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In a move that has sparked global condemnation from human rights advocates, Malaysia has begun the large-scale repatriation of roughly 5,000 Myanmar asylum seekers, including members of the persecuted Rohingya minority, under a controversial agreement struck with Myanmar’s military junta led by Min Aung Hlaing. Three Myanmar navy vessels are set to depart Malaysian ports on the day of this report, carrying the first group of 1,476 returnees back to conflict-ravaged Myanmar.

This repatriation marks a dramatic reversal of long-held policy by the administration of Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who once positioned himself as a vocal defender of human rights and a leading regional critic of Myanmar’s ruling military regime. For years, Malaysia under Anwar refused to recognize Min Aung Hlaing’s government and emerged as one of Southeast Asia’s strongest advocates for a negotiated end to Myanmar’s brutal ongoing civil war. Anwar has framed the current repatriation effort as a voluntary process, but has blocked access for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to meet with or screen the asylum seekers, all of whom have been held in Malaysian immigration detention centers for months.

Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority, have been systematically displaced from Myanmar for decades, stripped of their citizenship by the Myanmar government and targeted in widespread military campaigns of ethnic cleansing. Following the 2017 Myanmar military crackdown that pushed more than 750,000 Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh, thousands more risked dangerous sea voyages to seek refuge and work in Malaysia. Today, an estimated 200,000 Rohingya reside in Malaysia, most working low-wage manual labor jobs and living in informal communities. For years, despite occasional efforts to block new arrivals, Malaysia tolerated the existing Rohingya population, with broad public sympathy for the displaced minority among Malaysian Muslims.

That public sentiment began to shift dramatically in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit Malaysia’s lower-income households particularly hard. Economic strain fueled rising anti-immigrant resentment, and false accusations against Rohingya migrants spread rapidly across social media, leading successive Malaysian governments to tighten restrictions on refugee communities. The trend accelerated in 2026, when a viral false social media campaign claimed Rohingya leaders were demanding land and citizenship after a minor dispute over post-Eid al-Adha waste disposal. A subsequent petition calling for the expulsion of all Rohingya from Malaysia collected more than 400,000 signatures before it was removed from Change.org.

Anwar, who has seen his public approval ratings plummet sharply since taking office in 2022, says he has little choice but to act on growing public hostility. In a recent podcast interview, he acknowledged that Rohingya should be treated humanely, noting “We can arrest them, but do not beat, intimidate or humiliate them” — a statement that contradicts widespread allegations of abuse against detained refugees by Malaysian immigration officials. Even so, Anwar has insisted that the large Rohingya population has become a burden on the country, saying “They have clearly become a burden: a security burden, an economic burden and a source of hostility among the people.”

Political analysts warn the shift is driven primarily by domestic political pressure, not humanitarian or economic reality. Anwar took office in 2022 at the head of a fragile, uneasy coalition with his long-time political rivals, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the ethnic Malay party that held a monopoly on Malaysian power for more than 60 years. The country has faced persistent political instability since the 2018 historic election that first ousted UMNO, leading to repeated turnovers of coalition governments. Anwar’s coalition has lost multiple local seats in recent elections, and he is required to call a general election by early 2028.

“He is in a corner, at his weakest point,” explained Tricia Yeoh, Director of the Asian Institute for Policy and Engagement at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. “He has been forced to make concessions to his UMNO partners… There have been several corruption scandals, and his own party is divided. And after four years of telling voters this is what is required to maintain his fragile coalition, they are no longer willing to go along with that narrative.”

Yeoh noted that UMNO has leaned into long-standing racial politics that frame ethnic Malays, who make up a majority of the electorate, as needing special state protection — a narrative that stokes fear of outsiders and claims that immigrants take local jobs and drain public resources. Many of Anwar’s long-time supporters, who once saw him as a champion of liberal democratic values, have accused him of betraying his core principles. Latheefa Koya, former head of the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission, called Anwar’s decision “disgraceful, amoral, and shames the nation in the eyes of the international community.”

Human rights groups have universally condemned the repatriation, warning that all returnees face extreme danger in Myanmar. Nearly all of Rakhine State, the only region where Rohingya are legally permitted to reside, is currently controlled by the insurgent Arakan Army, and the Myanmar military has carried out sustained air bombardments across the region. Just one day before the first repatriation departed, two Myanmar air force bombs hit a market in Kyauktaw, killing 49 people. The only major population center still accessible to the junta, Rakhine’s capital Sittwe, is under siege and completely isolated, with Rohingya confined to overcrowded, under-resourced camps facing severe shortages of food and medicine. Rights groups also warn that working-age Rohingya men face high risk of forced conscription into the Myanmar military to fight in the country’s civil war.

Neither the Malaysian nor Myanmar governments have offered any public explanation for how they plan to address these massive humanitarian obstacles, or how the repatriation aligns with international humanitarian standards. For Rohingya advocates, the repatriation violates the core principle of voluntary, safe return that underpins global refugee protection norms. “We all dream of being able to return home one day,” said Nur Sadek, a Rohingya refugee rights advocate, “but we want to return because it is safe and because we choose to — not because we are forced. For me, the most important thing is that Rohingya and other refugees affected by this decision are listened to and treated with dignity.”

Since its launch in June 2025, a distinctive smartphone application with a heart-shaped icon emblazoned with the Palestinian flag has been gaining traction among pro-Palestinian activists and ethically minded consumers in France and beyond. Named Gaza Friendly, the app operates as a certification platform for retail and food service business owners who commit to boycotting goods sourced from Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and produced by companies that back Israel’s illegal settlement expansion.

Today, the platform’s app and companion website feature a growing directory of 80 certified businesses across France, spanning a wide range of food and beverage-focused operations including butcher shops, restaurants, bakeries, catering services, tea rooms, and food distributors. The directory is updated on a regular basis, and the app includes a built-in interactive map that lets consumers quickly locate certified merchants within their local area. To date, the app has been downloaded more than 500 times, built from the ground up by Pierre-Amael Noailly Charny, a Tunisian-origin pediatrician based in Lyon, alongside a small circle of like-minded friends.

In an interview with Middle East Eye, Noailly Charny explained that the initiative gives participating shopkeepers a tangible way to formalize their support for the Palestinian cause. “This label gives people outraged by the genocide in Gaza the possibility to turn their consumption into a lever for justice and solidarity,” he said. The entire project draws core inspiration from the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, the global campaign launched in 2005 by Palestinian civil society to pressure institutions and individual consumers to reject products linked to Israeli settlements, which are widely recognized as illegal under international law. “Boycott works because refusing certain products cuts off resources from the oppression,” the initiative states on its official website, with a long-term goal of building a large, interconnected network of certified merchants to amplify the reach and visibility of the global boycott campaign.

To earn Gaza Friendly certification, merchants are required to adhere to a clear three-point charter: they must remove all Coca-Cola Company beverages, all PepsiCo beverages, and all fresh produce imported from Israeli settlements from their inventory. Noailly Charny notes that targeting Coca-Cola and PepsiCo is a deliberate, peaceful advocacy strategy with powerful symbolic weight, citing well-documented evidence of the companies’ operational ties to the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. In 2025, BDS publicly revealed that Coca-Cola maintains a regional distribution center and temperature-controlled storage facilities in the Atarot settlement located in the occupied West Bank, while PepsiCo has faced longstanding criticism for its investments and subsidiary operations tied to Israel.

Activists argue that even though PepsiCo publicly maintains it does not provide political or military support to Israel, the company’s ownership of prominent Israeli brands including SodaStream and Sabra, alongside its ongoing commercial operations within the country, constitutes indirect backing for the Israeli state. For its part, Coca-Cola has stated that it does not formally endorse any nation, government, or official policy, but has not directly addressed the specific claims regarding its Atarot facility. Both multinational corporations declined to provide official comment to Middle East Eye for this report.

Noailly Charny emphasized that long before the Gaza Friendly app existed, many independent merchants across France had already chosen independently to stop carrying Coca-Cola and Pepsi products in solidarity. “We therefore chose to put them in the spotlight and list them to set an example and encourage others to join,” he explained.

One of the most recent additions to the certified directory is Aid Boucherie Halal, located in Creteil, a suburb just outside of Paris. The business was added to the Gaza Friendly roster on September 4, after owner Akli learned of the initiative through a personal contact. “The idea appealed to me, especially since some customers had already blamed me for selling Coca-Cola. Personally, I didn’t know the company had interests in Israel,” Akli told reporters. Akli added that he has long supported Palestinian rights but lacked a clear public way to demonstrate that commitment until he joined Gaza Friendly. “Now I don’t sell Coca-Cola or Pepsi, and my business is doing just as well – actually, even better,” he said, noting that he has seen a small but steady uptick in customers since joining the certification program.

Beyond maintaining the directory of certified businesses, Gaza Friendly also provides participating merchants with branded visual materials including posters and window stickers to boost public visibility of their commitment. It also curates a non-exhaustive list of alternative consumer products, with a heavy focus on beverage brands, that can replace the products targeted by the boycott.

Many of these alternative brands were specifically created to support Palestinian humanitarian efforts. One example is Pales Drinks, a Belgian soda brand founded in 2024 by young entrepreneur Abdelhakim Tarnach, which donates 10 percent of all its annual profits to humanitarian action in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories. That same year also saw the launch of Palestine Cola, a soft drink produced by Safad Food AB, a company founded by Palestinian-origin entrepreneurs based in Malmo, Sweden. For Palestine Cola, a portion of every sale goes directly to funding emergency humanitarian projects in Palestine, including providing clothing, temporary shelter, and food assistance to displaced communities. In France, Palestine Cola is primarily distributed by Jebalia, an online retailer focused on promoting ethical, solidarity-centered alternative consumption. Every purchase through Jebalia is framed on the company’s Instagram page as an act of tangible support for Palestinian humanitarian causes, and Jebalia itself has been listed as a Gaza Friendly-certified business since July 2025. Jebalia owner Sofiane Slimani says he fully embraces his public commitment to Palestinian solidarity. “We’ve reached a point where boycotting products linked to Israeli settlement activity is no longer enough. We need to offer alternatives,” he told Middle East Eye. Jebalia reports that it sold more than 100,000 cans of solidarity soda in 2025, its first year of operation. In addition to marketing through social media, the company attends high-profile public events to expand its reach, including the 2025 Annual Gathering of Muslims of France held in Le Bourget last April, and regularly partners with other advocacy-focused businesses to sell its products at pro-Palestinian solidarity events such as the Salam Cup charity football tournament held earlier this year in Bobigny, near Paris. During that tournament, Jebalia’s products were sold by Inda Coffee, a Paris-based coffee shop and matcha bar that regularly fundraises for Gaza aid initiatives. Though Inda Coffee participates in the boycott campaign, it has not yet sought Gaza Friendly certification. According to Noailly Charny, widespread awareness of the label remains low among French merchants, which is why expanding public outreach is a top priority for the organization. “We’re trying to reach influencers who work in the food sector,” the pediatrician said. Already, Lyon-based food content creator AmarFood, who focuses on highlighting halal, alcohol-free dining across Lyon and the Paris region, regularly promotes the Gaza Friendly initiative in his social media videos. More recently, another independent videographer published a lengthy breakdown of the app’s mission and functionality to help spread the word to a wider audience.

Looking ahead, the Gaza Friendly team has ambitious plans for global expansion beyond its French origins. Currently, merchants from roughly 15 different countries around the world have already joined the certification network, and organizers note that no comparable platform currently exists anywhere else globally to centralize this kind of consumer boycott action for Palestinian solidarity.

Yemen’s long-running civil war has entered a dangerous new phase following a sweeping Houthi offensive that has sent shockwaves through global energy markets and raised urgent questions about the militia’s growing military clout. What was once widely dismissed as an irregular ragtag fighting force has evolved dramatically over two decades into a well-armed militia capable of projecting power across the Middle East and disrupting one of the world’s busiest maritime trade chokepoints.

Originally founded in 1994 by Zaydi Shia cleric Hussein al-Houthi under the official name Ansar Allah (Helpers of God), the movement emerged to demand greater political autonomy for Yemen’s densely populated northern region. Following Hussein al-Houthi’s death, leadership passed to his brother Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, who led a series of insurgencies against former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh throughout the 2000s. The group seized Yemen’s capital Sanaa and most of the country’s northwest between 2014 and 2016, expanding its fighting ranks from an estimated 30,000 fighters in 2015 to roughly 350,000 by 2024, according to the most widely cited projections.

Since 2023, the Houthis have launched more than 100 attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, framing the operations as a response to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Most targeted ships are linked to Israel or Saudi Arabia, whose 2022 airstrike on Sanaa International Airport collapsed a UN-brokered informal ceasefire that had left the Houthis in control of 30% of Yemen’s territory, home to 80% of the country’s population, under a continuing Saudi-led blockade. Following the end of the ceasefire, the Houthis formally declared a maritime blockade and resumed attacks on shipping in the strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait, the 26-kilometer-wide chokepoint that connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea and Suez Canal, a critical route for 12% of global maritime trade and roughly 30% of global oil shipments.

While the Houthis operate as an independent actor, multiple international analysts and UN reports confirm the group has received substantial military support from Iran, which counts the Houthis as a core member of its regional Axis of Resistance network alongside Hamas and Hezbollah. Iranian support was historically overseen by Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, up until his 2020 assassination in a U.S. drone strike. More recently, Russia has also cultivated ties with the militia: Middle East Eye revealed in August 2024 that Moscow has provided targeting intelligence and deployed military intelligence officers to Yemen, and has repeatedly used its UN Security Council veto to block proposed arms embargoes on the group. Even commercial open-source tools have aided the Houthis’ operations: the group uses freely available maritime traffic data from public intelligence platforms to locate target vessels, and AI firm Anthropic confirmed in September 2024 that the militia has used its Claude large language model to develop missile navigation systems.

Contrary to early assessments of the group as an undisciplined militia, the Houthis now maintain a diverse, increasingly advanced arsenal that ranges from small arms to medium-range ballistic missiles capable of striking targets 2,000 kilometers away. The militia has already used these missiles to hit targets in northern Israel, including Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, putting most of the Middle East within striking range. Analysts widely agree that the Houthis lack the domestic industrial capacity to produce these complex systems indigenously, pointing to direct supply and component provision from Iran. The group claims to possess the Palestine-2, a hypersonic precision-guided missile with a 2,150-kilometer range that can travel at Mach 5, but independent analysts have cast doubt on these assertions, noting that only a handful of major world powers currently operate operational hypersonic weapons, none matching the claimed specifications. The militia also fields the Hatem-2, a documented variant of Iran’s advanced Kheibar Shekan medium-range ballistic missile with a 1,450-kilometer range and 500-kilogram warhead.

Alongside longer-range systems, the Houthis have repurposed older weapons seized from retreating pro-government forces, including decades-old Soviet-era air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles converted into anti-ship ballistic missiles. They have also deployed anti-ship cruise missiles (based on Iran’s Quds series, with a range of at least 800 kilometers) and even small anti-tank missiles to strike ships in the narrow Bab el-Mandeb strait, with analysts noting that in many cases components are shipped from Iran as ready-to-assemble kits for final construction inside Yemen.

Traditional heavy armour once formed a core part of the Houthi ground force, but most Soviet-era tanks and armoured vehicles inherited from the Yemeni military after the 2014 seizure of Sanaa have been destroyed by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes. This has pushed the group to rely heavily on drones for offensive operations: models including the Jaffa and Samad can reach targets over 2,000 kilometers away and have been repeatedly used to strike Israel, though most are intercepted by Israeli air defences such as Iron Dome. Recent evidence also suggests the Houthis are developing domestically assembled hydrogen-powered drones that can carry larger payloads over longer distances, with core components still imported from Iran. For maritime targeting, drones serve as a low-cost political tool rather than a decisive weapon, analysts note: while they rarely sink large commercial vessels, they create enough risk to push up insurance costs and divert trade routes, achieving the Houthis’ goal of disrupting global shipping. As one of the world’s most heavily armed societies, Yemen also has an abundant supply of small arms for Houthi infantry: many men in Houthi-controlled areas carry unregistered firearms, with large stockpiles of Iranian-supplied machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and even German-made G3 rifles seized from pro-government forces during battlefield victories.

The Houthis remain severely limited in traditional air and naval capabilities. Intelligence assessments suggest the militia only possesses one fighter jet, a 1970s-vintage U.S.-built Northrop F-5 seized from pro-government forces that has not been publicly sighted in more than two years and is likely destroyed. The group does operate a small number of aging Soviet-era helicopters, which it used during the high-profile November 2023 hijacking of the container vessel Galaxy Leader in the Red Sea. Without a traditional navy, the Houthis have built a fleet of uncrewed explosive drone boats, most purpose-built in Yemen using commercially available boat engines imported from China, Japan, and Europe with little regulatory restriction. This creates a unique challenge for global arms control, analysts note: restricting components would harm Yemen’s civilian fishing industry, which relies on the same parts.

The unknown size of the Houthi arsenal remains one of the biggest sources of regional uncertainty. “We really know next to nothing about the numbers of each missile system that they have, until they fire them,” explained Wolf-Christian Paes, a global security consultant and senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Despite this uncertainty, analysts agree that foreign backing, particularly from Iran, has been transformative for the Houthi movement. “Iranian support has been crucial to the buildup of Houthi military capabilities,” said Fabian Hinz, senior analyst at Conflict Armament Research (CAR). “Tehran has managed to secure a seemingly steady flow of technology to the Houthis and has proven willing to share even some of its most advanced capabilities, such as the Kheibar Shekan.”

As Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping continue, the rapid expansion of the group’s military footprint has escalated the Yemeni civil war and created sustained disruption for global energy and trade markets, cementing the militia’s role as a major disruptive force in Middle East security.

As the Jewish festival of Sukkot got underway on September 25, Israeli military forces have dramatically ramped up movement restrictions on Palestinian residents across the occupied West Bank, creating widespread disruption to daily routines and putting critical emergency medical services at severe risk. The enhanced security measures, which include a full territory-wide closure that will remain in effect until the holiday concludes on October 3, have seen Israeli troops block access to dozens of Palestinian towns and villages using iron barriers and large earth mounds, even on less-traveled secondary routes that many local residents rely on for daily travel.

Across the West Bank, existing permanent checkpoints have also seen sharply tightened security protocols, with some of the busiest crossing points — including the Atara and Ein Siniya checkpoints north of Ramallah, and the Jaba’ checkpoint northeast of Jerusalem — becoming major bottlenecks that leave Palestinians waiting for multiple hours to cross, particularly during morning and evening peak travel periods. These delays ripple across daily life: thousands of Palestinians who commute between communities for work, school, and family visits now face journeys that stretch from minutes to multiple hours, upending routine plans and leaving many stranded.

For Attaf Abu Aliya, a taxi driver based in the village of al-Mughayyir, located east of Ramallah, the new restrictions have turned his daily work into a prolonged ordeal. What would normally be a 30-minute drive from al-Mughayyir to the city of Ramallah now takes several hours to complete, with daily waits of four hours or more becoming routine. In an interview with Middle East Eye, Abu Aliya described how Israeli soldiers often hold up traffic for hours without conducting searches or allowing passage, an act he says is designed solely to make life harder for local Palestinians. “Students miss university classes, and everyone’s affairs are disrupted, all because of the whim of a single soldier,” he said. The situation grows even more volatile when Israeli settlers take control of checkpoints, he added: on multiple occasions, settlers have blocked traffic, smashed vehicle windows, and sprayed pepper spray on waiting passengers. Abu Aliya himself has been subjected to invasive searches and physical assault by soldiers during his waits at the checkpoint. “Our situation is truly tragic. That is the most accurate description of the lockdown and the tightened restrictions we are facing,” he said.

New data published on September 25 by the Palestinian Commission Against the Wall and Settlements underscores the scope of movement restrictions across the West Bank. As of this month, the organization counted 942 active checkpoints, closure points, and movement obstacles scattered across the territory. That total includes 824 permanent fixed checkpoints and closure locations, plus an additional 118 ad-hoc barriers such as earth mounds, dug trenches, and roadblocks that block access to community entrances. The United Nations has confirmed that restrictions have expanded beyond existing infrastructure in recent months, with new barriers erected regularly that further split apart connected Palestinian communities.

Beyond disrupting work and school, the tightened movement controls have created a life-threatening crisis for Palestinian emergency medical services, which require unimpeded access to patients across the West Bank. With most village and town entrances blocked and checkpoints creating hours-long backlogs, paramedic and ambulance teams face growing barriers to reaching time-sensitive emergencies and transporting critically ill patients to hospital care. Ahmed Jibril, director of the Emergency Medical Services Department at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, told Middle East Eye that ambulances receive no priority or special exemption from the restrictions, and are often subjected to even more rigorous inspection protocols than civilian vehicles.

Just last week, Jibril said, an ambulance crew was blocked from reaching an elderly woman experiencing a medical emergency near Salfit by closed checkpoints and locked iron gates. By the time the crew was able to access the area via an alternate route, the woman had died. “Checkpoints might open after long waits, but the greater challenge lies in the iron gates, which are sometimes permanently closed,” Jibril explained. “We are forced to find rough, alternative routes, which affects how quickly paramedics arrive and, consequently, the lives of thousands of patients.” Jibril also added that Israeli soldiers regularly mistreat medical staff at checkpoints: in many cases, soldiers enter ambulances under the pretense of checking a patient’s condition, force all medical workers out of the vehicle, and confiscate the ambulance keys, causing further dangerous delays.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has long documented the widespread harm caused by these Israeli movement restrictions. The organization confirms that the controls systematically block Palestinian access to essential healthcare, education, employment, agricultural land, and other basic public services. Extended full closures like the one in place for Sukkot not only lengthen commute times and delay the delivery of humanitarian aid, but can also leave entire Palestinian communities isolated from critical services for days at a time.

Tensions have flared in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City after Israeli security forces ordered more than 50 Palestinian-owned businesses to close, sealed off a key access gate to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and facilitated large incursions by ultranationalist Israelis into the sacred site during the Jewish Sukkot holiday.

The commercial shutdown, which went into effect Sunday morning on the third day of the week-long holiday, will remain in force through October 2. All affected shops are located in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, along the route leading to Bab al-Qattanin — one of the primary entry points to Al-Aqsa used by Palestinian worshippers. In addition to closing local businesses, Israeli authorities ordered Palestinian residents of the area to stay indoors and fully blocked the gate to the mosque compound ahead of a mass gathering of Israeli nationals for holiday rituals Sunday night.

Local Palestinian authorities condemned the sweeping restrictions as part of a dangerous, repeated pattern of displacement and erasure of Palestinian presence in the Old City. “The situation in Jerusalem’s markets during the holidays has become a recurring and worrying pattern: streets are closed, residents’ movement is restricted, and access to the Old City is affected by security measures,” the Jerusalem Governorate said in a statement. The administration added that this sustained Israeli policy risks gradually stripping the Old City of its distinct Palestinian commercial and cultural identity, while pushing generations-old family businesses owned by local Palestinians to the brink of collapse.

Parallel to the shop closures, hundreds of ultranationalist Israeli settlers and far-right political figures stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound over two days to perform unauthorized Jewish religious rituals, in direct violation of long-standing status quo agreements. According to official counts from the Jerusalem Governorate, roughly 1,500 people entered the site Sunday, with an additional 1,200 joining incursions Monday. All participants were provided with armed security protection by Israeli forces, where they held collective prayers, danced, chanted religious songs, and conducted holiday ceremonies within the complex.

High-profile far-right Israeli figures joined the incursions to signal their government’s claim over the site. On Sunday, Likud Party Knesset member Amit Halevi took part in the breach, and a group of nationalist rabbis entered the mosque courtyards alongside dozens of settlers to lead hymns. On Monday, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir joined the incursion, releasing a public video declaring “Today, we are the ones in charge on the Temple Mount” — using the Israeli name for the Al-Aqsa compound. He also added inflammatory rhetoric targeting Palestinian detainees, stating “We have turned the lives of their terrorists into hell.”

The Jerusalem Governorate issued a formal condemnation of Ben Gvir’s incursion and the holding of Jewish prayers within the Al-Aqsa compound, noting that the actions violate the internationally recognized historical and legal status quo governing the site and represent a deliberate attempt to impose a new unilateral religious reality.

The status quo is a decades-old globally accepted agreement that regulates access and administration of the 144-dunam (14.4-hectare) Al-Aqsa compound. Under the terms of the arrangement, the entire site is formally recognized as an exclusively Islamic holy site, with full responsibility for access, prayer scheduling, maintenance, and archaeological work falling to the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, the Islamic religious trust that has managed the mosque for generations.

However, since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, successive Israeli governments have systematically sidelined the Waqf and eroded the terms of the status quo. One of the most persistent breaches has been the authorization of near-daily incursions by Israeli nationalists and Jewish visitors, as well as allowing unauthorized Jewish prayer at the site, a practice that has accelerated in recent years under the current far-right Israeli government.

On September 20, one of the most uniquely positioned religious figures in modern Iranian history, Grand Ayatollah Mousa Shobeiri Zanjani, passed away at the age of 98, leaving behind a legacy of rare political independence that transcended the deep ideological divides shaping the Islamic Republic’s politics.

Shobeiri Zanjani carved out an unparalleled role in Iran’s clerical ecosystem: a senior religious scholar who intentionally held himself apart from formal state political power, yet commanded respect and influence that stretched across every faction of the country’s political and religious landscape. His student body included figures from opposite ends of Iran’s political spectrum: former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, and according to a senior source at the influential Qom Seminary, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s current supreme leader Ali Khamenei. For generations, politicians and clerics from competing factions turned to Shobeiri for credibility and mediation precisely because his moral and religious authority was never tied to partisan or state interests.

That deliberate political detachment made him a critical go-between at moments when Iran’s religious and state institutions collided. In the 1990s, the Qom Society of Seminary Scholars named Shobeiri one of just seven senior clerics qualified to serve as a marja – the highest rank of Shia religious authority, whose rulings on Islamic law are followed by believers around the world.

Shobeiri belonged to a longstanding strand of Iranian traditional clerical thought that holds senior religious leaders should not seek direct involvement in political office or state power. This camp, which also includes another highly respected Qom-based cleric Ayatollah Vahid Khorasani, prioritizes three core missions: protecting the institutional independence of Iran’s seminaries from state interference, preserving the centuries-old marjaʿiyyah system of independent religious authority, and addressing religious and social issues rather than holding or exercising formal political power.

Throughout his career, Shobeiri openly argued that excessive political entanglement by clerics erodes their religious standing and weakens public faith in Islam. In a 2017 gathering of clerics and scholars, he laid out his core philosophy clearly: “Some clerics believe that by becoming more involved in political matters, they can better preserve the standing of the clergy or the position of the mosque. We, however, believe that excessive politicisation, along with the emergence of differences of opinion – which are inevitable – can harm the standing of the clergy and the mosque and lead to a weakening of religious faith.”

He also stressed that clerics without specialized expertise in governance should avoid overstepping into political debate. “Those who do not have expertise in this field would be better off refraining from getting too deeply involved in political matters,” he said. “If someone has expertise, there is no problem with them expressing views on broader issues. But when someone who has no expertise in political science speaks without studying the subject, it creates problems.”

Even as he rejected direct political power, Shobeiri emphasized that religious leaders have a stake in the health of the Islamic Republic and the well-being of the Iranian people. “The Islamic Republic was established in the name of religion and is associated with religion, and preserving it is a religious duty. However, we must consider what contributes most to the survival of the government,” he noted at the same 2017 meeting. “The satisfaction of the people is, first and foremost, one of the things that can contribute to the survival of a government, and we must all work toward this.”

Shobeiri’s reputation for scholarly rigor in Islamic fiqh (jurisprudence) and unwavering political independence drew students from across Iran’s ideological divides to his Qom lectures. In the late 1960s, Khatami, who would later lead Iran’s reformist movement, studied advanced jurisprudence under Shobeiri. The ayatollah once famously praised his young student in correspondence, writing: “Just as Christopher Columbus discovered the American continent, I too discovered Seyyed Mohammad Khatami in the seminary.” Mohammad Reza Khatami, the former president’s brother, later described the bond between the two as far more than teacher and student – it was a decades-long spiritual and personal friendship.

According to the Qom Seminary source who spoke to Middle East Eye, two of Supreme Leader Khamenei’s sons, Mostafa and Mojtaba, also attended Shobeiri’s classes. Khamenei himself once told Shobeiri: “When my sons decided to become seminary students, I did not tell them to do so; they chose it themselves, and of course I was happy with their choice. When one of them came to Qom, I did not tell him to attend your classes; he chose your classes himself, and I was also happy with that choice.”

Shobeiri’s influence as a cross-factional mediator took center stage during the 2009 disputed presidential election, a watershed moment that remains one of the most divisive events in modern Iranian history. After incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, backed by Khamenei, was declared the winner over reformist candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the opposition alleged widespread vote rigging, triggering mass nationwide protests that were met with a harsh state crackdown that saw thousands of demonstrators arrested.

As tensions boiled over, many Iranians across factions turned to Shobeiri, leveraging his longstanding personal relationship with Khamenei to push for de-escalation. A group of 70 prominent political and academic figures, including Mousavi, Karroubi and Khatami, issued an open letter to senior Shia clerics raising alarms about reports of repeated torture of detained protesters and calling on religious leaders to intervene. In response, Shobeiri gathered with two other senior dissident clerics – Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri and former chief justice Ayatollah Mousavi Ardabili – to discuss the unfolding political and religious crisis.

Years later, prominent religious researcher and dissident Mohsen Kadivar revealed that Shobeiri held private meetings with Supreme Leader Khamenei during the protests in an effort to pressure the state to reduce its use of violence against demonstrators. After the crackdown, Shobeiri repeatedly intervened to secure the release of imprisoned political activists. Kadivar confirmed that Shobeiri once reached out directly to Khamenei’s office to successfully secure the release of Ali Shakouri-Rad, a leading reformist politician close to Mousavi.

When Khamenei ordered Mousavi and Karroubi placed under house arrest in 2011, the ayatollah made multiple personal attempts to persuade the supreme leader to reverse the decision, though these efforts ultimately failed. This was not the first time Shobeiri pushed back against state political actions: Kadivar also confirmed that Shobeiri met with Khamenei at least twice before 2009 to call for the lifting of house arrest imposed on Montazeri, one of the most prominent critics of Khamenei’s rule.

Shobeiri’s commitment to cross-factional engagement drew public criticism from hardline conservative clerics in 2018, after photos emerged of him meeting with Khatami, former interior minister Abdollah Nouri, and a group of other leading reformist figures. Senior conservative cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi sent a sharply worded public letter to Shobeiri, urging him to uphold the dignity of his clerical position and show proper respect for the ruling Islamic system. Yazdi chastised Shobeiri for failing to respond to two previous private letters, writing that “your position and standing are grounded in respect for the Islamic system in power, the Leader, and the status of religious authority.” He demanded Shobeiri take steps to prevent similar meetings from happening in the future.

The letter sparked immediate backlash from clerics and public figures across Iran. One senior cleric, Ayatollah Mohammad Andalib Hamadani, resigned from his position on the board of the Society of Seminary Teachers, which Yazdi chaired, in protest of the attack on Shobeiri. Kadivar, speaking out against what he called the threatening tone of Yazdi’s letter, summarized the core of Shobeiri’s independent legacy: “Mousa Shobeiri does not owe his religious authority to the political system or to Mr Khamenei, so that the Leader’s agents can threaten him. His standing and respect are the result of his scholarly precision and practical piety. Yazdi conveyed a message from the Leader: if you make a mistake and act differently from the Leader’s wishes, you will lose the respect due to your scholarship and the status of religious authority, because, from the system’s perspective, the dignity of religious authority means conformity with the wishes of the supreme leader.”