BLUF

Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s presidency from 1997 to 2001 is a case study in how a large African state like the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) can fracture due to foreign dependencies, institutional paralysis, and praetorianism.

The cobalt, copper, and coltan rich nation has been trapped in an endless cycle of armed instability, largely linked to Rwanda, since the fall of kleptocratic dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and his subsequent ousting by a coalition-backed Kabila in the First Congo War.

Kabila’s governance failures include a Faustian bargain with Rwanda and a rapid consolidation of power including military courts and a rebel police force; which caused uncertainty for investors and businesses. Most notably, Kabila’s decision to push out foreign currency via Decree No. 177, to ban the informal dollar economy, catastrophically backfired, as the hyper-inflating Congolese currency was not stable, which drove the DRC’s dollar-run raw materials market underground.

First Congo War and Background

For most of its existence, the DRC (known then as Zaire) was ruled by Mobutu Sese Seko, a dictator who rose to power in 1965 as an anti-communist general backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Many characterize his government as a kleptocracy, as not only did he appoint high government positions solely to the Ngbandi tribe (his own tribal people), but he also oversaw large-scale corruption with copper mines while maintaining a stagnant economy.

In October 1996, tensions skyrocketed between Rwanda, led by current President Paul Kagame, and Mobutu’s Zaire over Hutu militants who had fled into Zaire’s Nord-Kivu province as refugees during the Rwandan Civil War (1990-94). These militants (mainly the Interahamwe) were responsible for carrying out the Rwandan genocide and began guerilla warfare incursions into Rwanda from Zaire. As such, Rwanda began cross-border raids on Zairean soil, targeting Hutu camps. Kagame utilized his alliance with Yoweri Museveni, current President of Uganda, to form a coalition to invade Zaire.

While the initial conflict was of ethnic tensions between the Hutu population of Zaire’s refugee camps and Kagame’s Tutsi government, the Rwandan-Ugandan control and influence over the large resource-rich Zaire was a much more likely economic motivator. The Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL) would be formed by Kagame and Museveni to invade Zaire. Kagame called on his alliances with Burundi and Eritrea to expand the coalition, and gained the support of rebel Laurent Kabila to invade Zaire, who was in exile in Uganda at the time.

Kabila was a major opponent of Mobutu and founded the People’s Revolutionary Party (PRP), which ran a Marxist rebel state for twenty years until 1986, serving as a thorn in the back of Mobutu’s rule. As the Cold War came to a close in 1991, the CIA cut ties with Mobutu, as the threat of a Communist takeover of Zaire faded, while Kabila shifted from a Marxist ideology to officially democratic resistance against Mobutu.

Officially, the casus belli was liberating Zaire from Mobutu’s dictatorship and installing a democratic republic in the Congo region, led by Kabila. The underlying motivations were to kill Hutus who had participated in the Rwandan genocide and civil war, as well as influence over the resource rich nation.

Coltan: The DRC produces 70% of the world’s coltan, a vital component in capacitors and micro-hardware in smartphones.

Cobalt: 74% of the world’s mined cobalt is produced here, which is a common ingredient in electric vehicle batteries.

Copper: 3.5 million tonnes is produced annually which goes on to be used in global electrical grids, extracted through massive natural reserves such as the Kamoa-Kakula mine.

The First Congo War would last until May 1997. Kabila’s rebel forces combined with the Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian militaries were able to overwhelm Zaire’s disorganized armed forces. Despite Mobutu’s attempts at centralization and unique defensive strategies such as appointing Serbian war veterans, the Zairean Armed Forces suffered from corruption and a lack of supply in the forested border provinces.

On 16 May 1997, Mobutu Sese Seko fled Zaire as AFDL forces entered Kinshasa from two sides. The next day, Laurent-Désiré Kabila was sworn in as President of the renamed, flag-changed, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Kabila’s “Democracy”

Kabila took power in a state with Rwandan and Ugandan troops essentially enforcing his authority, spread across the country’s 2,345,408 square-kilometer forested territory. He inherited hollow institutions, a lackluster judiciary from Mobutu, and a police force made up largely of formerly rebel Kadogos (child fighters). Approaching the 21st century, Kabila had an exceptional responsibility to transform a decentralized nation with a majority rural village population that had seen a kleptocratic dictatorship for the vast majority of its existence into a modern democracy. He also had to maintain the trust of the coalition that put him in power in the first place (Rwanda and Uganda), and solve systemic corruption, diseases, and poverty.

Kabila’s first major step was passing Decree-Law No. 003 on 28 May 1997 which heavily centralized the state by suspending the Transitional Constitution of 9 April 1994 (which was established as a somewhat framework to democracy under Mobutu) and dissolving the High Council of the Republic. Kabila marketed this as dismantling Mobutu’s corrupt institutions and national centralization but NGOs such as the Human Rights Watch condemn this as a totalitarian consolidation of power.

Under Kabila’s new democratic system, a new constitution and transitional constituent assembly was promised in two years. He established a Constitutional Commission in October 1997 to draft a new constitution which was completed on 30 March 1998 and proposed a five-year centralized presidential democracy. However, the ratification process was delayed without a clear reason by Kabila and the set date for its passing was December 1998. With the outbreak of the Second Congo War in August 1998, Kabila was never able to pass the constitution.

Laurent Kabila’s grave error in his leadership was his continuation of Mobutu’s ethnic division. As mentioned, Kabila was an ethnic Luba, a people from the southeast Katanga province. In the height of the First Congo War, Kabila’s biggest speech was given in Lubumbashi, the DRC’s second-largest city and the Katanga’s provincial capital, where Kabila held a base of support. After dissolving Zaire’s old parliament, the High Council of the Republic, Kabila delayed the establishment of a permanent parliament, and only in 2000, he established the Constituent and Legislative Assembly (ACL). This was far from a democratic parliament, as it was made up of 300 unelected members handpicked by Kabila, largely from the Luba people. Even worse, the ACL was not even based in the capital Kinshasa; it was based in Lubumbashi, and according to Decree-Law No. 003, Kabila could dissolve it at will.

Kabila’s judicial system was based on the Court of Military Order (COM), established in 1997. The COM bypassed the civilian Supreme Court and local judiciaries to execute swift death penalties, a move heavily criticized by the Human Rights Watch. The police and military were made up of Kadogo rebels and Kabila’s own Luba rebels rather than an organized structure. Whether or not Kabila failed to organize the police system or he chose to keep his rebels due to distrust in Mobutu’s military is not known. What is clear is that the combination of the COM, and rebel police enforcement made the situation completely unpredictable for investors, diplomats, and businesses, as they faced limited legal protection and high risk of police extortion.

He inherited an extremely poor economy due to Mobutu’s years of personal copper corruption. He scrapped the essentially worthless old currency, the Zaire, and established the Congolese Franc, which current ministry reports say created a brief period of deflation and economic stability. He initiated subsidized projects to clear roads, though these never amounted to major changes. His socialist inspired philosophy rejected international IMF and World Bank loans, instead using limited domestic capital. In August 1998, the Second Congo War broke out, which prompted Kabila to fund a massive national military from the ground up. To control prices from the rapid printing of money to the end of 1998, he fixed prices and pushed out foreign currency. Since the state banks had essentially nonexistent tax infrastructure, this move caused hyperinflation for basic goods.

Kabila’s administration passed Decree No. 177 in 1999, which mandated the Congolese Franc as the sole currency in state transactions, which aimed to remove the informal U.S dollar run economy. On paper, using a strict local currency for state transactions policy sounds like a great idea for removing informal economic deals and corruption, but the move spectacularly backfired. Since investors and businessmen could not trust the hyper-inflating Congolese Franc, which saw broad money grow 382% in 1999 and 493% in 2000; they turned completely to the un-taxable underground dollar resource market.

The biggest risk to Kabila’s rule was that the foreign coalition that put him in power was interested in benefiting their own countries, not the DRC. Kabila drew the same criticism leaders like Hamid Karzai have faced: leaders who take power on the back of foreign militaries inherently lack domestic legitimacy. He began growing wary of Rwandan influence in his administration and the troop presence in the DRC. This breakdown in relations between Kabila and the Rwandan and Ugandan governments, which still occupied most of the DRC, resulted in Kabila dismissing his Rwandan advisor, James Kabarebe, on 14 July 1998. Subsequently, he ordered that all Rwandan troops leave the DRC’s territory on 27 July, which Rwanda refused to do. As such, the Second Congo War broke out in August 1998, completely upending Kabila’s state.

The war saw Rwanda and Uganda back a new rebel movement, the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) to oust Kabila, and plunged the DRC into an economic and humanitarian crisis. Instead of the first war’s relatively straightforward frontlines, the Second Congo War saw a disorganized, bloody insurgency by Rwandan-backed rebels and troops against Kabila’s already fragmented state. Kabila struggled to hold on to power and raised a new military to fight Rwandan-backed rebels from the ground up, essentially undoing any progress made under him.

During his reign, Laurent Kabila would grow eagerly paranoid about a coup being carried out against him. As such, he cracked down on possible coup attempts and arrested several officials that helped him come to power. Among these was Anselme Masasu, a popular Kadogo unit commander arrested in 1997 for allegedly plotting a coup with Rwandan support. To ease military tensions, Kabila let out a general amnesty in 2000, but quickly undid this after he rearrested Masasu in the same year. Masasu was giving a speech on the grievances of Kadogos. The young soldiers had been vital in helping Kabila come to power and he pledged to reward them, though most were still unpaid and lived in poor conditions. Kabila, viewing Masasu’s speeches as inciting a coup, subjected him to a closed-door military trial heavily criticized by the United Nations. Masasu was executed on 24 November 2000. Kabila subsequently executed more Kadogos alleged to be in his coup plot.

On 16 January 2001, an 18 year-old Kadogo, killed Kabila by shooting him four times in the Presidential office, under the pretext of justice for Kadogos like Masasu. A power vacuum opened in the DRC’s leadership, which was filled in 10 days by Kabila’s son, Joseph Kabila. Joseph would oversee the end of the Second Congo War and the restoration of overall stability, leading into today.

The DRC Today

When analyzing the resource and risk environment of the state, its political leadership is the most important factor. The current President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Félix Tshisekedi, represents a new reality, and in many ways a positive one, for investors and natural resource trade. Politically, his Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) administration has found itself at odds with both Rwanda’s Kagame and the DRC’s Joseph Kabila.

Tshisekedi’s approach to the DRC’s structural issues represents a pragmatic solution, including an attempted rapprochement with Rwanda in 2019 which opposition parties heavily criticized Tshisekedi for as a “Rwandan puppet.” This label completely switched in 2022, when Tshisekedi accused Rwanda of backing the March 23 movement (M23), a DRC rebel group which began an offensive in the Kivu provinces, which international sources confirm is backed by Rwanda.

Internationally, Chinese companies have become heavily involved in resource extraction and selling from the DRC’s massive natural reserves in the early 2020s. These companies include:

• CMOC Group

• Zijin Mining Group

• Huayou Cobalt

• Sicomines

• Chengtun Mining

• China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group

Tshisekedi’s approach has been to diversify the country’s resource extraction sector with Western companies to avoid a Chinese monopoly. For Western investors, Tshisekedi’s “minerals-for-security” proposal, which invites the United States and European Union for resources (mainly cobalt, lithium, and coltan) in exchange for security against M23 and Rwanda, is a very positive development.

The current government has signed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement for local trade, while a key governance measure it has taken is banning all unrefined cobalt and copper exports, while pushing for refining materials. While the move may seem to shake off investor confidence at first, it is a smart attempt at creating domestic jobs, as companies would have to smelt and refine materials on Congolese soil before exporting them. While Tshisekedi maintains tax enforcement is a priority, he has warned revenue institutions against strict government tactics and checks that scare off investors.

Today, former President Joseph Kabila has accused Tshisekedi of being a dictator, while Tshisekedi’s government has accused Joseph of backing the M23 rebel group. The United States has sanctioned Joseph for allegedly supporting rebel activity and armed revolt against the Congolese government. On 23 August 2026, representatives from the DRC government and from the M23 rebel group agreed to a roadmap for peace talks in Switzerland.

Humanitarian Toll

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) classifies the DRC today as one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the world, with nearly 15 million people in urgent need of aid. Since 1996, between 5.4 and 6 million people have died in wars and armed conflicts in the nation. A harrowing fact is that most of these deaths are indirect, due to crop destruction and lack of healthcare, which means a vast majority of deaths are of noncombatants. The wartime destruction of hospitals, water reservoirs, and basic clinics paired with the existing lack of clean water means the DRC has suffered with historic malaria outbreaks and measles affecting children. The DRC is also currently facing the fastest-growing Ebola epidemic in history as of August 2026. Between 7 and 8 million people have been internally displaced from their homes, and over 1 million externally. The population’s extreme poverty rate is between a staggering 67% to 74%. Approximately 26 million people live in food insecurity today as the UN-brokered government-rebel ceasefire remains fragile.

Winter of 1965, in the Rann of Kutch marsh, Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged gunfire. Just months after they engaged in brutal combat in the south, a large insurgency was erupting in the north across Indian-controlled Kashmir. Muslim Kashmiris demanded secession, but the Indian Armed Forces cracked down, leaving several dead.

This Kashmiri insurgency gained direct funding from the Pakistan Armed Forces, and intelligence agencies (namely the Inter-Services Intelligence) were already behind Indian lines as part of Pakistan’s Operation Gibraltar. At the time, the two nations were locked in a harsh standoff—Pakistan controlled by Military President Ayub Khan, and India led by Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.

At the Haji Pir pass, Indian troops crossed the border and seized the territory from Pakistan. Further south, the militaries targeted two critical cities: Lahore, a dense provincial capital in Pakistan, and Akhnoor, Indian Kashmir’s main communications center. Both parties tried taking the other’s key city, but the conflict quickly drew the attention of three global powers. China threatened to escalate the situation if India invaded Lahore, while the Soviet Union and the U.S wanted the conflict to end without Chinese involvement.

Amidst the Sino-Soviet split, the USSR feared Chinese expansion of influence against India, which leant to the Soviet side in the Cold War despite being officially non-aligned. Meanwhile the U.S was also wary of both Communist China’s influence and the potential fall of Lahore against Pakistan, a Western bloc member led by the pro-American dictator, Ayub Khan.

Under immense diplomatic pressure, both countries halted their advance. On 22 September 1965, the United Nations negotiated a ceasefire, officially ending the India–Pakistan war of 1965. However, both nations remained hostile. With a lack of a proper treaty to prevent further armed conflict on the Kashmir dispute, another war was looking imminent. As such, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin took the matter upon himself and opted to host a peace conference at the Soviet city of Tashkent (modern-day Uzbekistan).

Both parties and their delegates met in Tashkent on 4 January 1966. The Pakistani side demanded a plebiscite in Kashmir citing United Nations Security Council Resolution 47, while the Indian side continued reaffirming the territory was theirs citing the Instrument of Accession. With Kosygin acting as mediator, both parties went back and forth about their demands at a round table. Ultimately, they reached an agreement in the Tashkent Declaration on 10 January. Prisoners of war (POWs) would be returned, relationships would improve through trade, and most significantly, all territory seized during the 1965 war had to be given back.

Troops were forced back to their pre-war positions by 25 February 1966 and the treaty mandated that no country would interfere in the other’s internal political matters, economic embargoes would be forcibly lifted, and emissaries returned.

For the Ayub Khan administration, the terms of the Tashkent Declaration quickly went from a diplomatic triumph into a domestic political crisis. By agreeing to a strict return to the status quo ante bellum, Pakistan was forced to withdraw from strategic strongholds it had bled to capture, most notably the critically important Indian Chhamb sector. To the Pakistani public and the foot soldiers of the armed forces, who had been fed a stream of news detailing decisive victories including a front page by The Australian declaring a Pakistani military victory, the withdrawal felt like a capitulation to foreign pressure. Student protests erupted across major cities, permanently fracturing the control of Ayub Khan’s already weakening military regime and setting the stage for his eventual resignation after three riot-filled years.

Across the border, the Indian reception was mixed. While the agreement successfully neutralized the immediate threat to Akhnoor and secured a Pakistani withdrawal from Indian territory, the mutual disengagement meant India also had to surrender its hard-won tactical gains, including the Haji Pir pass, across the ceasefire line. Indian state press had also detailed how close the armed forces were to capturing Lahore, leading many anti-Pakistan groups to view the agreement as a major letdown.

The treaty mandated the resumption of bilateral trade between India and Pakistan. However, this was never actually implemented and India-Pakistan trade flatlined from 1965 onward. The stagnant socialist Indian economy for one was hit hard by American sanctions, the wartime stoppage of trade with Pakistan, and subsequent droughts. Meanwhile, Pakistan was also sanctioned by the United States but benefited from years of Western aid and a capitalist boom under Ayub Khan and was not affected as harshly by the stopping of Indian trade. Since 1965, India and Pakistan have not had a steady bilateral trade partnership. Even today, while the countries’ physical geography is deeply interconnected, bilateral trade has been suspended indefinitely since 2019 by Pakistan’s Imran Khan administration following the removal of Kashmir’s autonomous status (Article 370) and India’s 200% tariffs placed on Pakistan by Narendra Modi in the same year after the Pulwama attack.

Pakistani Foreign Minister (and later Prime Minister) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto pointed out that while the agreement resumed dialogue, it completely failed to solve the broader Kashmir issue. He was right. The nature of the dispute meant neither side was willing to compromise, a dilemma that has kept the region contested for over 70 years.

“Although the Tashkent declaration has resumed the dialogue between India and Pakistan but no amount of platitudes can substitute or detract from the imperative need for a permanent settlement of the tragic dispute over Jammu & Kashmir.”

— Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then-Foreign Minister of Pakistan and later Prime Minister, 1966

Perhaps the biggest controversy of the declaration was the mysterious death of Prime Minister Shastri. He died of a reported heart attack in Tashkent, which immediately raised suspicions and sparked conspiracy theories. Dying on an already controversial diplomatic mission led people to draw conclusions about who killed him, with theories pointing to foreign or domestic intelligence agencies that wanted to avoid a peace treaty. Gregory Douglas alleged that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Robert Crowley stated that the CIA was behind Shastri’s killing. Many also point out that elements of Indian intelligence, the Intelligence Bureau (IB), would have been upset at Shastri’s attempt at halting the India-Pakistan conflict and his pro-peace, anti-nuclear approach. In a rare show of unity, the Pakistani President carried the Indian Prime Minister’s coffin at his funeral in Tashkent, on 11 January 1966.

Ultimately, Premier Kosygin’s mediation was a masterclass in Cold War conflict management, but a failure in actual dispute resolution. The Tashkent Declaration froze the state of open war only till 1971, while also preventing a localized South Asian conflict from escalating into a broader superpower proxy war involving the Chinese giant. Yet, by not taking a firm action of plebiscite or recognition on the underlying territorial dispute of Jammu and Kashmir in favor of immediate demilitarization, the treaty merely placed a bandage over a deep wound.

Today, the Tashkent Declaration remains a largely forgotten event in history, often even overshadowed by the Simla Agreement of 1971 simply for the scale of armistice. The declaration became household talk in the 1960s and 70s in Pakistan and India for a signed deal that had a set of sweeping terms but was never properly implemented due to the core issue of Kashmir.

These two men smiling aren’t friends; they are bitter rivals who fractured the Palestinian government in half.

The man on the right is Mahmoud Abbas, Palestine’s current President and the chairman of the Fatah party, while the man on the left is the deceased Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Both are pictured in a Palestinian government office in the late 2000s. Haniyeh here is the sitting Prime Minister of Palestine while Abbas is the sitting President.

Background: Palestinian politics

When one thinks of Hamas, a decentralized militant group is imagined by many, but in the early 2000s, Hamas operated a centralized political bureau and aimed to compete in elections. Its political campaigns centered around anti-corruption and against Israeli occupation, holding back on extremist rhetoric to stabilize its image as a governable party which could operate a national government in the region.

Today, while Palestinians have not received their own official country and de-facto have little to no land given the Israeli occupation of Gaza and illegal settlements in the West Bank, their de-jure political governance is maintained through the Palestinian Authority (PA). Officially, it is a democratic system electing the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in Ramallah which splits equal power between a President and Prime Minister.

In 2006, President of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas of the secular Fatah party called the PA’s first general elections for the PLC to elect a Prime Minister. Capitalizing on years of Israeli occupation and allegations of corruption within the post-Arafat Fatah, Hamas won an upset majority. The group’s win was largely driven by the then-population in the Gaza Strip (though it is falsely claimed today as a justification for collective punishment that most of Gaza’s population voted for Hamas, as half of Gaza’s population cannot vote even today, and many refugees were not present in 2006). The leader of Hamas’ political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, was elected by 76 out of 132 legislators as Prime Minister of Palestine.

First Hamas Government: Turmoil

Ismail Haniyeh was sworn in as the first elected Prime Minister of Palestine on 29 March 2006. As soon as Hamas formed a government under Haniyeh, international reactions soured with the Palestinian Authority. The United States of America had been supporting the Fatah-led government with funds and diplomatic aid through the Palestine Economic Development Group. The U.S did this in an effort to quell Hamas and bolster the Israel-Palestine reconciliation, which Fatah was spearheading. Members of the international community began to raise concerns about Hamas’ promises to fight in an ‘armed struggle’ against Israel.

Ismail Haniyeh’s government refused to recognize Israel and refused to continue the reconciliation that had started via the Oslo Accords claiming Israel had no intention of peace. Following this, the U.S, its European allies, Israel, and the United Nations pulled back aid to the Palestinian Authority and imposed sanctions on Ismail Haniyeh’s government.

The Hamas government had almost immediately been plunged into a financial and diplomatic crisis by international pressure and sanctions, demanding that Ismail Haniyeh and his Hamas ministers resign.

It wasn’t just international pressure, internally, Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas held the presidency and was supposed to share equal power with Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh. Two rival political parties tasked with sharing equal power in a government was exceptionally difficult.

Fatah did not want to be affiliated with the Hamas government, and therefore collaboration between the Presidential branch (Fatah) and the Prime Ministerial branch (Hamas) failed, as no new legislations or reforms happened—a political deadlock.

In June 2006, Hamas militants captured an Israeli soldier by the name of Gilad Shalit, in response, Israel launched the 2006 cross-border raid in which they abducted several Hamas officials and parliamentarians, even further worsening the Haniyeh government’s stability, with 25% of Palestinian parliamentarians being jailed by Israel.

The harsh sanctions imposed by the West on the Palestinian government, the Israeli blockade and seizure of Palestinian supply routes, as well as the power-sharing dispute with Fatah would weaken the Hamas government and bring it to the brink of collapse.

In September of 2006, it was decided that a unity government would be formed between Fatah and Hamas to end the crisis. Negotiations and reconciliation talks began on what the new unity government’s policies, mainly towards Israel would look like.

Between October and November 2006, the crisis worsened as Mahmoud Abbas proclaimed that the negotiations had reached a ‘dead end.’ Heavy firing across the Gaza Strip between Hamas militants and Fatah security erupted. On 11 October 2006, the fighting was officially, the worst Palestinian factional infighting in decades, as the threat of civil war between the two factions seemed increasingly like a reality. Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas attempted reconciliation talks in Damascus, Syria on 27 January 2007, but failed to come to an agreement.

To finally reach a lasting agreement, on 8 February 2007, an agreement was signed in Mecca and was heavily mediated by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashal agreed to form a unity government and stop Palestinian infighting.

In March of 2007, one year after the Hamas government of Ismail Haniyeh was formed, the government resigned due to pressure and agreed to form a unity government with Fatah.

Second Hamas Government: Lasting Unity?

The Mecca agreement had brought several peaceful resolutions to the Fatah-Hamas conflict including the halting of all on-ground skirmishes between Fatah and Hamas’ security and militant wings. The agreement also would allow Fatah and Hamas to form a joint cabinet, although the agreement was certainly not all good.

Firstly, Israel and several Western countries denounced the Mecca agreement as not being enough and said that Hamas should fully step down from power. Secondly, although internal bickering had stopped on ground, Ismail Haniyeh remained as Prime Minister, and Mahmoud Abbas remained President, with the top governmental ranks having little change.

Officially, as part of the unity talks, they were required to work together for a better, united Palestinian government, this would not work out, as the Fatah-Hamas deadlock from the last Haniyeh government continued to the second one.

A lack of trust between Fatah and Hamas government officials led to a breakdown in negotiations, as one group feared the other would overtake it. International pressure also increased as the U.S and Israel demanded that the unity government be dissolved, and Hamas completely removed from power.

Dispute over the Security Services

The Palestinian Security Services (PSS) are a collection of police, security, and armed forces who serve under the Palestinian Authority and are controlled by the President. A dispute erupted over who should control the PSS, with the Haniyeh government fearing that Mahmoud Abbas would use the PSS to target Hamas militants.

Another important Palestinian security force controlled by Fatah clashed with Hamas in the Gaza Strip known as the Palestinian Preventive Security. Since Palestine does not have a military, the PSS, which is comprised of the Presidential Guard, National Security Forces, Interior Security, and General Intelligence serve as the closest thing to Palestinian armed forces.

The government’s interior minister, Hani Talab al-Qawasmi, was denied the required handover of security forces, which stayed in the hands of Fatah, which led to his resignation. Hamas desperately wanted control over the security services, as it would expand the arsenal of Hamas’ militant wing, the Al-Qassam brigades, but mainly, Hamas feared that Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah would plan a wipeout of Hamas’ militant wing using the security services for a major crackdown. Hamas had reason to fear this as Mahmoud Abbas had planned a crackdown on Hamas several times prior.

In response to Fatah and Abbas denying the handover of security forces, Hamas created its own security force, known as the ‘Executive Force,’ which Abbas condemned as unconstitutional, increasing conflict even further. With Fatah and the President controlling the security services, the divide in the unity government deepened.

The Split

Between late 2006 and early 2007, the U.S gave $59 million to fund the build-up of Fatah security forces, though the George W. Bush administration officially classified this as non-lethal. Egypt, Israel, and other U.S allies also gave arms training to Palestinian security forces, mainly to ones in Gaza. Hamas, whose militant wing primarily operated in Gaza saw this as a major threat and began rapidly mobilizing as a response. The Palestinian Presidential Guard and National Security Forces began being positioned throughout the Gaza Strip in preparation for a takeover. While Hamas militants began being positioned to prepare to take over Fatah’s security positions.

On 10 June 2007 Hamas on-ground forces officially declared a pre-emptive takeover, gave the justification that Fatah planned to takeover first, and opened fire on Fatah security forces, starting the 2007 Battle of Gaza, in which Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a mere 5 days using militant tactics in urban centers.

A security lesson that can be learnt is that the West’s denial of Hamas to partake in a democratic government pushed it out of a legal structure and into militant control over democratic rule.

On 31 July 2024, Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated by an Israeli air attack while in Tehran. Haniyeh’s former adversary, Mahmoud Abbas, called his killing a “cowardly act and dangerous development” further stating:

“There is no doubt the purpose of Mr. Haniyeh’s assassination is to prolong the war and expand its scope.” — Mahmoud Abbas, President of Palestine, 2024

Today, the Palestinian Legislative Council is stagnant, no general elections have been held since Hamas’ 2007 upset. De-facto, Mahmoud Abbas has been President unopposed and has not held elections by enforcing emergency powers, reflecting his deep unpopularity with Palestinians for his cooperation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Meanwhile, the post of Prime Minister has also been unelected, though figures resisting Netanyahu’s government such as third Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh have emerged. The current premiership also is firmly under the grasp of Abbas’ pragmatic inaction on Israel.

It is May 2011, the streets of Syria are filled with hundreds of thousands of protesters which began demonstrations a month prior. As the Western world watches demonstrations grow in number against the Eastern-aligned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, he employs a high-risk Machiavellian strategy to survive the wave of protests that ousted his fellow Arab leaders.

The strategy? Abandon the standard autocrat’s playbook of complete crackdown and accept the protestors’ demands, but selectively. Bashar’s government held many political prisoners and protesters demanded their release. He selectively released members of extremist groups including future leaders of Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, Jabhat al-Nusra, and even ISIS. Why would a secular autocrat release droves of extremists who opposed him from prisons as his rule was already facing massive dissent? Well, that is where Bashar al-Assad played his deadly gambit.

Background: Demonstrations

On 15 March 2011, the protests had reached their highest point during the “Day of Rage,” where thousands of Syrians took to the streets in an attempt to force Bashar to resign just a month after Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak caved in to protesters. Bashar responded with a standard autocrat’s playbook: three days later he launched a suppressive military crackdown on protesters in the city of Daraa and began police arrests in big cities. However, the crackdown caused the protesters to multiply in number as the demonstrations entered their second month.

Opposition groups were diverse in their goals; many were inspired by the ongoing Arab Spring and sought Bashar’s deposition for a new democratic system, while some simply sought economic reforms under Bashar and others had sectarian and ethnic goals.

The Strategy at Play

On 31 May 2011, Bashar issued a Presidential decree labeled Legislative Decree No. 61 to grant a general amnesty for all political crimes committed prior to that date. On paper, it appeared to be a general pardon as a major concession to the protesters’ demands. In reality, it was a highly strategic injection of radicalism into what the West viewed as a sea of democratic and moderate protesters. It was followed by Legislative Decree No. 72, which expanded the amnesty to civil crimes and saw many from the Sednaya military prison released.

As the doors of the notorious Sednaya prison swung open, Bashar did not release the secular students, journalists, or human rights lawyers who had organized the initial uprisings. Instead, the Mukhabarat (Syrian intelligence) unleashed hundreds of hardened self-proclaimed Salafi-jihadists, Al-Qaeda veterans who had previously been funneled from Iraq, and radical ideologues.

Among those freed were men like Zahran Alloush, who would go on to found Jaysh al-Islam, and Hassan Aboud, the future leader of Ahrar al-Sham. By simultaneously hunting down the moderate, democratic voices in the streets while releasing disciplined extremists into the power vacuum, Bashar engineered a hostile takeover of his own country’s revolution. He knew that these extremists would quickly organize and outgun the more moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA), and hijack the narrative of the rebellion.

Moreover, with the Syrian opposition being made up of extremist Al-Qaeda related elements and self-described Islamists, it would be extremely difficult for Western governments to support the revolt against Bashar with weaponry. The ousting of the pro-Russian autocrat Bashar would have been both a geopolitical and public relations victory for the West, but Bashar’s prisoner release strategy tainted his rebellion and prevented the West from providing major military support to the now Al-Qaeda affiliate entrenched rebels.

List of major prisoners released

Zahran Alloush: A self-described Salafi preacher imprisoned in 2009 for weapons possession. Upon release, he founded Liwa al-Islam (which later expanded into Jaysh al-Islam). The militant group became the authoritarian faction controlling the Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus. He was killed in a 2015 airstrike.

Hassan Aboud: Widely known as a radical, he had been imprisoned in Sednaya for years. Shortly after Bashar released him in the amnesties, he founded Ahrar al-Sham, which quickly grew into one of the largest and most organized self-declared “jihadist” coalitions in northern Syria. He died in a 2014 bomb attack.

Ahmad Issa al-Sheikh: Imprisoned in Sednaya in 2004 alongside his brothers. Released in the 2011 amnesties, he immediately went to the Idlib province and founded the Suqour al-Sham Brigade. While not near to the extremes of Al-Qaeda, their desire to establish a state on Islamic principles made them hard to gain the secular West’s support. Issa actually stood as a fierce opponent of ISIS and was the leader of the Islamic Front.

Amr al-Absi: An extremist who had been held in Sednaya since 2007. After his release in 2011, he became one of the earliest and highest-ranking figures to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He eventually served as the ISIS provincial governor of Aleppo and was instrumental in shaping the terror group’s early media and kidnapping strategies. He was killed in a 2016 airstrike.

Ali Musa al-Hawikh: A wanted terrorist released from Sednaya in the 2011 amnesties. He joined the Islamic State and rose to become the ISIS governor of Raqqa (the terror group’s de-facto capital), overseeing extreme brutality and executions. He was killed in a 2018 airstrike.

Effectiveness and Aftermath

Bashar’s calculated risk was devastatingly effective within a year. The rebellion composed mostly of democratic and moderate activists became increasingly controlled by radical Al-Qaeda affiliates and offshoots. By 2013, Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, Jabhat al-Nusra, became the single largest force in the rebellion, clashing with the moderate FSA.

In 2014, ISIS separated from the rebellion entirely and became a worldwide threat as the West’s attention shifted from Bashar to ISIS and both the U.S and Russia directly intervened in Syria to fight ISIS. More importantly, by 2015 the War on ISIS marked the complete fragmentation of the Syrian revolution against Bashar, which went from an attempted overthrow of an autocrat and repeat of Tahrir Square to now become a struggle between the smaller Free Syrian Army outmatched by an extreme Jabhat al-Nusra, which was outmatched by an even more extreme ISIS.

In a June 2014 statement, U.S President Barack Obama addressed the rise in extremist elements such as ISIS in the Syrian rebellion, the same rebellion he declared support for. Obama called the idea that moderate and democratic activists could defeat both Bashar’s government and Al-Qaeda extremists a “fantasy,” and said most of the activists were “former farmers or teachers or pharmacists” who had no way of defeating the Syrian Armed Forces and hardened terror groups even with Western arms.

Bashar was asked in a 2015 BBC interview on the purposeful targeting of moderate and democratic opposition and the less harsh crackdown on groups such as ISIS and al-Nusra. He responded by calling this assumption unrealistic that his government was purposely shooting itself in the foot:

Accuracy

It is important to distinguish between biased and unbiased reports on Bashar al-Assad, as Western and Eastern narratives frequently clash on the accuracy of reports regarding his government’s actions. However, the substantive amount of evidence such as the specific names Bashar’s own decree released from prison is viewed as intentionally trying to tinge the rebellion against him with extremists. Hence, even analysts wary of Western think tanks can see Bashar’s intentional prisoner release strategy of 2011.

Bashar consistently denied that the rebellion against him was ever moderate or democratic claiming it was violent and extremist from day one, and that his troops were killed in the early days of protests and fired back, though this argument is unequivocally denied by many human rights groups.

The reality tells a different story from Bashar’s interview; he did not shoot himself in the foot, he shot the Syrian revolution in the heart. By weaponizing the protesters’ demands to release a select few of extremists, he successfully transformed a one-sided fight against a dynastic autocracy into a multifaceted war on terror with him on the side against terrorism, ensuring that the international community would prefer the survival of his government over the chaotic alternative (ISIS/Al-Qaeda) he helped create.

In the end, even when Syria’s anti-Bashar opposition won the war in 2024 after a grueling 13 years, the lead faction was not the secular Free Syrian Army, the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, or the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, but it was Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, a militant umbrella group housing Jabhat al-Nusra and formerly classified as a terrorist group. Even as Bashar spends his days in Moscow, his strategy is still agitating Western observers to this day, as many criticize the support for Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former wanted Al-Qaeda commander serving as Syria’s new President and visiting the White House.

Today in 2026 AD, it is common to hear the phrase “Islamic law,” or “Islamic state.” Many governments and groups ranging from modern republics like Pakistan and Iran, absolute monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Oman, to medieval empires such as the Ottomans and Abbasids, and even 21st century terror groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda, have declared their legal framework as an “Islamic government.” Many in the West, and even some Muslims, per availability heuristic do not know what a real Islamic government should look like, and assume Sharia (referring to Islamic law) is the same ideology implemented by extremists such as ISIS in their territories. Further back, many point to examples such as ostentatious Ottoman sultans, brutal Timurid conquerors, and in modern times, dictatorships in the Middle East and regression in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

But many forget that from 622–632 AD, there was a principal Islamic government that is considered by all Muslims to be an undisputed accurate representation of what Islamic governance should look like. This state would be the First Islamic State, also called the Medina state, which would be led by Islam’s last prophet himself, Muhammad ﷺ. It predates sectarian divides such as Shia and Sunni, and is considered by Muslims as a divine role model for governance.

Contrary to popular belief, the Islamic state of Medina was not detailed only by theological sources but extensive historical evidence shows realist Early Middle Ages governance. The state was governed by the Charter of Medina, considered by historians as the world’s first constitution including religion and politics, as well as one of the world’s first written constitutions. The constitution maintained peace between the warring tribes of Arabia involved in blood-feuds while also establishing religious tolerance between Muslims, Jews, and Pagans who inhabited the First Islamic State.

Government model

While not the 500s BC Athenian voting democracy, the Medina state was overseen by the core principle of Shura, a concept in Islamic law of public consensus on decision-making and a form of referendum. Despite being revered as the Prophet of God by most of the state’s constituents, historical accounts record that Muhammad ﷺ frequently sought public consultation on decisions and military campaigns, particularly among the Muslims, and through the Charter of Medina, other religious groups such as Jews and Pagans were also consulted on major decisions. Furthermore, a voting-based democracy was not present as Muhammad ﷺ already held popular will.

The First Islamic State notably saw an alliance with the Jewish tribes of Banu Nadir, Banu Qaynuqa, and Banu Qurayza which eventually strained into conflict over political and military issues regarding the breaching of defense pacts.

Social policy

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ’s ten-year rule over the enclaves of Arabia, namely Hejaz and Oman, saw the implementation of a social welfare system called Zakat, a percentage tax Muslims had to give as a form of charity to help those in need, mainly orphans, widows, and beggars.

He also reversed many regressive norms held by tribes, such as female infanticide and tribal blood feuds. He introduced the right of women to get married and divorced at their own will and the right to own property. While these rights are considered bare minimum today, it is a general consensus of historians that this was revolutionary compared to pre-Islamic Arabia.

“The best of Jihad is a word of justice before an oppressive ruler.” — Islamic Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, recorded in Sunan Abu Dawud 4344, also in Al-Khisal Part 1, Chapter 14

In 622 AD, a flood of Meccan refugees (Muhajirun) who faced persecution under the Pagan Quraish administration fled to the neighboring city of Medina. In response, Muhammad ﷺ established Mawakhat, a system where refugees would be paired with inhabitants of Medina (Ansar) for financial and social protection. Today, Muslim nations such as Iran and Pakistan have admitted a great number of refugees, representing the Islamic theological importance of Aman (caring for migrants and displaced persons). Mosques also served as a primary civic infrastructure for Zakat and food distribution, which is present in many Muslim communities at a local level even today.

Islamic economics

Under the Medina state, interest payments (known as Riba in Arabic) were strictly abolished in state and local level transactions, which had previously served a major role in Mecca’s merchant trade. While the common reasoning for this is theological (Quran 2:275), modern Muslim economists have researched on interest payments and their correlation with increase in wealth inequality and poverty.

Unsurprisingly, most modern Muslim-majority states do not abolish interest rates as they are a fundamental part of post-globalization capitalist economics.

Another taxation system employed by the First Islamic State was Jizya, a tax specifically for non-Muslims in return for protection and inhabitance in Muslim lands as well as exemption from conscription. Unlike Zakat, Jizya would go to the central treasury rather than charity. Many later Muslim empires including the Mughals and Ottomans used a system of Jizya which indirectly encouraged conversions to Islam without forced conversion. However, the practice is considered incompatible with modern citizenship and therefore is not present in any country today.

Foreign policy

In foreign policy, the First Islamic State was born out of war between the early Muslims and the wealthy ruling Meccan tribe of the Quraish. The Muslims adopted a moral approach to not attack unless attacked, and Muhammad ﷺ promoted written peace treaties during wartime. In 628 AD, the Treaty of al-Hudaybiya was signed between the Muslims and the Quraish to establish a truce for 10 years. Theological sources state the Quraish violated it resulting in the restoration of conflict which the Muslims swiftly won.

Prior to the Islamic conquest of Mecca, Muhammad ﷺ established the rules of war for Islamic armies which was later codified after his death:

• Feed captives with what you eat, and clothe them with what you wear

• Do not harm noncombatants (then primarily included women, children, and the elderly)

• Do not harm monks or scholars

• Do not cut down fruit-bearing trees

• Do not strike the face

• Do not engage in indiscriminate attacks

• Do not kill or harm animals except for food

Historical sources document that the Quraish persecuted early Muslims as they perceived a religion contradictory to Pagan beliefs as an economic threat, however the Muslim conquest did not have the same reciprocity, instead advocating for a peaceful transition of power. The First Islamic State set up provisions to protect prisoners of war and shielded widows from forced marriages and losing inheritance rights.

Muhammad ﷺ also wrote a letter to Heraclius, the emperor of the Byzantine Empire and the most powerful leader of the Christian and Western world at the time, inviting him to embrace Islam. Tradition holds that the Orthodox Christian emperor investigated Muhammad ﷺ, and found him to have qualities of a true prophet. The foreign policy and the social order of the First Islamic State of Medina were limited by its existence in the 7th century, and its replication in modern day Muslim nations is a difficult task.

Implementation

Today, around 50 countries have Muslim-majority populations, out of these, 27 declare Islam as their state religion, and five major nations (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania) declare their government systems as Islamic law.

Afghanistan’s establishment as an Islamic Emirate following the Taliban takeover has amassed skepticism to how an Islamic state should be implemented. The Taliban does not claim to follow the First Islamic State’s model and instead claims to follow a literalist approach to Islamic holy texts. However, even in this system, analysts document that the Taliban’s “Islamic Emirate” is not an attempt to create an authentic Islamic state and its governance is heavily influenced by Pashtunwali, a fundamentalist set of tribal codes which predate Islam’s arrival to the region. The decision to ban girls’ and women’s education was not based on Islamic law but on tribal laws, and was globally criticized by Muslim scholars, as theologically, education is set as a responsibility and right for both Muslim men and women in Islam.

Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran all follow sects and movements within Islam, with Afghanistan being governed by a Wahhabi-influenced literalist interpretation of the Deobandi religious movement of the Sunni sect, Saudi Arabia governed by the Hanbali school of the Sunni sect also rooted in Wahhabism, and Iran being governed by the Jafari school of the Twelver Shia sect. The nations’ heavy reliance on post-Medina state theological divisions within Islam makes it difficult to implement the Islamic system of the time. Additionally, Western think tanks classify these nations as authoritarian states, which contradicts the Medina state’s governing principle of Shura (public consultation with leaders).

Pakistan and Mauritania are both democracies on paper which betters their image as nations of Shura, yet both face massive issues with corruption and political instability. Both countries officially follow Islam as their state religion without specific sects or schools. Mauritania in particular is one of the few countries alongside Saudi Arabia, Comoros, and the Maldives that mandates its citizens and the vast majority of its inhabitants to be Muslim, in contrast to the Medina state’s emphasis on religious pluralism in population.

Another example of where implementation gets messy with Islamic law and the Medina state’s example is that in Afghanistan and Iran, hijab for women is mandatory in public settings as part of a penal code, with punishments enforced for violations. However, the Medina state did not carry a rigid dress code or any punishments for hijab compliance. While modern Muslim states make global headlines policing the hijab, the original 7th-century Islamic state lacked a penal code for it entirely.

Many nations have adopted assemblies and courts to dictate the implementation of Sharia in various matters, including the Federal Shariat Court in Pakistan and the Syariah Courts in Malaysia and Singapore.

In recent years, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan popularized political rhetoric in Pakistan to model the nation’s governance after the Riyasat-e-Madina (Medina state in Urdu). His government saw the largest welfare program in the country’s history, the Ehsaas Program, and the Sehat Sahulat Program, a health insurance system. His short-lived reign was criticized by some as religious framing for populism amid economic woes due to COVID-19, while his ideological stance was based on a modern implementation of the 7th century social system prioritizing welfarism. The current Pakistani government has established a deadline for removing interest in its state bank by 2027, reflecting an attempt at implementing Islamic economics.

Imran Khan stated that the closest nations to the First Islamic State are actually the Scandinavian countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark) due to their advanced social safety and rule of law which successfully takes care of orphans and the impoverished.

While Donald Trump’s threats have kept global attention fixated on the logistics of a maritime invasion of Southern Iran, Washington’s real leverage points are being quietly assembled along Tehran’s northern land borders. Theorizing an invasion, many geopolitical analysts jumped to the Kharg Island, a relatively small island 25 kilometers off the coast of Iran, situated close to Saudi Arabia. But many overlook that Iran has lengthy borders with seven different countries, including a 534-kilometer border with NATO alliance member Turkey and a 689-kilometer border with Turkey’s close ally, Azerbaijan. One of Tehran’s fears is that its own Azeri population upwards of 20 million could act as a fifth column if conflict were to occur with Azerbaijan.

Moreover, since 2020, Baku has increased its cooperation with Israel for military assistance, and by extension the United States. This, paired with the fact that in March 2026, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev threatened a retaliation for Iran’s border crossfire, which has not yet happened, makes the Caucasus a focal point for a possible frontier. In a developing situation, reports have shown that Azerbaijani soil is being used to conduct intelligence by Israel against neighboring Iran.

U.S.—Russia Cold War in the Caucasus

In August 2025, Donald Trump negotiated the Armenia–Azerbaijan peace deal, a development that stood in contrast to Moscow’s historic influence in the Caucasus region. While Russia fights a stalemate in Ukraine, a year prior to the Iran war Washington quietly outmaneuvered both Moscow and Tehran for influence over the Caucasus through the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a reconciliation program between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In the 2020 Azerbaijan-Armenia war, as covered in Modern Wars, Vladimir Putin prioritized not displeasing Azerbaijan over helping its CSTO ally, Armenia. He did so to stick to his strategy of maintaining influence in post-Soviet territories and avoiding hostile neighbors. Moscow mediated talks between the two countries in 1994, 2020, and 2023, though the 2025 agreement shows an interest by Washington in the region. In 2009, Russia’s chief of its Chechnya region accused the CIA of causing instability by backing terror groups, highlighting background tensions between America and Russia over the Caucasus, a chokehold region of Eurasia.

Today, Russia’s relations with Azerbaijan have strained despite the former’s attempts to become a neutral mediator. Armenia’s ties with Russia have also strained due to its lack of support during the 2020 and 2023 wars, which even resulted in Armenia’s withdrawal from CSTO. This gap in influence has allowed America to sweep in and influence both countries with a new TRIPP program.

Two Muslim Giants: Turkey and Iran

Conflict between the West and Iran takes place on its southern underbelly, the Persian Gulf, surrounded by American-allied Muslim Gulf countries. However, the elephant in the room is that Iran shares a 534-kilometer border with Turkey, one of the militarily strongest members of America’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Yet Turkey has not taken any action against Iran. This pragmatic coexistence between Ankara and Tehran is not a new one. For centuries, the Ottoman and Safavid Empires maintained diplomacy despite mutual tensions. Attrition wars between the Persians and Turks over the centuries culminated in this stalemate. Today, Turkey heavily relies on Iranian natural gas through the Tabriz–Ankara pipeline and is one of Iran’s biggest trade partners. In turn, Iran imports machinery and electronics from Turkey. The two countries faced tensions in the Syrian Civil War for backing completely different sides, though any direct conflict has not happened.

The Turkish side of the Iran—Turkey border wall, 2021

Despite their completely opposing official factions, Turkey and Iran are deeply economically interdependent. Turkey has low incentive to join in any military action against Iran, despite American drones stationed at Incirlik Air Base. The United States is already displeased with Tayyip Erdogan for his purchasing of Russian military equipment and Ankara’s independent, non-NATO oriented diplomacy.

However, the cooperative rivalry between Turkey and Iran is completely different from the brotherly relationship between Turkey and Azerbaijan. Turkey essentially guarantees Azerbaijan defense against foreign powers, and notably had a decisive role against their shared rival Armenia in 2020 and 2023.

Iran, Azerbaijan, and Armenia

Iran’s relationship with Armenia is characterized by strategic partnership. While the two nations have no signed defense treaties, and they follow completely different religions (Armenia is the world’s first Christian state while Iran is a Muslim theocracy), their relations are generally amicable. Historically, Iran attempted to act as a mediator between the fellow Shia Muslim Azerbaijan and Armenia but recent developments have increased geopolitical necessity for closer Armenia—Iran relations. On 9 April 2025, Iran and Armenia held their first joint military exercise on the border town of Nurduz. The two nations also signed trade deals that would create increased economic interdependence between the two countries under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2025.

Meanwhile, Iran’s historic relationship with Azerbaijan is not one of open conflict or taunts, but that of strained ties and quiet avoidance. Azerbaijan’s growing partnership with the West has contributed to a decline in relations with Iran. Azerbaijan provided significant support to the U.S. during the War in Afghanistan since 2002. Further policies, such as being a NATO Partner for Peace, made Azerbaijan’s Western leaning clear. Despite both nations being deeply Shia Muslim majorities, relations deteriorated due to completely diverging regional interests.

Azerbaijan and Israel: Unlikely Friends

Israeli Prime Minister Isaac Herzog with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in 2024

In 2011, Azerbaijan began strengthening ties with Israel, while at the same time Iran-Israel tensions were rising. A year later, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Intelligence Service thwarted threats against Israeli diplomats in the capital Baku believed to be affiliated with Iran. Tensions culminated in Azerbaijan signing a $1.6 billion arms deal with Israel and doubling down on its alliance. A decade of close partnership culminated in March 2023, when Azerbaijan opened an embassy in Tel Aviv. Israel is also highly dependent on Azerbaijani crude oil, with a 2025 report estimating that 40% of Israel’s oil during the Gaza war was supplied by Azerbaijan. Among Muslim majority nations, Azerbaijan represents an outsider, with it being one of Israel’s closest allies in the region.

Aralık and Zangezur Corridors

Zoomed in on the four-country border, with Turkey’s Aralık district connecting to Azerbaijan

The political geography of the Iran—Azerbaijan—Armenia—Turkey border is that Iran shares two borders with Azerbaijan due to Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan enclave but one with Armenia. This is because Turkey’s Aralık district is a thin strip that connects Turkey to Azerbaijan, and separates a second border between Iran and Armenia by 2.5 kilometers. Iran and Armenia meanwhile, share a mere 44-kilometer border. The border between Azerbaijan (through its Nakhchivan enclave) and Turkey is a mere 17 kilometers and was established in a 1932 treaty to ensure that the two friendly Turkic nations can have a land connection.

The connection between the two countries would be further amplified by the Zangezur Corridor proposal which, if implemented, would de-facto sever any land connection between Iran and Armenia. Originally conceived after the 2020 war, it is a planned railway and highway free of Armenian customs between mainland Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan enclave, which would, by extension, create a connection between mainland Azerbaijan and Turkey. It is a continuation of the historic Turkish–Azeri blockade of Armenia. First imposed in 1991, it contributed to major economic losses in Armenia.

OSINT: Iran-Azerbaijan Border

On 5 March 2026, two one-way drones struck a terminal at the Nakhchivan International Airport in Azerbaijan. Just kilometers away from the border, the drones were reported by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence to be Iranian. The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, vowed retaliation after four people were injured in the strike. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran had not attacked Azerbaijan and claimed it was a false flag attack by Israel. Azerbaijan meanwhile, claimed it foiled a terrorist attack by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). All Azeri border personnel scheduled to leave were put on hold, and several top agencies were put on high alert. A buildup of border troops by Azerbaijan was reported by multiple outlets. This new development marks a complete contrast to Azerbaijan’s initial attitude at the start of the war, where Ilham Aliyev visited the Iranian consulate and offered condolences for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s assassination. Azerbaijan agreed not to retaliate after Iran agreed to pursue an investigation into the incident. The two nations have stalled strikes and have opted for dialogue. Following the 5 March strike, Azerbaijan withdrew its diplomatic envoy from Tehran in protest but has since partially returned them.

Map of the border between Iran (green) and Azerbaijan (blue), at the Aras Dam Lake, showing the distance between Iran and the March 2026 struck Nakhchivan International Airport

Despite tensions, Iran and Azerbaijan actually share the 44MW Aras Dam, which splits 50% into each nation. Parsabad is a likely center of conflict and an area to watch for intelligence. It is the northernmost city in Iran, with a population of nearly one hundred thousand which stretches deep into Azerbaijan.

As of writing this article, a new development has taken place where CNN has reported Azerbaijani soil is being used by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) for active covert operations to surveil Iran. The report, published by Tal Shalev and Tim Lister, claims Israeli assets were positioned in southern Azerbaijan, 96 kilometers north of the major Iranian city of Tabriz. The city is one of the hardest hit by Israeli and American airstrikes and has weakened the logistical hub of Iran’s northwest. Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry and representatives in Tel Aviv and Washington called the report “entirely baseless” and called for its retraction.

More importantly, a Times of Israel article claimed that the network of Israeli intelligence in Azerbaijan was used to assassinate Rahman Moqadam, Chief of the IRGC’s Special Operations Division. Israel and Azerbaijan also signed the Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Agreement on 3 February 2026. While it sounds like a trivial technology partnership between two friendly nations, it also allows for data sharing for military intelligence.

Another important aspect is Iraqi Kurdistan and its armed group, the Peshmerga. The group frequently clashes with the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq and Iran has direct military hostility with the Peshmerga, which sits at its border. Not surprisingly, Iraqi Kurdistan has a close military partnership with Israel, and expanded relations with Azerbaijan at the 2023 Munich Security Conference.

Strategic Implications

Iran’s borders with seven countries will likely be closely monitored by Western administrations in the future. Its border with Pakistan faced mutual rocket strikes in 2024, though Islamabad’s mediating position makes any threat unlikely. Iraq remains destabilized, and any Western attempt to use it to attack Iran would likely trigger a bloody civil war, as Tehran’s carefully placed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) wield significant influence in the country. Other regions such as Afghanistan and Turkmenistan remain highly isolated and therefore completely uninvolved in the situation. Turkey and Iran have centuries of stalemate and have little incentive to attack one another. That leaves Iran’s border with Azerbaijan to be a possible flashpoint.

Still, both nations have strategic reasons to not engage in conflict with Iran, notably the fact that Azerbaijan’s close ally Turkey and Iran are major trading partners. However, Azerbaijan’s closeness to Israel and the United States, as well as Iran’s relationship with Armenia could change the calculus.

The Caucasus are a geopolitical spider web at the moment, with Russia, the United States, Iran, and Turkey all having converging stakes on Azerbaijan and Armenia. Overall, reports of intelligence gathering and military buildup on the Azerbaijan—Iran border have been growing, though time will tell whether a military conflict or a skirmish will happen.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev with deceased Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, 2022

Mojtaba, 56, takes the reins of Supreme Leader, succeeding his father as the third person to hold the position

On 8 March 2026, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s 88-strong Assembly of Experts elected 56-year old Hujjat al-Islam Seyyed Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, the second eldest of the previous assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Mojtaba is recognized as one of the hardline members of the conservative Principlist faction and is an opponent of the liberal Reformist faction of the country. Analysts consider this as bad news for the country’s liberal protesters hoping for regime change. Mojtaba’s older brother and Ali Khamenei’s eldest son, Mostafa Khamenei was not considered for the role of Supreme Leader due to his lower ranking status as a cleric and focus on religious scholarship instead of Mojtaba’s focus on deep military-political connections to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The current Assembly of Experts, which was elected in 2024, is made up of a vast majority of Principlists (59) and only one Reformist, being the most conservative assembly in recent years. The United States and Israel’s strikes on Iran, hoping for “regime change”—have seemed to backfire similar to its War in Afghanistan, where the United States fought a 20-year bloody war just to replace the Taliban with a more adamant and emboldened Taliban.

On social media, supporters of the war mocked the late Khamenei for dying in American strikes so quickly. However, the truth remains that Khamenei was 86-years old, paralyzed in one arm, and reports of his near-death began in 2022. In fact, in the 2016 Assembly of Experts election, Ali Khamenei himself admitted that by the next elections (2024), he would likely be dead. Khamenei often said in religious speeches that it was his dream of being martyred and that dying of natural causes was a major fear of his. The United States and Israel assassinated Ali Khamenei hoping for “regime change.” All the strikes achieved was granting the ailing 86-year old his wish of martyrdom by the “Zionist oppressor state,” and gave way and sympathy to his son Mojtaba Khamenei. He is more hardline, anti-Western dialogue, wants nuclear weapons, close to the IRGC, and is seeking revenge for his family’s killing.

Moreover, America’s interventions in both Iran and Afghanistan have one common theme: uniting its opponents. When the United States intervened in 2001 in Afghanistan, the Taliban was facing internal dissent and a quasi-civil war with the Northern Alliance made up of other Afghan tribes. However, after the American invasion it became America versus the Taliban instead of Northern Alliance versus the Taliban and from there it became, in the eyes of many Afghan locals, America versus Afghanistan. The Iran protests of 2025-2026 are widely considered organic domestic protests due to dissatisfaction with the current government by Iranians, amid concerns of authoritarianism and economic woes. However, America and Israel’s bombing campaign over Iran in 2026 has divided the Iranian opposition, largely made of diaspora, over the war.

The Unifying Effect

In 1965, the United States intervened in Vietnam to back South Vietnam against the Communist north. A civil war between the north and south had already been raging for a decade and the US involvement was expected to bring a quick end to the war. In its haste, the United States used a destructive napalm bombing campaign on Indochina which allowed the North Vietnamese narrative to turn the war from South versus North Vietnam into America versus the Vietnamese people. In 2001, the United States occupied Afghanistan and to defeat the remaining Taliban militants, launched a deadly drone strike campaign in Pakistan and Afghanistan to which CIA counterterrorism head Robert Grenier said “We are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield.” Today, to “aid” the domestic protests in Iran, the US and Israel have launched an urban bombing campaign over Tehran and major Iranian cities, resulting in widespread civilian casualties. The issue is seen in all three of these wars: aerial bombing campaigns do not discriminate between populations, ultimately failing as a US government policy. Many of the Iranian civilians killed could have been opposition voices or protesters, but above all, they are noncombatants.

When Mojtaba Khamenei was originally suggested by some as the next Supreme Leader, analysts expected a strong reaction from within Iran’s clergy and the Majles (parliament) which is made up of powerful clerics, as passing power through lineage between the Khamenei family would be highly unpopular and would be symbolic of the Shah’s monarchy. However it appears since US President Donald Trump warned of appointing a supreme leader without his consent, and specifically singled out Mojtaba, Iran’s clerics, in an in-your-face move to the United States, unanimously elected Mojtaba to oppose the United States.

But the United States and Israel did not fail to see this coming. In fact, a geopolitical strategy integrating reverse psychology has been used for decades in the Middle East. As I covered in Modern Wars, in Syria, 2011, autocrat Bashar al-Assad released thousands of political prisoners to supposedly accept protesters’ demands. However, Western media noticed that most of those released weren’t liberal activists but extremist militants with connections to Al-Qaeda, who were being released and openly joining the rebellion against him. This way, he tainted the rebellion with extremists, which allowed him to receive sympathy from minorities and secularists. Today, Trump dismisses all questions of civilian casualties in Iran with the fact that the US is willing to go to dire measures to ensure the Iranian government does not acquire a nuclear weapon. However, as Joe Kent, Trump’s former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, points out: Iran was likely not trying to create a nuclear weapon under Ali Khamenei, as he had issued a religious decree against it since 2003. Now, Mojtaba has not only expressed willingness to do so, but some Iranians see the need for a nuclear deterrent due to the bombing campaign on Iran. While it is unlikely, it is a chilling possibility in realpolitik to have the United States and Israel aiming to agitate the Iranian government to an extent that it becomes made up of extremist hardliners who intend to develop a nuclear weapon, to then have a casus belli to launch a kinetic invasion of the country.

Iran’s clergy and government had two ways of ensuring the “Islamic Republic” survived the domestic opposition and foreign war: Either swing to the Reformists and implement liberal policies similar to former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, appeasing protesters’ demands and allowing for reform within Iran while maintaining the clergy, or swing even further to the far-right and electing a Principlist hardliner who the West is guaranteed to oppose—it appears the clergy has overwhelmingly picked the latter.

As expected, the war has paused partisan infighting in Iran and unified its leadership: Even the most liberal president and Reformist faction leader, Mohammad Khatami, has endorsed Mojtaba’s election, calling for unity.

“The election of the third leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, at a time of comprehensive war that also seeks to dismantle the country’s governance structure, has created hope and legitimate expectations among the people that the nation’s future must be built upon vital priorities… our armed forces are bravely defending the homeland, and our patient people are confronting this aggression with resilience.”

— Mohammad Khatami, former President of Iran and leader of the Iranian Reformists, 2026. Source.

The Man and his Policies

Not much is known about Mojtaba, yet he is considered by analysts as more conservative and anti-West than his father. He has held quite a private life, with there being almost no public videos of him speaking. While Ali Khamenei issued a strict religious ruling (fatwa) forbidding the production of nuclear weapons by Iran, Mojtaba criticized his own father’s ruling, saying Iran should have nuclear weapons. Ali was open to negotiations with the West, notably the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, while Mojtaba, who recently had his father, wife, and son killed by American airstrikes, is almost certainly opposed to dialogue with the West.

What is known about Mojtaba’s background points to a rigid member of the status quo; born in Mashhad near Turkmenistan, he was a teacher of advanced jurisprudence at the Qom Seminary, Iran’s largest Shia Muslim school. During his education in religious and legal practice, he was taught by major clerics considered to be loyalists to the Iranian Revolution’s Velâyat-e-Faqih ideology around Ruhollah Khomeini. He joined the IRGC at just 17 years old in 1987 and personally participated in the Iran-Iraq War while his father was President. He supported controversial far-right president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his 2005–2013 presidency, allegedly leading the bloody Basij crackdown of Green Movement protesters in the aftermath of the 2009 presidential election in Iran. The Basij is considered one of the most brutal militias and some insider reports state Mojtaba was its de-facto figurehead.

Mojtaba (second from right) at the Qom Seminary in March 2016

Mojtaba is likely to continue his father’s policies in general, though with more focus on combating the United States and Israel through military action and continuing the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. His domestic policy is likely also influenced by his father as well as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s conservatism. His acceptance of a Reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, suggests that he might not be as hardline as some early predictions show, though his stance on the nuclear program of Iran will be the definitive flashpoint for the future.

“My dear brothers in arms! What the Iranian people want is the continuation of an effective defence that makes the enemy regret. Furthermore, the leverage of closing the Strait of Hormuz must definitely continue to be utilised. Studies have been conducted regarding opening other fronts where the enemy has minimal experience and where it would be highly vulnerable. Should the war continue, activation of such fronts will be carried out based on certain interests.”

— Mojtaba Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, 2026. Source.

Map of Iran by the Library of Congress, 1996

Imran Khan with tribal chieftains in Pakistan’s tribal belt, circa 1993

No, no, this isn’t a case supportive of the Taliban, let’s be clear—the Taliban and its offshoots have been involved in vicious terrorism, killing thousands of innocents, and have imposed extremist laws, particularly against women throughout their rule. This is the curious case of Imran Khan, Pakistan’s famous cricketer-turned-politician who has been long criticized for his allegedly soft stance on the terrorist group. This mainly stems from Khan’s fierce criticism of the American government’s actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan, calling the campaign against the Taliban an “American War” that Pakistan should never have joined.

With the Fall of Kabul in August 2021, America’s failed 20-year-long campaign left thousands of innocents killed in collateral damage, but the Taliban was stronger than ever and in charge of Afghanistan once more. Following this, many have begun to question whether the policy toward the Taliban should have been reevaluated. As research by Brown University’s Costs of War project shows, the policy of military operations and drone strikes by the American and Pakistani governments strengthened the Taliban with seized military equipment, and even caused the group to grow in size, with many victims of collateral damage joining the Taliban in sympathy. Khan had been calling for an end to this since before the insurgency in Pakistan began.

Contrary to popular belief, Khan has condemned the Taliban as a “terrorist group,” specifically stating that anyone who kills innocent civilians is a terrorist, in a 2016 interview with Al Jazeera. In 2012, the Pakistani Taliban, officially the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), threatened to assassinate Imran Khan and attack his party’s protests, which Khan laughed at in response. So why the “Taliban Khan” label?

Many statements of his have been criticized as pro-Taliban; for instance, after the Fall of Kabul, he stated that Afghans had “broken the shackles of slavery.” A notable event his critics cite is that in 2014, the TTP nominated Khan to be a negotiator on their behalf with the Pakistani government, an offer which Khan refused. What is Khan’s actual stance in his own words on the terrorist insurgency, and why has it been long misunderstood?

Understanding Khan’s Argument

Imran Khan’s policy towards what he calls the “Taliban syndrome,” put simply, is a negotiated political settlement instead of military action. Described as a pacifist stance, the policy of peace talks with the Taliban was not created by Khan, and his main opponent, the Pakistan Muslim League (N), pursued major talks with the group in the early 2010s. However, Khan’s stance in particular is complex.

Khan’s main point, seen in a 2016 Al Jazeera interview, is that there were no militant Taliban in Pakistan at the time of 9/11; in fact, the first Taliban in Pakistan appeared after the American drone strike campaign started in 2004. According to him, the Afghan Taliban is an organic insurgency in Afghanistan which cannot be destroyed by military force and therefore must be negotiated with. Meanwhile, he holds a much more adversarial relationship with the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), supporting some military and police operations against them in the past. However, he asserts that the TTP exists in the first place because of America’s drone strike campaign and Pakistan’s deployment of military into the sensitive tribal areas. He argues that the state cannot solve the issue of the TTP by continuing its root cause, military operations.

Khan claims that around 95% of the TTP are Pakistan’s tribal people agitated by military operations and only 5% are hardline ideological terrorists.

Khan talks about his stance on the Taliban to Mehdi Hasan in an Al Jazeera interview, 2016

In 2004, Khan predicted that if the Pakistan Armed Forces were sent into the then-Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to fight the Afghan Taliban alongside the United States, they would be “stuck there forever.” He strongly warned against sending in the military, saying it would provoke a reaction from local tribesmen who might take up arms and launch an insurgency. He pointed to the centuries-old agreements against centralized military action in the tribal areas, which were an isolated, sensitive region. At the time, the FATA autonomous zone was governed by a completely different set of laws, the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), which barred federal police presence and dated back to the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Instead of military deployment, he suggested for the Government of Pakistan to collaborate with the tribal people in order to capture Al-Qaeda members coming from Afghanistan after the Battle of Tora Bora, using provincial counterterrorism authorities instead of the armed forces. He used the example of Pakistan’s tribal people capturing 240 Al-Qaeda fighters and handing them over to the Pakistani government in 2002. As for the ‘stuck there forever’ part, unfortunately he wasn’t wrong.

Timeline: Early political career

Imran Khan formally entered Pakistani politics in 1996 after retiring as a famous cricketer. Even though he was born in the urban city of Lahore in the Punjab province, he has strong ethnic roots in the Pashtun tribal areas, descending from a Pashtun family in the remote region of Waziristan. In 1993, he wrote Warrior Race: Journey Through the Land of the Tribal Pathans in which he trekked through remote regions along the Afghan border and spoke with locals. Despite being years before the post-9/11 insurgency in the region, he captured the sensitivity of the isolated region, where even young boys carried Kalashnikovs. Imran Khan’s personal experiences in the tribal areas of Pakistan prior to the War on Terror put him in a unique position to analyze the dynamics of the region.

In 2004, Khan first publicly commented on the Taliban insurgency and issued a strong warning against military deployment in FATA. He delivered a speech on the floor of the parliament against military operations, urging collaboration with Pakistan’s tribal people. Directly challenging Pakistan’s then-President, General Pervez Musharraf, he said Pakistan should not partake in the United States’ post-9/11 operations. Khan claims he was against military intervention since 2001.

In 2006, he criticized then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai for being a Western puppet. He also targeted President Musharraf for his support of the George Bush administration’s demands, accusing Musharraf of being Bush’s “poodle.”

In 2011, Khan exchanged blows with the Taliban when he called himself a liberal politician. The Taliban reacted by calling him a “slave of the West” to which Khan said Islam is a liberal religion misconstrued by the Taliban and doubled down on being a liberal.

The United States’ drone strike campaign in western Pakistan became the subject of heated debate in the early 2010s, as hundreds of innocent Pakistani civilians were killed during hundreds of drone strikes as collateral damage. Khan was one of its leading critics, saying the bombing was causing hatred towards the United States which helped the Taliban grow in number. Between 6–7 October 2012, Khan launched a “Peace March” protest campaign aiming to create international awareness about civilian deaths in American drone attacks. He proposed to take a rally of 100,000 people from the capital Islamabad to South Waziristan. International human rights groups and some Americans showed their support to the Peace March, with British NGO Reprieve joining it. Large anti-drone protests took place by Khan’s PTI party in Waziristan, Karachi, Peshawar, and Islamabad.

Imran Khan carries the remnants of a drone strike, 2012

Despite Khan’s march against drones being criticized for being soft on the Taliban, it was oddly the Taliban itself which threatened to kill Imran Khan because of his march.

In August 2012, TTP spokesperson Ahsanullah Ahsan, referring to Khan said “If he comes, our suicide bombers will target him.” Khan laughed at the threats made by the TTP and went ahead with his march regardless. Counteractively, in the same month he described what the Afghan Taliban was doing while fighting a war with the United States as “jihad,” a religious term in Islam loosely translated to a holy struggle. Khan framed it as a jihad as he said the Afghan Taliban was defending its own land from foreign occupation, which drew ire for being supportive of the Taliban.

In May 2013, Khan’s party won a majority in the northwestern tribal Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the exact region that was under war with the TTP. His anti-drone campaign, ethnic Pashtun roots, and views on corruption resonated with voters of the province. Khan now had the chance to implement his policies towards militancy in practice instead of mere theory. Khan appointed his chief minister as Pervez Khattak—a party stalwart, and formed a coalition with a religious party, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI).

In September 2013, he urged the Government of Pakistan to open an office in Peshawar to lead negotiations with the TTP similar to the Afghan Taliban’s office in Qatar. His demand came following suicide bomb attacks by the group, after which Khan urged an immediate ceasefire from both sides.

On 1 November 2013, it was confirmed that notorious terrorist and the emir of the TTP, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed by an American drone strike. His killing came after months of back-and-forth negotiations between the then-Pakistani government and the TTP. Imran Khan responded in strong criticism, calling his killing a “Deliberate targeting of the peace process.” He said Pakistanis had waited two months for negotiations with the TTP to conclude and finally when all parties reached a consensus, the United States knew what it was doing by killing him—sabotaging the peace process. After the strike, Khan questioned if the United States was a friend or an enemy and said “I can’t for the life of mine figure out why they [The United States] would do this.” Chaudhry Nisar of the federal government led by the Pakistan Muslim League (N) expressed a similar stance of disappointment. In response, he announced that his provincial government would block the supply routes of NATO for seven months in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which his party governed, though the plan was never executed.

On 2 February 2014, Shahidullah Shahid, the spokesperson of the TTP, named Imran Khan along with several conservative clerics as negotiators on their behalf with the Pakistani government for peace talks. The TTP’s decision to appoint Khan was due to his vocal support for negotiations. Khan quickly refused the request. The talks did not start due to an American drone attack.

In December 2014, following the Army Public School (APS) Peshawar massacre, dubbed “Pakistan’s 9/11,” in which the TTP brutally killed over a hundred students, Khan ended his 126-day marathon “Azadi March” sit-in against the then-government for alleged corruption. Visibly saddened, he urged for national unity and visited the injured victims and parents of the deceased in hospitals and at their homes. In a rare move, Khan endorsed the Pakistan Armed Forces’ military operation against the TTP dubbed “Operation Zarb-e-Azb,” saying it was necessary after the massacre. It is the only time Khan has supported a military operation in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Khan visits the victims of the 2014 Peshawar massacre

In an attempt to remove its perceived soft stance on the Taliban; in 2015, his PTI party’s information secretary issued a statement saying “The PTI condemns the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and all other terror groups that have unleashed their brutality on the people of Pakistan.”

In 2016, his party’s provincial government allocated 300 million Pakistani rupees (then roughly $3 million) to fund the Darul Uloom Haqqania, a madrassah (Islamic school and seminary). The madrassah was dubbed the “University of Jihad” in the West, for the amount of Taliban leaders to have studied at the institution. Khan justified the decision, saying that the isolation of such madrassahs was causing the spread of extremism. He said that the funds were given to mainstream the institution to alleviate isolation and in exchange for reforms to combat extremism. It was also in the same year he condemned the Taliban as a terrorist group in an Al Jazeera interview, and accused it of being made up of drug and land mafias.

The owner of the Darul Uloom Haqqania, former senator and cleric Sami-ul-Haq was dubbed the “Father of the Taliban” due to him being the teacher of the Afghan Taliban’s founder, Mullah Omar. Khan was criticized for holding a positive relationship with Sami. In the 2010s, Khan often sought his help in anti-polio campaigns, mainstreaming madrassahs, and peace talks with the Taliban. He formed an alliance with his party, the JUI (S) in his 2018 election campaign. In the same year, Sami-ul-Haq was stabbed to death, after which Khan issued a strong condemnation and ordered an investigation into his killing as Prime Minister. Khan’s defense for being affiliated with Sami was that he served as a moderate bridge to peace talks with the Taliban, and accredited him for helping in advancing the mainstreaming of madrassahs and peace talks with militants. Khan and Sami launched an anti-polio campaign under his party’s provincial government in 2013, in which the TTP attacked polio workers. Khan, who was threatened himself, condemned the attacks but was accused of not naming the TTP upfront and instead using softer terminology such as “those who are attacking polio workers.”

Cleric Sami-ul-Haq with Imran Khan in December 2013

In 2018, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani offered peace talks to the Afghan Taliban. Khan said this vindicated criticism of his beliefs on peace talks with the group.

Prime Minister Khan

During Khan’s 2018 election campaign, he vowed for peace in the region through improved relations with Afghanistan, envisioning free trade and open borders. He also said he would halt military operations and begin negotiations with the TTP to separate radical fighters from estranged tribal people.

“Afghanistan... has seen the most human misery and damage in the name of wars. The people of Afghanistan need peace, and Pakistan wants peace in Afghanistan,” — Khan, 2018

Shortly after becoming prime minister, Khan pledged to grant citizenship to roughly 1.5 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, which included ones that lived in the country undocumented for multiple decades. “They are humans, how have we deprived them for 30, 40 years?” he said, adopting an egalitarian stance. However, he backtracked this sweeping plan after facing backlash from the Parliament and in Pakistani political discourse.

Throughout his tenure, he facilitated talks between the United States’ Trump administration and the Afghan Taliban to bring an end to the war. In 2018, he coordinated with the American envoy of Zalmay Khalilzad and supported the eventual 2020 Doha Agreement to mainstream the Taliban negotiations and reach a peace deal.

His tenure saw zero drone strikes by the United States or Pakistani military, as a result of his strong anti-intervention and anti-drone stance seen in his 2012 activism. The previous five years (2013–2018) saw between 50 and 70 US drone strikes, many on civilian areas. He also held a firm stance against lending bases to the United States leading to his 2022 statement, “Absolutely not,” when asked if he would authorize American counterterrorism operations from Pakistani soil after the Taliban takeover.

In 2020, Khan made a “historic” visit to Kabul to meet the US-backed Afghan government’s president, Ashraf Ghani. The meeting resulted in both agreeing on terms to reduce violence in the region and reach a peace agreement with the Taliban. The visit marked a rare moment of alliance between two historically adversarial nations. Ghani hailed the visit while Khan said he would do everything possible to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

Imran Khan makes a historic visit to meet Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul, 2020

In a June 2020 address in the National Assembly of Pakistan, Khan attracted widespread criticism after calling the manner of notorious terrorist Osama Bin Laden’s death as “shaheed,” translating to “martyrdom.” The speech itself was in criticism of the 2011 US operation in Abbottabad for not informing Pakistan, and saying it was a violation of the nation’s sovereignty. He argued Pakistan should have been made aware of the operation to kill Bin Laden. Khan did not comment on the incident but several of his cabinet ministers including his foreign minister said it was a “slip of the tongue” and taken “out of context.”

On 15 August 2021, the Afghan Taliban took over Kabul and the remaining areas of Afghanistan after the American military began a withdrawal three and a half months prior. Khan said that there must be a political settlement before the American government withdrew. Following the takeover, he said that the Afghan people had “broken the shackles of slavery,” a statement which again garnered criticism, while Khan said he was referring to the fight against foreign occupation. Khan immediately postured to make good relations with the new Taliban government, saying that the takeover of Kabul saved the region from a bloodbath. He urged the international community to give the Taliban time to fulfill their promises of an inclusive government.

More importantly, Khan’s position on the Taliban government is that the international community should recognize and mainstream the administration to gain leverage and incentivize the new government to create an inclusive government and respect women’s rights. He argued that isolating the government, like the West was doing, would only cause more harm to the Afghan people because the Taliban would have no incentive to respect the international community’s demands about human rights.

Imran Khan’s address on Afghanistan relations at the 76th United Nations General Assembly in 2021

As a result of the Taliban takeover, in the same year, major talks with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) began, brokered by the Afghan Taliban. Khan’s hope was that the new Afghan state and Pakistan could eliminate the remaining radical non-state actors and differentiate between reconcilable tribesmen and hardline terrorists. Intense negotiations and jirgas (consensus-based meetings between Pashtun tribes) were pushed for by Khan and mediated by the Afghan Taliban government. Pakistan also released several imprisoned TTP figures as good-will gestures to accept the TTP’s negotiation demands.

On 9 November 2021, a one-month “complete ceasefire” was declared between the TTP and the Pakistani government led by Khan, in an agreement negotiated by the Afghan Taliban government. Despite hopes for it being extended after one-month, the ceasefire collapsed after the TTP accused the Pakistani government of not releasing prisoners as part of the deal. Khan’s government was surprised at the TTP’s decision to call off the ceasefire.

Khan’s administration sought to collaborate with Taliban-led Afghan government to eliminate the TTP. Many in Islamabad hoped to differentiate the “Good Taliban” (Afghan Taliban factions formerly favorable to Pakistan) from the “Bad Taliban” (TTP). It was hoped that the Afghan Taliban takeover would bolster the crackdown on the TTP with Islamabad and Kabul being able to collaborate to destroy any remaining non-state terrorists.

However, the Afghan Taliban regime led by Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada would be an untrustworthy party, and many in Kabul saw advantages in the ideologically aligned TTP growing throughout Pakistan.

Khan’s government was ousted in April 2022; two months after his ousting a unilateral ceasefire was declared in June 2022, largely due to Khan’s negotiation efforts. However, the unilateral ceasefire with the TTP and relations with the Afghan Taliban fell apart as the new government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has shown more favor for military use due to accusations of continuing TTP terrorism. As a result, many TTP fled to Afghanistan and have been sheltered by the Afghan Taliban regime. The collapse of negotiations in November 2022 has seen a spike in cross-border terrorism by the TTP and ISIS-K and the state of “open war” Afghanistan and Pakistan are in today.

Imran Khan has said that depriving Afghan women and girls of their education would be un-Islamic, and said providing girls’ education would be a condition in Pakistan recognizing the Taliban government.

“The idea that women should not be educated is just not Islamic. It has nothing to do with religion.” — Khan, 2021

Nobel laureate and survivor of a shooting by the TTP, Malala Yousafzai said she appreciated Imran Khan’s standing up for Afghan women’s education. However, she criticized Khan in 2021 for his comments on Pashtun cultural opinion being linked to the Taliban. Khan advocated for the differentiation between the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban, viewing the Afghan Taliban as a negotiable government while viewing the Pakistani Taliban as a terrorist group. Malala criticized Khan for his differentiation stance, pointing out that both groups follow a similar extremist ideology and are aligned in their goals for the region.

In a later speech in 2023, Khan said that there were some plans to resettle TTP militants from Afghanistan back into the former FATA regions of Pakistan when he was Prime Minister, though these plans were never executed. Khan has often been falsely accused of resettling these terrorists into Pakistan.

Analysis

Imran Khan’s stance on the Taliban is complex. His prediction that the American war would fail to defeat the Taliban proved veracious, with the United States withdrawing its troops in 2021, and the outcome of the 20-year attrition war being replacing the 2001 Taliban government with a stronger 2021 Taliban government, enriched with American military equipment and more members. His ideas on how collateral damage, drone strike bombing campaigns, and military deployments cause terrorist groups to grow have been reiterated by Brown University’s Costs of War project. In many towns of Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal areas, a philosophy of Badal is prevalent, where if one family member is killed, the entire family seeks revenge. For example, if a drone strike on a village kills 5 Taliban terrorists but with the cost of 5 civilians, all the families of the killed, including the civilians’ families, will collectively seek revenge against the United States and join sympathetic groups part of the Taliban.

“We are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield.” — Robert Grenier, former CIA station chief in Pakistan and CIA counterterrorism head, 2012

His 2004 statement in the Parliament of Pakistan that the Pakistan army would be “stuck there forever” on the decision to deploy troops in the FATA areas is technically not wrong, as Pakistan’s military is still fighting terrorists over two decades on. However, analysts debate whether Khan’s reasoning for the tribal areas’ attrition war persisting is correct. While Khan was criticized for his position during the war, Michael Kugelman, Director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, highlighted how Washington was forced to pursue the exact type of political settlement with the Taliban that Khan had advocated for years. Khan argues that had Pakistan refused to join the American coalition in the War on Terror, the country would have prevented over 80,000 Pakistani deaths from drone strikes and suicide bombings. His point that there were fewer suicide bombings or major terrorist insurgencies in Pakistan before the country joined the War on Terror is factually accurate, as the Pakistani Taliban was founded in 2007, six years after Pakistan joined the war, though he glosses over how the infamous terror group Al-Qaeda was founded in Peshawar in 1988. It is a subject of debate on whether the terrorist insurgency in Pakistan started because of the War on Terror or the War on Terror started because of the terrorist insurgency in Pakistan.

His multifaceted approach to madrassahs while in government is an example of his understanding of the Pashtun tribal areas. His view that religious seminaries were able to spread extremism due to a lack of government checks and balances leading to isolation is based on the estimated 30,000 to 35,000 madrassahs that were completely unregulated by Pakistan’s education authorities. His provincial and federal governments did mainstream many madrassahs in the hopes to de-radicalize and give fair education to the millions of Pakistani students in the institutions. Khan’s federal government established the Directorate General of Religious Education (DGRE) in 2019 for the regulation, documentation, and integration of these institutions. Prior to the federal funding of madrassahs, the seminaries received funding from suspicious foreign sources linked to extremism; Khan argued that the funds gave the government a financial carrot over what was being taught at madrassahs.

His logic that isolating the Taliban-led Afghan government reduces leverage to protect human rights can be compared to Cuba where an isolated embargo strengthened anti-American fanaticism and eventually the US agreed to recognize the government (Cuban thaw).

He has condemned the Taliban and TTP as terrorists on many occasions, particularly during their suicide attacks in the early 2010s. However, many of his statements have been characterized by media coverage as in favor of the Taliban. His statement on Osama Bin Laden being a “shaheed” (though Khan’s party considers this a slip-up) and the Taliban’s war against America being a “jihad against foreign occupation” has been a subject of major criticism. His branding of Taliban terrorists as “fighters,” or “militants,” has also been a reason for his nickname “Taliban Khan.”

His personal ideological stances reflect Pakistani nationalist, democratic, welfarist, and centrist principles, divergent from the Taliban’s far-right extremist and separatist radical views. The reason his language and attitude toward the Taliban and TTP has been to appease the hardline right of Pakistan and Afghanistan to achieve the least bloodshed in a peace deal. His statements also show a balancing act between the right-wing clerics and tribal people of Pakistan as well as the West and Pakistan’s urban population. He has been criticized for seeking negotiations on the TTP’s terms and some say the proliferation of terrorism after 2019 is because of this.

Terrorist attacks in Pakistan since 2001 were the lowest in 2019, during Khan’s second year in office. Terrorist attacks also were significantly lower than the previous administration’s tenure (2013–2018) and the successor administration (2022–). However, many accredit this drop to the Pakistan army’s successful Operation Zarb-e-Azb (2014–2017) instead of Khan’s policies.

“It’s a neat narrative, and Khan’s delivery is consistent. But it’s worth parsing through to note what he glosses over, because while newly candid in some ways for a Pakistani leader on the issue of jihad, the picture he paints isn’t complete.” — Madiha Afzal, fellow at Foreign Policy

Terrorist attacks in Pakistan by the TTP continue including a 2026 attack on a mosque in Islamabad. His statements have often been perceived by media as supportive of the Taliban, despite his clear condemnation of the group. The Taliban government in Afghanistan and Government of Pakistan (Khan’s political opponents), have engaged in an “open war” as of early 2026 as the two nations clash. Khan has been vocal about recognizing and supporting peace talks with the Taliban regime, saying he would do a better job in preventing the war between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

All in all, the “Taliban Khan” label overlooks his complex, decades-long stance on the insurgency. Khan himself was involved in spats and was even threatened to be killed by the Taliban throughout his political career. The label stems from an oversimplification of his pragmatic stance seeking peace talks over military use in Pakistan’s heated, conservative tribal areas along Afghanistan.

2012 Map of Pakistan-Afghanistan border, specifically the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) which saw the bulk of the TTP militancy and Khan’s ethnic roots in South Waziristan (Work of the United States government, with modifications)

On 28 February 2026, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated by an airstrike, ending his 36-year long rule over Iran. He leaves behind a controversial and divisive legacy. While the media covers his foreign policy, political, and military actions, his tenure of 36 years—which is ample time for any world leader to entirely reshape a country, is often ignored in the area of domestic governance over Iran.

After being sworn in as the highly powerful supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran on 4 June 1989, he initiated various economic, healthcare, education, science, and energy policies for Iran domestically, which have often been overshadowed due to political polarization, isolation, focus on the Middle East’s conflicts as well as accusations of human rights abuses and authoritarianism.

Iranian Supreme Leader’s Responsibilities

Before the late supreme leader’s governance record can be assessed, it is important to understand the powers and responsibilities of the Supreme Leader of Iran. The supreme leader has total control over foreign policy, political structure, and military actions, but has less control over domestic policy, which is the responsibility of the President of Iran. Instead of making the policies himself, the supreme leader assumes the de-facto role of the final say, whether or not a president’s domestic policies are implemented. However, the supreme leader has more than enough authority to implement his own domestic policies, but in many cases the president oversees it.

Khamenei, over his almost four decade-long reign, oversaw six presidents—both reformists and hardliners. As an important distinction, this article will look at solely the domestic policies which Khamenei called for and implemented during his tenure, not the policies of the presidents under him.

Energy

Under Khamenei, Iran gained the classification of an “Energy Superpower” even in Western circles. While the 1979 Revolution in Iran is mostly portrayed as about religious factors, the nationalization of the country’s large oil reserves was also a central goal. Under Ruhollah Khomeini, the country only started to nationalize its oil reserves but did not fully extract its energy potential—that was achieved under Ali Khamenei.

When Khamenei took power in 1989, Iran’s easy-to-extract crude oil reserves, the third largest in the world, were far from their energy and economic potential, as they had been controlled by Western companies under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and faced drastically isolated export opportunities under Ruhollah Khomeini. Under Khamenei, the doctrine of Negah be Shargh (Look to the East) for trade was adopted due to Western sanctions. The People’s Republic of China would emerge as the top buyer of Iranian crude oil through the 2000s and by the end of his tenure in 2025-26, China held a near-monopsony, taking almost 90% of Iran’s seaborne oil exports, meaning consuming over 1.4 million barrels of Iranian oil per day.

Ayatollah Khamenei pushed for the expansion of Iran’s nuclear energy program for civilian use. He positioned the program as a sovereign right, with Iran being a signatory of the Treaty on the Non‑Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which allows nuclear power for peaceful purposes. He also pronounced a religious decree (fatwa) against the creation of nuclear weapons in 2003. One of his main points was that Iran should not depend on foreign fuel suppliers and that uranium enrichment was necessary for civilian power plants, saying that oil and gas reserves would not last forever. Many Western countries accuse this of being a cover for the development of nuclear weapons, while others say the program was a modern energy policy. In 2026, these uranium enrichment facilities and plants were targeted by airstrikes from the United States.

Despite being a high-profile topic, Iran’s nuclear energy program only produces ~2% of its total energy; for comparison natural gas produces 80%.

Khamenei aggressively prioritized the development of the South Pars gas field which is the largest natural gas reserve in the world. His domestic policy prioritized connecting nearly the entire country, including remote rural villages to the national gas grid throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Following his 2014 “resistance economy” doctrine (Covered in Economy section) his administration pushed for increased gas production, which saw daily extraction rise from 240 million cubic meters in 2013 to 540 million by 2017. 27 Phases of expansion for the South Pars gas field were created under Khamenei in collaboration with over 400 domestic companies.

Economy

Iran’s economy faces widespread financial sanctions by Western countries, which continued throughout Khamenei’s entire tenure, which drastically limited Iran’s financial stability, trade, and currency.

In his economic policy, he focused on economic privatization of banks, infrastructure, and small oil enterprises, espousing a largely capitalistic approach. This policy was implemented in the late 2000s and was a departure from previous supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini’s state-nationalization approach. He did this through legal means, overturning Article 44 of the Iranian constitution which mandated a minimum percent of state-owned companies in certain sectors.

“Ceding 80 per cent of the shares of large companies will serve to bring about economic development, social justice and the elimination of poverty.” — Khamenei, 2006

The privatization reforms had mixed results in the economy. In 2025, the London-based Iran International reported that almost all major oil, banking, petrochemical, and steel companies were state-owned or de-facto owned by the state’s political elite. Amidst this, the former Iranian communication minister, Mohammad-Javad Azari-Jahromi criticized the government for “cronyism.” This shows his economic privatization reforms of the 2000s were not successful as promised and were largely reversed under successive presidents. Critics say the economic privatization programme was a farce, and instead the state transferred companies to semi-state actors, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in a form of corruption and was intended to expand the supreme leader’s personal assets in a strategy referred to as Khosoulati.

In response to the 2008 financial crisis, he endorsed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, which said that Iran’s economy was doing better than the West, and that the United States and Europe were under a worse economic crisis.

In 2014, Khamenei unveiled the General Policies of the Resistance Economy, a doctrine to rebuild the country’s economy for the 21st century. It was a 24-point order designed to reduce the impact of Western sanctions, reduce oil dependency, and diversify the country’s revenue sources by increasing production of natural gas. A core component of the decree was ending Iran’s historic reliance on exporting crude oil. Instead, Khamenei mandated a transition to a “knowledge-based economy” that prioritized the refinement of petrochemicals and a massive expansion in the production of natural gas. While the scale at which the top-down doctrine actually affected Iran’s economy is debated, the initiative to diversify the country’s revenue sources and combatting oil dependency is a smart policy. Meanwhile, economists say that it was unable to truly solve the problem of being isolated from Western markets, which is considered impossible in today’s globalized economy.

However, Iran’s economy largely suffered with high inflation and currency devaluation throughout his tenure, continuing unemployment crises after the COVID-19 Pandemic, and even in the recent 2025–26 Iran protests, the major issue was economic crises, which Khamenei himself acknowledged as a fair demand of the protesters. This is where it gets politicized, since pro-Iran media blames the country’s long-term economic woes and the detrimental state of the currency on the West’s sanctions, which have isolated Iran’s economy. Meanwhile, pro-West media states Khamenei’s poor handling of the economy is the reason for inflation. The reality is a bit of both: Western sanctions have undeniably constricted Iran’s economy, which was mostly export-based, and are the cause of its extremely low currency value. However, decisions of Khamenei’s such as pouring between $30 billion and $50 billion into military aid during the Syrian Civil War—which to many Iranians has essentially gone down the drain, yielded no benefits. Accusations of financial corruption among state institutions such as the IRGC also persist.

Science and Technology

Khamenei heavily promoted domestic scientific progress, and under him, scientific research in Iran accelerated to some of the fastest in the world, even according to Western outlets. The country’s scientific research papers grew 18-fold between 1996 and 2008, from 736 published papers to 13,238. Officially, he pushed for more women and youth in science, scientific knowledge as a sense of national pride, cooperation between Muslim nations’ universities, and was the first major cleric to allow therapeutic cloning and stem cell research.

In technology, he promoted Iranian nanotechnology, which went from a small sector in the 2000s to among the top five in the world in terms of research. He also promoted aeronautical engineering but most of all, his directives in 2005 led to creation of the National Information Network (NIN) in 2013. The NIN is a heavily monitored, state-controlled intranet. Khamenei championed its creation to protect Iranian society from Western digital influence and harmful content. He personally established the Supreme Council of Cyberspace (SCC) in 2012 to oversee government involvement in Iran’s digital space. In practice, the NIN provided Khamenei’s government with the ability to block foreign social media platforms and execute total internet blackouts during protests, drawing ire from Western nations for censorship.

Education

Ali Khamenei’s paramount education policy was the Fundamental Reform Document of Education (FRDE) which was rolled out in 2011. It included a set of guidelines aiming for major reform for “equity” in the education system. Over 200 textbooks were refined to implement the policy. Khamenei stated his intent was to build the “Iranian-Islamic identity” for students and “Purify” the curriculum with Islamic principles. He personally rallied against the use of the English language in classes in a bid to promote Iranian sovereignty, which led to the language’s ban in 2018 throughout Iranian primary schools.

Observers noted that his education reforms would promote anti-Western ideology and largely served to ensure loyalty to the government and teach the 1979 Revolution’s “Islamic” ideology. Subjects such as certain humanities or anything deemed to weaken loyalty or promote Western-influenced cultures was removed on the Ayatollah’s orders. He also passed the “We Defend Our Iran” curriculum in 2021, which advocated against Western sentiment such as secularism. A brain drain in educational professionals and a continuing out-of-school children crisis continue to this day.

Khamenei took the decision to enroll the Afghan refugees living in Iran to the education system in 2015, directing the education ministry to allow Afghan children to study regardless of legal status. This decision was praised by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi, citing that Iran hosted 900,000 Afghan refugees fleeing from the War in Afghanistan.

Healthcare

In healthcare, Khamenei and the presidents under him did not pursue major reforms, as Iran’s Primary Healthcare Care (PHC) system already covered 90% of the population. In 2014, Khamenei outlined a 14-point healthcare agenda titled General Policies on Health aiming for Iran to become a top medical center in Southwest Asia. It included general provisions on medical research, hiring of doctors, and mental health, but included no funding allocations, clear targets, or timelines.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Khamenei banned the importation of Western vaccines from the United States and United Kingdom, calling them “completely untrustworthy.” Instead, he promoted COVIran Barakat, a domestic vaccine being developed by Iran’s Shifa Pharmed Industrial Group. It was the first locally developed COVID-19 vaccine to be approved for emergency use in the Middle East. Khamenei himself also was administered it.

In the early 2010s, he reversed Iran’s comprehensive family planning policies developed in the 1990s and called for drastically increasing Iran’s population amid low fertility rates. He called for measures to increase the population of Iran through legislation with the National Population Taskforce, warning of the “dangers of an aging population.” His new family planning policy which was formalized under the Family Protection and Youthful Population Law, 2021, offered incentives for having children including a 7.5-fold increase in child benefit payments to government employees. However, his policy was controversial as it was criticized by health experts and accused of depriving women’s rights.

Conclusion

Under the late Supreme Leader Khamenei’s directive, Iran saw major growth in areas such as natural gas production and crude oil exports while seeing a rise in economic privatization, scientific research, and nuclear energy. At home, he consolidated the unstable, isolated, and young “Islamic Republic” which was recovering from revolution and war. From a public policy perspective, quality of life in Iran still remains low. Many of these policies, particularly privatization are often accused of serving state interests such as the powerful IRGC rather than translating to benefits for the Iranian people. In the focus of the state, healthcare and education were overshadowed by the situation of freedom of speech and human rights. His policies reflected a strong emphasis on Iranian sovereignty and combating heavy Western sanctions.

Iran is not the same country it was in 1989.