标签： Asia

Seven months ago, U.S. President Donald Trump launched a discretionary war against Iran, a conflict he initially framed as a quick “little excursion” that would wrap up in mere weeks. Today, that war remains mired in intractable deadlock, with no clear path to victory or exit for the United States – a outcome that has upended regional security and threatened global economic stability. The conflict, launched at the urging of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in late February, was premised on two flawed justifications: forcing Tehran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to commercial navigation (a status quo that held before the war began) and compelling Iran to renegotiate its nuclear program. Notably, independent experts have repeatedly confirmed Iran was not close to developing a nuclear weapon prior to the outbreak of hostilities, undermining the core strategic rationale for the invasion. From its inception, the conflict was launched without a coherent long-term strategy. The Trump administration repeatedly downplayed expectations, echoing then-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s promises that the war would be short and low-cost, while criticizing previous U.S. leaders for getting the country trapped in protracted foreign wars. Yet administration officials badly miscalculated: they severely underestimated the Iranian regime’s resilience and preparedness to repel U.S. aggression, and failed to anticipate that Iranian society would rally together around the government in response to outside attack. Despite these early missteps, Trump has repeatedly rushed to claim premature military victory, asserting that Iran’s defensive capabilities had been wiped out and that U.S. bombings had forced Tehran to the negotiating table. These claims have quickly unraveled. Not only did Tehran rebuild its offensive capabilities far faster than U.S. intelligence projected, it also secured de facto control over the Strait of Hormuz – a critical chokepoint for global oil supplies – giving Iran a powerful leverage point to pressure Washington and the international community. By May, Iran held the strategic upper hand and refused to enter any negotiations that did not address its core non-negotiable demands: a full ceasefire across all fronts, including an end to Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon; the unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets held overseas; war reparations from the U.S.; formal recognition of Iran’s sovereign right to manage the Strait of Hormuz; and a permanent guarantee that the U.S. and Israel will abandon all threats of regime change and military action against Iran. In June, Trump signed a vaguely worded memorandum of understanding with Iran’s hardline IRGC-dominated leadership that aligned closely with many of these demands. But facing fierce backlash from senior Republican Party figures and Netanyahu, Trump quickly backed out of the agreement and renewed large-scale military strikes. For its part, Tehran made no effort to salvage the deal, recognizing that continued conflict serves its goal of inflicting political damage on Trump ahead of U.S. midterm elections. Since the collapse of the June memorandum, the Trump administration has reimposed a full blockade on Iranian ports to cut off Tehran’s oil revenue, while carrying out periodic airstrikes intended to intimidate the regime. These moves have done nothing to break the stalemate, with periodic exchanges of fire continuing this week: the U.S. launched strikes on Iran’s Larak Island, and the IRGC retaliated with attacks on U.S. military bases in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. With no substantive peace talks underway, the conflict remains in a dangerous, volatile limbo. Ahead of the approaching midterm elections, the Trump administration last week unveiled a sweeping new round of sanctions dubbed Operation Economic Outcast, labeled “Economic D-Day” by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The policy is designed to cripple Iran’s economy and force global isolation of the regime, but analysts widely expect it to fail, just as previous pressure campaigns have. Both China and Russia have already rejected the new sanctions as unacceptable, and none of Iran’s key neighboring states – including Pakistan, Iraq, and Turkey – have committed to enforcing the measures. Only the United Arab Emirates, a close U.S. and Israeli ally, has paused financial transactions and trade with Tehran. History offers little evidence that broad, unilaterally enforced sanctions force regime capitulation: the only widely cited case of successful multilateral sanctions was the campaign against South Africa’s apartheid regime. For 47 years, Iran’s Islamic government has honed strategies to evade U.S.-led sanctions, building domestic self-sufficiency and diversifying its trade network to reduce dependence on Western markets. While the Iranian public has inevitably borne the brunt of economic hardship from past sanctions, the regime has consistently survived and consolidated its control. The current round of sanctions will almost certainly deepen suffering for ordinary Iranians, but there is little reason to expect it to topple the government or force Tehran to make concessions on core demands. The ongoing standoff poses unacceptable risks to both regional and global security. Allowing the conflict to escalate further could spark a full-scale regional war, and a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz would carry catastrophic costs for the global economy. The only viable path forward, according to regional analysts, is for Washington and Tehran to return to the framework of the June memorandum of understanding and resume direct, good-faith negotiations to reach a final settlement. Quiet mediation efforts led by Pakistan and Qatar continue to work behind the scenes to bring the two sides back to the table, and a growing number of Gulf states are pushing for an end to the conflict. These regional powers have increasingly come to accept Iran as a permanent major regional actor, and are moving away from relying exclusively on the U.S. for security. In a notable sign of this shift, Saudi Arabia – the wealthiest Gulf state – recently signed a mutual defense pact with NATO member Turkey and nuclear-armed Pakistan, with several other regional states including Egypt considering joining the agreement, a move that Iran has publicly welcomed. While the path to a lasting peace remains fraught with uncertainty and obstacles, analysts agree that diplomacy is the only viable way out of the current stalemate. This commentary, written by Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Australian National University, the University of Western Australia, and Victoria University, is republished under a Creative Commons license from The Conversation.

When the British Museum opened its doors to the public on Thursday morning, it launched what has been billed as the most anticipated exhibition in its 273-year history: the first display of the Bayeux Tapestry on English soil in almost a century. The 70-meter medieval embroidery, which chronicles the 1066 Norman Conquest of England, has been housed in France since the Middle Ages, and British negotiators have worked to secure a temporary loan of the fragile artifact since 1931. After nearly 100 years of diplomatic efforts, the tapestry finally arrived in London this summer under heavy security, with an 11-month exhibition run planned.

Demand for tickets has been unprecedented: all allocations for the exhibition’s first four months sold out within hours on the single busiest sales day in the museum’s history, drawing projections that hundreds of thousands of visitors will view the work before it returns to France. This landmark cultural event would not have been possible without a £5 million ($6.75 million) sponsorship from Igor Tulchinsky, founder, CEO and chair of U.S.-based investment firm WorldQuant, who was named the exhibition’s official sponsor in February. Tulchinsky, who maintains a low public profile, stood alongside senior dignitaries including King Charles III, French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham at the exhibition’s official opening reception last week, where the leaders viewed the tapestry through its protective security casing. A fundraising gala in Tulchinsky’s honor is scheduled to take place at the museum next month to recognize his support.

But new revelations about Tulchinsky’s lesser-known business interests have sparked fierce backlash and renewed ethical scrutiny of the British Museum, which has already faced intense criticism in recent years over its removal of Palestinian heritage references from its galleries and its history of controversial corporate partnerships. In April, two months after Tulchinsky signed on to sponsor the tapestry exhibition, he launched WorldQuant Genesis, a Tel Aviv-based venture capital fund focused on early-stage defense technology startups. The fund is led by retired Israeli Major General Saar Tzur, who stepped down from his senior command posts leading the Israeli military’s Northern Corps and Manoeuvre Array in October 2024, just one year into Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has been accused of genocide by multiple human rights and legal bodies.

Following his retirement from the military, Tzur joined the advisory board of Ottopia, an Israeli technology startup that provides remote control technology for unmanned military vehicles deployed by the Israeli army in Gaza. In public statements on Ottopia’s website, Tzur has described these teleoperated vehicles as critical “force multipliers” for Israeli operations in Gaza, noting that the technology allows soldiers to carry out combat operations without putting troops at risk. Ottopia markets its technology as “battle proven” in direct combat and target engagement, counting remote-controlled bulldozers and explosive-laden armored personnel carriers (APCs) among its products. Company founder Amit Rosenzweig has confirmed that these explosive APCs have been supplied to Israeli forces operating in Gaza, explaining that operators can control the vehicles from a safe location using a joystick.

Human rights groups have directly linked the widespread use of these remote-controlled explosive vehicles to widespread civilian casualties, mass displacement, and systematic destruction of civilian and cultural infrastructure in Gaza. According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel first deployed these vehicles in densely populated residential areas of Gaza in May 2024, with use intensifying that October as part of the Israeli military’s “Generals’ Plan” to depopulate and forcibly displace all residents from northern Gaza. Between August and October 2025, the group recorded that Israeli forces deployed an average of 15 explosive remote vehicles per day, dropping an estimated 100 tonnes of explosives on residential neighborhoods monthly and destroying roughly 300 residential units every day. Gaza residents describe the blasts from these vehicles as far more destructive than conventional airstrikes, with entire multi-story buildings reduced to fine rubble in seconds, forcing mass panic and displacement.

While an October 2025 ceasefire agreement paused large-scale use of the vehicles, Euro-Med Monitor has documented a renewed escalation in their deployment across northern and eastern Gaza over the past two months. While the group has not been able to independently confirm that the vehicles it has documented use Ottopia technology, it notes that the vehicles match the description of systems marketed by the firm and Tzur. Beyond civilian harm, the widespread use of these weapons in populated areas has put Gaza’s millennia-old cultural heritage at severe risk. While no direct hits to heritage sites from these vehicles have yet been recorded, multiple iconic heritage sites—including the Old al-Omari Mosque, the Byzantine Church of Jabalia, and al-Sheikh Saad Mosque—are located in areas where large-scale vehicle operations have taken place, and have sustained damage from adjacent attacks. Euro-Med Monitor estimates that more than 70% of Gaza’s total documented cultural heritage sites have already been destroyed or damaged during the current conflict, a pattern the group says matches the definition of cultural genocide laid out in a recent UN report.

Tulchinsky has publicly confirmed his longstanding support for Israel and the Israeli military, noting that he has provided direct financial donations to the Israeli military since the start of the war in October 2023, and that WorldQuant has maintained an office in Israel since 2009. “Even against the backdrop of the complex reality, my commitment to Israel and its future remains intact,” he said in a statement following the launch of WorldQuant Genesis, which has already invested in Israeli defense tech startup NavAiro, which develops counter-drone technology for the military. There is no proven direct link between Tulchinsky’s fund and Ottopia, but campaigners say Tulchinsky’s clear ties to the Israeli defense industry that has overseen the destruction in Gaza make his sponsorship of a major cultural institution deeply unethical.

Artists for Palestine UK, a leading network of cultural workers and artists, has called the British Museum’s decision to accept Tulchinsky’s sponsorship “outrageous” and “shameful.” “How can the museum’s trustees possibly have come to the conclusion that Tulchinsky, with his links to the ongoing erasure of Gaza and parts of Lebanon, was a suitable sponsor?” the group said in a statement. “And, more fundamentally, how are basic ethical standards, human rights and international law not guiding factors in such decisions, even before considerations of reputational damage?”

This is not the first time the British Museum has faced criticism over its sponsorship choices: the institution previously drew widespread protests for accepting a £50 million 10-year sponsorship deal from fossil fuel giant BP to fund its major masterplan redevelopment. It also faces ongoing calls from UK Members of Parliament for an investigation into its removal of multiple references to Palestine from its public galleries. The Guardian also recently revealed that the museum hosted a private preview of the Bayeux Tapestry for Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of Palantir, a U.S. tech firm that provides advanced AI and data analysis tools to the Israeli military. Neither the British Museum, WorldQuant nor Ottopia have responded to multiple requests for comment from Middle East Eye on the revelations.

For over 140 years, New York City’s Madison Square Garden has stood as the world’s most iconic arena, hosting everything from championship NBA games to blockbuster sold-out concerts for global superstars. But on a recent Saturday afternoon, this legendary venue played host to a far different gathering: thousands of Indian and Hindu Americans, dressed in vibrant saffron accessories and traditional cultural garments, traveled from across the United States to hear from Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a far-right Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization whose affiliate groups have been linked to escalating violence against religious minorities in India.

Organized by a group called American Hindus for Engagement And Dialogue (Ahead), the gathering was branded as the “Universal Oneness Celebration,” marketed as an afternoon of interfaith dialogue, shared cultural expression, and collective unity. As a correspondent for Middle East Eye, I gained access to the event after passing a strict identity-based vetting process — a requirement that contradicts the event’s public framing of radical inclusion. To receive a free ticket, attendees were required to list an affiliated Hindu temple or organization, provide a unique five-digit code for that group, and submit a reference from within the organization. Unlike many other prospective guests who received follow-up screening calls or were denied entry entirely, I was approved without question, a outcome I attribute to my clearly Hindu Brahmin surname — a detail that aligns with the RSS’s long history of Brahmin dominance within its leadership ranks.

Founded in 1925, the RSS boasts more than 5 million members worldwide and is built around the political ideology of Hindutva, a project that seeks to transform India, a constitutionally secular state, into a ethnically homogeneous Hindu nation. The movement’s earliest ideologues openly drew inspiration from authoritarian exclusionary projects: MS Golwalkar, the RSS’s second supreme leader, once framed Nazi Germany’s ethnic cleansing of European Jews as “a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by,” explicitly targeting India’s Muslim community. VD Savarkar, widely considered the founder of Hindutva, held up the Zionist project in Palestine as a model for his exclusionary vision for India.

India’s current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), emerged directly from the RSS’s ideological coalition, the Sangh Parivar, and nearly all of its top leaders — including Prime Minister Narendra Modi — hold active membership in the organization. In recent years, senior BJP cabinet ministers have delivered public hate speeches calling for the killing of Indian Muslims, labeling the community “green snakes” that must be eliminated.

Even before entering the venue, the demographic homogeneity of the crowd — carefully curated to align with the RSS’s core values — was unmistakable. As more than 5,000 attendees waited in line to enter MSG’s Infosys Theater, the crowd broke out into repeated chants of “Jai Shri Ram,” a phrase that originated as a Hindu religious greeting but has since become a battle cry for perpetrators of anti-minority violence in India. The slogan was politicized in the 1980s to rally support for the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of the 16th-century Babri Masjid, a mosque demolished by Hindu mobs led by prominent BJP leaders in 1992.

Attendees also chanted repeatedly “Vande Mataram,” India’s national song, whose full version — championed exclusively by the RSS and affiliated groups — includes references to Hindu deities that secular Indian leaders have long argued contradict the country’s secular constitutional identity. The final stanzas of the full version call for 70 million people to “lift swords” and “drive out every invader who came from land and sea,” a clear dog whistle targeting India’s Muslim and Christian minority communities. Just weeks before the MSG event, the BJP-led national government passed legislation criminalizing any disruption or insult to the full version of the song, codifying the RSS’s preferred framing into national law.

Conversations with attendees made clear the deep ties between the gathering and the global Sangh Parivar network. One woman traveling with her young son said they had come from a local shakha — or local chapter — of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the RSS’s official international wing, near Edison, New Jersey, which is one of more than 250 HSS chapters across the United States. Other attendees identified as members of Sangh-affiliated groups ranging from the campus-based Hindu Students Council to Hindu Yuva, another youth organizing project tied to the movement. According to research from Savera, an anti-Hindutva advocacy organization, Ahead’s leadership has direct, extensive ties to both the RSS and BJP, and the group listed more than 250 partner organizations from across the U.S. that sent delegates to the New York event.

Outside the arena, dozens of activists from organizations including the Anti Imperialist South Asian Alliance Philadelphia (AISA Philly) and South Asian Left (Salam) gathered to protest the event. Rishi Arun, a member of both protesting groups, told Middle East Eye that the MSG gathering was the culmination of a decades-long project to legitimize Hindutva ideology among the South Asian diaspora in the United States. “These organisations have covertly pushed Hindutva propaganda while masquerading as cultural organisations, and using the language of universality, spirituality, and often inclusion,” Arun explained.

Inside the venue, the event opened with a showcase of three South Asian drumming traditions, but the crowd only erupted into excitement when performers took up the Maharashtrian Dhol Tasha — a style organizers explicitly noted has military origins. As the drums played, an image of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, a 17th-century Maratha king, was projected onto the main stage; while many mainstream historians dispute this framing, Hindu nationalists have rebranded Shivaji as an early icon of armed Hindu resistance against Muslim rule in India.

After short informational videos about “Hindu Dharma” and the nation of “Bharat” — the name Hindu nationalists insist on for India, rejecting both the “Hindustan” and “India” labels imposed by Muslim and British rulers respectively — the program continued with a regional cultural dance showcase. The crowd’s loudest cheers came during a segment celebrating the Middle East, performed to “Fa9la” by Bahraini artist Flipperachi — the viral entry theme for the Pakistani villain in the 2025 Bollywood film *Dhurandar*, which has been widely described as a Hindu nationalist revenge fantasy against Pakistan. Through carefully curated cultural programming, the event evoked core Hindutva sentiments without ever explicitly stating its exclusionary political goals.

The tone shifted after the cultural portion of the event, as organizers convened what they framed as an interfaith summit “One World, One Humanity,” with Bhagwat standing center stage flanked by clergy from Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and other major global faith traditions. Bawa Jain, founder of the World Council of Religious Leaders, introduced a centennial call to action for the RSS, reaffirming the organization’s stated commitment to global interfaith harmony. In opening remarks to the summit, Bhagwat told the crowd, “if any Hindu thinks there should be no Muslims in India, he will not remain Hindu” — a statement critics dismiss as tailored for a Western audience, even as the RSS continues to fuel anti-minority violence back in India.

Human rights monitoring group Genocide Watch has explicitly warned that India is currently in the precursor stages of an anti-Muslim genocide, and has directly linked the RSS to arming and training Hindu nationalist groups to carry out organized communal violence. In his 40-minute closing speech, Bhagwat told attendees that “every nation has a destiny to fulfil” and that the destiny of “Bharat” is to “make the world realise” the idea of “unity in diversity.”

A day after the event, RSS leadership praised the New York gathering on social media platform X, framing it as a key global outreach initiative during Bhagwat’s multi-city tour of the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. But critics of the event say Bhagwat’s moderate, inclusive rhetoric for American audiences stands in stark contrast to the daily violence carried out by RSS affiliates in India.

“Bhagwat’s words are one thing. And the bloodshed that the RSS commits on a near-daily basis in India is entirely another,” said Safa Ahmed, board member of the Indian American Muslim Council and a co-organizer of the external protest. Ahmed referenced Golwalkar’s original writing, which argues that religious minorities must be “wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation” — a standard that Ahmed says represents the RSS’s true vision for minority communities in India.

Just one week before the MSG event, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom called on the Biden administration to impose sanctions on the RSS for its role in “violent attacks against religious minorities, including Christians, Dalits, Muslims, and Sikhs,” and urged the State Department to revoke Bhagwat’s travel visa to the United States.

As the event drew to a close, attendees closed out the gathering with a new, globalized twist on the traditional RSS closing chant. While RSS shakhas in India traditionally end with “Bharat Mata ki jai” (“Victory to Mother India”), the New York crowd chanted “Vishwa dharma ki jai” — “Victory to universal dharma” — a clear signal that the RSS is actively expanding its ideological project beyond India’s borders into the U.S. diaspora.

On Monday, the most prominent grassroots advocacy organization representing Iranian American communities, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), issued a formal appeal to top officials in the Trump administration demanding an urgent reversal of new sanctions that have effectively sent a message the United States is in conflict with the Iranian public, while calling for permanent exemptions for all humanitarian, educational and cultural initiatives.

NIAC’s open letter was addressed to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and it warned that the imminent withdrawal of long-standing general licenses will deepen growing harm already being felt across sectors that have long connected U.S. and Iranian communities. These licenses previously cleared the way for U.S. universities, educational testing providers and other non-governmental entities to offer life-changing academic opportunities to Iranian citizens.

The appeal comes in the wake of multiple confirmed reports that major testing providers have already restricted access for Iranian students following the new sanctions rollout. The Education Testing Service (ETS), which administers two of the most widely required standardized tests for international study — the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) — has halted all testing operations within Iran. The Duolingo English Test, a popular alternative proficiency assessment run by global language learning platform Duolingo, has also been taken offline for users in Iran and any test-takers holding Iranian identification.

Labeled “Operation Economic Outcast,” the Trump administration’s new sanctions are formally framed as a response to the Iranian government’s decision to restrict access to the Strait of Hormuz, a retaliatory move amid the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. But NIAC President Jamal Abdi argued in the letter that these new restrictions will have no meaningful impact on the Iranian ruling establishment, despite their stated policy goal.

“Instead, it is already being felt by American entities and Iranian students,” Abdi wrote. “Iranian students have been barred from taking key exams required for academic studies by US organizations.”

Abdi called on the administration to immediately reinstate two critical regulatory frameworks: 31 CFR § 560.544, which grants authorization for U.S. individuals and organizations to conduct certain educational activities in third countries, and Iran General License G, the legal provision that explicitly permits educational exchange programs between the two nations.

“The Trump administration would be wise to bolster the limited educational, humanitarian, and cultural channels that exist between ordinary Iranians and the United States, rather than send a message that the US is at war with the Iranian people,” Abdi stated.

For decades, Iran has ranked among the countries with the highest global demand for TOEFL testing, as thousands of Iranian students pursue undergraduate and graduate study at international institutions each year. Abdi noted that cutting off access to these core testing infrastructure will create insurmountable barriers for Iranian citizens seeking global educational opportunities.

NIAC outlined the overlapping barriers Iranian students already face when pursuing study in the United States: a long-standing travel ban that blocks most Iranians from securing U.S. visas, paired with the new sanctions that eliminate access to required English proficiency exams, academic services and university enrollment.

“There is no world in which the US preventing young Iranians from taking English proficiency tests leads to the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and yet that appears to be the rationale for this cruel new policy,” Abdi said in an accompanying public statement. He reiterated that preserving and expanding people-to-people connections between U.S. and Iranian communities is a far more productive policy path than cutting these ties.

Beyond educational access, Abdi also pressed administration leaders to reverse the suspension of licenses that permit Iranian Americans to send remittances to immediate family members residing in Iran, as well as licenses that allow athletic competitions between U.S. and Iranian teams. He warned that the suspension of sports exchange licenses creates unnecessary complications for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games scheduled to be hosted in Los Angeles, damages the U.S.’s global reputation as a welcoming host nation, and delivers no tangible policy benefits to advance U.S. strategic goals.

Abdi explained that the exemptions now being rolled back by the White House were first introduced more than a decade ago specifically to mitigate harmful unintended consequences of earlier U.S. sanctions regimes, which had accidentally cut off ordinary Iranians from access to academic opportunities and people-to-people exchanges.

“Now, it appears that these have become very much intended consequences aimed at the Iranian people, which is a self-defeating message for the US to send to Iranians and the world,” Abdi continued. “There is absolutely no justification for this.”