Throughout my nearly five years in Tehran at the turn of this century, speculation about his health and longevity was a near-constant background hum. He was reported, or rumoured, to be mortally stricken by prostate cancer, his constitution already weakened by an assassination attempt in 1981 that left his right arm largely useless. Who would succeed him was far from clear, and the object of further speculation. 

As he lived on into more recent times, reaching the same age of 86 attained by his predecessor – the Islamic Republic's founding father Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini – the prospect of his demise became a more immediate issue, though the question of succession remained equally shrouded in uncertainty. As Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei was the commanding voice behind the ruthless crackdown that took the lives of tens of thousands of citizens early this year in the latest and greatest of many escalating protests, at which the slogan "Marg Bar Diktator!" — Death to the Dictator! — became an increasingly prominent slogan. 

Their wish was confirmed to be true at 5 a.m. local time on Sunday morning by Iranian broadcasters. The previous morning, Khamenei’s compound in Tehran was demolished as the Israeli-American onslaught got under way while the Ayatollah was heading a meeting of the Defence Council. That ensured that top military figures were also killed, including the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Pakpour, the Army Chief of Staff Abdolrahim Musavi, and Khamenei's top military adviser, Ali Shamkhani, who had been wounded but survived the attack in June last year. 

The Iranian leadership appears to have been caught by surprise, as it was last year when the opening Israeli strike, which culled many top military leaders as well as nuclear scientists, was launched between two rounds of indirect negotiations between Iran and the U.S. Oman, which was mediating the talks, was furious then, denouncing Israel as the real destabilising factor in the region. 

Perhaps the Iranian leaders — and the Omani mediators — thought that such a dirty trick could only be pulled once. But it has happened again, with no evidence that the talks in Geneva had broken down. The chief Omani negotiator, Badr Albusaidi, was livid. Only hours before the strike, he was in Washington for meetings “to explain that a peace agreement between the U.S. and Iran is now within reach. No nuclear weapons. Not ever. Zero stockpiling. Comprehensive verification. Peacefully and permanently. Let’s support the negotiators in closing the deal.”

After learning of the attack, he expressed his outrage in another tweet: “I am dismayed. Active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined. Neither the interests of the United States nor the cause of global peace are well served by this. And I pray for the innocents who will suffer. I urge the United States not to get sucked in further. This is not your war.”

But Donald Trump and the U.S. were already thoroughly sucked in, and it was indeed their war, or at least his. According to the Israelis, the date had been decided jointly weeks before, after months of planning. Which meant that the Geneva negotiations, focused on the nuclear issue, were simply deceptive camouflage designed to give time for the U.S. to complete the marshalling of its biggest naval and air buildup in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

Trump and the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon made it clear that the campaign now had little to do with the niceties of Iran's nuclear programme: the agenda was regime change in Tehran, and a surprise attack to decapitate the regime was an essential element. 

With Iran's air defences largely taken out in last year's 12 days of war, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Hundreds of air, missile and drone strikes were carried out on missile launchers, military bases and other targets around the country, with inevitable "collateral damage", including a girl's primary school in the southern town of Minab where scores of children were reported killed.

The Iranians did their best to live up to their dire warnings of deadly reprisals against Israel, and against American bases and allies on the Arab side of the Gulf and elsewhere. Missiles hailed down on airports and other installations in Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and even Oman, despite its active mediation. While some U.S. bases may have been hit, so too were many civilian sites such as Dubai's iconic Burj al Arab hotel. Explosions too are being heard in Beirut, after Hezbollah fired rockets and drones at northern Israel to "avenge" Khamenei's death and the Israel Defense Forces struck back.

Air traffic was halted throughout a region rich in international hubs, sowing chaos worldwide. Iran's declaration that the strategic Strait of Hormuz was closed to shipping forced cargo shippers to suspend the voyages that transport some 20% of the world's oil and a lot of liquid gas, causing tremors through international markets. Once again, a decision taken by a tiny circle of men in Washington, Jerusalem and Tehran instantly rewired daily life, reminding us who actually gets to pull the global emergency brake.

What all this would do to Iran's relations with the Arab side of the Gulf was one of many open questions. While Oman was actively mediating, the other Arab oil states had been pressing the Americans not to allow a campaign that would predictably destabilise the region, and declaring their airspace not available for any hostilities. But any sympathy for Tehran quickly evaporated when the missiles started flying in: the Gulf Arab states closed ranks.

Trump and the Israelis made it clear that this was not one quick spectacular strike, but an ongoing campaign that would last days, perhaps even weeks. Presumably at the end, Iran would find its missile capabilities "obliterated," in Trump's favourite term, along with any nuclear activities. 

Once the bombs stop falling, Trump and Netanyahu urged, the Iranians should come out of their basements and take over a government that would be theirs for the taking. A historic opportunity that would likely not recur for generations, Iranians were told. 

But it is hard to imagine such regime change being wrought remotely from the skies. The regime lost little time in filling the leadership vacuum, setting up a three-man ruling council in line with the constitution, composed of the President, Masood Pezeshkian, the head of the Judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, and Ayatollah Alireza Arafi from the Council of Guardians. All regime loyalists, and the latter two noted hard-liners. So business as usual as far as they are concerned. But the fact is that the assassination of the Supreme Leader and the attendant bludgeoning of the regime's capabilities will inevitably usher in a new and unpredictable phase in Iran's turbulent history.

On the streets, reactions were fractured: jubilation in areas that had long chanted “Death to the dictator”, state-promote mourning in others, but also fear and a grim resignation, an understanding that power vacuums are often filled with fresh repression or civil war.

A smooth transition to a peaceful democracy is about the least likely scenario among the many possibilities. So too is an imminent return of the monarchy, with a comeback by Israeli-backed Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah ousted by the 1979 revolution. So far there has been no sign visible to the outside world of a split in the ranks of the defenses built up by the Islamic Republic, which still has regular military forces numbering around 400,000, Revolutionary Guards of up to 190,000, and its auxiliary militia enforcers, the Basij, who may be able to mobilise around a million at street level. 

There must be much anger among regime loyalists, which may fall on the heads of any opposition protestors who imagine they can move in and take over the reins of government from the bombed-out wreckage of the Islamic Republic. The U.S. military is not likely to be able to remain engaged in the detail of defanging the regime once the main thrust of the campaign is done. But Israel likely will. Its equivalent of the CIA, the Mossad, has spent years building up formidable intelligence at street level, and will be doing its utmost to continue hamstringing the regime from within and fomenting opposition.Among the many unanswerable questions is whether all this will lead simply to chaos and fragmentation, which is probably Israel's preferred outcome, or to a more compliant regime willing to compromise with the U.S. in order to get crippling economic sanctions lifted. As Trump concedes the war might last weeks, who knows what Iran will eventually emerge from the smoke and the rubble?

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If anybody hoped that the man on whose word it all hangs, President Donald Trump, might clarify his intentions in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, they were disappointed. 

Speaking 36 hours before a third round of indirect and ultimately inconclusive talks with the Iranians in Geneva on Thursday, he said, "My preference is to stop this problem through diplomacy but one thing is for certain, I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon...they want to make a deal, but we haven't heard those secret (sic) words, 'We will never have a nuclear weapon.’”

In the run-up to the Geneva talks, led on the U.S. side by real estate moguls Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Iranian officials voiced optimism that a deal could be struck and insisted they would be flexible on the nuclear issue. Various formulas were being bandied around, such as Iran sending abroad half of its estimated 300kg of highly enriched uranium and diluting the rest under supervision, participating in a regional consortium for peaceful enrichment and so on. 

In theory, for Iran to say "We will never have a nuclear weapon" should not be an issue — it has said all along that it is not pursuing that goal, which is banned by a fatwa. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X this week that Tehran “will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon.” Which begs the question as to why it has enriched uranium to 60% — short of weapons grade but well beyond the levels needed for peaceful civilian purposes.  

Witkoff and Kushner will be vigilant for signs of Iranian duplicity and foot-dragging. But with another set of talks ending with no deal apart from promises of more talks, both sides might simply be playing for time, Iran to delay the feared blow, and the U.S. to finish assembling the assault force, its biggest mobilization of naval and air power in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

There is strong apprehension in the region that the huge and costly U.S. buildup must mean business. American bombs and missiles would hit Iran. The Iranians would make good on their threat to make it a regional war, not a symbolic retaliation as happened in the 12-day war in June last year after American bunker-buster bombs hit Iran's nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow. This time Iranian missiles would target U.S. military assets, bases on the Arab side of the Gulf and elsewhere, and perhaps oil installations. And Israel. The Israelis would hit back hard. Hezbollah in Lebanon would do its best to join in, prompting a further massive Israeli response. 

There were ominous straws in the wind. The U.S. withdrew non-essential personnel from bases in the Gulf, and from its embassy in Beirut. The Israelis reportedly warned Lebanon that if Hezbollah joined in, they would hit back at government targets, including Beirut airport, which were unscathed throughout the earlier hostilities. They stepped up their daily attacks on suspected Hezbollah targets, including a big missile attack on February  20 on the eastern Beqaa valley which left 12 dead, including eight Hezbollahis. Since the November 2024 ceasefire, Hezbollah has not fired so much as a peashooter at Israel while well over 400 of their people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

Does all this mean the doomsday scenario is inexorable? Are the Americans set on a clear game plan, with identified objectives and the means to attain them?

Apparently not. Trump is reportedly receiving divided counsel from his advisers, military and political, some more hawkish and others more cautious than others. Above all, he has an eye on the looming mid-term elections in November. He was elected on a platform of ending the "forever" wars in the Middle East, yet could be on the brink of starting another one, which would not go down well with part of his MAGA base or the public in general. 

The signs are that he was hoping the swashbuckling display of power would intimidate the Iranians into buckling. Witkoff admitted Trump was puzzled that Iran had not capitulated. “Why, under this pressure, with the amount of sea power and naval power over there, why haven’t they come to us and said, ‘We profess we don’t want a weapon, so here’s what we’re prepared to do?’ And, yet, it’s sort of hard to get them to that place,” he told Fox News. Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi explained: "It's because we're Iranian."

Trump's adrenalin was clearly set pumping by the adventure in Venezuela, where a similar military buildup culminated in the operation to abduct President Nicolas Maduro. But Iran is not Venezuela. It is a highly militarized regime which has spent 47 years preparing its internal and external defences, and which has different power bases that make it hard simply to decapitate. There is no magic bullet that might not set the region on fire. 

Taking out the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i (who is also a religious leader, and this is Ramadan) would not be likely to bring about a change in regime behavior as in Venezuela. Bringing the regime down altogether would require a prolonged and detailed campaign that the U.S. military machine might not be able to sustain. 

That's where Israel comes in. Some White House advisers reportedly believe it would play better politically for Israel to strike first rather than the U.S., and thus force Iran to retaliate. Like Trump, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a man with an eye on impending elections (October at the latest) is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who makes no secret of his ambition to see the Iranian regime brought down. Netanyahu — backed by almost the entire Israeli political spectrum — is clearly champing at the bit, but aware of the danger of being seen to drag the U.S. into a potentially messy embroilment. One reason perhaps for the unusually discreet nature of Netanyahu's sixth visit to the White House on  February 11 — in through the back door, no lovefest press appearances. 

Which may also actually have been a sign that the two allies might not be on the same strategic page. Plunging Iran into fragmentation and chaos would absolutely fit Israel's playbook, but not necessarily America's. The two are working at cross-purposes in Syria, where the Israelis are pushing against a strong central government which the U.S. is supporting, even against its erstwhile Kurdish allies in the north-east. 

If there are two constants in the current equation, they are that the Iranian people’s disillusionment and rage against the regime will not go away, and neither will Israel's desire to overthrow it. But if Trump does not share that goal, he will have to find a face-saving way to wriggle off the hook he has created with his ostentatious military buildup. 

A version of this story was published in this week’s Coda Currents newsletter.Sign up here.

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The images rolling through my mind of what I had seen over four humanitarian missions were already apocalyptic. I tried to picture “worse”. The children and adults I saw, in a crush of bodies, faces frozen in a grimace of despair and grief as they held out their empty pots. I tried to amplify the deadened eyes, the lethargic movements of starving people, and the soundtrack of desperate voices not quite drowned out by the incessant buzz of drones overhead. 

Mohammed, INARA’s physical therapist in Gaza City, had sent me a couple videos of Souhaib, a little boy he’s treating. Souhaib had woken up one morning unable to move. He was admitted to the ICU and then spent a month in the hospital, but his condition did not change all that much. 

The doctor’s preliminary diagnosis was acute flaccid paralysis – most likely a rare disease known as Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), a rapid-onset muscle weakness caused by the immune system damaging the peripheral nervous system. But that diagnosis hasn’t been confirmed and cannot be confirmed in Gaza because the tests Sohaib needs aren’t available. All anyone can do is to give Sohaib physical therapy and hope that the paralysis doesn’t move to his involuntary nerves, his internal organs, which would lead to death. 

Soubaib is malnourished, his head looks unnaturally big with its shock of blond hair, but Mohammad manages to coax smiles and giggles out of him as he moves his limp limbs. Souhaib is not the only child suffering in this way. There has been a spike in cases of suspected GBS. Where normally there would be one or two cases annually, now there are dozens, a byproduct of the lack of sanitation and lack of food. In Gaza, people’s bodies – especially those of children – have become too weak to fight infection. 

“It’s like we’ve been issued a death sentence, only it’s a slow and excruciating execution” Mohammed messaged me on the day that famine, according to the United Nation’s IPC scale, was officially confirmed in Gaza City. Not that the people there needed a report to know that they were starving and being starved. 

Hunger related deaths have soared to more than 400, including 145 children.

Ever since Israel implemented its full blockade on humanitarian trucks when it broke the ceasefire back in March there has been nothing “sustainable” or durable in what we, or frankly any of us in the humanitarian community, do or are allowed to do. We require Israel’s permission to pick up our pallets from the crossing point, to move waste, to fix bombed water lines, to cross through red zones and within the vast majority of Gaza, basically to do just about anything. In theory it’s meant to protect us from Israeli strikes. In reality, it’s always a gamble. Gaza is the deadliest place for humanitarians.

In May, Israel and the United States established the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, replacing a pre-existing and proven system of at least 400 distribution points with just four located inside Israel’s red zones. Since then, more than a thousand people have been killed by Israeli guns, drones and tanks, just trying to get food from these locations. Doctors Without Borders, whose staff regularly receive mass influxes of casualties following violence at GHF sites, plainly stated: “This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing.’

Under international and U.S. pressure, Israel has been allowing a “trickle” of aid trucks to enter Gaza along with those carrying commercial goods destined for the market where few can afford the astronomical purchase costs. 

A parcel of fresh vegetables weighing six kilograms (around 13 pounds) – not anything brought from the outside, but local produce from the few greenhouses still accessible – costs around $120. When the vegetables are delivered, I’m struck by how little children are grinning and grabbing at a cucumber like it’s candy on Halloween. 

My INARA team goes to visit the home of a mother who showed up at our Gaza City clinic utterly beside herself and hysterical. Her twin boys’ bottoms scream with angry red diaper rash. Her husband holds out the can of baby formula with barely two scoops left. And one of her daughters ducks her head in shame as her mother shows our team her shaved head, raw with scabs from scratching because she had lice. The team returns with whatever they’ve been able to scratch together: a little shampoo, soap, baby formula and diapers.

One of the boys tells Yousra that it’s his birthday the next day. His mother says that all he has been asking for is bread. Not cake. Gazan children don’t even dare to dream of cake. Yousra returns, having searched for hours, on her own time, with a “bread cake”. As many loaves as she was able to find and a single candle. 

The boy’s smile is pure magic. 

“I had to do it,” Yousra told me later. “I just had to give him a little bit of joy.”

When I read the news, some days ago, about Israel dropping leaflets over Gaza City, ordering its one million residents to move south, I was in a panic. 

I breathed a sigh of semi-relief when I heard from Yousra, when she finally got a signal on her phone. 

And then Yousra sends a message and video that just shreds me.

“I didn’t want to leave my sons (7 and 10) alone while I was at work in case there was an evacuation order or a bombing, so I took them to my sister’s house” Yousra said. “We saw a very young girl lifting very heavy jerry cans, so I asked my older son to get out of the car to help her. I wanted my son to have this empathy, to help her and to know how exhausting her situation is.” 

“Don’t worry”, though, Yousra continued. “We are strong enough to support others. We are here for our families, for the team, and for the people.” 

Yet there is no strength in the world that can withstand the level of bombing that is raining hell beyond hell down on Gaza. And as Israel launched its ground offensive in Gaza City this week, sending in thousands of troops, there has been a crushing sense of finality. That people, forced to flee, are saying goodbye to their city, their homes, for the last time. 

Our staff in Deir al-Balah, in the middle of the Gaza Strip,  have been providing those evacuated from the north with fresh vegetable parcels purchased from the market. I was sent a video of a boy laughing as he bit into a tomato. “I can’t wait for my mom to make salad,” he says. “I’m so hungry!”

Earlier this week Mohammed tried to scout out a possible location for a tent for himself and his elderly parents. He sent me a video of the traffic jam along Gaza’s coastal road, people who are heeding Israel’s warning to leave the city. 

Others are still stuck in the city, even as the Israeli tanks enter. “No one knows what to do”, he says. “I’m watching people in the street, they are just going around in circles, gasping and crying about how they can’t leave, don’t know where to go or how to get there.”

Mohammed, himself, feels deeply conflicted about leaving. “Arwa,” he tells me, “we didn’t evacuate when most people did last time, but I think we are going to have to this time. It burns me inside, it burns. It’s so painful. Where does this road end?” What answer is it possible to give him? “I wish,” he wrote, “I wish not to be displaced from our land. And to not be then displaced to Egypt. And to not then be displaced to South Sudan etc etc.”

He knows, like everyone in Gaza, how the Israelis and the Trump administration casually float ideas about where Gazans can be moved, how easily their land can be emptied. 

That time has now come. Our primary care clinic, which was seeing 120 patients a day in Gaza City, has been moved further west, towards the coast. Four of our staff are refusing to leave and will continue to operate it for as long as they can. 

The rest of our staff have now been forcibly evacuated further south, into tents and concrete rooms with no running water or electricity. 

“You know Arwa,” Yousra says after spending 12 hours stuck in a sea of human misery making its way south, “it’s what you don’t see in the videos. It’s the women just sitting along the side of the road with one plastic bag between their legs, too tired to walk.” She’s struggling to find the words to express what she’s witnessed. And what keeps her going. “I want to live,” she tells me. “Not because I’m scared of death. I want to live so I can keep testifying to what we endured and have to endure every day while the world just watches and does nothing. And I want to live, so I can keep helping my people.”

A version of this article was published in our Sunday Read newsletter. Sign up here.

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The Iranian defense minister’s trip to Qingdao - his first foreign visit since the ceasefire with Israel - was meant to signal solidarity within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a block that includes Russia, India, and Pakistan. But the SCO, despite its ambitions, could only muster a joint statement of “serious concern” over Middle East tensions when Iran was being bombed by Israel - a statement India refused to sign. This exposed the stark limits of alternative alliances and the growing difficulty of presenting a united front against the West. In Qingdao, Andrei Belousov, the Russian defense minister, warned of “worsening geopolitical tensions” and “signs of further deterioration,” a statement that’s hard to argue with.  

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, Trump relished his role as global peacemaker, claiming credit for an uneasy Israel-Iran truce - a truce that Russia welcomed while being careful to credit Qatar for its diplomatic efforts. Russia itself reportedly played a supporting role alongside Oman and Egypt. But the real diplomatic heavy lifting was done by others - and Russia’s own leverage  was exposed as limited. 

Once the region’s indispensable power broker, Moscow found itself on the sidelines. Its influence with Tehran diminished, and its air defense systems in Iran—meant to deter Israeli and later American strikes—were exposed as ineffective. With Bashar al-Assad’s rule in Syria collapsed, the Kremlin is acutely aware it cannot afford to lose another major ally in the region. As long as the Iranian government stands, Russia can still claim to have a role to play, but its ability to project power in the Middle East is now more symbolic than real. The 12-day war put Russia in an awkward position. Iran, a key supplier of drones for Russia’s war in Ukraine, was unimpressed by Moscow’s lack of support during the crisis. Even after signing a 20-year pact in January, Russia offered little more than “grave concern” when the bombs started falling. Similarly to the SCO, BRICS, supposedly the alternative to Western alliances, could only issue a joint statement, revealing just how thin multipolarity is in practice.

Enter the new narrative spin

For years, Vladimir Putin has argued that the West’s “rules-based order” is little more than a tool for maintaining Western dominance and justifying double standards. His vision of multipolarity is not just anti-American rhetoric—it’s a deliberate strategy to appeal to countries disillusioned by Western interventions, broken promises, and the arrogance of those who claimed victory in the Cold War. Russia has worked to turn Western failures—from Iraq to Afghanistan, from Libya to the global financial crisis—into recruitment tools for its own vision of “civilizational diversity.” Multipolarity, in the Kremlin’s telling, is about giving every culture, every nation, a seat at the table, while quietly reserving the right to redraw the map and rewrite the rules when it suits Moscow’s interests.

For a time, this approach was paying off. Russia’s anti-colonial and multipolar rhetoric resonated well beyond its borders, particularly in the Global South and among those frustrated by Western hypocrisy. 

But across the periphery of Russia’s historical empire, from Central Asia to the Baltics, from the Caucasus to Ukraine and Georgia, Russia’s multipolar message is seen not as liberation but as yet another chapter in a centuries-long cycle of conquest, repression and forced assimilation - a reality that continues to define the struggle for self-determination across Russia’s former empire.  Here, Russia’s message of “sameness” has long served as a colonial tool, erasing languages, cultures, and identities in the name of imperial unity. 

The recent conflict in the Middle East has forced Moscow to adapt its “multipolarity” messaging yet again. As its limitations as a regional power became impossible to ignore, Russian state media and officials began to reframe the conversation—no longer just championing multipolarity, but openly embracing the language of empire. In this new narrative, ‘empire’ is recast not as a relic of oppression, but as a stabilizing force uniquely capable of imposing order on an unruly world. The pivot is as much about masking diminished leverage as it is about projecting confidence: if Moscow can no longer dictate outcomes, it can still claim the mantle of indispensable power by rewriting the very terms of global legitimacy.

As we peered into the abyss of World War III, Russian state media pivoted: suddenly, ‘empire’—long a slur—was rebranded as a stabilizing force in a chaotic world.

This rhetorical shift has been swift and striking. Where once the Kremlin denounced imperialism as a Western vice, Russian commentators now argue that empires are not only inevitable but necessary for stability. “Empires could return to world politics not only as dark shadows of the past. Empire may soon become a buzzword for discussing the direction in which the world’s political organization is heading,” wrote one Russian analyst. The message is clear: in an age of chaos and fractured alliances, only a strong imperial center—preferably Moscow—can guarantee order. But beneath the surface, this embrace of empire reveals as much uncertainty as ambition, exposing deep anxieties about Russia’s place in a world it can no longer control as it once did.

Inside Russia, this new imperial rhetoric is both a rallying cry and a reflection of unease. In recent weeks, influential analysts have argued that Iran’s restraint—its so-called “peacefulness”—only invited aggression, a warning that resonates with those who fear Russia could be next. Enter Alexander Dugin, the far-right philosopher often described as “Putin’s brain,” whose apocalyptic worldview has shaped much of the Kremlin’s confrontational posture. Dugin warns that if the U.S. and Israel can strike Tehran with impunity, nothing would stop them from finding a pretext to strike Moscow. This siege mentality, echoed by senior officials, is now being used to justify a strategy of escalation and deterrence at any cost.

Dugin’s views were echoed by Konstantin Kosachev, chair of the Russian parliamentary foreign affairs committee: “If you don’t want to be bombed by the West, arm yourself. Build deterrence. Go all the way—even to the point of developing weapons of mass destruction.”

But for all the talk of “victory,” by all sides post the 12-day war,  the outcomes remain ambiguous. Iran insists its nuclear ambitions are undimmed. While Israel and Trump’s team says Iran is further from a bomb than ever before – still, the facts are murky and the region is no closer to peace. As one Russian analyst remarked, the normalization of “phoney war” logic means that everyone is arming up, alliances are transactional, and the rules are made up as we go along.

If the only lesson of the 12-day war is that everyone must arm themselves to the teeth, we’re not just reliving the Cold War—we’re entering a new era of empire-building, where deterrence is everything and the lines between friend and foe are as blurred as ever.

In a world where old alliances crumble and new narratives emerge, the true battle, it seems, is not just over territory or military might, but over the stories that define power itself. Russia’s pivot to an imperial narrative reveals both its ambitions and its anxieties, highlighting a global order in flux where legitimacy is contested and the rules are rewritten in real time. Understanding this evolving empire game is essential to grasping the future of international relations and the fragile balance that holds the world together.

A version of this story was published in this week’s Coda Currents newsletter. Sign up here.

Research and additional reporting by Masho Lomashvili.

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First up, things you should know this week: the US election race, two assassinations, geopolitics, and the internet.

JD Vance appeared to be Silicon Valley’s chosen blue-eyed boy just a few weeks ago, but a significant faction of tech investors who describe themselves as “pro-business, pro-American dream, pro-entrepreneurship, and pro-technological progress” are now rallying behind US Vice President Kamala Harris. Why is Silicon Valley determined to play kingmaker in the US elections? One big reason is Biden’s billionaire tax.

Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the Palestinian extremist group Hamas, and Fuad Shokr, a senior member of Hezbollah, were killed within hours of each other on July 31. The deaths have sparked fears of a wider crisis in the Middle East, where oil prices began to soar within hours of the news about the assassinations. Here is a look at how oil prices and conflict have been linked historically.

Sanctioned and shunned by the West over the full scale invasion in Ukraine, Russia has invested heavily into its relationship with the rest of the world, relying heavily on China, and going on a charm offensive in Africa and Asia. Some of this diplomacy has been detrimental to Ukraine and crucial in keeping Putin  in power. Read Insider’s deep dive on how the Kremlin's aggression is bringing more allies to Ukraine here.

What’s going on with YouTube in Russia? YouTube users in Russia have reported that loading speeds on the video platform have slowed down by 40%, amid concerns the platform may be shut down in Russia altogether, as a growing effort by the country to isolate its internet from the rest of the world. Alexander Khinshtein, who is part of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, shared on his Telegram channel that the slow down was a deliberate decision. “The degradation of YouTube is a forced step, aimed not against Russian users, but against the administration of a foreign resource, which still believes that it can violate and ignore our legislation with impunity”. In July, Roskomnadzor asked Google to unblock more than 200 YouTube channels that belonged to Russian journalists, media, public figures, artists, and government agencies which were banned in 2022.

Political bodies in art and at the Olympics:

Since it was painted in 1650, the The Threatened Swan by Dutch painter Jan Asseljin has been explained through two allegories, either the swan is a protective parent guarding her eggs from a ferocious dog, or the swan is a political allegory representing Johann de Witt, a politician in 17th century Holland, defending his Republic from enemies. Neither of these explains what is truly arresting about Asseljin’s work, which is the sheer force of a body in motion frozen in time, animated by something so primal it can only be understood, not spoken. [Scroll up if you missed the image or see it in its full glory here]

The spectacle of moving bodies animated by passion has captivated humans since at least 776 BC, when the first Olympics were held in ancient Greece and won by a cook named Coreobus. In 2024, the irony of a global event to promote peaceful competition is extreme. At the Olympics, feats of extraordinary athleticism remind us of what human bodies are capable of. But outside the arena, we are forced to confront how fragile those bodies are, how quickly they are reduced to politics, parts and rubble.

At the Paris Olympics, athletes and performers who embody euphoria, grace, speed and resilience must also confront the fact that their bodies are political. Barbara Butch, a queer performer who was part of the opening ceremony, has filed a complaint against the extreme cyberbullying they have faced since their performance was aired. Simone Biles, who made Olympic history, had to explain why her hair was out of place in the midst of a heatwave brought on by climate-change. Thanks to years of advocacy, for the first time in history Olympic and Paralympic athletes who are parents will finally be able to access a special nursery within the village.

Watch: Unconfined joy is the only way to describe this moment when the Olympic Refugee Team’s Cindy Ngamba won her way to the boxing quarter finals.

Listen: To this podcast called Matryoshka of Lies documenting Russia’s history of doublespeak, invasions, and political killings.

Read: About the first out gay Olympic Gold Medalist Matthew Mitcham on how athletes are supplementing their careers with money they make on OnlyFans.

Special thanks to Marina Bocharaova.

The post Body Politics appeared first on Coda Story.

Fatafta is the Middle East-North Africa policy manager at the digital rights group Access Now and a policy analyst at the think tank Al-Shabaka which seeks to “educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination.” Coda Story spoke with her to learn more about Israel’s use of surveillance technology in Palestine. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You wrote on Twitter recently that Palestine is a surveillance testing laboratory. Could you elaborate on what you meant by that?

Most, if not all, of the surveillance technologies that are developed and exported by the Israeli authorities stem from the occupied territories. It's either the Israeli army that has been prototyping and testing these technologies or private companies that are set up by former Israeli intelligence and military forces. Israel doesn't acknowledge that its obligations to protect human rights under international law extend to the territories they occupy. And at the same time, they see in the occupied territories a lucrative opportunity to prototype, deploy, test and enhance all sorts of weapons and surveillance technologies.

In the last few weeks we've seen internet shutdowns in response to widespread protests in Iran. Despite the state of their diplomatic relations, how much do Israel and Iran learn from each other in terms of building a surveillance state?

I think regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, authoritarian governments and oppressive regimes use the same tactics. They all have the same oppressive handbook. They know that flow of information is important. It's important for organizing. It's important for documentation, it's important for accountability. And that's why the Internet becomes an enemy of the state. For them, the moment there are protests or dissent on the ground, the number one rule is to stop the information from flowing, whether it be reporting to Meta to take down content as the Israeli government does, or shutting down the Internet or throttling the services like the Iranian regime does.

What can people do to resist?

For one, documentation. I think the bigger point here, though, is that it is not up to ordinary citizens. It is actually up to the international community to hold the Israeli government accountable for all of these violations. Often governments, especially the European governments and the U.S., when it comes to surveillance technologies, they don't see the supply chain. They don't understand that when technology is being used on an oppressed, occupied community it will soon be deployed somewhere else. And I think it's important for people not only in Palestine but elsewhere, to understand how surveillance supply chains work, especially in the Palestinian context. Of course, Palestinians on the ground can protest. But we need to understand what's driving this economy. It's the demand from abroad and there are of course happy suppliers.

IN GLOBAL NEWS:

Meta is in the spotlight again for its role in inciting ethnic violence in Myanmar. According to a damning new report from Amnesty International, Meta “proactively amplified and promoted content” on Facebook, which helped to incite widespread violence against Rohingya Muslims in 2017. The investigation claims that the company knew or should have known that Facebook’s algorithms were amplifying the dissemination of harmful anti-Rohingya hate speech and disinformation in Myanmar, but failed to act, prioritizing profit over safety. In Myanmar Facebook is the internet and “Facebook’s algorithms were intensifying a storm of hatred against the Rohingya which contributed to real-world violence,” said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s Secretary General. “The company now has a responsibility to provide reparations to all those who suffered the violent consequences of their reckless actions.” As we recently reported, Rohingya refugees sued Facebook for $150 billion for allegedly amplifying hate speech that led directly to violence.

Software meant to monitor students at risk of harming themselves or others has been used to target student protesters on U.S. college campuses. The company, Social Sentinel, has provided dozens of colleges nationwide with technology marketed to promote school safety by monitoring the social media accounts of students at risk of harming themselves or others. However, an investigation from The Dallas Morning News found that some colleges that bought the service used it to surveil student protesters. “Despite publicly saying its service was not a surveillance tool, Social Sentinel representatives promoted the tool to universities for “mitigating” and “forestalling” protests. The documents also show the company has been moving in a new and potentially more invasive direction — allowing schools to monitor student emails on university accounts,” the paper found. For more, you can check out our past reporting exploring how the pandemic led to an explosion of dubious ed-tech solutions. 

Yesterday, Uganda’s highest court held its first hearing in a legal challenge to the country’s national digital ID system. The lawsuit, filed by a coalition of human rights groups, claims the country’s controversial digital ID scheme has excluded women and the elderly from accessing public health and government services. The government’s national identity card, known as the Ndaga Muntu, is mandatory to vote, open a bank account, get health care, travel domestically, and access an array of other government services. The lawsuit argues that millions of people — primarily women and senior citizens — are systematically being excluded from accessing crucial social support because they don’t have the required digital ID card. We’ve covered the rise of digital ID schemes across the region. For more, you can read our coverage of biometric identification systems in Ghana and Kenya.

This week’s newsletter is curated by Coda’s staff reporter Erica Hellerstein. Rebekah Robinson and Liam Scott contributed to this edition.

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Pegasus illustrates the need to address the international proliferation of spyware. In a market that’s highly unregulated, this won’t be as simple as punishing companies here and there. 

While NSO Group deals with backlash, other companies are happy to fill authoritarians’ need for tools that will allow them to monitor and track people.

“The problem is the industry and the lack of control regulation of the industry,” said Etienne Maynier, a technologist at Amnesty International. 

So long as there isn’t a framework to ensure other companies can’t follow in NSO Group’s footsteps and sell their tools to authoritarians, “we can only expect this abuse will continue,” he added. 

Take, for example, another Israeli firm QuaDream, which sells some of the most sophisticated spyware available and exploited the same flaw in Apple devices. Like Pegasus, QuaDream relies on zero-click exploits that enable attackers to crack phones without requiring the device’s owner to open a malicious link. QuaDream is also courting similar clients to NSO Group, like Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Singapore. 

Like Pegasus, QuaDream’s REIGN spyware grants full access to the phone’s messages, photos, contacts and cameras. The spyware can also activate a devices’ cameras and microphones and record calls in real time. 

But unlike NSO Group, QuaDream hasn’t faced the same level of international scrutiny, and it hasn’t been sanctioned, blacklisted or sued. Whack-a-mole style regulation will inevitably miss companies. 

It’s tricky to crack down on companies in such an opaque industry. “The spyware market is very secretive, and often we discover things when they're already done,” said Maynier. 

Even if you know the company’s name, what do you do next? The spyware industry is diverse. Tools range from Pegasus-like exploitation software to companies that sell hacking-for-hire services. The same type of regulation won’t work for every situation.

For example, BellTroX, a New Delhi-based hacking-for-hire firm, profiles individuals and targets them with customized phishing campaigns. Export controls will be important for reigning in Pegasus or QuaDream, but they won’t be as effective for companies like BellTroX that are selling a service, rather than a product, explained Maynier. 

One option might be holding BellTroX liable and taking legal action against the company. 

Piecemeal regulations won’t stop spyware from being used in authoritarian countries. Blacklisting NSO Group in the U.S. or forbidding French phone numbers from being targeted does nothing to prevent spyware from being used in Saudi Arabia.

“We have to solve the problem for everyone, otherwise it won’t work,” said Maynier. 

There is a bright side though. Because of the Pegasus Project, there’s more attention to the spyware industry overall. The next step is figuring out what to do about it.

Any approach to regulating spyware will be multifaceted, said Maynier. In addition to export controls and lawsuits by companies like Apple, the solution will involve agreements on the national, regional and international level.

“Right now, we need a short term solution to stop this abuse,” said Maynier. In the long term, the solution will be much more complicated. 

Masho Lomashvili contributed additional reporting.

IN OTHER GLOBAL NEWS: 

In Italy, a driver born in Ghana or Laos may pay over $1,000 more for car insurance than a driver born in Milan. There’s a clear pattern of bias in the algorithms that calculate insurance prices, according to a study by researchers at the Universities of Padua, Udine, and Carnegie Mellon. Italy knew there was a problem in 2012, when authorities tried to encourage insurance companies to stop including birthplace or citizenship in the risk models used to calculate premiums. Clearly it didn’t work. 

Gig workers in Turkey are striking, amid the lira’s dire crash. Food delivery workers from various companies are pushing for wage increases, but so far, many have been offered minimal increases of a couple hundred dollars. The economy is in rough shape, with inflation near 50%. Turkey’s Information Technologies and Communication Authority plans to take steps to require food delivery companies to hire more gig workers as actual employees.

Surveillance with a side of fries: McDonald’s settled a $50 million class action lawsuit over its use of biometrics. Employees sued under Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), arguing that the company required them to use a smart clock-in system that gathered biometric data without their informed consent. This is only one of the BIPA lawsuits facing McDonald’s. The other has to do with collecting recordings of customers’ voices at drive-thrus.

WHAT WE ARE READING

• The Record profiled the man suing the government over its use of facial recognition in India’s Telangana state. The region’s capital, Hyderabad, is one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world.
• A teenager in Russia was sentenced to five years in prison for planning to blow up a virtual version of the offices of the FSB, the state security services. Not in real life. In the video game Minecraft. 

The post Playing whack-a-mole with spyware isn’t going to work appeared first on Coda Story.

Until recently. 

In 2021, several incidents featured attackers demanding ransom, but their behavior ran counter to typical ransomware heists and suggested that lurking beneath the surface, they had different goals. They made their demands with extroverted gusto, like they intended their crime to be a public act. The targets were mainly mid-sized companies such as dating apps and insurance companies, large enough to cause public concern but not large enough to spark action from the Israeli state. Most telling, the groups behind the attacks have been linked to Iran to varying degrees. 

“I call this a hybrid threat. There are attacks that are considered political-cyber-offensive, which are by states or by non-state actors but with a political agenda,” said Gabi Siboni, the head of the cyber security program at The Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. “And there are cyber criminals. But what you can see is that it's getting mixed.”

This new generation of ransomware attacks underscores how a new front in the conflict between Iran and Israel is developing. Ostensibly financial crimes, ransomware has become a tool of statecraft with the geopolitical aim to damage the social bonds of Israeli society and public trust in the country’s institutions, rather than to damage infrastructure or extract a financial bounty.

While the Israeli Cyber Directorate has issued multiple recommendations and warnings about this new “wave of attacks,” the responsibility to protect private computer systems still rests with companies. The advent of geopolitical ransomware exploits a structural vulnerability: a route to damage the social cohesion of a country via geopolitical attacks that bypass state defenses.

Last October, in what is called the “Atraf” hack, Black Shadow, a group with links to Iran, hacked into the servers of CyberServe, an Israeli hosting company, accessing websites and applications of the company’s customers.

Among its customers was the LGBTQ dating app, Atraf. The application’s databases were not encrypted, making it easier for hackers to get their hands on very sensitive personal information. Before asking for the ransom, the group dumped tens of thousands of records from the various sites it had penetrated. The leak included a thousand user profiles in Atraf’s customer database that disclosed information such as names, sexual orientations, unencrypted passwords, locations and HIV status.

The attackers demanded $1 million in exchange for the encryption key and threatened to leak more information.

Ransomware’s parallels with disinformation are striking. While most high-profile ransomware attacks are in the U.S., U.K., and Europe, the vast majority of attacks are in countries facing political instability, like in Latin America and Africa.

Many digital hostage-taking organizations originate from the same hotbeds where disinformation campaigns are generated, like Russia, Ukraine, North Korea, and the Philippines. Ransomware travels the same political divisions as disinformation campaigns, trafficking in the exploitation of economic inequality, fear of immigrants, and racial resentments to undermine public trust in institutions and belief in social stability.

Where disinformation uses noise and incoherence to sow doubt and spread division, ransomware does something similar: it, too, is an agent of chaos. It may look like just a way to make a crypto-buck, but its effects, very often intentional, are much more profound.

The CyberServe hack had little resemblance to a classic ransom attack. Everything was very public. The group used Telegram and RaidForum for their announcements instead of directly establishing communication with the company. Typically, financially motivated actors seek private negotiations, but the Telegram groups run by Black Shadows look like a public campaign — complete with drop countdowns and cheery messages.

‘The nature of this wave of attacks is actually to seed fear and sense of terror in the Israeli people by attacking high-profile targets or ones that can generate enough media attention.’ said Lotem Finkelsteen from Checkpoint, a cybersecurity company. This explains the public behavior of the attackers. “They put more focus on echoing the attack, embarrassing the victim and developing expectations in the Twitter/Telegram followers than getting a financial payment.”

Iran and Israel are bitter foes. After the state of Israel came into existence in 1948, Iran was the second Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel as a sovereign state. Iran retracted recognition after its 1979 revolution and regularly threatens Israel with total annihilation. The cyber realm often reflects real-life tensions so, once high tech entered our lives, the two foes quickly picked up cyber weapons. 

The countries’ long-running cyber conflict has taken many turns but until recently, the tit-for-tat hacks have mainly concentrated on military infrastructure. This is changing. Both parties are increasingly targeting civilian infrastructure and private companies. Recent hacks attributed to Israel include attacks on the University of Tehran and on a system that allows millions of Iranians to use government-issued cards to buy fuel at a subsidized price. Iran has gone after Israel’s water. Last April, six facilities were targeted in an attempt to increase the amount of chlorine in the water supply to dangerously high levels. 

According to Boaz Dolev, the CEO of cybersecurity company ClearSky, Black Shadow’s previous attack on the Israeli insurance company, Shirbit, was also confounding. After stealing the company’s data, the attackers wiped the information off the servers instead of encrypting it. “This is not something a ransomware group does,” he said. After demanding $1 million in bitcoin, Black Shadow refused to give the company a four-hour extension past its deadline to provide a payment in full.

An Israeli cyber negotiator, who requested anonymity to maintain a nonpublic professional profile, also doubts Black Shadow’s motivation. “I'm not a cyber analyst, I'm a negotiator. What I can identify from the beginning is whether the motivation of the person is political, which means to cause havoc, uncertainty and to undermine public confidence in the system. With Shirbit it was very clear that it was a politically motivated attack rather than financially motivated one.”

This cyber negotiator recently had come across similar fishy attacks on Israeli companies. At one company, he started negotiating with the hacking group called “Pay2Key.” At first, it looked to him like a typical ransom attack, but then he noticed red flags. For example, the group was a previously unknown actor yet they used unusually aggressive language. 

Nevertheless, the company decided to pay the ransom. Pay2Key did not provide a data decryptor. To get to the top in the ransom industry, reputation matters. Taking the ransom and in return not providing the decryption key so that a company can retrieve its data is very bad for repeat business.

After several encounters with unusual ransomware actors, the cyber negotiator began looking more closely into the threat they posed. Technical analysis of the Pay2Key attack by Dolev’s cybersecurity company, ClearSky estimated “with medium to high confidence” that Pay2Key is a new operation conducted by an Iranian group called Fox Kitten, an Advanced Persistent Threat, the name for an opaque actor, typically linked to the government, which gains unauthorized access to a computer network and remains undetected. Pay2Key is believed to have begun a wave of attacks against dozens of Israeli companies in July and August, 2020.

The attacks are not limited to Israel. The FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency recently identified a new Advanced Persistent Threat group associated with the Iranian regime involved in “data exfiltration or encryption, ransomware, and extortion” in the U.S. and Australia.

In fact, yet another group linked to Iran has had an unusual modus operandi. In June 2021, a group called Deus claimed that they had obtained 15 terabytes of data from Voicenter, a call center company. The data contained information belonging not only to Voicenter but also 8,000 companies that used their services. The hackers posted samples of the information, security camera and webcam footage, photos, ID cards, WhatsApp messages, emails and phone calls. 

They used public channels, raised their ransom demands every 12 hours, and announced that the data was for sale even before the negotiation period was over. In this way, Iranian advanced persistent threat groups play a ransomware poker game: trying to inflict maximum social and political damage without triggering state retaliation.  

Israeli companies are reluctant to acknowledge cyber attacks from Iranian groups precisely because the publicity could generate nervousness and doubt about the hardness of Israel’s defensive shell against its powerful enemy. This lack of transparency, however, also creates vulnerability, say Israeli cyber security experts. “We still do not have enough information to link these groups to the Iranian government, but even if these direct links exist, the ransom tools used in these attacks are quite conventional and small,” said Einat Myron, a cybersecurity expert in Israel. 

“Medium-sized companies can certainly do a better job at protecting against them,” Myron said. “Maybe avoiding playing into foreign actor’s games could be the new motivation for business owners to start taking data protection seriously.”

Ransomware: The New Disinformation

The rise of the geopolitical hack

Erica Hellerstein

Ransomware could soon be about more than just money

Caitlin Thompson

Ransomware attackers are going after schools

Caitlin Thompson

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