Niyaz

 It has taken nearly two weeks for me to gather enough concentration to write this. We are in another war. The Iranian regime, the United States, and Israel are at war. There were royalist groups encouraging war as a means of liberation—an interventionist strategy that has never worked. Yet the assumption was that Iran is somehow too exceptional to follow the same patterns repeated across the region and throughout history. There is not much to expect from a war led by a U.S. president whose judgment is widely questioned, alongside another leader already under an arrest warrant from the ICC for war crimes. Some danced with joy when the attacks began. I don’t know how many are still dancing two weeks later. Some screamed—both with joy and with fear. Some are simply afraid. In our geography, the will of the people is rarely the only force shaping history. Those in power—inside and outside the country—follow their own agendas and ideologies. Though they may appear very different ...