From AI videos mocking Trump in the Iran war to the White House’s own meme-making, “slopaganda” is less about persuasion and more about capturing "some emotional truth," write @faisalalyafai.bsky.social & @chriselkholy.bsky.social . newlinesmag.com/spotlight/slopaganda-com...
Posts like this one bring me so much joy.
I’ve been waiting for this one ever since I heard Chihab present part of it in Cairo! A cultural history of the Egyptian state.
Kevin Schwartz and I wrote this piece for @the-independent.com 👇
www.independent.co.uk/independentp...
Asef Bayat writes: "I believe that Tehran, and by extension Iran, will endure and ultimately overcome not only this brutal war but also the despotic regime that governs it." 👇
Maybe find an example of a country that did submit under these kind of pressures and attacks first? Even one? Because the general pattern seems to be that these campaigns cause tremendous human suffering and then fail, over and over and over again.
www.wsj.com/world/us-ene...
“The destruction of all of this is deliberate, and it needs to be named for what it is: a program of forced de-development, intended to ensure that Iran emerges from this conflict economically shattered, industrially incapacitated, and stripped of the capacity for independent development.”
I told Financial Times that Iranians have never said they will not negotiate over their nuclear program like they’ve said we'll never negotiate over missiles. Nuclear program has always been up for negotiation. www.ft.com/content/ac5a...
141 seats and 53,4%. The only record still remaining is Orban's 54,1% result from 2022, and with one quarter of the vote remaing, this could still happen.
Not that it matters, beyond humiliation
My latest in @jacobinmag.bsky.social on the illegal US-Israeli war on #Iran: a war not only on a state, but on Iran’s sovereign development and the social achievements built by generations of Iranians.
jacobin.com/2026/04/isre...
Kevin Schwartz and I wrote this piece for @the-independent.com 👇
www.independent.co.uk/independentp...
Asef Bayat writes: "I believe that Tehran, and by extension Iran, will endure and ultimately overcome not only this brutal war but also the despotic regime that governs it." 👇
The US government’s negotiators are a bunch of sophists trained on debate team party tricks. Fundamentally unserious. Ghalibaf, on the other hand, is a Brigadier General and veteran of the Iran-Iraq war with a PhD in political geography. In other words, a serious person.
Iran exported its wars for 25 years, but then Washington changed the rules.
@hhassan.bsky.social and Kamran Bokhari on the 'Third Gulf War' and the threshold it crossed.
We can certainly debate what it means to have “won” a war.
The article by @jricole.bsky.social is well worth reading in any case. 👇
www.juancole.com/2026/04/how-...
The propaganda war isn't even close right now. Who would have thought that Iran, of all regimes, would be winning a global AI battle of memes against some of the same people who pioneered their popular use in politics?
3/fin ... That is, in the end, what makes this moment different from other moments of great-power recklessness: not the structural pressures, which are real enough, but the character of the man they are bearing down upon."
2/ ...in which every available exit diminishes the political narrative he has staked his identity on, is a genuinely dangerous figure to place at the apex of nuclear decision-making. He has made a catastrophic mess of this confrontation and appears to care only about his own self-image. ...
Excellent article by Hussein Banai — a must read. 👇
1/ "A leader who entered a war he did not understand, in pursuit of objectives he had not reconciled, and who now confronts a situation ...
newlinesmag.com/argument/the...
Kevin Schwartz and I wrote an article on the Iranian propaganda machine for The Independent. We take a closer look at the history behind the now much-discussed rise of AI-generated videos and meme production since the start of the war.
www.independent.co.uk/independentp...
NEW PODCAST: The MERIP Roundtable is back for our third installment discussing the war on Iran and the region. Executive Director James Ryan is joined by Rima Majed and Ali Musleh to discuss the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the state of resistance.
NEW: "Reconstruction and Ruin" the Winter 2025 Issue of Middle East Report is now live!
This issue captures the challenges facing ordinary people in the Middle East as the warfare politics of dispossession and division continue amidst efforts to rebuild urban landscapes.
“Narratives of ‘the Oppressed’—The Dialectic of Resistance Behind the Axis” Olmer Gölz Olmo Gölz and Ruth Vollmer
NEW in MER 313: Resistance -- The Axis and Beyond
READ NOW
Last week I was in London to attend the launch of Iran Freedom Congress.
I wrote about it and about the broader tasks facing the Iranian opposition.
Let me know what you think!
www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
If you hit the paywall, feel free to reach out.