First Person
Fraying Ties Across the Gulf
An Iranian academic who has spent years studying and living across the region reflects on what the recent war risks destroying — not just infrastructure, but the centuries-old transnational ties that have held its people together through every previous rupture.
Far From the Land of Good News
Nada Bakri, whose late husband restored a family home in Marjayoun, reflects on southern Lebanon from afar, tracing the political logic that delivered the region into its current devastation while mapping what it means to love a place you can no longer visit.
An Iranian’s Dispatch From the Digital Darkness
Journalist Nilo Tabrizy shares an essay by “Bijan,” an Iranian labor activist and former political prisoner who, during a 20-day communications blackout in January 2025, wrote about his experience in solitary confinement and being severed from the world. He has been unreachable since U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began.
Iran’s Attacks on the Gulf Are Leaving Scars That Won’t Fade
A writer based in Doha reflects on living through Iran's strikes on the Gulf states during Ramadan, drawing on memories of Kuwait during the 2003 Iraq War to explore the lasting psychological and social toll the conflict is leaving on Gulf societies.
A Desert Picnic With Libya’s Most Wanted Man
A secret meeting with Saif al-Islam Gadhafi in the Libyan desert, weeks before his assassination, revealed a man still trying to shape the country’s future.
Iran Has Always Been More Than the Islamic Republic
An Iranian journalist reflects on the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, considering decades of failed sanctions, diaspora authoritarianism and the civilizational story that nobody told.
Remembering ‘Never Again for Everyone’ at Bergen-Belsen
In April 2025, the author accompanied his mother, a child survivor of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, to a memorial ceremony marking 80 years since the camp’s liberation. At the time, famine was raging in Gaza. As a pro-Palestinian activist and Israeli citizen, the author was filled with complex emotions.