Enable, Rinse and Repeat

Just as they did last year, EU Foreign Affairs Ministers considered the suspension of the Association Agreement with Israel for its flagrant violations of human rights. And just like last year, Spain, Ireland and Slovenia pointed out that the Agreement should be suspended for evident violations of human rights. And just like last year, there was no majority for any concrete action.

Most governments and major media outlets shrugged the whole thing off as just another vote. After all, until there is a clear majority if not unanimity among EU governments, how could the Union act? 

Meanwhile, the media and political debate lost themselves in discussions of complex EU voting procedures or reading tea leaves of possible shifts in key European governments.

This, however, misses the point. Whether such a majority exists or not has nothing to do with the legal obligations of the EU and its member states. These obligations require the EU to act.

Breaking its Own Rules

The European Union is under two major kinds of legal constraints: internal and international.

Internally, the EU’s legal commitment to human rights is hard-wired into all aspects of policy and action by the Lisbon Treaty. This ‘constitution’ says the Union is founded upon “democracy, human rights and fundamental values” and that these must be upheld in every dimension of the EU’s policies and practices. 

In fact, precisely for this ‘hard-wiring’, some argue that Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria means that the Association Agreement never ought to have been signed at all.

In addition, Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement says all links are subject to “respect for human rights”. The evidence of Israel’s massive and systematic violations of human rights internally, internationally and of course in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is so well-known and so overwhelmingly vast that it cannot be summarised here. 

Save to say that it has been necessary to invent new terms for what is being done in Palestine (and elsewhere like in Lebanon and Iran): domicide, urbicide, medicide, scholasticide, ecocide, econocide, unchilding, and journocide killing the most journalists worldwide in each of the last three years running – a combined total greater than all journalists killed in the U.S. Civil War, both World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars (including Cambodia and Laos conflicts), the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 Afghanistan war. Not to mention the use of ‘double tap’ or ‘triple tap’ attacks in all these cases: targeting civilians/non-combatants, protected categories (medics, journalists), aggravated by perfidy.

All this is an incontrovertible matter of public record. Even an internal review by the EU’s own External Action Service found Israel had violated international law in Gaza.

For those violations alone, the Agreement ought to have been suspended years ago.

There is no room for interpretation: by the EU’s own internal rules, it should already have suspended the Agreement if not cut relations with Israel entirely.

Breaching International Law

The European Union’s obligations under international law are if anything even stronger.

Take the duty to prevent genocide as an example.

The Genocide Convention establishes a duty to use “all means reasonably available” to prevent genocide. This obligation was confirmed in January 2024 by the International Court of Justice, which also accepted that Palestinians’ right to be protected from genocide ‘may’ be being violated.

As its largest commercial partner, the EU patently has the leverage to act. The European Union and Israel are linked by defence and security contracts and collaborations, and through academic and commercial research relations. The EU has the obligation not to continue any such ties which in any way support those violations.

The same goes for individual states. Two of Israel’s top three arms suppliers are key EU Member States: Germany and Italy. Like any other government, both have a duty not to sell weapons used in the devastation of Gaza, in the colonization and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, and in the unprecedented destruction of South Lebanon.

Hiding Behind Procedures

Yet the European Commission and many Member States in the Council fail to act. Year after year, they hide behind voting regulations to avoid acting on those obligations.

How?

Human rights assessments ought to be routine, but in practice must be requested by Member States which then need to obtain that such reviews be tabled for a vote by the Foreign Affairs Council. As in 2025, reports are usually not tabled on the basis that there is no perceived consensus for suspending the Agreement, or a ‘qualified majority’ to suspend portions of it or agree on sanctions. So, in practice, breaches of Article 2 are never openly discussed or voted on.

For the EU’s rhetorical commitment to human rights to be taken seriously, the assessments of, and votes on, human rights should be transparent, routine and compulsory.

Instead, for decades, the EU has avoided saying how it defines “human rights conditions” or specifying how these should be measured and assessed. It has failed to make reviews regular or transparent. It has made sure that whether those reviews come to a vote or are even tabled is not automatic but is at the Council’s discretion.

It is impossible not to conclude that the self-proclaimed paladin of human rights and fundamental values never intended to take its human rights commitments seriously.

Rules Unfit for Purpose

The fact that there are too few member states willing to vote for suspending the agreement with Israel is entirely irrelevant.

What these votes mean is simply that a majority of EU governments are happy to continue to break their own rules and international law.

The obligation to prevent genocide or crimes against humanity doesn’t suddenly disappear, it cannot be dismissed or deferred just because the EU’s internal procedures are unfit for purpose. If the EU’s procedures result in illegal outcomes, those rules must be changed. They certainly don’t absolve EU leaders of their legal responsibilities.

What is astonishing is not only that the EU is failing to uphold international law or its own principles, it is also damaging itself geopolitically.

The EU’s reputation as a ‘normative actor’ – its influence from promoting universal human rights and democracy – lies in tatters. Its self-proclaimed role as paladin of the rule of law has been reduced to little more than a bitter irony.

European representatives failed to condemn the evident violation of the UN Charter when the US and Israel attacked Iran or when Israel invaded Lebanon just as they failed to support the cases brought against Israel before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Ignoring international law in this way helps undermine the international institutions of the ‘United Nations system’.

Consigning Europe to Irrelevance

Europe has nothing to show for all this damage. It is not even sacrificing principle for power. It is weakening and isolating itself.

For the last few decades, European governments have lost political and strategic autonomy by increasingly aligning themselves with the US. The failure to set clear political distance from the US and to use what leverage Europe has, only worsens this isolation and irrelevance. Europe is taken for granted in Washington and is diplomatically irrelevant for China, Russia or Iran, which might have found a respected but relatively independent  interlocutor useful to facilitate diplomacy. 

One example of this is the EU’s striking absence from any negotiations over the conflicts in the Persian Gulf and the East Mediterranean.

Instead, by ignoring the rule of law on Israel while increasing sanctions on Iran and Russia, barely hours before the Iran/US ceasefire deadline, the EU added instability to an already exceptionally volatile and dangerous moment in world history.

In other words, by disregarding its self-proclaimed values, international law and its own self-interest, the EU is consigning Europe to global irrelevance.

The post Hiding Behind Procedure: How the EU Attempts to Sidestep Obligations on Israel – and Why They Fail appeared first on Untold.

Calypse is us and at the same time she speaks to us: the conscience of a generation that is condemned to resist and survive.

The comic has been created by the UntoldMag collective together with artist Francesca Cogni.

Episode 2: “Rights We Can’t Afford”

The post Abu Calypse, Episode 2: “Rights We Can’t Afford” appeared first on Untold.

This was not merely a rhetorical flourish. It signaled the final abandonment of a diplomatic convention that had guided Indian prime ministers for decades: the practice of visiting both Israel and Palestine on the same trip. Every previous prime minister who traveled to Tel Aviv also made the journey to Ramallah, a tangible demonstration of India’s commitment to a two-state solution. Modi broke that tradition. His lone visit to Israel, without any stop in Palestine, cast serious doubt on whether New Delhi still supports the creation of a Palestinian state.

The implications of this shift have grown only starker since the war on Iran began. While the Indian government has issued tepid calls for restraint, it has offered condemnation neither for the killing of Iranian leaders nor of the unfolding catastrophe in Iran. This silence is particularly striking given the deep ties between the two countries. Iran, a fellow BRICS member, remains one of India’s largest trading partners and has offered crucial diplomatic support on Kashmir in international forums—standing with India against Pakistan when it mattered. Indian investment in Iran grew substantially throughout the 2010s, including the development of a strategic port that promised significant benefits for both economies.

Despite its deep investments in the relationship with Iran over decades, India’s unequivocal positioning with Israel and the United States in this war signals a meta-shift in its foreign policy—one increasingly guided by the BJP’s Hindu nationalist worldview. To understand the magnitude of this shift, we must first understand what Indian foreign policy was, and where it came from.

Idealist Foreign Policy

India’s foreign policy was shaped by the crucible of anticolonial struggle, and its contours were drawn long before independence was actually achieved. The first stirrings came as early as 1927, at the League Against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression in Brussels, where Indian leaders and activists played a pivotal role. 

During the Second World War, even as Indian leaders intensified their campaign against British rule, they never wavered in their commitment against antisemitism and fascism. When the Spanish Civil War erupted, Indian volunteers traveled thousands of miles to fight for the Republicans. Jawaharlal Nehru, who would become India’s first prime minister, raised funds in Britain and India to support the Republican war effort. 

At the very moment when Modi’s ideological predecessors were delivering speeches in the streets of Bombay cheering the persecution of Jews in Europe, Nehru was facilitating the arrival of Jewish refugees in India from Europe.

This idealism—forged in anti-imperial struggle and tempered by a commitment to human dignity—shaped independent India’s foreign policy from its inception. In the postwar world, divided between two hostile camps, India joined with other newly independent states in refusing to choose sides. The Bandung Conference of 1955 and the Belgrade Conference of 1961 gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which became the most powerful foreign policy doctrine in the decolonized world. India was not merely a participant but a principal architect, both of the movement itself and of its implementation.

Anticolonial Principles

Crucially, NAM was never the “pragmatic neutrality” its critics caricatured it as. It was an idealistic stance that firmly advocated for peace, nuclear disarmament, and decolonization. This was not abstract rhetoric but lived policy. India headed the international committee that brokered a ceasefire in the Korean War. It opposed the Israeli-French-British attack on Egypt over the nationalization of the Suez Canal. It condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary. It stood against the Vietnam War. It played a mediating role in the Congo crisis. It refused all diplomatic recognition to apartheid South Africa.

The finest hour of Indian foreign policy, however, arrived in 1971. When civil war erupted in Pakistan following East Pakistan’s declaration of independence, India—then one of the poorest countries in the world—sheltered ten million refugees for nearly nine months. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi traveled across the globe, pleading for international attention to the crisis and the unfolding genocide in East Pakistan. When diplomacy failed and the threat of US intervention on behalf of its Pakistani ally loomed, the Indian army intervened alongside the Bangladeshi liberation forces. In a swift thirteen-day war, they broke the Pakistani military’s grip, and the new nation of Bangladesh was born.

But the truly remarkable feat was not the military victory—it was what came after. India withdrew its forces and left Bangladesh to its people and its chosen leaders. It made no attempt to occupy or annex its neighbor. At a moment when it could have pursued expansionist ambitions, it chose restraint. This was foreign policy as an anticolonial principle in action.

Sympathy for Palestine

India’s approach toward Israel-Palestine was not an exception to this foreign policy outlook—it was its logical extension. The anticolonial tradition expressed itself naturally in sympathy for Palestine. Mahatma Gandhi himself drew a direct colonial analogy, declaring that Palestine belonged to the Arabs just as England belonged to the English—recognizing the national sovereignty of Palestinians over their land. Nehru, the committed antifascist who understood intimately the agony of European Jewry after the Holocaust, nevertheless refused to see the occupation of Palestine as a just solution to that crisis. His sympathy for Jewish victims did not translate into support for Palestinian dispossession.

This principled stance found concrete expression at the United Nations in 1947, when India voted against the partition of Palestine—defying both the United States and the Soviet Union in the process. The vote was not merely a foreign policy calculation but a reflection of the ideological position the anticolonial leadership had staked out during the independence struggle: a principled opposition to the division of lands and peoples on the basis of religion. India opposed partition in Palestine for the same reasons it had opposed the partition of its own subcontinent.

India formally recognized Israel in 1950, but this diplomatic gesture did not signal an abandonment of its commitment to the Palestinian people. Nehru visited Gaza in 1960, over Israeli objections and despite security threats. In 1974, India became the first non-Arab state to formally recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization. Full diplomatic relations followed in 1980, and when the PLO declared independence in 1988, India extended immediate recognition. Yasser Arafat was a frequent visitor to New Delhi, received with state honors at a time when the West still designated him a terrorist.

The Unipolar World

The 1990s brought two simultaneous transformations that would strain this tradition. First, India finally opened its markets to the global economy, abandoning the democratic-socialist framework that had guided economic policy since 1947. The repercussions for foreign policy were immediate: idealism gradually gave way to the logic of economic pragmatism. Second, the fall of the Soviet Union rendered the Non-Aligned Movement seemingly obsolete in a unipolar world. 

These twin shifts found their clearest expression in the warming of India-US relations. After decades of Cold War distance, Washington began courting New Delhi as a trusted regional partner, supplanting Pakistan, which had served as the US outpost since the 1950s. China’s rise as an economic and military power only accelerated this realignment.

The Israel-Palestine issue could not remain insulated from these pressures. In 1992, India established full diplomatic relations with Israel—a step it had resisted for four decades. The Oslo Accords, which followed shortly after, seemed to vindicate this shift: the PLO itself had now agreed to a two-state solution, the very framework India had endorsed for a while. But India’s understanding of what two states might mean differed markedly from the West’s. 

Where the United States and its allies deployed the two-state formula as a mechanism to contain Palestinian aspirations—creating an appearance of movement toward justice while facilitating continued Israeli expansion in the West Bank—India continued to view it as a genuine compromise in the service of peace. This is why, even after Oslo, even after establishing relations with Israel, India remained firmly aligned with Palestine until quite recently. While the West bankrolled occupation and looked away as Gaza was bombarded, New Delhi maintained its traditional stance until 2014.

Blueprint of Ethno-Democracy

In 2014, India elected its first majority BJP government with a sweeping mandate. For the first time, a prime minister had both the ideological conviction and the political capital to fundamentally reshape Indian foreign policy according to Hindu nationalist priorities. Since the late 1980s, Hindu nationalist forces began gaining larger mass support, a trend that ultimately culminated in the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992. The rise of Hindu nationalism coincided with the neoliberalization of the Indian economy, initiated by the Indian National Congress. Inequality in Indian society increased manifold following the opening of the market, which, as in other parts of the world, fueled right-wing politics. In 2014, after a brief stint in power from 1999 to 2004 as part of a coalition with regional centrist parties, the BJP returned to power—this time with a clear majority on its own and a clear agenda to transform the political discourse and social fabric of India.

The BJP’s affinity for Israel can be understood through two interlocking factors. The first is ethnonationalism. The BJP’s longstanding project is the transformation of India into a Hindu state—a nation in which religious identity determines belonging, and minorities are rendered permanently subordinate. 

In this project, Israel serves as both inspiration and model. What the BJP admires is the architecture of what has been called an “ethno-democracy“: a state that formally guarantees the supremacy of one religious group while tolerating the presence of others only on condition of their political marginalization. Israel grants Jewish citizens superior status within a self-defined Jewish republic; the BJP wants the same for India’s Hindu majority, with Muslims relegated to second-class citizenship.

The blueprint for this vision is already visible. The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 offered a path to citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from neighboring countries—Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians—but pointedly excluded Muslims. The message was unmistakable: in the BJP’s India, religious persecution renders Muslims uniquely ineligible for refuge. 

More recently, the government has begun replicating elements of the Israeli settler-colonial model in Kashmir. By stripping the region of its limited autonomy and its constitutional protections, New Delhi has opened the door for Indians from outside Kashmir to settle there, acquire property, and permanently alter the region’s demographic composition. The objective, pursued systematically, is demographic transformation through internal colonization.

Empire of Islamophobia

The second factor is Islamophobia. It is no coincidence that the perceived enemies of the Israeli state and of the BJP’s India are the same: Muslims. By aligning itself overwhelmingly with Israel, the BJP sends a message to India’s own Muslim population—whose historic solidarity with the Palestinian cause is well known—about where they belong in the new Hindu nationalist order. 

The Palestinian struggle for independence, which the Indian state once supported and celebrated, is now routinely designated as terrorism. This rhetorical move aligns India with Israel’s self-perception as a victim of “Muslim terror”, creating a shared narrative of existential threat. The two states, in this telling, are not aggressors but survivors, not occupiers but the occupied.

This empire of Islamophobia extends well beyond Tel Aviv and New Delhi. It is a global network of ethnonationalist movements and governments. Modi’s bonhomie with Donald Trump and Netanyahu is not, as it is sometimes described, a pragmatic accommodation to the realities of a unipolar world. It is a deliberate ideological choice—an expression of solidarity among right-wing movements that share a common enemy and a common vision of who must be punished in the name of national renewal.

But this shared vision is not merely rhetorical. It is material and operational. Israel has become one of India’s largest suppliers of defense technology, with bilateral military trade reaching into the billions. The Indian government has allegedly deployed Israeli spyware—most notoriously the Pegasus system—to surveil political opponents, journalists, and activists, weaponizing technology supplied by Tel Aviv against domestic dissent. 

And while much of the world has grown hazardous for Israeli soldiers facing prosecution for war crimes committed in Gaza, India has remained a safe haven. Approximately 80,000 Israelis travel to India annually; a significant proportion are active-duty or former IDF soldiers, confident that they will face neither legal consequences nor public accountability on Indian soil.

A New Trinity

Today, Indian foreign policy has traded its foundational principles—anticolonialism, peace, Third World solidarity, justice—for a new trinity: ethnonationalism, Islamophobia, and opportunism. The consequences of this transformation are now visible for all to see. India has failed to take a meaningful moral or political position on any major international crisis in recent years. 

When Russia invaded Ukraine, India did not use its historic relationship with Moscow to press for peace. Instead, it enabled its capitalist duopoly of businessmen Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani to profit handsomely from buying discounted Russian oil and reselling it to European markets—effectively bankrolling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine while claiming neutrality. 

When Israel launched its assault on Gaza, eventually recognized by international jurists as a plausible case of genocide, India offered neither resistance nor even condemnation. When civil war erupted in Sudan, New Delhi’s deepening complicity with UAE elites—major players in the conflict—precluded any meaningful stance. 

When the US effectively kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, India remained silent. And now, as the United States and Israel pursue an unjustified and illegal war on Iran, the BJP-led government has offered passive support while its rank and file actively cheers the destruction on streets and social media.

For a time, it seemed the BJP could sustain this foreign policy misadventurism without consequence. The Iran war has shattered that illusion. The war has created an unprecedented energy crisis, sending oil and gas prices soaring and dealing a severe blow to an already fragile economy. The material costs of aligning with Washington and Tel Aviv against Tehran are arriving ahead of schedule.

But the deeper cost is strategic and moral. India’s foreign minister and his aides repeatedly pitched the country’s approach as a “decolonial foreign policy“—a cynical appropriation of the language of liberation to dress up what is, in practice, pure opportunism. The gap between rhetoric and reality could not be wider. India, which led the Third World in the 20th century, which spoke for anticolonial struggles everywhere, now stands virtually alone on the world stage. It has no genuine allies, no reliable friends or neighbors, no principled partners. It has only the mercy of Trump, the indulgence of Putin, and the embrace of Netanyahu. 

This is not non-alignment. This is not pragmatism. This is the foreign policy of a right-wing movement that has made its peace with empire, ethnic supremacy, the punishment of Muslims everywhere—and in doing so, has left India isolated, diminished, and morally unrecognizable.

The post From Bandung to Bibi: How Modi’s India Abandoned Non-Alignment for Ethnonationalism appeared first on Untold.

Calypse is us and at the same time she speaks to us: the conscience of a generation that is condemned to resist and survive.

The comic has been created by the UntoldMag collective together with artist Francesca Cogni.

Episode 1: “A Complicated War”

The post Abu Calypse, Episode 1: “A Complicated War” appeared first on Untold.

Networks of Violence

It should not surprise anyone that those who take pleasure in sexual abuse can also take pleasure in violent abuse and mass murder in wars and racial domination. This is not merely about individual depravity. It is about the core of a world system governed by these people and celebrated by whole societies — heads of state, politicians, tech moguls, billionaires, diplomats, media personalities, and the networks that sustain their power.

The Epstein files revealed that those who gathered to enjoy the sexual abuse of children and women are the same circles that govern this world. Today, someone like US American Secretary of Sate Marco Rubio can stand in Munich — of all places — and praise the history of Europe’s so-called past greatness: praising five centuries of colonialism, slavery, genocide, and destruction as progress, leadership, superiority and enlightenment. And he receives a standing ovation from today’s European leaders, thirsty for a return to the times when they could so casually dominate and eradicate peoples, cultures, histories, and ecosystems.

These are the same leaders who defend their wars of aggression while condemning any resistance to them as itself the aggression. Those who will condemn dismembered babies while praising the precision rockets that dismembered them. Those who demand that others obey laws they themselves violate daily. Those who speak of diversity while fearing otherness, who preach peace while supplying the weapons that kill millions.

Addiction to Domination

The history of the  so-called West is a history of endless wars — an addiction to violence and an inability to imagine relations other than domination. Domination over nature, over humans, over animals, over knowledge, over everything.

This is why the West constantly projects itself onto others. They fear migrants will occupy their lands — because that is what they do across the world. They accuse anyone seeking equality of wanting domination or destruction — because that is what they themselves pursue.

As the saying goes regarding Israel’s pathological lies about Palestine: “every accusation is a confession.” The same can be said about the West more broadly today.

And now we watch as the specter of another world war is unleashed by the same addicts of violence and domination — the same circles, the same names that appear around Epstein’s island — who now claim that their wars are meant to prevent war. 

The West asks the world to stand behind it, to defend and project it as the morally superior force for good — a camp led by a wanted war criminal accused of genocide and a megalomaniac white supremacist rapist and pathological liar. Anyone who refuses to submit will be eradicated.

Colonial Heritage 

The German chancellor Firedrich Merz — whose senior Nazi grandfather belonged to the generation whose crimes forced the world to create international law in the first place — recently said that “Iran should not be protected by international law,” echoing the same logic his party and allies across Europe sometimes invoke when they suggest that European laws should not protect immigrants. Of course ignoring that the very principle of law is that it applies to everyone, equally.

Of course, Merz — who a year earlier, when Israel and the United States had once again illegally attacked Iran in the middle of negotiations, described the mass killing of civilians as “the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us” — is no stranger to such racist double standards.

What the blatant boasting about plans to commit war crimes by US and Israeli officials — and their public justification by their European counterparts — exposes, once again, is that these powers have never truly broken with their white supremacist heritage. The normalization of racism and the ease with which they can justify mass killing remain deeply embedded in political culture shaped by centuries of colonial violence.

Because they deeply believe in their inalienable right to dominate the world. The world is theirs, and theirs alone. Others should be grateful simply to be allowed to exist within it as servants.

And if they are not grateful, they can be eradicated. Any resistance becomes an unacceptable act of aggression — proof that these “ungrateful” subhumans are violent savages who must be eliminated for the safety of their world. This is the same logic that drove the countless colonial genocides across the continents Europeans claimed as their own — by divine mandate or racial superiority — and it continues to this day.

Two Worlds, One Reality

It is often difficult to explain to those who are not on our side of the equation — us who are objects of various degrees of violence, potential or actual — what living with this violence does to you. How fundamentally different our experience of the world is from that of someone who does not experience the world as a death trap or an endless heartbreak.

Someone who can move through it safely and confidently. Someone born on the other side of that coin — where exploitation elsewhere brings benefits; where borders are lines on maps that one casually crosses; where wars happen somewhere else; where violence is strange and shocking; where racism is a topic of debate over dinner; where colonialism lives in history books; where politics is an interesting subject, and horror a cinematic genre.

For those of us on this side of the coin, however, all of this — and more — is life.

Sometimes I wonder how such a person grows up with the conviction that they are intrinsically a force for good in both history and present. Every film, series, book, and museum tells them a heroic story about themselves while demonizing others.

Selective Outrage, Systemic Hypocrisy

The same powers that proudly announce their readiness to violate international law are also the most enthusiastic defenders of that law when others are accused of breaching it. They are outraged by crimes identical to those they themselves commit.

For these democratically elected forces, not all humans are equal. In fact, not all humans are even worthy of being treated as humans. Laws exist to protect Merz’s “us” — and that “us” alone. Violence counts as violence only when it is directed against “us”, even when it is a reaction to violence initiated by “us”.

If only a fraction of the world’s condemnations, sanctions, and measures were instead aimed at the two outlaw states launching wars and genocide across the world, those hypocritical statements might carry some weight.

The war on Iran began the moment Iran agreed to conditions during negotiations. It opened with a war crime by the US targeting a school for young girls, killing over 150 children—with investigations suggesting this might have been intentional. Hardly surprising when we consider the past two years of mass child murder in Gaza. Yet there were hardly any condemnations, expressions of horror, let alone sanctions from the self-appointed guardians of international law, democracy, and moral superiority in Europe and elsewhere. Instead, condemnation, sanctions, and measures were reserved for Iran’s retaliatory strikes.

For 15 months since a ceasefire agreement was reached between Israel and Lebanon, the Israelis have violated it over 10,000 times, killing more than 500 people. Yet there has been no pressure, no condemnation, nothing from the world. The moment Hezbollah responded—however poorly timed—the condemnations began pouring down, but still with no pressure on Israel to stop its war crimes.

For decades, not a single attempt has been made to pressure the aggressors. To the contrary, their aggressions, humiliations, and injustices have intensified and continued, accompanied by infuriating moralizing postures from the aggressors themselves and their supporters. What do you expect people to do when you offer them no alternatives, when you repeatedly tell them that force is their only way out, that all peaceful avenues are genuinely impossible?

Violence begets violence. It is a basic truth.

The Choice of Complicity

Meanwhile, the aggressors proudly announce their crimes to the sound of silent approval from the self-proclaimed defenders of peace and democracy. An Israeli minister can declare they will do to Beirut what they did to Gaza—where an international court has determined genocide is being committed by his government. A prime minister can state his intention to occupy entire countries to create a Greater Israel. A report can casually mention that that same Prime Minister asked the military to submit additional civilian targets “for approval”.

Meanwhile, the president and his team leading the world’s most aggressive empire can bully nations to steal their resources, bluntly asserting their ancestors’ right to genocide continents. All of this occurs, and the world’s response is to condemn those who choose to oppose or resist the horror—regardless of one’s views on their ideologies or their own brutality.

The only way to confront both forms of brutality is to offer alternatives and create new ways of being that transcend the Western paradigm of domination by force and power.

Until then, condemnations must be directed at those who rule the world, not at those trying to carve out their place within it. 

The post The Colonial Roots of Contemporary Atrocity: Why the West Can’t Stop Making War appeared first on Untold.

Iran suffered heavy losses, with official figures reporting 935 dead, including 38 children and 132 women, and thousands wounded, while Western intelligence estimated over 1,000 fatalities, including scientists, IRGC personnel, and civilians. In retaliation, Iran fired hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles, some of which penetrated Israeli defenses, killing at least 28 and injuring more than 3,000, according to official reports. 

On 21 June, the United States directly entered the offence with Operation Midnight Hammer, launching stealth B-2 bombers and Tomahawk cruise missiles to destroy deeply buried Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Esfahan, and Natanz. The UK, France, and Germany supported Israel by deploying naval assets and missile defense units to the region. 

And on June 25, a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect, halting active hostilities for the time being. The near future remains uncertain, however. The Iranian sky is now under the occupation of Israel, as in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, with a free ticket for bombings and assassinations. 

Scapegoating and Oppression

Israel’s unprecedented use of drones launched from inside Iran dealt a severe blow to the Islamic Republic’s core security narrative. For decades, Iran’s rulers justified their authoritarian control and economic shortcomings by claiming they alone could guarantee national security. Yet, when Israel smuggled armed drones—via suitcases, trucks, and shipping containers—to clear paths toward missile systems and nuclear sites inside cities like Tehran and Isfahan, it exposed deep vulnerabilities in a regime that claims omnipresent vigilance. Public trust wavered as the administration’s unshakable grip on defense began to show cracks.

To deal with this crisis, in the aftermath, the regime launched a scapegoating campaign as part of the unfolding war nationalism. It is targeting Kurds, Afghans, Jews, and Baha’is “suspected of collaborating with Israel,” according to state media and human rights reports. Among the most chilling acts were the executions of three Kurdish prisoners—publicly charged under espionage allegations linked to the Israeli attacks—even as credible evidence remains scant. 

Meanwhile, large-scale deportations of Afghan migrants surged, with Iranian authorities arresting thousands—including many with valid visas—and forcing them to leave under claims of security threats, all without due process. These harsh reprisals aimed to deflect attention from the regime’s failure to prevent foreign penetration, a shameful blow to its masculine guardian image, while reviving old narratives of an internal “fifth column.” By stigmatizing minority groups, the government sought to reassert its authority without ever confronting its own intelligence lapses.

The Blessings of Bombs

Right before the 12-day war, there was one of the largest labor protests in Iran, with almost a month of nationwide strike by drivers that spread to 163 cities. The strike, sparked by plummeting freight rates, rising insurance and fuel costs, and deteriorating working conditions, has garnered widespread public backing, as well as support from many activists and political prisoners. The war, at least temporarily, put an end not only to this strike, a reaction to the massive neoliberalization in the past decades, but also to civil resistance against the regime inside Iran.

Instead, since the war, two masculine, campist, passifying, nihilistic, and death-driven hopes have gained influence in the Iranian political scene, relying on fantasies of heroic men saving a threatened motherland. They stand in sharp contrast to the Jina revolution’s politics of care and solidarity, rooted in reclaiming life (زندگی) instead of domination, exclusion, or the glorification of death.

The first death-driven hope centers on foreign saviors—mainly Israel and the United States—imagined as powerful forces who will humiliate the regime and “liberate” Iran. Many monarchist supporters, who openly align with Israel, promote this vision. The exiled crown prince, hoping to return after 46 years, quickly held a conference in Paris, calling the war “our Berlin Wall moment.” The war is seen as only between the regime and foreign liberators—not involving Iran or its people—so “all Iranians are happy.” Civilian deaths are dismissed as “collateral damage,” a necessary cost of freedom. The war is presented as part of a larger plan for a “new Middle East,” a fascist utopia that, among others, justifies genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Israel and the U.S. framed their attacks as necessary to stop an imminent nuclear threat. Yet ironically, Israel is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, refuses to join international treaties, and is currently committing genocide and other war crimes in Gaza. The U.S., the only nation to have ever used nuclear bombs, continues to attack others without facing consequences. Together, they form a disturbing pair, claiming to protect the world while enforcing a global regime of war and domination.

The second death-driven hope envisions the Islamic Republic as the defender of Iran. A broad group—comprising regime supporters and nationalists from both the left and right—embraces this idea. In their view, all Iranians, even critics of the regime, should support it during wartime. But this supposed temporary unity is used to delay demands for justice and freedom. Martyrdom is glorified, life is devalued, and death becomes a sacred price for independence. War is used to justify more repression, surveillance, exclusion, and the quest to find traitors. However, it has a history that extends beyond the last war.

When Ayatollah Khomeini said “war is a blessing,” it wasn’t just a slogan—it was a strategy. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), the new Islamic regime used war to strengthen its power, silence dissent, execute political prisoners, and invade Kurdistan (Rojhelat), all under the banner of defending the homeland. Over forty years later, the war with Israel follows the same pattern. Despite its military cost, it gave the regime a political advantage—fueling nationalism and briefly covering up the deep legitimacy crisis caused by the Jina uprising in 2022.

Beyond domestic consolidation, the war also served as an international PR campaign. The Islamic regime, long tarnished by its alliances with repressive regimes like Syria’s Assad, gained symbolic capital by standing toe-to-toe with Israel, an occupying force that is committing genocide. In the eyes of some domestic and even international observers, Tehran repositioned itself as a legitimate actor of resistance, masking authoritarian violence under the guise of anti-imperial struggle.

Care for Life

Against these two death-driven hopes in Iran, a quiet yet powerful reminder of another kind of resistance has emerged, challenging them by emphasizing life and care. In the shadow of airstrikes and state crackdowns, the spirit of the Jina Revolution resurfaced—not in mass protests this time, but through the reactivation of care networks that had once sustained a revolutionary horizon in 2022. 

These networks, built around mutual aid, grassroots organizing, and solidarity, have reawakened under wartime pressures to meet urgent needs: sharing food, housing the displaced, finding the missing, supporting the repair of buildings, and helping the elderly and vulnerable survive the war. The care networks, as in the case of the revolutionary momentum, expand beyond Iranians, as for example Balochi activists organized to provide food and water to the Afghans who are suffering in the deportation camps and on the borders.  

This is more than improvisational charity—it is the continuation of a “politics of care” that has long underpinned dissent in Iran, especially among women, gender dissidents, students, and marginalized communities. These reproductive and survival initiatives—community kitchens, informal health networks, Telegram-based aid channels, and transportation facilitation collectives—represent an alternative infrastructure that emerged before the 2022 uprising but were politicized by the repression they faced. 

During the Jina Revolution, these same networks helped coordinate protests and protect demonstrators. Now, under the pressure of war, they once again step into the breach—this time to preserve life itself in the broadest sense: biological, social, and political. 

In a moment when the regime seeks to monopolize narratives of survival and sovereignty, these autonomous practices of care tell a different story of concurrent resistance against war and dictatorship. Unlike the official masculine praise for the martyrs of the war and the justification of intensified oppression, care practices concentrate on people’s pains and sufferings to reclaim life, highlighting what unites us as “we” in opposition to both the necro hopes of the oppressive regime nationalism, and those of imperialist genocidal “saviors”. 

**A shorter version of this article was published in German here. 

The post Bombs, Scapegoats and Care: Iran in the Shadow of War appeared first on Untold.

The first image etched into eleven-year-old Aya’s mind was a dark, powerless room and women screaming over her uncle’s burned body—an airstrike by the U.S. left only a burnt limb the size of a palm. From that moment, she adapted her mind to the image of a shattered, grieving woman in Baghdad. Just like Fida from Palestine, Maya and Diana from Lebanon, Oula from Syria, and Mazda and Zoya from Afghanistan—these women are activists and journalists who spoke about the experiences of women in wartime. Although foreign forces claimed to be ‘liberating’ them, what these women received instead was devastation, occupation, and deep social divisions.

Now, one of the world’s most violent military leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu, is citing Jina Mahsa Amini and the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” to justify his attack on Iran with a cloak of justice, turning “women’s rights” into a weapon to legitimize war and occupation—the same leader responsible for killing thousands of women in Gaza over the past two years. An all-too-familiar pattern of imperialist exploitation repeated across the region.

For Aya and other Iraqi women, the US occupation was never a source of liberation. Women were arrested alongside their children, and husbands were killed in front of their families—often by soldiers who spoke of peace while carrying weapons. What occurred was not a rescue, but another form of devastation. Iraqi women were not freed; they were caught between tyranny and the foreign fire that arrived with empty promises. Today, each of these women activists who have emerged from war and destruction represents not only her personal experience but also a collective voice—the voice of women who have lived through resistance and have refused to be ‘liberated’ by bombs.

From Iraq: Fake liberation, real chains

Aya, an Iraqi journalist and women’s rights activist, once tried counting how many women she had lost over the years—but gave up quickly, fearing her heart might collapse from grief. Her childhood began with the memory of her uncle’s burned limb and the women’s cries in that powerless room. From then on, the image of the broken woman was etched in her mind: a woman forced to bear the burdens of war, execution, disappearances, and discrimination in an oppressive system.

Under Saddam Hussein, young boys might be executed in front of their mothers for having a religious or communist book. After 2003, the scene didn’t change—only the methods did. Men were executed or disappeared; many never returned, not even as bodies. What mothers received was their absence.

Aya says that after the US invasion in 2003, that violent system against women did not collapse—it grew stronger: “Saddam needed to go, but the way he left only deepened the destruction. The US decided how Iraq would ‘change,’ chose new rulers, and imposed priorities with no link to the wishes of the people. Iraq was neither liberated nor secure; it was another form of prison—and remains so.”

Aya believes that the US not only failed to free Iraqi women but handed power to men who hate women: “The laws allow child brides, men kill women in the name of ‘manhood’ and escape punishment. What we have is legalized violence against women, not reform.”

She says the rhetoric of ‘education for women’ and ‘civil society’ during occupation was simply a facade for failure: “On the surface, workshops and seminars happened, but in practice, women remained vulnerable in a patriarchal society. Women activists, translators, and journalists were all labeled as traitors or collaborators. We received neither support nor voice.”

Aya says this pattern of deception is a familiar US tactic: “The slogans remain the same: freedom, human rights, saving women. Yet behind these words always lies a political agenda. Deprived of hope, we sometimes fall into believing them.” She is certain that occupation never leads to liberation: “The only real resistance is refusing to let our suffering be exploited as a weapon. When foreign powers invoke feminist slogans, they strip them of meaning and turn them into war propaganda; this is not rescue—it’s a takeover.”

When Netanyahu speaks of “Woman, Life, Freedom,” Aya says it serves only as a façade for atrocity—the same recurring pattern, the same slogan, the same lie: “They present us as symbols rather than human beings. They showcase us at strategic moments to legitimise  a policy, only to abandon us when we cease to be of use.”

She expresses her unwavering solidarity with women in Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan: “My solidarity is unconditional. I urge the women of Iran: do not let anyone dictate your story. These narratives are our invaluable assets. But today they’re being taken from us; we are being used, without any concern for our lives.” She warns: “When we ask the international community to acknowledge our plight, the response is often ‘it’s an internal matter.’ But if it suits their interests, all of a sudden, our lives matter to them. This selective approach to our suffering is the worst form of exploitation.”

From Gaza: “We know how to resist ourselves”

Fida is a woman forged by war—a gender studies researcher born and raised in Gaza. She has lived through the horrors of war for as long as she can remember, constantly overshadowed by bombs and occupation. However, the devastation of the past two years marks a profound escalation: complete destruction, profound loss of friends and loved ones, and even erasure of her hometown. For her, women suffer the most amidst the rubble. 

When Fida heard Netanyahu invoke “Woman, Life, Freedom” to justify attacks on Iran, she was not surprised—“this is what the Israeli regime has always done: instrumentalize the suffering of others to legitimize its own violence. This reflects a colonial, racist mindset that dehumanizes others,” she says.

Fida places Netanyahu alongside politicians like Donald Trump—figures who only acknowledge movements they can co-opt: “Whenever a movement can feed their war machine, economy, or geopolitical interests, they seize it. Saying ‘we bomb to free women’ is nothing new—Afghanistan, Iraq—and now Iran. This discourse is acceptable in the West because Islamophobia, white supremacy, and racism are entrenched.”

In response, she emphasizes a simple but vital truth: “Yes, women in our region are oppressed, but this is our struggle. We know how to resist, organize, and fight. No state responsible for war, occupation, or resource plunder has the moral standing to speak of freedom.”

She warns many progressive movements risk being hijacked by imperial projects, shifting focus from justice and transgression to mere token representation in corrupt institutions: “That is dangerous—because countries like the US, Israel, and Germany use moral slogans to conceal their expansionist agendas.”

Fida argues that a common tactic employed by Western powers is to depict West Asian women solely as passive victims—figures presumed to be awaiting rescue by the so-called “civilized” white man. “This portrayal is not only demeaning,” she explains, “but also strategically useful, as it allows these actors to obscure their own roles in constructing systems of occupation and domination, while shifting responsibility onto ‘culture’ or ‘religion.’”

Fida has never looked to foreign governments for support in achieving liberation, and she contends that such expectations are misplaced. “When these states invoke ‘women’s rights,’ it is often not out of genuine concern or solidarity, but rather to legitimize military interventions.”

Importantly, her critique extends beyond the context of Palestine or Gaza. Fida warns that feminist movements in Iran must likewise be vigilant against the risk of co-optation. In her words, a movement rooted in popular struggle can only retain its authenticity and strength if it is led from within, not by the intervention of foreign powers. “We must have full autonomy over our movements. No state with a legacy of colonialism, violence, and war possesses the ethical authority to dictate the terms of our emancipation.”

From Lebanon: The same old tactic

For years, Lebanese women have borne the burden of violence, crisis, and poverty—women like Maya, who are not just storytellers of war but have lived it. A journalist and feminist who lived the crisis from within, she now speaks with experience and resilience of women who became the pillars of families amid destruction.

Maya describes her home in southern Lebanon—recently bombed again by Israel—where thousands of families lost homes and land. Many cannot return: “In crisis moments, these women cared for those around them. In crowded shelters, with bare hands they built kitchens, made play and learning spaces for children. They prevented families from falling apart.”

By late 2024, more than 50% of Lebanon’s 1.2 million internally displaced were women and children, including some 12,000 pregnant women without access to basic medical services. Economic and financial collapse since 2019, the COVID pandemic, and the Beirut port blast intensified pressure—especially on women in informal, small-scale work.

Lebanon, she notes, is a “country of consecutive crises.” Since the outbreak of the civil war in 1975, five successive generations have endured at least one major security or economic crisis. “Each generation held onto the hope that the next would live in peace,” she reflects, “but we have learned to remain in a constant state of readiness—always anticipating the next blow.” These protracted crises unfold within deeply patriarchal structures and legal frameworks that systematically marginalize women.

She describes a form of latent violence—one that does not destroy the body, but gradually erodes the spirit: “If the bullets don’t kill you, war finds a way to break you from within. Many older women continue to live with psychological trauma and a persistent sense of entrapment in the city. They are unable to return to their homes, lands, and gardens in the South; their sense of belonging has been violently severed. It is as if Israel seeks to erase women’s connection to the land through hostility.”

Maya recounts that until the early 2000s when the Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon was liberated, she was not even permitted to visit her birthplace. Against this backdrop, Netanyahu’s invocation of the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” to justify aggression toward Iran strikes her as yet another iteration of a familiar strategy: “It’s the same old tactic powerful states have used for years—washing women’s rights. They claim to champion freedom, but in reality, they instrumentalize such slogans to legitimize war, intervention, and the expansion of their [geopolitical] influence.”

She cites examples: Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, now Iran: “Whenever real decisions need to be made, these governments sideline women- unless they conform to official narratives. This selective use of women shows their real intent: they use women not to liberate them, but to advance military-political goals.”

For Maya, Netanyahu is the epitome of this hypocrisy—a politician directly responsible for killing women and children in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria: “For someone like him, responsible for so many crimes, to invoke the name of Mahsa (Jina) Amini—it’s a moral affront. If anyone still believes that Israel will liberate Iranian women, they need only look at Gaza or post-occupation Afghanistan.”

Her message to Iranian women is clear: “As long as war machines are active and driven by militarized men, women’s suffering will be instrumentalized. We must remain vigilant—liberation cannot begin with bombs.”

Diana, a Lebanese journalist, emphasizes how the layered realities of war have fundamentally reshaped women’s lives in Lebanon. Under what she refers to as “patriarchal peace,” survival has become a multi-generational struggle:: “Grandmothers managing homes amid bombardment, mothers rebuilding after displacement, daughters facing economic collapse and mass migration. Despite everything, women have held society together, yet structural transformation in laws and political representation remains elusive.”

She notes that women’s roles shifted significantly during the civil war and subsequent occupation—taking on responsibilities as caretakers, fighters, smugglers, and negotiators—often under duress. “In the occupied South, women played key roles in sustaining social life and participated in resistance networks, especially secular ones. But war left them vulnerable to violence from ‘the enemy’ and their own communities. As [Lebanese anthropologist] Souad Joseph puts it, war not only creates widows and mothers of martyrs, but deepens patriarchal norms that restrict women even after the weapons fall silent.”

Diana believes Netanyahu’s rhetoric about women in Iran mirrors Lebanon’s experience: powerful actors borrowing feminist language to conceal violence. “As some foreign institutions or politicians have used women’s rights to justify unrelated agendas. When feminism becomes propaganda, it becomes part of the war machine—not a means to peace.”

She argues that such appropriations deplete feminism, reducing struggles for justice to hollow marketing slogans and silencing the voices of real feminists on the frontlines whose language has been co-opted. Her message to women in other crisis zones, such as Iran, is clear: “You are not alone, and you are not merely victims. Your struggle is part of a broader, global movement—but its direction and meaning must be defined by you. Do not allow others to instrumentalize your suffering to justify further violence.”

From Syria: Patriarchy fights on there too

Oula, a Syrian feminist researcher, offers a one-word answer to why foreign armed forces invoke women’s rights during wartime: “Patriarchy.” 

“Whether it’s a regime, militia, or state, they all reproduce the same logic: that they know better than we do what is good for women, what rights we should have, what problems we face, and what our future ought to be.”

As the author of the study Paths of the Feminist Movement after 2011, Oula argues that speaking about women is easy—but truly listening would require relinquishing power, something patriarchy is rarely willing to do. “When Syrians rose up in 2011, they demanded dignity, freedom, and human rights. That was a revolution for dignity—and dignity without full women’s rights is meaningless.”

Despite war, displacement, and repression, feminist organizing in Syria not only persisted but flourished. Women led local initiatives, supported survivors, and created feminist spaces both within Syria and in exile—spaces rooted not in traditional institutions, but in solidarity, care, and everyday resistance.

Yet at the critical turning points, these same women were once again pushed to the margins. Oula, with a critical view of the political process in Syria after the beginning of the transitional period, says: “Despite years of activism and feminist leadership, out of 23 ministries in the transitional government, only one was assigned to a woman. These achievements are real, but fragile. These victories were not the result of the war, but were achieved in spite of it.” According to her, 14 years of war and displacement, while painful for all Syrians, brought specific forms of violence upon women: “From rape and sexual violence in detention centers to forced disappearances, public punishments by extremist groups, and the use of women’s bodies as weapons on the battlefield.” 

Despite this harsh reality, Oula’s account of Syrian women is one of resistance in the heart of the fire. In ISIS-controlled areas, women resisted forced disappearances, taught secretly, built support networks, stood against brainwashing. In areas under foreign or local militia control, documenting abuses, coordinating humanitarian aid, and creating safe spaces—even under bombardment—became everyday acts. To Oula, survival was also rebuilding, envisioning alternatives: “Resistance wasn’t always grand demonstrations—it was keeping society together and asserting women’s presence in shaping the country’s future.”

Asked whether she sees parallels between how women are used in Syria and the global portrayal of Iranian women’s struggles, Oula responds firmly: “Absolutely. War criminals and occupiers have long used our fights for their own goals. From the French in Algeria to the US Americans in Afghanistan, colonialism always posed as ‘saving women’ to legitimize violence. Today the pattern repeats—when Netanyahu uses Iranian women’s protests to justify aggression, it’s a continuation of that violent history.”

Afghanistan: Only the color of chains changed

In 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan, promising to “free Afghan women”—a slogan that became the banner of the campaign, casting Afghan women as symbols of “salvation” from Taliban darkness. But the lived experience of women during 20 years of “the republic” tells a bleaker story.

Mazda, an Afghan women’s rights activist, speaks from that experience—from shiny storefronts whose veneer couldn’t mask the stench of obsolescence and violence. She says that freedom in Afghanistan was inflated and hollow, a balloon that popped. Over those 20 years, only a limited group of urban women accessed universities and jobs, but the societal reception remained sexist: “Appearances changed; women were no longer whipped in the street for not wearing the hijab, but abuse continued—verbal harassment, groping, unwanted touching—from street to presidential palace. Laws seemingly protecting women weren’t enforced, and the underpinning structure remained misogynistic.”

As she puts it, the US removed the Taliban’s beard from the streets, but left misogynistic structures intact: “The real voices of Afghan women were never the occupiers’ priority—not in politics, not in reconstruction plans.” Mazda says that the voices of the people—whether women or men—meant nothing to the occupying powers; they only listened to themselves and silenced everyone else with bombs, bullets, and violence: “We protested, we demonstrated, but the response was always the same: violence.”

What distinguishes indigenous feminism from imported versions is agency, Mazda says: “In local feminism, women are subjects, decision-makers—not objects for international institutions and armies to decide for.” The US‑NATO package of “democracy” implemented at Bonn conferences included a definition of women’s rights—but this was symbolic window dressing to legitimize occupation.” she says, with derision: “There was no real liberation—only the color of our chains was changed.”

She speaks about personal and collective experiences of the Afghan woman’s body as a battlefield and symbol of power, where women are blamed even when assaulted: “Society blamed her for her clothing, the law didn’t protect her; the police became perpetrators. In an environment without legal mechanisms to address femicide or sexual assault, any man in the street could act as an enforcer. The republic might have removed official hijab patrols—but patriarchy permeated society, controlling women’s bodies.”

There, Mazda says, women’s bodies became banners for regimes—republicans branded them as democratic symbols, the Taliban used them for “political Islam.” In both cases, women remain symbolic objects for legitimizing regimes. She asks: “Why do states speak so much about women in wars but never listen to them? Because women are seen as ‘honor,’ not humans. Political power always seeks means to reinforce dominance, not autonomous agents who can disrupt the status quo.”

When Netanyahu wields “Woman, Life, Freedom” to justify attacking Iran, Mazda sees a continuation of the same scenario that used Afghan women to justify occupation: “It’s laughable to think bombs bring freedom—amid bodies left in our hands. It’s absurd to consider child-killers as saviors.”

She has lived the experience of “imported freedom”: “Today millions of Afghan women have gained nothing but depression, isolation, and bans from that exported democracy. The danger of exploiting women’s suffering is more than disrespect—it gives excuses to warmongers and normalizes violence against women.”

Mazda’s message to Iranian women and others whose voices may be hijacked: “Be careful not to be used as tools. Peace is born from awareness, not bombs. No country has been liberated by bombing. All that changes is just the color of our chains.”

Zoya, a member of the AfgactivistCollective—a group of first- and second-generation Afghans aligned with the Global South movement—opposes both the US occupation and the Taliban. The collective works to link Afghan struggles with broader regional movements.

Calm yet confident, Zoya speaks of the West’s invasion under the banner of “saving Afghan women,” wryly remarking: “Twenty years of war just to replace Taliban with Taliban.”

For Zoya, the rhetoric of salvation served as a cover for economic and geopolitical interests—not women’s rights, but access to natural resources and Afghanistan’s strategic position. As she puts it, the hypocrisy was plain to see: “Everything happened in front of our eyes.” The Doha Agreement, she says, confirmed that behind the veil of liberation lay nothing but self-interest.

She states: “Our land is full of resources needed for capitalist war machines. Women’s bodies were just propaganda tools.” In her narrative, Afghan women’s resistance arose from within—from houses turned into secret classrooms, hands building progress uncontested by funding or support: “With all the money that flowed into Afghanistan, what was visible was our own effort—not international NGOs.”

She describes corrupt development models that dispossessed farmers, bought homes, forced dependence on processed food—food that created health and pharmaceutical markets for international profit. “Today’s Afghan crisis is the result of this profit logic,” Zoya says.

With the Taliban’s return, new forms of suppression emerged—religiously justified but without real basis: “From closing girls’ schools after sixth grade, banning women’s baths, to even requiring covered kitchen windows—these are all pretexts to distract us from resource extraction.”

She clenches anger at the question: “Who arms the Taliban? How did they gain power during 20 years of ‘struggle’? The same forces preaching freedom also profit from Afghan suffering—through pharmaceuticals, military, electronics industries.”

She doesn’t spare “white feminism,” openly criticizing Germany’s so-called feminist foreign policy: “Afghan women are ignored, Palestinian women are nonexistent, and Iranian women must be saved.” To her, this brand of feminism is colonialism dressed in progressive language: “They offer a false feminism—one that neither dismantles patriarchy nor challenges oppressive structures.” 

Her answer? Amplify grounded, authentic voices. “Only true narratives can withstand purple-washing—the use of feminist slogans to camouflage war and domination.” Her message to Iranian women—and to any women whose movements risk being co-opted—is clear: “We in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iran, Kurdistan, Congo, Somalia, Balochistan—we all share one struggle: against patriarchy, imperialism, and capitalism.”

The narratives of war-affected women across the region may differ in detail, but they speak in unison: liberation does not arrive through occupation or bombs, and slogans like “Woman, Life, Freedom” must not be turned into tools by powers that are themselves among the main violators of all three.

In a world where structural violence and imperialism continue to target societies of the Global South under the mask of “rescue” or “freedom,” it is more urgent than ever to listen to the voices of real women from within these communities.

They do not need saviors.

The post The Women Not Liberated by Bombs appeared first on Untold.

The grandson of a senior Nazi whom he admired, Merz had recently explained in another interview how antisemitism in Germany was imported through Muslim migrants. The same migrants who fuel his country’s economy and pay the taxes that keep the aging population alive.

At the same meeting, the G7 issued statements parroting the now-routine defense of Israel’s “right to defend itself,” even as the state continued its live-streamed genocide in Gaza, where it is starving and systematically killing 2 million people, while occupying Syria, Lebanon and Palestine and bombing them along with Yemen and waged war on Iran. 

But who is “us” in the German Chancellor’s statement? Is it the so-called West, white people, capitalists, colonial powers, or all of the above?

What is certain is that this collective West, with its rich history of genocides across continents and scientific, obsessive destruction of the planet and its ecosystems, is addicted to war, destruction, and violent power.

Selective Humanity

There is something inherently terrifying in colonial practices and discourse. It is terrifying because it does not even see its murder as murder; it sees it as a necessity or a good. It does not even acknowledge the humanity of those it murders. In fact, it is not murder that it sees—it sees the eradication of a disease. 

This is why it is “dirty work”, a term that reminds of testimonies of Nazis when justifying their own actions: it is cleaning those undesirables off the planet in order to turn it into a clean, organized, sanitized, plastic terrain that serves their desires and feeds their power. 

This is why it is only they who have a right to defend themselves—they are the only ones who are humanized in their own discourse. They grieve and have names; they have feelings and hopes. The others are insignificant objects, microbes that need to be eradicated and sanitized.

This is why they can bomb nuclear facilities and risk a nuclear disaster that would kill millions of people and destroy rich, vital ecosystems of plants and animals. They feel nothing towards nature. In fact, they hate its uncontrolled disorder and seek to control it, discipline it.

This is how Nazis built on the colonial ideological heritage of control, classification, and racism.

This is why Israel can have nuclear weapons and refuse to have any oversight over its nuclear facilities, while bombing another country that does not have such weapons and is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty—because it accuses it of having intentions of building the very weapon it itself owns. This is why Israel’s allies do not even mention this, as they are willing to destroy populations for such bias.

The alliance of “us”, by conducting a genocide and yet another illegal, murderous war against yet another country—regardless of how horrible that country’s government is—has once and for all destroyed whatever was left of the short-lived international order that was meant to prevent the colonial powers from destroying the planet yet again.

Anyone who thinks this is only about Iran or West Asia should think again. What we are witnessing or living in this region is the future of humanity. This time the bullies are going to mass murder us; next time, it will be you. Just remember this as you watch us burn—for “you.”

Global threats

There are currently two states openly threatening other countries with war with no repercussions—launching attacks without legal justification, outside the framework of the United Nations and international law. The US threatening to invade or forcefully annex Canada, Panama, Greenland, after having invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, and attacking a dozen more countries in the past few decades while Israel, another settler colony built on genocide, is attacking half a dozen countries and threatening a few more.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the same powers hailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza and attack on Iran as a right, “self sefense”, or a “pre-emtive strike”, immediately reacted, imposing sanctions and activating international institutions.

We are at a point in history where the heads of these two states—the US and Israel—can openly threaten to assassinate heads of other states or bombing their nuclear facilities, with utter and absolute silence from the international institutions or open support and approval from the states that are supposed to safeguard the planet from nuclear apocalypse or at least pay lip service to the concept of international law and diplomacy.

This is not about Iran, whose authoritarian regime has been the cause of much death and suffering both inside and outside its borders. What is happening today takes us back to a legal and moral standard that resembles colonial times and with this normalized anyone can be next and anyone will be.

Yet the so-called West and its media outlets constantly parrot the same lies: That the only threat to the world are the “evil scary Muslims”, whether they are the millions of migrants, so-called terrorist organizations, or occasional states that compete with the global hegemon—rather than the nuclear powers brandishing their arsenals and threatening the world with apocalypse and with countless recent precedents of attacking, invading, violating international law, using nuclear bombs, and openly declaring their intentions to do more.

If there was any sense of law and point to the UN, there should be a global emergency to stop the biggest threat to the planet today and to impose severe sanctions on the US, Israel, as well as on Germany, the UK and the few complicit states that are threatening the world with an earlier than expected complete destruction.

Normalized Horror

The West’s outrage is always selective. When Gaza’s hospitals were turned into execution chambers and mass graves, when Palestinian doctors, medical workers, and babies were murdered—there was silence. Or worse, justification.

Let us not forget the former German foreign minister, now president of the UN General Assembly, who defended bombing hospitals. An accomplice to war crimes presiding over what’s left of international diplomacy.

This is the world we live in: Every day, among the many reports of Israeli crimes in Gaza, a new norm emerges to be added to the vocabulary of genocide: “X number of aid seekers killed”. A news item that slips quietly into the daily news cycle. 

Like so many grotesque terms invented to describe the sadistic reality of Israel’s war machine—remember “wounded child, no surviving family,” “decomposing babies in incubators”—this phrase is yet another reminder of the horror being normalized. This is the “dirty work” that Israel is doing for “all of us”, invoked by the German Chancellor. That same “us” Trump also invoked when speaking about Israel’s attacks and later his own on Iran.

Meanwhile, the “international community”—the “us” they are referring to, the Global North, the colonial powers, the so-called West, or however we choose to describe the forces backing the settler colony’s sadistic violence and the Empire’s unchecked hegemony—tramples what little remains of international law and the post-WWII diplomatic order.

And who are the men leading this charge? Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu—both facing a litany of accusations and court cases: corruption, sexual abuse, war crimes, crimes against humanity. One even has an active ICC arrest warrant, the other has threatened and sanctioned the ICC judges.

This is the reality of colonial powers that have long presented themselves as “civilization”—even as they perfect the technologies of killing, destruction, and the gruesome erasure of all they seek to dominate.

Nuclear Hypocrisy

As bombs fell on Iran, the hypocrisy deepened. Why is Israel’s nuclear arsenal exempt from oversight? Why is there no international outcry demanding it join the Non-Proliferation Treaty or allow IAEA inspections?

Israel is the only country known to possess nuclear weapons “in secret”, outside any international framework, with zero IAEA involvement?

Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear program has triggered global alarm, intrusive inspections, and massive resource deployment by the IAEA with a vastly disproportionate share of resources including under the JCPOA.

Furthermore, the IAEA itself, along with U.S. intelligence agencies, repeatedly confirmed: there is no evidence that Iran is weaponizing its nuclear technology.

In contrast, Israel—a state currently committing genocide, led by a prime minister wanted by the ICC for war crimes, engaged in wars of aggression, and occupying at least three countries—faces no comparable scrutiny. The other country leading the charge—the US—is the only one known to have used nuclear weapons as well as to have used lies about weapons of mass destruction to invade and occupy another country—Iraq—leading to the death of millions just over 20 years ago (Israel had previously bombed Iraq’s nuclear programme in 1981 and Syria’s in 2007).

If there is any state whose nuclear program demands oversight, it is Israel. A global demand to bring Israel under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and place its facilities under IAEA safeguards should be central to any regional or international negotiation. Anything less is simply about domination rather than non-proliferation. 

War not Liberation

In 2003, millions across the world stood against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The war, waged under the pretext of a lie about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction— known to be a lie back then and later confirmed as such, the brutal war was an affront on international law as was the US invasion of Afghanistan two years prior. 

Those who opposed these wars were not defending the Taliban nor Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule, but trying to prevent the devastation that followed: millions killed, entire societies shattered, and a chain reaction of violence and suffering that continues to this day.

Now, new lies and another pretext were used to justify yet another illegal war of aggression—this time against another authoritarian state: Iran. If history has taught us anything, it is that such wars bring only more death, more displacement, more destruction, and set the people affected back years. They do not liberate; they annihilate, extract, and subjugate. And each time they are allowed to happen, they further entrench a world order where violence, not reason, reigns—where the strong are above the law, and the rest of us are left to burn.

Broken Treaties

The US once again violated international law by bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, even as Iran was invited to negotiations by European states. But this is nothing new. 

Colonizers have always reneged on their promises—on treaties, agreements, and diplomacy. They conquer through violence and destruction, then invite negotiation on their own terms. They impose agreements designed to cement subjugation, only to break them whenever it suits their interests.

In the United States alone, hundreds of treaties were signed with Native American nations—every single one of them was broken or violated. The Trail of Tears, the forced relocations, and the massacres at Wounded Knee and Sand Creek are not isolated acts of cruelty but part of a systematic betrayal. 

Similarly, in Africa, colonial powers like Britain and France promised independence and self-governance in exchange for loyalty during the world wars, only to brutally suppress anti-colonial movements when those promises were called in. In Palestine, the Balfour Declaration laid the foundation for a century of dispossession based on lies and colonial arrogance.

Colonizers create rules to guarantee their victory—but if they lose, they simply change the rules or disregard them altogether. Institutions like the UN are tolerated only when they serve the interests of those powers. When they pose even a symbolic challenge, they are defunded, discredited, or ignored.

So how can anyone, in this region or anywhere else, still believe in diplomacy with colonizers? How can corrupt Arab regimes and other complicit governments across the planet continue to act as if Europe, the U.S., and the alliance defending genocide have ever been trustworthy partners?

These powers have long been the greatest threat to global peace—rampaging across continents in the name of empire, fueling genocides, launching two world wars, and willing to steer us toward a third through reckless violence, resource extraction, and endless militarization.

This is a moment of reckoning. If the global majority—especially in the Global South, those countries that are at risk of being next on the list—does not respond with clarity, courage, and unity, the whole planet will bear the cost. What we’re facing are not exceptions. It is the rule of empire which offers nothing but subjugation or death. And history has already shown us where that road leads.

The post The “Dirty Work” of Empire: The War on Iran, and the Collapse of the International Order appeared first on Untold.

While the world focuses on Iran’s nuclear program and political tensions, a quieter, deadlier crisis is unfolding: water scarcity. It is not simply caused by drought—but the result of decades of mismanagement, resource plundering, and neglect that have now brought Iran to the brink of a social and environmental catastrophe. 

From dried-up wetlands in Gavkhouni to the migration of millions to the north, water is not only an environmental issue but has become a fault line of ethnic and political division in the country and beyond. 

Mohammad Bazargan, Secretary of the Water and Environment Task Force in Iran’s Expediency Council, recently warned that the country is dangerously close to a full-blown water and soil crisis. His statement marks one of the strongest public acknowledgments by an official.

If trends continue, by 2050, a large portion of Iran’s southern population may be forced to migrate northward in search of livable conditions—adding enormous pressure to already overstretched regions. Bazargan has warned that we could soon reach a point where “there won’t be enough room for people to sleep, let alone enough food to eat.”

A looming catastrophe

Iran’s water crisis is one of the most urgent yet least seriously addressed national issues. Despite mounting warnings and visible environmental consequences, attention to this looming catastrophe remains largely superficial—if not entirely absent. More dangerously, the worsening water situation carries the potential to inflame ethnic tensions and deepen existing social divides.

The crisis stretches far beyond simple drought. From drying lakes and polluted rivers to environmental degradation, land subsidence, mass unemployment, and large-scale migration to northern regions, water mismanagement is silently reshaping Iran’s demographic and political landscape.

What was once a sociological concern is now rapidly transforming into a socio-hydropolitical crisis — a term increasingly used to describe conflicts that stem from water scarcity.

People migrating to northern provinces, abandoning their homes due to drought and water shortages, are becoming what experts call climate refugees. Some villages have experienced complete abandonment. This slow, creeping process of climate-induced migration has been unfolding for years—quietly, steadily—until it reached today’s critical threshold. Decision-makers have long neglected this form of migration, which, unlike sudden disasters, leaves deeper social and political impacts.

More than a drought

At the core of the problem is not just mismanagement, but a misguided philosophy of control. Although Iran has several laws on water management, such as the Law of Equitable Water Distribution and the Comprehensive Water Law, successive administrations have approached water not as a public resource, but as something to be dominated and owned. This top-down view has severely weakened Iran’s institutional capacity to implement sustainable solutions.

According to Abbas Keshavarz, Iran has overdrawn its groundwater reserves by an estimated 150 to 350 billion cubic meters—a staggering depletion that places aquifers on the verge of collapse. This figure reflects the total amount of groundwater overuse in recent decades due to unsustainable extraction practices.

In contrast, Mohammad Hossein Bazargan, Secretary of the Water and Environment Task Force of the Expediency Council, highlights that Iran has lost around 50 billion cubic meters of groundwater over the past 150 years—a number that refers specifically to irreversible losses, meaning water reserves that can no longer be naturally replenished.

The difference in these figures stems from the type and timeframe of measurement: Keshavarz refers to the overall extraction, while Bazargan focuses on permanent depletion of non-renewable reserves. Regardless of the estimate, both warn that the situation is reaching a critical point. Water is no longer just an environmental issue—it is becoming a national fault line.

While some, like Bazargan, may still refer to this crisis as a ‘drought,’ such terminology grossly oversimplifies the situation. The term evokes a temporary condition—a few dry years, less rainfall or snow, and the hope of a forthcoming ‘wet season.’ But this is no longer our reality.

For earlier generations, water scarcity was local and seasonal. If a spring or river ran low, the cause was likely a lack of rainfall. But today, when major cities like Isfahan and Yazd face water shortages, the state implements inter-basin water transfer projects—redirecting water from wetter provinces like Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari to drier regions. 

As Issa Kalantari, former head of Iran’s Department of Environment, pointed out, the problem is not low inflow. During the Safavid era, Sheikh Baha’i calculated the flow of the Zayandeh Rud River at around 700 million cubic meters annually. Today, the same river sees a flow of 1.85 billion cubic meters—yet it is dry and excessive consumption prevents any water from reaching critical ecosystems. For instance, Gavkhouni, once a vibrant wetland, has suffered worse than even Lake Jazmourian, which still occasionally receives flood waters while Gavkhouni does not.

Water wisdom

Kalantari warned in 2014 that Iran would only have 15 years of water left for agriculture if consumption remained unchecked. That leaves just four years from now. The core of the crisis, experts say, is clear: Iran’s rainfall has remained relatively consistent, but extraction from underground aquifers—waters that take centuries or millennia to replenish—has skyrocketed. 

This unchecked overuse lies at the heart of Iran’s water emergency. Keshavarz notes that oil wealth shifted Iran away from its ancient qanat systems—ingenious underground channels—toward a destructive reliance on deep wells, unraveling centuries of water wisdom.

According to Iran’s former head of the Department of Environment, the country originally possessed around 500 billion cubic meters of fossil water—ancient underground reserves. However, 200 billion cubic meters of this freshwater have already been consumed, and the remaining 300 billion cubic meters are saline, rendering them unsuitable even for agriculture.

While water scarcity has now reached nearly every corner of the country—including typically lush provinces like Gilan and Mazandaran—the crisis is not evenly distributed. The Iranian Central Plateau, located to the east of the Zagros Mountains and south of the Alborz range, faces the most critical conditions. Experts caution that these regions may eventually force entire populations to relocate.

What’s striking, however, is the deafening silence from current environmental officials. In Iran, it is common for officials to only speak out after leaving office—whether by resignation, dismissal, or the end of their term. When in power, accountability and proactive responsibility are often absent. The water crisis deepens, but institutional responses continue to arrive too late.

Mismanagement and policy failures

One of the primary drivers of Iran’s worsening water crisis is the government’s policy of excessive groundwater extraction. According to Mostafa Fadaei-Fard, head of the Flood Evaluation Committee of Iran’s National Committee on Large Dams, over 37 million people in western and northern provinces may be forced to migrate due to the depletion of aquifers.

Projects like the Koohrang water transfer channel have diverted massive volumes of water from river sources to the city of Isfahan, sustaining industrial and agricultural sectors in drought-stricken central Iran. However, the environmental and social costs of such policies are mounting. 

Keshavarz highlights how land reforms in the 1960s, combined with lax regulations, spurred a drilling frenzy. Today, Iran counts 660,000 legal wells and 360,000 illegal ones, bleeding its groundwater dry.

Military-linked companies, particularly those affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have seized lands around Lake Urmia, engaging in high-water-consumption agriculture, notably watermelon farming. 

Producing one kilogram of watermelon consumes roughly 250 liters of water, yet the price of watermelon is relatively low at the expense of local communities facing severe water scarcity. This paradox has led many to claim that Iran now offers the cheapest water in the world.

Household water consumption in Iran is estimated at 6–7 billion cubic meters annually. Of the 400 billion cubic meters of annual precipitation, 270 billion evaporates, leaving 130 billion, of which nearly 110 billion cubic meters is consumed. A staggering 70–90% of this is used in agriculture, yet Iran’s irrigation efficiency is only around 30% compared to neighbors like Turkey and Iraq, which have irrigation efficiencies above 50%, meaning up to 50 billion cubic meters of water is wasted every year. 

Urban water loss is also a critical concern: 25–30% of water is lost in city water networks due to leaks, outdated infrastructure, and poor management. By comparison, this figure is under 10% in the global north.  

In many Iranian cities, drinking water is still used to irrigate green spaces, whereas treated wastewater is commonly used for this purpose elsewhere. Meanwhile, industrial zones, including steel, petrochemical, tile, and ceramic factories in the central desert, consume massive volumes of water. For example, Mobarakeh Steel Company uses around 210 million cubic meters of water annually—nearly 40% of the total water used in the provinces of Yazd, Kerman, and Isfahan combined.

The government’s dam-building spree has also exacerbated the crisis. Iran has entered the 21st century facing what experts call a “human-made drought” due to unsustainable practices. In 2012, Iran had 316 dams; by 2018, that number had surged to 647. In 2019, the government announced plans to construct 109 new dams within two years, many of them military-led or aimed at altering demographic patterns, and built without environmental assessments.

This rapid dam construction has led to significant water loss. For instance, the Latyan Dam, one of Tehran’s five main drinking water sources with a capacity of 95 million cubic meters, currently holds only 9 million cubic meters. Water levels in other major dams such as those in Minab, Zayandeh-Rood, and Saveh have also dropped to critical lows.

Groundwater levels in Tehran have fallen an average of 12 meters over the past two decades, causing land subsidence in urban areas. The policies pursued by both the current and previous administrations have pushed Iran toward an irreversible water disaster, one that intertwines environmental collapse with political and social instability.

Migration, Somalia, and social tensions

Both global and historical experiences show numerous examples of severe water scarcity leading to social and political crises. One of the most alarming cases is that of Somalia.

Since the beginning of 2020 , approximately 1.3 million Somalis have been forced to migrate due to the water crisis. Considering Somalia’s population of 16 million, this means 8% of the entire nation has become internally displaced within a single year.

​Certainly, while it’s an oversimplification to attribute Somalia’s conflicts and state failure solely to water scarcity, it’s important to recognize that water-related challenges play a significant role in exacerbating existing vulnerabilities.​ 

For instance, the 2011 famine in Somalia, which led to the deaths of over 250,000 people, was primarily caused by severe drought conditions. This environmental crisis intensified existing political instability and conflict, highlighting how water scarcity can act as a catalyst in fragile contexts.​ 

Moreover, a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) emphasizes that environmental degradation, including water scarcity, contributes to conflict dynamics in Somalia by undermining livelihoods and fueling competition over scarce resources.​ Therefore, while water scarcity is not the root cause of Somalia’s complex challenges, it is a critical factor that, if overlooked, can hinder efforts toward peace and stability

The case of Somalia offers a warning. Could Iran follow the same path? 

A study by the Iranian Parliament’s Research Center indicates that 282 cities in Iran are currently facing high water stress. The same study reports that average rainfall has declined by 36% compared to the past 52-year average. In provinces like Hormozgan, Sistan and Baluchestan, Fars, Kerman, Razavi Khorasan, and South Khorasan, the reduction is even more dramatic—between 50% and 85%.

Iran has now been confronting water scarcity for over two decades. According to the World Resources Institute, Iran ranks fourth globally among countries facing an extreme water crisis. The country is essentially on the brink of what experts call “Day Zero” — the moment when water reserves might entirely run out.

Ethno-hydrological and climatic fault lines

The internal migration from arid to cooler, water-rich regions in Iran is intensifying existing social fractures. In a country characterized by diverse ethnic groups, water scarcity further inflames pre-existing tensions. Rather than uniting people in crisis, water is becoming a divisive force, fueling mistrust and resentment between regions and communities.

One stark example is the Koohrang water transfer project, along with the Beheshtabad and Golab canals, which collectively transport nearly two billion cubic meters of water annually to Isfahan. For years, this transfer triggered protests from neighboring provinces inhabited largely by Lur communities, who accuse the Persian-majority Isfahan of “plundering” their water. 

During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, in an attempt to appease protestors in Chaharmahal, Bakhtiari and Lorestan, villagers were granted unrestricted permission to drill wells. This unregulated access quickly depleted underground water reserves and worsened the crisis. Ahmadinejad famously dismissed Ministry of Energy restrictions as “bureaucratic nonsense,” encouraging anyone to dig wherever possible. Such populist policies, compounded by ill-informed parliamentary decisions, have deepened Iran’s water crisis.

Ethnic fault lines are increasingly intertwined with water politics.

In Khuzestan, a major Arab-populated province with rich water resources, the transfer of water from the Karun River—Iran’s largest—has sparked anger among Arab residents. They accuse the state of “Arab-cleansing” and favoring Lur populations in the region. The Koohrang-3 Tunnel project, which submerged several villages, triggered an influx of migrants into Khuzestan, exacerbating ethnic tensions. 

In northwest Iran, Lake Urmia—once the country’s largest lake—has nearly dried up. The region straddles East and West Azerbaijan, inhabited by Turks and Kurds. Despite numerous proposed solutions, the lake remains a source of inter-ethnic tension. The Zab River transfer project, designed to refill the lake, has sparked opposition among local Kurdish communities, who argue that their water is being diverted to Turkish-speaking regions at their expense. As demographic shifts intensify—Azerbaijanis migrating to Tehran and Kurds moving into Urmia—a new crisis of ethno-demographic imbalance looms.

Other controversial megaprojects, such as transferring water from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf or from the Oman Sea to central provinces like Isfahan, have drawn harsh criticism from economists and environmentalists. Critics argue that these projects are unrealistic and ecologically destructive, benefiting only industrial interests in provinces like Isfahan, which already dominate Iran’s economic landscape. 

There is growing concern that these projects are driven not by necessity, but by powerful lobbying from industrial elites, at the expense of Baluchi and Arab communities in southern Iran.

These ethnic, environmental, and economic pressures, coupled with poor governance, over-construction of dams, and inefficient water management, have pushed Iran toward an ecological and social catastrophe. Some experts argue that misguided self-sufficiency policies in agriculture have led to over-extraction of groundwater and irreversible land subsidence.

The consequences are alarming: rapid rural-to-urban migration, population surges in northern provinces, and creeping demographic transformation. Yet, the government responds by securitizing the crisis, rather than addressing its root causes.

Iran is also in water disputes with neighboring countries—such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. However, it is not just external challenges, but internal mismanagement and the weakness of the Islamic Republic’s governance model that are at the core of this crisis.

Ethnic and identity-based tensions, exacerbated by crippling sanctions, state repression, and erosion of the middle class, are escalating. 

Water is Iran’s most urgent existential crisis. And if this reality continues to be ignored, the hydro-ethnic conflict may become the greatest threat to Iran’s territorial and social cohesion. 

Water is the blood of the earth, a shared vein running through us all—blue brothers and sisters, not bound by blood but by this liquid lifeline. Yet, like the parched earth, we too have cracked and splintered from its absence. Forced to romanticize our misery, we weep—for the waterless in Sudan and Somalia, for the salt-scattered people around Lake Urmia, for throats choked dry under the sun of injustice.

The post The Countdown to Iran’s Day Zero: A Crisis of Water, Not War appeared first on Untold.

تذکره الاولیا، عطار نیشابوری

Bayazid said: I say that my true follower is the one who stands at the edge of Hell, and, when someone is taken to Hell, they take their hand and sends them to Heaven, taking their place in Hell themself.

Tazkirat al-Awliya, Attar Neishaburi

To look at the narrow and long road which leads the world to the slaughter-house.

To Be In A Time Of War, Etel Adnan

بی‌قراری

unease

so, tell me.

when do we mourn the living dead that we are,

the muted throats that we occupy,

the stones we pick and leave behind,

the lives we exploit and live beside,

the graves we enter, armed fully—with limbs, with pride—

—the dead are dead, do not bother.

—the dead are dead, no one expects them to rise, do not bother.

so, tell me.

where is your fire? whose flame is this? whom are you burning?

of the witches, of the whores, of the bitches, of the shores,

this time, the roaches that endure, this time, 

the survivors of the shores, this time,

a tulip, grown on her own, alone, this time, 

on the cracks of the shores.

so, tell me.

when did you declare a war? and which coffin is mine?

whose god might I argue with? which wreckage is mine? what should I pick? what shall I throw? whom do I attack? Where do I go?

—the dead are dead, do not bother 

mourned too many times.

so, tell me.

is the frontier your lips or your hands?

which one should I kiss? of the throats you choke,

which one should I be? of my many names,

which one do you remember? which one do you pick? 

the sentiments of wartime, despair haunting the dew of mourning, cold sweat, blues fading, reds burning,

night ending on no ending note, enough is never enough.

the breaking news of today: it is never enough.

when will be my time?

بوی زهم

the smell of raw meat

these days, the extension of me is death. it has no smell, only a shifting shape. it pours from my fingers and eyes. I cannot hold it. like a fish, it exists only to jump out. I walk, and it weeps out. I do not walk, and it weeps out. I mostly stay at home, containing it, at least I try.

these days, my loneliness feels political. as does yours, you, the aching heart. we hold the same rage but barely meet each other’s eyes. they call it community, but, hmmmm, we ain’t one. death has consumed us. we let it do its job, thinking we could master it. instead, it mastered us. I fear what I write. I fear the damage already done. I fear my heart learning a game that isn’t her own. I fear arguing in the language of the world against this heart. this heart. I hold it tight. but, no matter how. it pours herself out. 

I am my own heart. I am a liquid spilling from room to room, evaporating into dew, clinging only to the walls. these days, the extension of my existence clings to every door I pass, every room I enter. hours circle me like a revolving door, dragging me in and out. the floor of my room. I look at it. I see the blood piling up to my knees, weeds twisting through it. I try to move, but the blood becomes a hurricane. angry waves slam against still walls—the lovemaking of fists and faces, all against walls.

the limit of what is yet to be undone. it presses, all against my heart.

they rarely ask, “how are you?” when they do, I cry. inside. “fine, Alhamdulillah,” I reply.

سکون

stillness

we are on the brink. the brink is something made of bricks, brick by brick, ancient ruins are built on the brink.

retaliation for the previous retaliation of the previous retaliation of another, of another century. preparation for retaliating against the retaliation that has not yet happened, might never happen.

their war cabinet is a small room, their table too small for the number of chairs gathered around it, their chairs too small for their hands, their hands too small to hold the smallest birds’ beaks they have bombed, so far. the room makes decisions about the fate of birds, of me making love tonight, of friendships ending on disagreements about “how” to decolonize, on how many fingers a Palestinian child might need for his life.

the sky is no longer God’s. it never was. the war cabinet owns it. The New Order emerges from the sky they have divided and defined, and on earth, only things drop: a piece of lip, two or three beaks. the war cabinet teaches me new words: Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. my English improves: MK-84 Bombs with SPICE-2000 GUIDANCE KITS. I understand new distinctions—no god takes responsibility for creating the occupants of that room.

we are on the brink, falling on the ground, brick by brick.

به‌جوش‌آمدن

boiling

today, I realized the world has no edge. I leaned. I felt. today, I aged ten years—and a day. and that one day was the hardest to digest. I blame it on words losing their meaning, bread crumbling, the poison absorbed deeply. squeezed—just one drop. words. drops. cheap.

today, anger chewed my flesh. it did not soften, only hardened. tightened my muscles. tight. today, I became very Fanonian. stiff. the evil’s feet entered my mouth, deep into my throat. I missed the chance to throw it up. mistake. I swallowed him. mistake. today, terror knocked the door open. I approached the door. mistake. who is it? who is terrorizing me? a friend. a dear comrade. mistake.

today, I became anger. I became rage. I became wrath. I ate my own flesh like a rat. today, my mouth swallowed my tail. tail. I became a tail. I banged the water, ripping its surface—bang, bang, bang. I became the head of the snake.

hit me. hit me, now. bang, bang, bang.

the poison is not mine. I won’t take that shit. no. not me. not my mother. not her garden. today, I searched for an edge to bang my head—against the sharpest of edges: you, your court, your hammer, your execution order stamped on my hands.

bang, bang, bang.

the rope, its slow, very slow extension. its shadow, persistent, very persistent. its firing squad, persistent. oh God, so persistent. and all your hammers, knocking on my head, your care, your repair, knocking on my hands.

bang, bang, bang.

no. I won’t take this shit. not mine. no. I won’t touch this corpse. I won’t bury it. I won’t be that dead. no. not me. not my mother. not her garden.

not again.

today, I realized the world has no edge. no corner. today, I felt.

نفس

NAFS

these days, my thighs long to make love, perhaps, to a living thing other than my own thighs. I rarely remember that I live in a body, that there is at least one thing in this world that is mine. fully mine. every day, I declare war against it. very determined.

still and still. I yearn for touch—black, curly hair, hairy, dark, sad eyes, deep brown, strong nipples, ones that are not only mine. I send many hugs to many, an emoji repeated three times, returned in kind, another hug, dark blue, superior vena cava. emojis are clumsy prophets of delivering arms. arms. I stretch mine, I make a fist, the size of my heart. it never pumps. the miracle never arrives—only the punishment.

I am Lot’s people. I walk with him. I do look back. I am stone. I am all the stones bombed into smaller stones. scattered. my body. the ruins. the ruined history. only one missile. exploding the body that was supposed to be mine. I am stone. I am all the stones bombed into smaller stones. pick me. put me in your pocket. fist your hand around me. hold me as you hold your rage—close, warm, deep, dangerously. you will need me if you ever walk by the ruins of Palmyra. leave me there. I will be all that remains—fragmented, forgotten, faded.

I will remain.

تقلا

trying

I live in Switzerland. for now. they say they are neutral. they say they make knives—practical, conclusive, cutting, opening, closing, punching, piercing—all in one act, like neutrality: clean, clear, cut. I am from Zanjan. we do not say we are neutral. we do say we make knives, daggers, ghame. they have names carved into them, or an eye, a peacock, a heart, a flower. they are not practical. they are forged for battle. they need stone or oil to stay sharp. like love, they need tough touch. they play rituals difficult to watch, of mourning, of boredom, of desperation, of love. they are passed between lovers or murderers. remember me, or, kill her, remember this dagger, or bury her. oh, heart, the wounded one. oh, heart, the bleeding one. oh, love, the sweet God.

I stole my father’s. I decided what my inheritance is. of him. of his pocket Zanjani knife, with rusty steel, still smelling like his hands—gasoline, oil, dirt, smoke, dearth, silence, shame. it opens so slowly, it resists being closed, it is slow, like death, it hesitates to cut, like patience. it remains only a trace, a line, a shallow scratch—like him, a troubled existence, disappearing.

love is the practice of opening and closing a Zanjani knife, going to war with a butter-cutting knife, with a heart made of butter, carving the mountain, melting.

I live in Switzerland. for now. it is wartime, and they have mountains. many. chained. around me. they do not carve them for love. the dagger is not in the war with stone here. never. there is no Farhad* dying between the Alps. Zahhak** might only go for a hike, fully equipped, later return home, watch Netflix, chill. 

the evil is unbound. my father’s knife does not cut.

کشتن نفس

KILLING NAF 

I have no intention of invading your earth more than my grave, Ya Allah. At 164.45 centimetres, or less, depending on what remains, if any. let me occupy as little land as possible, like those who came before me, like those who will come after—arrested, beaten, executed, raped, tortured, stolen from, burnt, bombed. let me deliver this body back to you at home, ya Allah, over the hands of those who might, probably, perhaps, resemble my people. Ya Allah, Ya Rahman, Ya Latif, “let go of my hand, grant me freedom,”*** allow me to die at home, leave me alone.

make me weightless.

صعود

ascending

bitterness, my sister says, is a drop of evil. leave it to the colourless waters, she says, the evil you never solve, but only dissolve in your own hands. leave it to the sea, she says, and the sea is always the sea, always willing to receive the rage, swallowing the pain.

I have long been water, my dearest sister, and I have many times turned into many stones. to be the edge is to be the meeting point of water and stone—not shapeless, not already shaped, but the gradual becoming of a movement, of the touch between two impossibilities. the weeping willow tree, mad, still, counting her every leaf, on the edge of the cliff, still, stiff.

فرود

descending

all my lovers live in Qaf Mount****, and what is the difference between me and a bird? I would fail in my attempt to fly.

نمردن

not-dying

I remember all the lines of my mother’s forehead: one line, revolution, one line, war, some lines, sewing and weaving, a few, squeezing and feeding, many more, praying and paying.

lines—interruption, discontinuity. lines—the continuation of disruptions, discontinuities.

I see my mom growing different lines. correction: I do not see, I guess. through haze, fog, through the frames continuously interrupted. reconnecting. now, I know her as I know fading squares. I see the world I left behind. now, I am dead, for some years now. continuously dead. I watch the life I left behind through pixels. no one truly returns from the dead to live again. no one would be interested in that to happen. what is gone is dead. I am gone. I am dead. Still. I persist. I want to come back to life. I do. I call. I just call. the everydayness of the terrible. reconnecting. 

“they hit?”“did they hit?”“not yet.”“no sirens?”“I just woke up, taking wudu.” “I am still awake, refreshing the feed.” “go to sleep.” “call me later.”

I want to come back to life. I do. I call. I just call.

“they hit?”“there too?” “how many?”“it sounded like a lightless storm, and a close-by park is filled now, with runners.”

the unfinished business of moving away, floating within. I do. I want to run, move back, float. reconnecting. the everydayness of the terrible. connection is interrupted.

I am gone. I am dead. and ears hear after death.

تعارض

contradiction

my country is falling, in my hands, like Ophelia falling, over my hands. I am a defence site, failing with my own hands. in the meantime, I make a phone call to you. in Cairo, I am in love. in Tehran, only I am confused. you want to escape. you say. I tell you I can change the weather for you, the shapes of clouds if you want, or the endless greyness of skies. I own two boxing gloves, I say, have never tried them even once. you laugh, only, sweetly. you want to disappear soon, somewhere—me too, in you. my passport is not made for love. the problem is not walls, you say, they are easy to jump. wall is nothing, you say, it won’t go into us. the problem is the world, getting into us, you say, we get hard, hardened. I can be the wall, I say, jump over me, so the world escapes us, crosses between us. you laugh, over the phone, sweetly, and I think of tasting you, tasting the Mediterranean Sea in between us. my country has lost its defence system, they say, like me, in front of you.

love makes us porous, and we only fill our holes with lead.

وزیدن

blowing

not the scarcity of words, not your claws, gently, on my throat, not your decorum, and never your missiles and drones. it is only me, unwilling to sell it to you, my right-to-left writing world. there are many words. and I know more, more words. it is only me, unwilling to sit by your well, not willing to weep my words, into that void. and only to escape this void, I turn into the moon. I go behind the clouds. no. not silence. I only take my light away. it is not the scarcity of words. it is me not willing to write. I am Leila. I know only wind. close. I do poetry, only to the wind. closer to her ear. I whisper. I do not write. I blow. persist. insist. to the stone that is to be your heart. to that. I give. one stroke at a time. word by word. I do not write. I dig. deeper. I do not write. I have an army of ants, rebel ones. I let them open the page, go against your punctuating order of lines, invade the paragraph, close the line. 

I do not write. I am Vatan. I dig. I go deep. like the wind, I insist. I never heal. I never leave. I am home. from right to left. from the river to the sea. I do not write. I am the wind. I persist.

مرهم

healer

the one who must die, are resisting, and the one who will never die, are very busy, committing a suicide in the depth of their heart. some keywords are dropped too soon: repairing, renewing, reshaping, rebirthing—re, re, re, relentlessly. the problem is vague, the pain rarely gets named, the terms are dropped, coined too soon, too much. the story starts and ends with conclusions. the champagne is opened, a sudden sound, some kind of explosion, glasses shattering—for a different reason: healing. the healers get busy with deadlines. ghosts invade the chat. no response. no reply. everyone cares, but no one really does. no one has capacity. the champagnes are filled to the edge, but for a different reason: healing.

I hear healing I only see a brick. a brick. soaked in period blood, fully. ready to be thrown out, away, while still dripping blood. in my past life, there used to be a monster living in my utters, his head stretched up until my lips, his tail lingering on the fringe of my bones, and I bleeding the remnants of his teeth. out, away. I had no intention of healing. an impossible co-existence of the flesh and the sword. take that monster away. my mother would say. sit on this brick. my mother would say, warm the brick over the fire, wrap it in a towel, sit bare-skinned over it. let the heated soil absorb the wetness of the flesh, the coldness of the blood. let the earth meet the blood. my mother would say. we are from the blood and we will return to the blood. let the earth taste your pain. and, when the brick is soaked with blood. keep it. keep it. for later. throw it directly at the head of one who detests the land. who detests you. who mocks the blood. my mother would say. her mother would say. and the earth as well.

healing: a bloody brick.

healing: relieving the pain, revealing the rage.

healing: absorbing, exploding.

decolonise healing: hold on to the blood.

قلب

Heart

yes, everything flows through the blood. mathematics of liquids as well as life. the miracles of waves and floods. and yes, everything is blood. and perhaps a bit of water as well. I fight tooth and nail for the heart to remain in the blood. I wish the same for you. I might even be a prophet. rasool. guide you back to the heart. free her from the torment of “ifs,” let her suffer if she must, as she pleases. let her taste her own blood—the warmth, the essence of one who did not to die.

you tell me, how is your heart? with which fire do you cleanse your heart?

you tell me:

is agony the dignity of a heart still beating amidst the wartime?

september-december 2024

*Farhad is a literary figure in Persian poetry and mythology, who carved the mountain out of his love for Shirin.

**Zahhak, the snake-shouldered figure in Persian mythology, represents evil. He is chained and bound in Mount Damavand, implying that evil, at best, can be restrained on Earth but never truly vanishes.

***I am referring to the way Omm Kalthum sang this line in the song Al-Atlal.

****Qaf Mount is the mysterious and mythical mountain, standing for the farthest place on the earth, and in Sufi trajectory, for the final point of reaching the truth.

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