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  • Against Trump’s will, Iran dragging the US into a long war

    Against Trump’s will, Iran dragging the US into a long war

    After months of a fragile truce that held from an initial April ceasefire through a mid-June bilateral memorandum of understanding, armed conflict between the United States and Iran has reignited, with Washington launching a wave of targeted strikes against Iranian assets in response to Tehran’s harassment of commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. This escalation marks the most severe breach of the June 17 agreement, and has led former U.S. President Donald Trump to formally confirm what many regional analysts had feared: the months-long truce is definitively over.

    The root of the latest breakdown in tensions is a high-stakes dispute over strategic control of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical global energy chokepoints. Under the terms of the now-defunct memorandum, Iran committed to using its best efforts to guarantee unimpeded, toll-free passage for commercial vessels through the strait for a 60-day period. Almost immediately, however, tensions flared over competing shipping routes through the waterway. The U.S.-backed corridor hugs the Omani coast, relies on international maritime coordination, and remains outside direct Iranian oversight. Tehran, by contrast, has pushed aggressively to force all commercial traffic to use an alternative route that runs along Iran’s territorial coast, where it can enforce strict monitoring and full control. At its current width, the strait cannot support two separate controlled corridors without Iran resorting to force or credible threats of force to deter use of the U.S.-endorsed route, and Tehran has already deployed live fire to push ships away from the Omani corridor.

    Analysts note that the lopsided balance of strengths between the two nations has made a lasting ceasefire nearly impossible to achieve. The U.S. retains overwhelming conventional military superiority over Iran, but lacks the domestic political will to commit to a prolonged conflict or a large-scale ground invasion that would force regime change in Tehran. Washington has made clear it has no interest in expending military resources or shifting its global defense priorities to focus on a long-term war with Iran, even as it retains the capability to inflict widespread damage on Iranian military and infrastructure targets.

    For Iran, the opposite dynamic holds: the regime boasts unwavering political resolve to assert its regional dominance and ensure its own survival. Since the outbreak of the current war that saw key Iranian political and military leaders killed early on, the regime has grown increasingly hardline and militaristic, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) cementing its grip on national power. Ideologically driven, strategically shrewd, and willing to use ruthless tactics to achieve its aims, Tehran has prioritized demonstrating its control over the strait over the economic benefits it would gain from concessions, including a promised $300 billion post-conflict reconstruction fund and relief from crippling international sanctions. To enforce its claims, Iran has deployed low-cost, effective tactics including weaponized drones and fast attack craft to threaten civilian shipping, a strategy that lets it assert control without matching U.S. military power. Even so, Iran’s greatest vulnerability remains its fragile economy, which has already suffered massive damage from months of conflict and could not withstand a prolonged U.S. blockade or sustained air campaign against critical infrastructure.

    Domestic political pressures on both sides have further pushed the truce toward collapse. In Iran, any leader that entertains talks with the U.S. or makes concessions on the Strait of Hormuz risks being branded a traitor by hardline IRGC factions, a danger highlighted by historical precedents: the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, both killed for making peace deals with rivals deemed unacceptable by domestic hardliners. For Trump, domestic opposition rules out a return to full-scale all-out war, but pressure from foreign policy hardliners in the U.S. who oppose walking away from the conflict without progress on Iran’s nuclear program and leaving Tehran in full control of the strait has forced his hand to launch retaliatory strikes after Iran’s attacks on shipping. Analysts point out that Trump significantly underestimated Tehran’s commitment to asserting regional dominance and control over the strait, relying instead on the promise of economic benefits to force compliance with the memorandum.

    Looking ahead, the most likely outcome is not a return to the all-out full-scale war that preceded the April ceasefire, nor is a lasting permanent peace agreement on the horizon. Instead, the region is set to return to the precarious status quo that held between the April 8 initial ceasefire and the June 17 memorandum: a frozen conflict that falls below the threshold of all-out war, but offers no path to substantive peace. Over the coming months, experts expect tit-for-tat strikes to continue, with the Strait of Hormuz remaining partially closed and maritime security in the waterway highly uncertain.

  • Is the British empire widely taught in British schools? The data says no

    Is the British empire widely taught in British schools? The data says no

    More than 130 years ago, Indian-born British author Rudyard Kipling famously asked, “And what should they know of England who only England know?” A staunch advocate of the British Empire, Kipling argued that British identity could not be separated from the project of imperial expansion that shaped the nation’s global standing for centuries. He chided ordinary Britons for their lack of awareness and engagement with the empire that defined their country’s role on the world stage. That question remains as relevant today as it was in 1891, as a fierce new debate over the teaching of imperial history in British secondary schools has reignited across public and political spheres.

    The latest exchange began on a recent podcast hosted by Zack Polanski, leader of the UK’s left-wing Green Party. Reflecting on his own secondary education, Polanski noted that his history curriculum focused heavily on the Tudors, Roman occupation of Britain, and the Second World War, with barely any mention of the British Empire or its centuries of colonial expansion. “Maybe schools have got better but I imagine we’re still not there,” he said.

    Joining Polanski as a guest was prominent historian William Dalrymple, who pushed further on the gap in modern history education. Dalrymple acknowledged that optional A-level modules covering the British Empire do exist for secondary students, but stressed these are never part of the mandatory core curriculum. Few teachers feel properly trained to teach the topic, he added, leaving imperial history as a niche subject studied only by a small minority of pupils. “Most British people are entirely ignorant about what is, for better or worse, the most important thing Britain ever did,” Dalrymple argued. He specifically called out the complete absence of any teaching on the British Mandate in Palestine, Britain’s role in the events leading to the 1948 Nakba, and the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral lands.

    The comments quickly drew pushback from conservative political and media circles. Former Conservative Education Secretary Michael Gove, currently editor of *The Spectator*, intervened on social media, dismissing the critique as the complaints of two privately educated men reflecting on their own outdated school experiences. Gove claimed that the current national curriculum for state-funded schools already covers the British Empire extensively. Max Jeffery, a writer-at-large for *The Spectator*, expanded on this defense, arguing that for 13 years, the national curriculum has required pupils in Years 7 through 9 to study “Britain’s ideas, political power, industry and Empire.” In a separate piece for the outlet UnHerd, writer Samuel Rubinstein added that the empire has long been part of the national history curriculum, and accused Polanski and Dalrymple of pushing for a national “exercise in self-flagellation” over Britain’s past.

    But a close look at the structure of Britain’s education system and available curriculum data tells a more complicated story. While Gove and other critics point to the national curriculum as proof of comprehensive imperial history teaching, the national curriculum only applies to the small share of secondary schools in England controlled by local authorities. Today, 85 percent of English secondary schools are academies or free schools, which are not required to follow the national curriculum – and private schools are also exempt. Even for schools that do follow the national curriculum for Key Stages 1 through 3, content covering the empire is listed as a “non-statutory example,” meaning it is optional rather than required. The only mandatory history topic in the entire curriculum is the Holocaust.

    Further data shows that even at the GCSE and A-level stages, where optional imperial history modules are offered by exam boards, very few students actually engage with the topic. Only 36 percent of teachers who cover the British Empire do so at the GCSE level, and that number drops to just 23 percent at the A-level stage. Just 9.6 percent of all GCSE history entries include a module focused on migration or empire, and all units on the empire offered by major UK exam boards are optional rather than mandatory. Even the module that focuses on imperial legacies, offered by exam board Edexcel, is titled “Migrants in Britain” and centers the effects of empire rather than the structure and impact of the imperial project itself.

    The gap between official claims and on-the-ground teaching is backed by major national research. A large-scale study published earlier this year, led by researchers from the University of Oxford and University College London, found that only 16 percent of teachers believe Britain’s imperial past is taught well enough in UK schools. This gap exists despite overwhelming agreement on the importance of the topic: 94 percent of teachers and 79 percent of surveyed students said all young people should be taught about the British Empire. A recent government curriculum review recommended wider teaching of “History’s inherent diversity” through analysis of a broader range of sources, but did not specifically name the empire as a required topic.

    Dalrymple, who is based in India, told Middle East Eye that the lack of education creates tangible gaps in British public understanding of global perceptions of the country. “There are more modules out there than twenty years ago, but it’s still overwhelmingly true that most people leave school without any clear idea about how the world sees us,” he said. “Living in India, I see Brits coming out, including high commissioners, who have no perception of how we are regarded and are very surprised to discover that the general impression of the empire is very different to how it’s laid out in their own education.”

    Gurminder Bhambra, a sociologist at the University of Sussex who specializes in colonialism and modern British identity, argues that imperial history is foundational to understanding modern Britain itself. “The history of Britain as a modern nation cannot be understood separate to its history of colonisation – from the wealth that contributed to its development and the peoples that call it home, every aspect of Britain has been significantly shaped by empire,” she explained. “The failure to teach this history properly is what enables some to deny the citizenship claims of those that they deem other and, perhaps more perniciously, denies the very basis on which they make such claims.”

    The gap in teaching is particularly stark when it comes to the legacy of the British Empire in the Middle East, specifically the lead-up to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Britain governed Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for three decades, facilitating large-scale Jewish immigration amid rising persecution in Europe before abruptly withdrawing in 1948. The British withdrawal paved the way for the establishment of the state of Israel and the Nakba, the displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians that remains at the core of the modern conflict. Last year, then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy acknowledged the historical injustice of the unfulfilled promise of equal rights for Palestinians in the Balfour Declaration, when announcing the UK government’s intention to recognize Palestinian statehood. But almost no British secondary students learn this history in school.

    Data from 2020 shows that less than 2 percent of GCSE history students in England study any module covering the Middle East. In 2023, only 44 UK schools taught the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the GCSE level, and just 0.5 percent of all GCSE history entries that year were for the only module on the topic offered by any major exam board. “The Nakba is not taught in British schools, and in many British textbooks a lie is told,” Dalrymple said. “I remember my primary school geography textbooks talked about Israelis making the deserts bloom. The fact that an entire people there were shunted out because the British did nothing to protect them, and indeed created the situation whereby they could be evicted, is unknown.” This ignorance, he added, shapes modern public and political discourse: “The results of this can be seen in speeches in parliament, and the attitudes of newsreaders. MPs and presenters simply do not know who these people in Gaza are and why they would have cause for complaint.”

    Public opinion on how the empire should be taught is clear: a 2025 poll found that 78 percent of UK adults believe teaching should include a balanced mix of positive and negative aspects of the British Empire to give pupils a comprehensive view. Dalrymple pushes back against claims that calls for more comprehensive teaching are rooted in a desire to force “woke guilt” on students. “No one’s asking for a ‘woke’ guilt trip, but for British people to have the tools to understand the charges being levelled against them,” he said. “They shouldn’t be taught to hate their country or have an entirely negative view of their ancestry, but it’s important to understand what the debates are. The idea that the empire was a force for good is simply not how most of the world understands it.”

    As modern Britain continues to evolve, with a large share of the population descended from immigrants who arrived after the collapse of the empire in the mid-20th century, the question of how to teach imperial history remains deeply tied to the question of national identity. As 19th century imperial commentator John Robert Seeley described it, the British empire was the “extension of the English nationality into new lands,” and modern historian Robert JC Young has framed Englishness as a global identity shaped by imperial expansion. As current data makes clear, this central pillar of British history and national identity remains largely untaught in UK secondary schools – even as overwhelming majorities of teachers and students agree it deserves a place in the curriculum.

  • ICC deputy prosecutor says ‘breakthrough’ achieved in Darfur investigation

    ICC deputy prosecutor says ‘breakthrough’ achieved in Darfur investigation

    The ongoing conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region has entered its third year of devastating violence, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has announced a key milestone in its long-running investigation into alleged war crimes perpetrated by parties to the conflict. Speaking during a visit to refugee camps in neighboring Chad in an interview with the BBC, ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Khan confirmed Thursday that her team has secured a major investigative breakthrough, uncovering concrete evidence that directly connects ongoing atrocities on the ground to specific senior leaders.

  • Khamenei’s body arrives in Mashhad for burial after week of processions

    Khamenei’s body arrives in Mashhad for burial after week of processions

    Nearly five months after Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a US-Israeli joint military airstrike, the final chapter of his national funeral process moved to his hometown of Mashhad this week, carrying with it rising regional tensions and unprecedented displays of public grief. After a week of cross-country and cross-border mourning ceremonies, Khamenei’s remains—along with the bodies of four of his family members killed alongside him in the February 28 assassination—were transported to Mashhad’s Shahid Hasheminejad Airport early Thursday. The special flight carrying the caskets was escorted by Iranian military fighter jets, a formal honor for the country’s decades-long top leader.

    Originally scheduled to take place at 6 a.m. local time, the burial service was pushed back eight hours to 2 p.m. local time, a last-minute change announced by official Iranian media just hours after the United States and Iran resumed exchange of air strikes following a brief temporary ceasefire. US airstrikes targeting railway infrastructure have damaged key bridges connecting the capital Tehran to Mashhad, disrupting overland travel between the two cities. However, senior Iranian officials have flatly rejected any connection between the delay and the renewed military attacks, instead attributing the postponement to an overwhelming influx of mourners that has strained the city’s security and logistics capacity.

    Mashhad, a city of deep religious importance to Shia Islam globally, draws millions of pilgrims annually to the shrine of Imam Reza, one of the faith’s most venerated figures. Khamenei, a native of the city, left explicit instructions before his death to be interred on the grounds of the holy shrine, according to Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, head of the late supreme leader’s office. Tens of thousands of mourners have flooded into the city from across Iran and neighboring Iraq in the days leading up to the burial, filling public squares and thoroughfares surrounding the shrine. Many of the gathered mourners carried signs and chanted virulent anti-US and anti-Trump slogans, with placards reading “Kill Trump” and crowds calling out “Death to America” and threats against the former US president for his administration’s role in the assassination strike.

    Before Khamenei’s remains reached Iran’s northeastern holy city, they were taken to two of Shia Islam’s most sacred sites in Iraq: Najaf and Karbala, for multi-day mourning processions. Iraq’s prominent state-aligned paramilitary group Hashd al-Shaabi confirmed that more than 2.3 million people joined the procession held in Najaf alone, marking one of the largest public gatherings the country has seen in recent years. Iran’s sitting President Masoud Pezeshkian and senior commanders from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) traveled to Iraq to take part in the memorial events.

    Notably absent from all public mourning events has been Mojtaba Khamenei, Ali Khamenei’s son and the newly sworn-in Supreme Leader of Iran. A recent report from The New York Times revealed that Mojtaba’s request to attend his father’s funeral processions was denied by Iranian security officials over persistent fears that he could also be targeted for assassination. Since assuming the country’s highest office just days after his father’s killing, the new supreme leader has not made any public appearances and remains completely out of public view.

    The funeral and burial come at a moment of extreme volatility across the Middle East, with the resumption of hostilities between Washington and Tehran raising fears of a broader regional conflict that could draw in neighboring powers and global stakeholders.

  • Democratic hopeful Rahm Emanuel calls for end to unconditional US aid to Israel

    Democratic hopeful Rahm Emanuel calls for end to unconditional US aid to Israel

    Ahead of the 2028 U.S. presidential election, influential Democratic figure and likely White House hopeful Rahm Emanuel has delivered a sharp rebuke of Washington’s decades-long policy of unqualified, blind support for the Israeli government, calling the long-standing approach a fundamental misstep. Speaking at a public event hosted by Tel Aviv University’s Center for the United States on Wednesday, Emanuel — a Jewish former White House official with deep roots in U.S. Middle East policy — argued that current Israeli leadership has steered the country toward growing international isolation, branding it a “territorial pariah” on the global stage.

    Emanuel emphasized that no nation can sustain perpetual conflict once the international community no longer accepts the legitimacy of its fight. “You must instead find a new sustainable path to peace, security, and economic prosperity. America stands ready,” he added. He also took a sarcastic swipe at the Israeli government’s recent diplomatic efforts, noting that its most high-profile new diplomatic win is recognition from Somaliland, a self-declared state that lacks broad international recognition. Quoting his grandmother, he joked, “You lost Europe, you lost America, and you picked up Somaliland; such a deal,” prompting laughter from the audience.

    During his current visit to Israel, Emanuel held a meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog but intentionally skipped a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two have a long-standing feud: Netanyahu labeled Emanuel a “self-hating Jew” back in 2008 after Emanuel condemned Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements in Palestinian territories. Speaking to reporters ahead of his Wednesday speech, Emanuel explained his choice to avoid sitting with Netanyahu, noting that Israeli general elections are scheduled for this autumn. “I’m not going to give the prime minister an opportunity to twist this politically,” he said. In a post-meeting social media statement, Herzog highlighted that maintaining strong, positive ties with both U.S. major political parties — Democrats and Republicans alike — is a critical priority for Israel.

    Breaking from the long-standing mainstream U.S. framing of a two-state solution to the conflict, Emanuel put forward what he calls a “23-state solution”: he proposed that 21 existing Arab states take on active, shared responsibility to support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, while also formalizing international recognition of Israel’s territorial claims.

    Throughout his remarks, Emanuel made clear that his criticism reflects a broader, long-building shift in attitudes within the U.S. Democratic Party toward U.S.-Israel relations, a shift that has sparked intense public debate since the launch of Israel’s 2023 military campaign in Gaza. He warned that the bilateral relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv is currently “at a crossroads” that demands “significant changes and a new direction.” “The status quo is unacceptable, where you can’t say anything negative, which acts as an implicit endorsement,” he stated.

    In his sharp rebuke of Netanyahu’s leadership, Emanuel argued that decades of unconditional U.S. backing have enabled the Israeli prime minister to act without accountability: “Unconditional support has produced a prime minister who has presumed that his strategic interest would incur no political costs if he ignored America’s concerns about settlements and sparked a regional war.” Emanuel also put forward concrete policy changes, suggesting that Washington cut defense subsidies to Israel, and impose targeted sanctions on Israeli settlers who carry out attacks against Palestinian civilians as well as Israeli politicians who openly endorse settler violence. In a separate interview with Israeli Channel 12, he even noted that Palestinian scholar and activist Edward Said is more popular among American Jewish voters than Netanyahu.

    Emanuel’s political credentials on Middle East policy carry significant weight: he served as a senior advisor to President Bill Clinton during the 1990s Oslo peace negotiations, and held the post of White House Chief of Staff under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2010, where he shaped U.S. policy across the Middle East. A former U.S. congressman and Chicago mayor, he has been open about his plans to launch a 2028 Democratic presidential bid, even though no major contender has formally declared candidacy for the race yet.

    His high-profile criticism comes as public opinion across the United States has shifted dramatically on the Israel-Palestine conflict, particularly within the Democratic base. A recent joint poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research recorded a steep drop in public support for Israel, with growing opposition among Democrats and emerging internal divisions among Republicans. The data shows that 58 percent of Democratic voters now believe the U.S. is “too supportive of Israel,” up sharply from 45 percent in January 2024. Furthermore, roughly one-third of all U.S. adults — including half of all Democratic respondents — agree that Israel has committed acts of genocide against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

    Stances on unconditional U.S. support for Israel and the Gaza war have become a defining litmus test for Democratic candidates, most recently in party primary elections where progressive candidates openly critical of the status quo have secured multiple upset victories against more establishment opponents.

  • The Syrian families giving abandoned children a home and a future

    The Syrian families giving abandoned children a home and a future

    Deep inside the Lahn al-Hayat complex in rural Damascus, soft lullabies drift from sunlit apartment-style units where full-time caregivers known as “mothers” tend to 50 swaddled infants of unknown parentage. Just a few years ago, this compound, built under the former Assad regime, functioned as a tool of state repression, used to disappear the children of political detainees. Today, it stands at the center of a quiet revolution in Syrian child protection, shaped by a decades-long crisis of child abandonment and a grassroots movement that is rewriting the rules for vulnerable infants across the newly reunified nation.

    Child abandonment has long been a persistent crisis in Syria, driven by deep-seated religious stigma, widespread poverty, and the cascading harm of 14 years of civil conflict, compounded by the devastating 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake. Infants are regularly found abandoned on mosque steps, outside hospital entrances, and even in rubbish bins—some only hours old, their bodies still coated in the protective vernix of newborns. Swedan, a case worker with the Syrian-founded child protection organization Child Houses, still carries a photo of one such infant: a newborn abandoned by her family and discovered bloodied after being attacked by a scavenging animal in a dumpster. She is one of 200 children that Swedan and his team placed with foster families between 2021, when the group operated out of an emergency shelter in HTS-held Idlib, and Syria’s 2024 reunification.

    Following reunification, all abandoned children previously cared for by Child Houses were transferred to the newly restructured Lahn al-Hayat, a state-run care complex that now uses the Idlib-based organization’s community-centered model with ongoing guidance from the Child Houses team. Since the transfer, an additional 100 infants have been placed in foster care through the new partnership, marking a dramatic shift away from Syria’s long reliance on large institutional orphanages.

    The transformation of Lahn al-Hayat is one of the most visible signs of this change. Under the former Assad government, the facility was tied to the regime’s security apparatus, and former Child Houses executive director Faisal al-Hammoud alleges that prior to 2024, facility leaders exploited children for corrupt trafficking purposes. Today, under the leadership of Moutasem al-Salloumi, a veteran child protection specialist who previously worked in Idlib, the complex has implemented strict new child safeguarding protocols, digitized its record-keeping, and prioritized family-based care over institutional placement.

    “Before the liberation, the management of Lahn al-Hayat were using children as pieces for trading in a business. Now they are treated like children,” al-Hammoud told Middle East Eye in an interview. Salloumi, for his part, emphasizes that no institutional setting can match the emotional and developmental benefits of a loving family. “No centre can replace the love of a family. They will always get a better, normal life with a father, a mother, a family,” he said, while noting that the facility continues to provide high-quality, family-like care for children who cannot be placed with foster families. Inside the complex, children are grouped by age in home-like units, attend local public schools during the academic year, and receive consistent care from full-time resident caregivers, creating an environment that feels far more intimate than traditional large-scale orphanages.

    A key challenge shaping Syria’s new fostering framework is the country’s religious and legal context. Western-style adoption, which grants a child full inheritance, lineage, and naming rights within their adoptive family, is illegal across most of the Arab world, including Syria, due to sharia law requirements that preserve a child’s original lineage. To address this, Child Houses worked with Idlib authorities starting in 2021 to build a care system aligned with kafala, the Islamic legal framework for long-term foster guardianship. Under this model, children do not take their foster family’s name or receive automatic inheritance rights, and biological parents retain the right to reclaim their child at any time if it is determined to be in the child’s best interest. Case workers also spend three months actively searching for biological family before a child is classified as of unknown parentage, though reunification is rarely pursued for infants abandoned due to stigma around extramarital birth.

    One of the earliest and most impactful reforms championed by Child Houses was the elimination of an outdated administrative label for children of unknown parentage that translated to “bastard,” replacing the slur with a neutral coded numbering system. While the official language has changed, deep-seated social stigma around abandoning children born outside of marriage—long one of the most common drivers of infant abandonment in Syria—remains a major barrier. Many foster mothers even hide their identities in Child Houses’ public outreach for fear of social judgment. But the upheaval of war and the 2023 earthquake opened a new public conversation about vulnerable children, exposing the failures of institutional care and creating space for alternative approaches.

    Fourteen years of conflict left tens of thousands of children orphaned, separated from their families, or displaced without care, while many infertile Syrian couples began seeking ways to expand their families. Into this gap, Child Houses built a grassroots fostering movement that started with no formal framework and grew as ordinary families stepped forward to welcome children. Khawla and Abdulkhaleq, a couple who struggled with infertility for 13 years, welcomed their foster son Ahmad just days after the 2023 earthquake, after seeing social media coverage of the disaster’s toll on children. “There were a lot of children who lost fathers and mothers. I thought maybe we can take care of a child,” Khawla told Middle East Eye. After consulting with their extended family and a local imam, the couple completed the screening process, and Ahmad’s aunt breastfed him to establish kinship recognized under Islamic tradition. For Khawla, who endured years of social stigma for her infertility, Ahmad restored her confidence, and the family remains unapologetic about their choice to welcome him, even amid lingering community gossip.

    Aliaa and her husband, who have fostered two young girls, Farah and Nesme, tell a similar story. After facing questions and judgment from community members who raised stigma around the girls’ origins, the couple remained committed to providing a loving home. Over time, their example shifted local attitudes: neighbors who once criticized them eventually began fostering their own children. “People followed our lead,” Aliaa said.

    This ripple effect has built a growing roster of approved foster families, the vast majority from Idlib—Syria’s one of the most conservative governorates, but also the birthplace of the Child Houses model. Every family that welcomes a foster child changes not just their own life, but the attitudes of their broader community, Audrey Bingaman, Child Houses’ partnerships and development manager, explained. “Grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbours and friends saw these children growing up in loving homes and began to see what was possible,” she said.

    As the movement grows, new challenges are emerging. Child Houses conducts regular home visits and connects foster families through a support network where they exchange advice and navigate the unique challenges of foster care, with one recurring question rising to the forefront: when and how should children be told about their origins? As the first cohort of fostered children approach school age, the organization is developing new psychosocial support guidelines to help families navigate this uncharted territory. Formal legal codification of the new fostering framework also awaits the first session of Syria’s new post-reunification parliament, but the shift toward family-based care is already well underway.

    After decades where children of unknown parentage were confined to overcrowded institutions and defined by the stigma of their birth, ordinary Syrian families are opening their homes and rewriting that narrative—one loving placement at a time.

  • Netanyahu’s son Yair adopts new name in latest family name change

    Netanyahu’s son Yair adopts new name in latest family name change

    Israel’s oldest daily newspaper Haaretz revealed this week that Yair Netanyahu, eldest son of sitting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has officially changed his legal name to Yonatan Hon, a move that comes as the Netanyahu family confronts cascading legal troubles and global political backlash.

    Official Israeli tax withholding documents issued in December 2024 still bore Yair’s birth name, but updated records from 2025 list the new identity alongside the unusual, seemingly symbolic fictional address “Balfour 0” – a reference to Balfour Street, the location of the official prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. This is not the first time Yair has altered his surname: on public social media platforms, he previously used the name Yair Hoon, a close variation of his new legal name. The root of the surname traces to his maternal grandfather Shmuel, who originally bore the last name Hoon before changing it to Ben Artzi later in life.

    The name change unfolds against a backdrop of intensifying political and legal peril for the Netanyahu family, both domestically and on the global stage. In the United States, the Israeli prime minister has become an increasingly divisive and toxic figure in mainstream politics, as public backlash grows over his government’s conduct of the war in Gaza. Separately, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the military campaign in Gaza.

    Yair himself has long faced public scrutiny over his business dealings in the U.S. and longstanding ties to wealthy conservative and far-right actors. The most high-profile controversy dates back to 2018, when Israeli public television leaked an audio recording of Yair speaking outside a strip club, where he appeared to boast that his father had advanced a multibillion-dollar natural gas deal that delivered major profits to a prominent Israeli tycoon. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu currently battles three separate active corruption investigations that have dogged his third term as prime minister.

    This pattern of name changes among the Netanyahu family is not new, nor is it an isolated practice in Israeli political history. Five years ago, Yair’s younger brother Avner changed his surname to Avi Segal, Israeli outlets confirmed. Under that new identity, Avner paid £502,000 ($672,000) in cash to purchase an apartment in Oxford, England, a move widely interpreted as an effort to avoid public scrutiny and media attention. The surname Segal was the original last name of Tzila Segal, Benjamin Netanyahu’s mother, before she married family patriarch Benzion Netanyahu.

    Even Benjamin Netanyahu himself adopted an alternate name during the 1980s while residing in the United States: he went by Ben Nitai at the time, later explaining he had considered permanently settling in the country. The family’s history of name changes stretches back a full century, to Benzion Netanyahu, the prime minister’s father. Born Benzion Mileikowsky in Poland, he changed his surname after immigrating to British Mandate Palestine in the 1920s to participate in Zionist settlement efforts. That choice aligned with a widespread Zionist practice of the era, where European Jewish immigrants discarded their diaspora surnames in favor of Hebrew names to frame themselves as indigenous to the land they were colonizing.

    Many of Israel’s founding and early leaders followed the same convention. Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion was born David Gruen in Poland; founding foreign minister Moshe Sharett was born Moshe Shertok in Russia; early prime minister Levi Eshkol was born Levi Yitzhak Shkolnik in Russia; fourth prime minister Golda Meir was born Golda Mabovitch in Ukraine; seventh prime minister Yitzhak Shamir was born Yitzhak Yezernitsky in Russia; eighth prime minister Shimon Peres was born Szymon Perski in Poland; 10th prime minister Ehud Barak was born Ehud Brog in Mandatory Palestine; and 11th prime minister Ariel Sharon was born Arik Scheinermann in Mandatory Palestine.

    This report was originally compiled with contributions from independent reporting on Middle Eastern affairs from Middle East Eye.

  • World Cup 2026: Iraq returned, but it will take years to bridge the gulf with football’s elite

    World Cup 2026: Iraq returned, but it will take years to bridge the gulf with football’s elite

    After four decades of waiting, Iraq finally earned its place back at football’s most prestigious global tournament this summer. But lopsided losses across all three of its group stage matches have laid bare the wide gap that still separates the Lions of Mesopotamia from the world’s elite footballing nations.

    Iraq’s World Cup campaign got off to a difficult start with a 4-1 defeat to Norway, followed by a 3-0 shutout at the hands of tournament contender France. The team’s return to the global stage ended with a demoralizing 5-0 loss to Senegal, leaving Iraq at the bottom of its group and eliminated from knockout stage contention. Across the group stage, no side conceded more goals than Iraq, a stark statistic that highlights the gap the country must close to compete at the highest level. Many fans and football insiders agree that bridging this divide will take years of sustained work and reform.

    Even amid the string of disappointing results, the campaign was not without bright moments that captured the joy of Iraq’s long-awaited return. Talismanic striker Aymen Hussein’s first-half goal against Norway, celebrated in a packed stadium of 60,000 spectators and broadcast to millions of viewers around the world, gave the nation a rare moment of collective celebration. For diaspora fans who never expected to see Iraq compete on the World Cup stage, the mere presence of the team meant more than final scores. “It is hard to describe what it was like to see the flag, hear the songs and just be together,” New York-based Iraq supporter Zainab Hassan told Middle East Eye. “The team lost but it wasn’t about winning, it was just about being there and feeling the excitement. I never thought I would see it.”

    While few in Iraq’s football ecosystem expected an easy run against three top-ranked opponents, the lopsided margin of defeat has prompted renewed scrutiny of the national program and its structures. In response, Iraq’s Olympic Committee has announced it will partner with the Iraq Football Association (IFA) to launch a full review of the World Cup campaign, identifying strengths, weaknesses and priority areas for improvement.

    Baghdad-based sports commentator Nawar Faeq al-Rikabi, who has covered Iraqi football for years, acknowledged the team underperformed even against tempered expectations. “We tried, but it was hard,” al-Rikabi told Middle East Eye. “We didn’t do that well. We were supposed to play a little better and not lose that badly. We were losing 2-1 to Norway then made a mistake and couldn’t come back. Against France and their stars, we just don’t have the experience. Senegal was a disaster, we should have looked better than this. We have some good players, but didn’t look good.”

    For the IFA, qualification for the tournament itself was already a historic milestone after 40 years away from the World Cup. “The primary objective of qualifying for the Fifa World Cup was achieved after a 40-year absence,” IFA spokesperson Ahmed Oudah Zamil told Middle East Eye. “At the same time, the IFA recognises that returning to the Fifa World Cup after four decades presented a new challenge.” Facing off against three established international powers with deep, well-developed talent pools made clear Iraq’s current position in global football, and the federation says its goal now extends beyond simply qualifying for future tournaments: it aims to build a team that can compete consistently with the world’s best. “Competing at the highest level of international football requires experience, continuous development, and thorough preparation,” Zamil said. “Therefore, the focus is now on ensuring the team is fully prepared to represent Iraq with pride and to use this historic qualification as the foundation for long-term success.”

    All attention has already shifted to the next chapter of Iraq’s football development, with two major regional tournaments on the near horizon: the eight-team Gulf Cup scheduled for September in Saudi Arabia, followed by the 24-team Asian Cup in the same country this coming January. A central question for the immediate future is whether current head coach Graham Arnold will remain at the helm of the national team. Appointed in March 2025, the Australian tactician led Iraq through its successful qualifying campaign and retains the confidence of the IFA leadership, which has framed technical stability as a core pillar of long-term success. “Technical stability is one of the key factors behind success, so renewing the coach’s contract reflects the federation’s confidence in the current project and its commitment to maintaining continuity,” Zamil said. While Arnold’s future remains the subject of mild speculation amid reported interest from the United Arab Emirates Football Association, many local observers argue his work has already laid critical groundwork for future progress, and retaining him would be the best path forward. “The FA needs to keep Arnold, as he gave the team a personality,” al-Rikabi said. “Even though we lost badly, if they keep him, he has the chance to create a new young team.”

    Beyond the leadership of the senior national team, deeper structural reform is needed to unlock Iraq’s undoubted football potential, starting with growing the domestic coaching pipeline. “We have to improve in this field,” al-Rikabi added. “The local coaches need to train, to go on courses and go and see European teams and how they operate at a youth level. In modern football, coaches at the under-17 level are the essence of everything.” Investing in qualified domestic coaching would in turn strengthen youth development, a critical need in a country of 46 million people with a deep, widespread cultural passion for the sport. “We are a nation of 46 million, so it’s not possible we don’t have good players, but we can’t see them,” al-Rikabi said. “Iraqis have a huge passion for football, so if we give attention to players from the age of 12 to 16, then we have great talent; but if no one sees them, they will vanish.”

    While Iraq has increasingly tapped into talent from its global diaspora, a growing trend across international football that was visible at this year’s World Cup, long-term progress depends on reforming and strengthening the domestic game. The top-tier Iraq Stars League, the foundation of the country’s domestic football ecosystem, suffers from structural gaps and a lack of sustained investment. “We don’t have a lot of training pitches, which is a huge problem, and there is not enough forward planning,” al-Rikabi said. “There is too much thinking about this year’s results. The fans’ voices are strong and the clubs are afraid of them. We don’t have the right structure for local leagues, we don’t have an under-17 league, we don’t have organised under-20 teams.”

    Unlike regional peers such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Iraq does not have access to the same level of financial resources for big-ticket football investments. Still, the IFA says it is fully committed to strengthening the domestic league’s foundational structures. “The federation is committed to strengthening the commercial and marketing value of the league, improving club governance and financial sustainability to increase overall competitiveness of the league to produce more players capable of competing at the international level,” Zamil said. “A stronger domestic league will ultimately strengthen the Iraqi national team. Improving stadiums and football infrastructure, raise the professional standards of clubs, invest in youth development and academy systems.”

    It will be years before it becomes clear whether Iraq’s 2026 World Cup return will stand as a transformative starting point for Iraqi football or just a one-off, unforgettable moment. If the country qualifies for the 2030 tournament and puts in a competitive showing, it will signal that the lessons from this summer’s campaign have been fully integrated, and that 40 years of waiting marked the start of a sustained upward trajectory. For Iraqi fans, however, the long-awaited return to the world stage was already an unforgettable achievement in its own right. “It was so fantastic to see Iraq on the world stage,” Hassan said. “We would love to do it again.”

  • Exclusive: UK government lawyer warned ICC bureau its Khan disciplinary process ‘unlawful’

    Exclusive: UK government lawyer warned ICC bureau its Khan disciplinary process ‘unlawful’

    In an exclusive bombshell revelation obtained by Middle East Eye, the United Kingdom’s most senior government legal official raised urgent red flags last year over fundamental legal flaws in the International Criminal Court’s planned disciplinary proceedings against its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan.

    Sir James Eadie KC, the UK’s first treasury counsel and the British government’s permanent senior legal advisor, prepared the confidential 21-page legal opinion in a private capacity in November 2025. The document was submitted to the president and Bureau of the ICC Assembly of States Parties (ASP) at the request of Khan’s own legal team, which sought Eadie’s expertise to guide the bureau as it weighed the structure of the misconduct probe.

    At the core of Eadie’s criticism is the narrow, restrictive mandate the ASP Bureau assigned to a three-judge panel convened to review misconduct allegations against Khan. Eadie argued that bureau leaders had stripped the panel of its core adjudicative authority, eliminating any independent judicial fact-finding role entirely. He stressed that this framework leaves “no judicial, or independent, fact-finding phase at all” and renders the process “unlawful, unsustainable in principle”.

    Eadie further argued that the United Nations Office of Oversight Services (OIOS), which was tasked with leading the underlying investigation into the allegations, should be limited only to compiling evidence and documenting witness statements. Any final determination of disputed facts, he insisted, must rest with the independent judicial panel. “It would be entirely inappropriate in principle for the investigator (in effect the prosecutor of the misconduct charges) also to be the judge,” Eadie wrote in the opinion obtained via diplomatic sources.

    The legal expert outlined that minimum fair process standards require a judicial proceeding, including an oral hearing where the panel can test witness credibility through cross-examination of live evidence, and that any final decision on findings of fact cannot be carried out by executive or political bodies. Despite Khan’s legal team formally requesting this foundational fair process in a July 2025 letter to ASP President Paivi Kaukoranta, the bureau rejected all such requests, and even denied the panel’s request for an extension to review Khan’s submissions.

    The disciplinary process traces back to November 2024, when Kaukoranta authorized an ad hoc probe led by OIOS after the complainant in the case refused to cooperate with the ICC’s own internal investigative body. Four allegations were opened against Khan: a complaint from a female staff member alleging unwelcome sexual conduct and abuse of authority, plus three additional claims of retaliation against other office employees. Khan has issued a full denial of all misconduct and breach of duty allegations.

    Over 12 months, OIOS collected evidence and submitted a 150-page investigative report alongside 5,000 pages of supporting evidence to the three-judge panel in December 2025. After nearly three months of review, the panel issued a unanimous ruling: the evidence presented by UN investigators failed to meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard for finding misconduct or breach of duty under ICC rules.

    Weeks after the panel’s ruling, however, a majority of ASP Bureau members representing 21 member states voted to disregard the judges’ conclusion and signal that they believed Khan likely committed misconduct. The move sparked widespread concerns that the entire process had been tainted by political interference. In early June, the bureau gave Khan and the complainant a final opportunity for additional submissions before formally suspending Khan and referring the entire matter to the full ASP. The court’s 125 member states will now convene a special session at UN Headquarters in New York on July 24 to vote on whether to remove Khan from office permanently.

    Eadie’s opinion specifically tied the need for a fair, independent process to the intense political pressure surrounding Khan’s leadership of the ICC’s ongoing investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes and genocide in Gaza. He noted that the political context, including punitive sanctions imposed by the United States on Khan and other ICC staff after the court announced arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and senior Hamas officials, makes procedural integrity critical to protecting the court’s credibility.

    “If such officials can be removed or disciplined without a proper adjudication of the allegations against them, against that political context, the integrity of the ICC and its perceived integrity will be fundamentally undermined,” Eadie wrote.

    Khan, a British barrister, was elected as the ICC’s third chief prosecutor in February 2021, nearly two decades after the court’s founding in 2002. During his tenure, his office has opened investigations into grave international crimes allegedly committed by leaders across the globe, including issuing arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Myanmar’s junta leadership, and Taliban officials in Afghanistan. His work targeting powerful state leaders has drawn retaliation: the Trump administration first imposed US sanctions on Khan in 2025, and a Russian court has issued an in absentia arrest warrant for him. Sanctions have since been expanded to target two deputy ICC prosecutors, eight ICC judges involved in the Palestine and Afghanistan investigations, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, and multiple Palestinian non-governmental organizations that provided evidence to the court. None of the US, Russia, or Israel are member states of the ICC, but the court holds jurisdiction over crimes committed by their nationals on the territory of ICC member countries.

    The exclusive disclosure of Eadie’s confidential legal opinion comes as the ICC faces an unprecedented crisis that threatens to undermine its standing as the world’s permanent international criminal tribunal, with critics warning that a political vote to remove Khan amid pressure over the Gaza investigation would fatally damage the court’s reputation for impartiality.

  • Teenage Palestinian girls held in Israeli prison have their futures put on hold

    Teenage Palestinian girls held in Israeli prison have their futures put on hold

    As thousands of Palestinian high school seniors wrap up their final exams this summer and step toward the next chapter of their academic journeys, two teenage girls from the occupied West Bank town of Tammun are confined behind the walls of Israel’s Damon Prison, their classroom seats empty and their carefully laid plans derailed by arrest over social media content. Seventeen-year-old Nada Bani Odeh was on the cusp of sitting for the tawjihi, Palestine’s rigorous national secondary school leaving exam, when Israeli forces raided her family’s home before dawn on February 12. Sixteen-year-old Ola Qutaishat, who had just finished 11th grade and was gearing up for her own final year of studies, was taken from her home in a nearly identical pre-dawn raid three months later, on May 24.

    Gharam Abu Aisha, Nada’s mother, told Middle East Eye she initially assumed the soldiers who stormed her home had come for her husband, never expecting they would target her teenage daughter. “Then they asked, ‘Where is the tawjihi student?’” she recalled. Nada, who had already lost her older brother Wadie to Israeli forces months earlier, calmly complied with the soldiers’ orders, handed over her phone, and comforted her sobbing mother as she was led away. “Why are you crying? Even if I come back after a year or two, I’ll still come home and get the highest grades for you,” Nada told her mother, before turning back one last time to ask her to care for her younger sister.

    Before her arrest, Nada was a quiet, high-achieving student who consistently ranked at the top of her class. She had long set her sights on acing the tawjihi, determined to fulfill the academic dream her brother never got the chance to complete. Even from behind bars, those ambitions remain her primary focus. Through lawyers and recently released prisoners, Nada sends messages home not asking about the endless delays in her court case, but about her grades, her classmates, and whether she will ever get the chance to pick up her studies where she left off. For Gharam, the daily absence of her daughter has left an irreplaceable void; the pair shared everything from long evening conversations to quiet drives after busy school days, and Gharam says she misses every part of their routine. “I’m proud of her,” she said. “I just want to hold her again.”

    Ola’s story mirrors Nada’s in nearly every detail. On the night of her arrest, the 16-year-old had stayed up late studying English for an upcoming school exam, and her family went to bed expecting a completely ordinary morning. When armed soldiers woke the household, they separated family members, searched the home without explanation or a warrant, and handcuffed and blindfolded Ola in front of her distraught parents. When her father—still recovering from recent surgery—tried to intervene, soldiers pushed him back, while Ola begged them not to hurt him. Her sister clung to the teenager, pleading with the raiding party. “I kept telling them, ‘She’s only 16 years old. Why are you taking her?’” Ola’s sister recalled. “She wasn’t carrying anything. She wasn’t a threat. She was only thinking about her English exam.”

    Like Nada, Ola remains in Damon Prison as her case crawls through the Israeli military court system, with every scheduled hearing ending in another delay. She faces allegations of incitement over social media posts, but no formal verdict has ever been issued. Her father told Middle East Eye that even the presiding military judge has questioned prosecutors over the lack of progress in the case, asking, “Why have you brought this girl here? Why isn’t the case ready?” Before her arrest, Ola dreamed of becoming a journalist, determined to give a voice to silenced Palestinians and share the reality of life under occupation with the world. That dream is now on indefinite hold.

    Current data from the Israel Prison Service shows that as of late December, 351 Palestinian minors were being held in Israeli detention on so-called “security” grounds, with an additional 106 detained for illegal entry into Israel. Nada and Ola, two of the youngest female Palestinian prisoners in detention, are being held together in a separate section of Damon Prison, isolated from the adult prison population and confined to a small cell under constant surveillance. According to Palestinian lawyer Hasan Abadi, conditions inside the facility have deteriorated drastically since October 7, 2023, amounting to a systematic campaign of abuse against detainees. “Damon Prison has become a living grave for prisoners,” Abadi said. Cells lack adequate ventilation, food is nutritionally poor, medical care for sick prisoners is nonexistent, and basic supplies like clothing and cleaning products are unavailable. The facility is severely overcrowded: eight women are often forced to share a cell built for four, leaving half the population to sleep on the cold floor. For Nada and Ola, conditions are even harsher: held in complete isolation, the teenagers have no access to basic sanitary supplies even during menstrual periods, and have no privacy from constant surveillance.

    “What is happening in Damon Prison is not merely a series of isolated violations, but a systematic regime of oppression, starvation, and humiliation aimed at breaking Palestinian women physically and psychologically,” Abadi explained. “With every testimony, it becomes increasingly clear that the prison is no longer just a place of detention, but an instrument of slow death carried out in cold blood. Despite all this suffering, the female prisoners continue to resist, holding on to the Quran, their stories, and their memories as a final shield protecting their humanity.”

    Even amid the harsh conditions and uncertain legal processes, both teenage girls have retained their determination to return to their education. Nada continues to reassure her mother in every message that she will come home, finish her studies, and make her family proud—a promise that has kept both mother and daughter holding out hope for a return to the future they once planned.