learned the hard way that the program was open to illegal aliens: she suffered a fractured skull during a purse theft by a man released from lock-up under Harris’s program.