1/@Michael_Barak and Burzine Waghmar, '#Hezbollah: What next for #Israel and #Iran?' 1 Oct 24 #webinar @UsanasF. @RUSI_org @ISS_RUSI @WashInstitute @mrubin1971 @Nina_Slama @IsraelinIndia @israelinMumbai @GuyNirIL @IsraelMFA @MEAIndia 2/Burzine Waghmar, Centre for Iranian Studies, SOAS [play 33:20]: #Iran approached the #Japanese #Yakuza for #weaponsgrade #plutonium in exchange for #arms to be sent to #Burmese #rebels. @AIPAC @meforum @jonathan_spyer

1/Burzine Waghmar #IsraelvsIran #IsraelUnderAttack #OnAirToday @NewsX [play 12:09]: '#Iran is the cancer eating away at the destiny of the entire #MiddleEast [and] fount of all #terror and problems for not just #Israel...since 1979.'
2/Burzine Waghmar #IsraelvsIran #IsraelUnderAttack #OnAirToday @NewsX [play 12:50]: '#Iran hasn't been able to establish #deterrence, exposed [#IRGC's] #military and #technological inferiority, critical opening for #Israel' paved.

1/ Tiny corr. #IranElections2024 @TheEconomist 29 June 24, p 41: #Khamenei, strictly, never 'won' in 1989. He was stage managed into office by #Rafsanjani, whose #obituary in #TheEconomist, Jan 2017, was appropriately titled 'Shark of #Persia'. 2/ #Khamenei was elected, actually kicked upstairs, note, as a temporary #SupremeLeader #رهبر—think Senior Lecturer to Professor minus tomes or no. of theses supervised. The #Iranianconstitution was expediently revised to make him permanent. Many then,

1/Burzine Waghmar, Centre for #IranianStudies, #SOAS #IranElection #Raisi #analysis @EpochTimes 21 May 23. #Khamenei appoints Trnstl Council #VP #Mokhber #Speaker #JudiciaryChief per Art 131. @RUSI_org @UsanasF @EFSAS_AMS @FCDOGovUK shorturl.at/ZDR7W
2/#MajlesSpeaker #Ghalibaf had #presidential ambitions when #EbrahimRaisi was alive. #Khamenei will retain final say on #foreignpolicy and who is the eventual #winner after 50-day transition & #Iranian #GuardianCouncil-vetted #shamelection #campaign.

@BBCr4today 1/@JustinOnWeb @MishalHusain, @UCLPolicyLab @MoazzamTMalik queries 'what we can learn' from #Japan, by the by, a #constitutionalmonarchy with a troubled #imperial #past, which doesn't earn even a tenth of the opprobrium #Britain does. Ponder that. @BBCr4today @JustinOnWeb @MishalHusain @UCLPolicyLab @MoazzamTMalik 2/@MoazzamTMalik, ex-envoy to #Indonesia, struck how successive generations of #Indonesians, among other #Asians, incurious about lambasting #Japan for unspeakable #atrocities compressed in a brief interlude? Only #whites enrage #Asians on cue!

1/@Mumbai4Freedom @IndiaToday, #CAA #CitizenshipAmendmentAct #AbhinavChandrachud unchallenged on stating #RajendraPrasad "#President" in '48? #GeorgeVI was #IndianHeadofState (25:18). @jsaideepak @LiveLawIndia @MLJ_GoI @SupremeCourtIND 2/#Jews, since #Israel's inception, universally entitled by sui generis #LawofReturn חוק השבות to a #Jewish #homeland. #AbhinavChandrachud such a benighted #Maharashtrian #Hindu? #Indian #Jewry hails from #Maharashtra yet he blithely queries (28:35) why

1/ Loquacious, #leftish @DalrympleWill, is left too tongue-tied to tweet about #Jewish 9-yr. olds being #raped by #Hamas so hard that their pelvis bones broke. Or nails driven into the groins of #Jewish #corpses. Poor #Jews in #Maharashtra or #Kerala 2/ can't afford his #salon shindigs @JaipurLitFest. Nor would he chance upon 'em @Bahrisons_books, ever the effete, crumpled #kurta, lispy poseur, #Gibbon to #southDelhi's dim #Punjabis. Perhaps a lifetime's residual reticences about #Jews honed over

@nramind 1/ #FaliNariman's #JammuKashmir #Art370 constitutional point to @sardesairajdeep @IndiaToday aside, I refract it, as a #historian, through the non-legalist prism. Cynical expediency isn't the full tale. #Situationalethics matter. My🧵. @Vikram_Sood @UsanasF @nramind @sardesairajdeep @IndiaToday @Vikram_Sood @UsanasF 2/ #JammuKashmir #5Aug2019 precedent exists: #ArunachalPradesh, a contested, peripheral outlier, was a #UnionTerritory from 1972 but, #RajivGandhi, in the wake of that #IndiaChinaStandoff Sumdorong Chu Pass, conferred statehood in Dec 1986 (55th #Amendment).

@TheHinduComment 1/ #Madras, where @the_hindu and its #editor @nambath are based, admittedly a long way from #Leh. But a fitful acquaintance with the histories of #JammuKashmir #Ladakh isn't excusable in this wired age. The parcelling of #Ladakh, as a #unionterritory, @TheHinduComment @the_hindu @nambath 2/ harks to the 1950s. @THexplains, #Buddhist indigenes, independent before 1834, long objected to being cobbled with #JammuAndKashmir, pre- or post-1947. @Brill_ME_Africa Encyclopædia of #Islam, 3rd ed, 'Ladakh' (by John Bray), 2019.

1/ #Iranian #President #EbrahimRaisi reminds #Muslims how #Israel's #elimination nigh. In a joint #ArabLeague #OICSummit 11 Nov 23 diatribe, #antisemitic #Ibrahim_Raisi exhorted #Palestine #FromTheRiverToTheSea, strikingly, with a #Quranic allusion. 2/ #Raisi in #Persian, '#Palestine is definitely victorious'; then #Arabic, #Quran [#Surah al-Maʻārij] 70, 6-7: إِنَّهُمْ يَرَوْنَهُۥ بَعِيدًۭا وَنَرَىٰهُ قَرِيبًۭا 'They see it far, But we see it near' refrain, '#AlQuds [is] ours, Victory ours.'

1/ Centre for #Iranian #Studies, SOAS, Burzine Waghmar, 'Sino-#Palestinian #Relations: #Fatah 1964-#Hamas 2023'. My #IsraelGazaWar #lecture @UsanasF #webinar 6 Nov 2023. #Hamas #Israel @RUSI_org @ISS_RUSI @EFSAS_AMS @SOASVostokSoc 2/ Salient #China-#Palestine #historical features: #Israel first in #MidEast to recognise #PRC '50, reciprocated only '92. #PLO, #PFLP etc. opened in #Beijing offices '65 onwards. #Palestinian #militias, esp. #Fatah, #PLA-armed & trained on #Chinese mainland.

1. @SuellaBraverman, @metpoliceuk is woefully naive to issue this following @MrAndyNgo's coverage of #HizbUtTahrir #Palestine protest. #Jihad does NOT have 'a number of meanings'. Classical and Modern #Islamic #jurists, #Muslims, and #Islamists always 2. conceptually designated it as '#holywar'. Modern #Islamists in the West have skewed it to gloss over #bloodshed, #rapine and #violence by harping on a tenuously constricted connotation of 'inner struggle'. See Bernard @LewisRemembered 1988: 72.

1/ Lord Owen is profoundly misguided on @ChiefMI6 in #Iran. As #ForeignSecretary, he could've been more activist then by urging the @bbcworldservice to dial down #Khomeini's coverage which made this obscure #cleric #headlinenews.
rb.gy/xm94u 2/ #Khomeini's move to #France, after #Saddam ejected him at the #Shah's myopic behest, marked a turning point in the political fortunes of this exiled troublemaker, a grim #IranianStudies point in fact. @FCDOHistorians, #DavidOwen not once intervened,

1. @guardian 15 Oct 22, p 21 @tweeter_anita @EmpirePodUK, a cold-eyed, #critical #historian would've provided the #lowdown, and six of her best, to those boorish, blingy, visiting #Punjabis about the #Sikhempire or #ZulfikarBhutto. 2. #Kashmiris and #Ladakhis, unlike mawkish #Punjabis, don't quite share that lachrymose view of #Punjabi #history or #DuleepSingh. #Lamaist #Buddhists and #Muslims chafed under #Sikhrulers. Expelled former; forbade latter #fasting/#Fridayprayers.

1. My #SamarkandSummit orientalist🧵on its toponym and etymology. Incorrect is #Wikipedia's #Samarkand etymon entry and false analogy to #Tashkent. Both #Samarkand, like neighbouring #Bukhara, remain extensively debated in eastern #MiddleIranian #philology. 2. #Samarkand, contra #Wikipedia, is not 'stone city'. The first element /sm’r/ remains unexplained. On #Sogdian sm’rknδh [Ancient Letters], cf. Chin. Samojian 颯秣建 Gr. Μαρακάνδοι, scholarly consensus exists only on second compound, #Sogdian 'town, city'.

@tanjil_rashid_ @ZareerMasani @saliltripathi 1. #Partition1947 counterfactuals aren't counterintuitive. #Partition ended a zero sum game among the same stale set of interlocutors conducting a dialogue of the deaf #Simla, June '45 onwards. #CabinetMissionPlan's devolution did NOT solve #India's impasse. @tanjil_rashid_ @ZareerMasani @saliltripathi 2. #Jinnah accepted the #CabinetMissionPlan for an embryonic #Pakistan was assured, and permitted to secede, come 1957, if the #confederation was not to the #MuslimLeague's liking. Routinely overlooked by #Nehru's #Indian and #Pakistani baiters.

1. #MaxHastings needs to bone up before sketchily declaiming ‘#histrionics in the #West’ about #ChineseBeltandRoad #lending, @thetimes 30 July 22, p 33. Becoming, like that #LeCarré, another raging '#nationaltreasure' discharging disaffected drivel. 2. Surmises of #moralequivalence between #Chinese and #Western rapacity by #MaxHastings are tenuous. #Pakistanieconomists, long critical of the #BRI, would remind him how 27% of #Islamabad’s #externaldebt, $90bn as of April 2021, is now owed to #Beijing.