Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Saeed Bagheri, Assistant Professor of International Law, University of Reading

Israeli strikes targeted oil facilities near the Iranian capital of Tehran over the weekend. Two oil refineries, both of which had been attacked by Israel in 2025, and two oil storage facilities were hit. According to Iran’s deputy health minister, Ali Jafarian, at least four people were killed by the strikes.

The strikes raise two main questions. First is whether an oil refinery truly qualifies as a legitimate military target under international humanitarian law. And second is whether the rule of proportionality – that military actions are not excessive in relation to their intended aim – should have constrained an attack of this nature.

The principle of distinction forms the cornerstone of the laws governing the conduct of hostilities. It requires parties to an armed conflict to distinguish at all times between civilian and military objects. The Geneva conventions, a set of treaties that establish rules for humane treatment during wars, also say that parties must limit their attacks to military objectives.

Article 52 of the conventions provides the authoritative definition of a military object. It says an object is a legitimate target if it makes an effective contribution to military action by its nature, location, purpose or use. It adds that the destruction of such an object must also offer a definite military advantage in the circumstances prevailing at the time.

Oil refineries showcase the complexity of applying these principles. They convert crude oil into gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel, all of which are essential both for civilian life and military operations. Armed forces may depend on these fuels to operate vehicles, aircraft and naval vessels, sustaining their combat and logistical capabilities.

Disrupting fuel production can therefore weaken the military capability of an adversary. This could make an oil refinery a legitimate target. However, there is no convincing evidence yet that the two targeted facilities near Tehran – the Tondgouyan and Shahran oil refineries – were important sources of fuel for the Iranian military.

Even if an oil refinery contributes to military actions, its importance to the civilian economy remains significant from a legal standpoint. Many states depend on continuous energy supplies for transportation, industry and public services.

Fuel shortages can disrupt public transportation, delay the delivery of food and medical supplies and impede electricity generation. In densely populated urban areas like Tehran, which is home to around 15 million people, such disruptions can have a serious impact on daily life and economic stability.

These considerations are reinforced by Article 54 of the Geneva conventions. This safeguards objects from attack that are considered indispensable for the survival of the civilian population.

The provision explicitly references foodstuffs, water installations and agricultural areas. But its underlying rationale emphasises the importance of protecting systems that are essential to fundamental living conditions, so probably includes energy infrastructure that underpins the operation of water treatment, sanitation and emergency services.

Principle of proportionality

The principle of proportionality provides a mechanism to balance military necessity and humanitarian protection. Article 51 of the Geneva conventions prohibits attacks that are expected to cause incidental civilian harm that is excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage.

In the case of oil refineries, proportionality analysis should account not only for immediate casualties and structural damage. It should also account for the expected downstream impact on civilian life. This includes the impact of service interruptions, economic disruption, fuel shortages and, perhaps most importantly, reduced air, water and soil quality.

Environmental contamination, particularly degraded water quality, has been documented following attacks on energy facilities in previous conflicts. The most notable instances have been in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf war, Syria in 2015 and Ukraine since 2022.

Under international humanitarian law, adversaries must take these considerations into account when assessing what is proportionate in the pursuit of military objectives. They must weigh the anticipated military advantage against the broader consequences for civilians who depend on the targeted facilities.

Tehran’s high energy demands mean that damage to refineries that supply fuel to millions could cause severe disruption. It could also cause air and water pollution. The Iranian authorities warned of toxic acid rain immediately after the attacks on Tehran’s oil facilities, and many residents have since reported headaches and difficulty breathing.

These consequences do not appear to have been considered in the Israeli military’s proportionality assessment. No feasible precautions or mitigation measures were reported prior to the attacks. There also does not appear to be evidence that attacking the refineries would yield a definite military advantage.

International humanitarian law does not categorically prohibit attacks on energy infrastructure. But it does require careful, context-specific assessments of the military relevance of an energy facility and the possible civilian harm caused by its destruction.

For now, assessing the legality of the Israeli strikes is difficult. More detail on the role of the refineries in Iran’s military operations and the anticipated military advantage achieved by targeting them will be required before a judgment can be made.

Saeed Bagheri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What international law says about the Israeli strikes on Iranian oil facilities – https://theconversation.com/what-international-law-says-about-the-israeli-strikes-on-iranian-oil-facilities-277875

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Emilie Rutledge, Senior Lecturer in Economics, The Open University

At the end of 2025, the Gulf states received high praise for their economic resilience. According to reports by the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, the region was stable, modern and reliable.

Now the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – are watching on nervously. The economic damage done by what has become a regional conflict, bringing an abrupt loss of stability, could be huge.

Aside from Saddam Hussein’s foray into Kuwait in 1991, these six countries have successfully steered clear of conflict on their home turf over a long perriod. They avoided the revolutionary upheavals which affected Egypt (1952), Iraq, Syria and Iran (1979). They steered clear of any spillover from the long-running Israel-Palestine conflict.

The group was mostly unaffected by the war between Iran and Iraq. And aside from a short-lived uprising in Bahrain in 2011, the GCC emerged largely unscathed from the regional turmoil of the Arab Spring in 2010 which spread from Tunisia and and Egypt and led to violent instability which continues to this day in Libya, Yemen and Syria.

The GCC’s comparative stability underpins its attractiveness as a global hub for money and modernity. Success in luxury tourism has filled places such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi with five (and even a seven) star hotels. Only France has more Michelin-starred restaurants than the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There is cutting-edge technology in Qatar’s energy sector, and a vast AI campus in the UAE.

It is these kinds of projects which led the World Bank and the World Economic Forum to publish glowing reports on the region recently. Both organisations agreed in late 2025 that oil wealth was being wisely invested for the future.

The general view was that the GCC was a place of economic stability and diversity. A director of the World Bank, Safaa El Kogali, said that the region’s embrace of a digital future had been nothing short of “remarkable”.

But US military bases in all GCC countries have come under attack. Drones have hit oil tankers. The Strait of Hormuz, vital for the transit of much of the world’s energy is effectively closed.

Missiles from Iran directly hit three Amazon web service facilities, one in Bahrain and two in the UAE, leading the company to recommend that GCC businesses back up their data and migrate it to data centres in the US.

Stock markets across the world have fallen sharply. Energy bills and petrol prices have soared as oil and gas refineries have been shut in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.

Under fire

Despite efforts to diversify economies away from oil, for now the region is still clearly dependent on oil exports and food imports, hence the worries over Hormuz. There are fears for its numerous desalination plants, which provide drinking water (as well as filling infinity pools and keeping golf courses green).

And its status as a safe and sunny sanctuary for conference conveners, influencers, holiday makers and owners of second homes is now being questioned.

Even if the conflict were to end soon, reputational damage has been done. People are fleeing the area, as images of smoke filled skies fill screens.

This will inevitably dampen foreign direct investment in the immediate future. The course and duration of the conflict will determine the degree to which the region can bounce back and continue to attract holidaymakers and young professionals and those seeking a life with more sun and less tax.

From a geopolitical perspective, the region’s recent success – aside from its vast and easily extracted natural resources – has rested largely on the assumed political stability that was underwritten by hosting US military bases and buying US military hardware. Both of these could now prove to be an economic liability.

Emilie Rutledge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Middle East conflict has swiftly exposed economic vulnerability in the region – https://theconversation.com/the-middle-east-conflict-has-swiftly-exposed-economic-vulnerability-in-the-region-277666

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Iwan Williams, Senior Lecturer in Sports Communication and Public Relations, Swansea University

When Snoop Dogg swaggered into Swansea wearing a Swansea City hoodie and beanie, it felt surreal. The American rapper took his seat at the Swansea.com Stadium and, for a moment, Welsh football tilted slightly off its axis.

Far from being incidental, it was a calculated public relations strategy – and a smart one. His arrival offers a revealing lesson in sports branding, celebrity capital and the globalisation of lower-league football.

Snoop Dogg’s minority investment in Swansea City, announced in July 2025, triggered an immediate surge of interest in a Championship club that has struggled for visibility since relegation from the Premier League in 2018. Swansea have spent years trying to stabilise themselves financially and culturally outside the glare of the top flight.

The club’s chief executive, Tom Gorringe, has been candid about those constraints. Swansea needed fresh revenue streams and renewed attention. Snoop’s social media reach – more than 100 million followers across platforms, including more than 88.5 million on Instagram – offered exactly that.

That kind of reach acts as a multiplier. Every post, every appearance, exposes the club to audiences traditional marketing budgets could never reach. Nowhere is that more valuable than in the US, a market long targeted by British clubs but notoriously difficult for smaller sides to penetrate in any meaningful way.

The effect was almost immediate. Ticket demand spiked ahead of Swansea’s match against Preston on February 24, the first widely publicised fixture attended by Snoop. The club opened additional sections of the ground to accommodate a crowd of 20,233. This was an unprecedented move in recent years. What would normally have been a modest second-tier fixture sold out. It became one of the largest attendances in recent Swansea history.

Celebrity endorsements in sport are nothing new. Yet the pairing of a west coast rapper with a west Wales Championship club is less random than it first appears. Snoop’s public persona dovetails neatly with Swansea’s self-image. He has described the city as “proud” and “working class”, “an underdog that bites back, just like me”.

That underdog identity carries weight in Welsh sport. Whether in football or rugby, Wales often frames itself as resilient, defiant and collectively driven when competing against wealthier or more populous opponents. The emotional logic fits. And in modern sporting PR, emotional authenticity matters more than cynical brand alignment.

There is another advantage. Snoop’s presence humanises the club’s ownership structure. Since November 2024, following a takeover, Swansea’s central decision-makers have been two American businessmen. For many supporters, overseas ownership can feel distant and abstract. A globally recognised cultural figure who turns up at games, posts enthusiastically and participates in club promotions offers something more tangible.

No magic bullet

Still, this is no magic bullet. Snoop Dogg’s investment is relatively modest. Swansea remain bound by financial regulations and the economic realities of the Championship. Celebrity attention can amplify a brand, but it cannot increase recruitment budgets or guarantee promotion. If results falter, media interest will cool.

Within those limits, however, Swansea appear to be maximising what celebrity PR can offer. The club is not claiming that Snoop will transform its fortunes overnight. Instead, it is treating his global cultural capital as a strategic asset in an unequal league ecosystem where visibility itself has value.

Read more:
Why America is buying up English football – and what it means for the future of ‘soccer’

His involvement also reflects a broader shift in how football clubs operate. Increasingly, they exist at the intersection of sport, entertainment and global media. Ownership is no longer just about balance sheets. It shapes narrative, perception and the way fandom itself is constructed.

In that sense, Swansea are doing more than enjoying a surreal headline. They are experimenting with identity. They are attempting to reposition themselves within a crowded, rapidly evolving football mediascape.

It is also telling that the club’s other celebrity co-owners, American lifestyle personality Martha Stewart and Croatian footballer Luka Modrić, have not generated similar column inches. Clearly, not all celebrity is equal.

Swansea City, to their credit, seem to understand where the real leverage lies. By directing the PR spotlight squarely at Snoop Dogg, they have recognised that brand alignment works best when it feels culturally coherent. In football, as on the pitch, timing and positioning matter. Get them right, and even a Championship club can land a global headline.

Iwan Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How Snoop Dogg became Swansea City’s most unlikely asset – https://theconversation.com/how-snoop-dogg-became-swansea-citys-most-unlikely-asset-276904

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Robert Frost, Early Career Fellow in History, University of Leicester

The concept of cultural appropriation, or “the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own”, is a controversial topic guaranteed to provoke polarising debate.

Recently, the National Portrait Gallery added a trigger warning to its photographs and portraits of T.E. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia. Visitors are now advised that these reflect “attitudes and viewpoints of the time”. Two Daily Telegraph columnists voiced contrary opinions, though both ultimately subsumed the issue into an attack on Free Palestine activists, impeding our understanding of the historical context.

If we restrict ourselves to looking at the images alone, they can indeed be classed as acts of cultural appropriation: there was, after all, no obligation for Lawrence to wear the costume when posing.

Read more:
What is cultural appropriation, and how does it differ from cultural appreciation?

But there is also Lawrence’s personal reality to consider. In the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence recounted being given the clothing by the Arabian Emir Feisal, the leader of the Arab revolt. The emir felt that British army khaki was uncomfortably close to that worn by the Turkish colonial soldiers, and that his followers would be more willing to accept someone dressed like themselves.

And Lawrence’s loyalty to the Arab cause did not end in 1918. In 1919, he lobbied the British government – unsuccessfully – to back them at Versailles. The most famous painting of Lawrence in Arab robes, from the same year, was a radical act of solidarity with another culture.

In this light, Lawrence was not simply engaging in frivolous cosplay. His choices should be distinguished from those of contemporaries such as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle) also known as Mata Hari, the Dutch courtesan, dancer and convicted spy whose performances revolved around discarding the slendong veils worn by Javanese temple dancers. Yet beyond such surface-level engagement, I have come across documentation showing how and why many others donned indigenous dress in the countries they visited, as opposed to simply wearing it, in effect, for show.

Practical considerations

Wearing native dress for more practical purposes was part of a longer tradition extending back many centuries. For starters, it had practical benefits. Turkish dress was particularly popular; it was composed of layers which could be added or removed as needed. It was also looser than standard European clothing, so better suited to a warm climate. And it was no small advantage that it could actually be obtained locally. Those venturing to Egypt and Palestine frequently wore it.

In the 1810s, the British sailors Charles Irby and James Mangles, quickly realised that western dress tended to attract a little too much attention. They recalled how local people, intrigued by their appearance, “used to flock to gaze at us as if we had been wild beasts”.

Witnessing a play in Cairo in 1815, the Italian adventurer and Egyptologist Giovanni Belzoni was surprised to see a character in western dress “who served as a sort of clown”. Under such conditions, it is unsurprising that Irby, Mangles and Belzoni all opted to change out of western clothing.

As I point out in my recent research, travellers were often advised by local people. Sadic Gibraltar, the son of an Egyptian admiral, told the British Egyptologist Gardner Wilkinson that Egypt was safe, “but costume of Turk is better”. Gibraltar sent Wilkinson to Osman Effendi, who led Wilkinson around the city to buy the recommended clothing. He also fitted out Edward William Lane in the same way; this dress allowed Lane to conduct a study of Islamic culture that would now be classed as participant observation.

A couple of decades later in 1839, the Scottish artist David Roberts was only permitted to enter mosques after he promised Cairo’s governor that he would wear local dress.

Two centuries later, it is difficult to assess whether any of these people were in any real danger. More likely, the dress simply made the wearer less conspicuous, so reduced unnecessary stress. William Rae Wilson probably also spoke for many when he wrote that his hosts “look upon it as a sort of compliment to imitate their dress”.

Resistance to wearing local dress came primarily from other Europeans, not indigenous people. Early 19th-century British embassy missions abroad always wore military uniform. Even Lord Byron – well-known for donning Greek national dress in the Greek war of independence – chose full-dress uniform for meeting Albania’s ruler, Ali Pasha. At an official level, there was an expectation that every Briton should behave similarly.

In one extreme episode, the British consul in Egypt, Henry Salt, sought to disavow Britons who continued to wear native dress. Charged by Britain’s growing power during the Napoleonic wars, Salt envisaged a future in which western clothing would mark his compatriots out for special treatment.

An objection by the Britons themselves meant the order was rescinded, though eventually a trend developed toward tropical kit being used as a marker of difference in the late 19th century.

It has become almost a stock-in-trade to suggest that Britons, from the Arctic to the Sahara, failed to copy local customs more appropriate to their situation. Paintings from the past are complicated artefacts, but it is perhaps time to reclassify them as examples showing that some Britons actually did adapt.

Robert Frost receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust.

– ref. Cultural appropriation? How westerners have worn indigenous clothing for a variety of reasons throughout history – https://theconversation.com/cultural-appropriation-how-westerners-have-worn-indigenous-clothing-for-a-variety-of-reasons-throughout-history-275110

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Vivek Soundararajan, Professor of Work and Equality, University of Bath

Every week brings fresh claims about AI transforming the workplace. A CEO declares a revolution. A think piece predicts millions of jobs vanishing overnight. The noise is relentless.

But strip away the hype and there is a simpler question. In developed economies, what has AI actually changed about work so far? The answer turns out to be more interesting, and more uneven, than either side suggests.

What’s real

Let’s start with what the evidence supports. AI is delivering genuine productivity gains in specific kinds of knowledge-based and service work. An experimental study found that professionals using ChatGPT for writing tasks took 40% less time to complete them, with an 18% improvement in quality (as evaluated by their colleagues in blind testing).

And another study of more than 5,000 customer service agents found a 15% increase in issues resolved per hour. An industry experiment involving realistic, complex tasks done with management consultants found they completed the work 25% faster and produced results that were deemed to be 40% higher in quality (again, judged by experts in blind tests). Randomised trials involving nearly 5,000 software developers documented a 26% increase in completed tasks.

AI has long been discussed as a threat to jobs and livelihoods. But what’s the reality? In this new series, we explore the impact it is already having on different occupations – and how people really feel about their AI assistants.

These are not small numbers. And adoption is moving fast. A US survey found that nearly four in ten workers were using generative AI at work by mid-2025. This pace of adoption outstrips the early years of both the personal computer and the internet. Across countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), firms report that AI integration into business functions is accelerating.

So the productivity story is real, particularly in text-heavy, codifiable tasks across legal, finance, marketing and customer service. That much is not hype.

What’s overstated

But the apocalyptic predictions have not yet materialised. Employment across OECD countries remains historically robust. A review of the research-based evidence produced in the US in early 2026 found that despite rapid adoption, AI has so far caused little in the way of widespread job losses or pay cuts. And a study (as yet unpublished) that tracked AI chatbot use in Danish workplaces found essentially zero effects on earnings or recorded hours, even among heavy users and early adopters.

Why? Because many jobs still require tacit knowledge, physical presence, sound judgement and the kind of contextual awareness that AI cannot yet replicate. And adoption is far more uneven than the headline numbers suggest. While AI use among firms in the US soared between 2023 and 2025, a report found fewer firms had actually embedded it into their operations. The information sector, for example, adopted it at roughly ten times the rate of hospitality.

One economic modelling exercise estimates that AI might add somewhere between 1% and 1.6% to US GDP over the next decade. This is significant, but it is far short of the transformative claims.

The gap between productivity gains in controlled studies and real transformation inside organisations remains enormous. The revolution, for most workplaces, has not yet arrived.

What’s under-reported

Here is where the story gets more consequential and where the commentary falls short. The distributional effects of AI within developed economies deserve far more attention. Not everyone is experiencing this transformation the same way.

The evidence on who benefits is strikingly consistent. Less experienced workers see the biggest gains from AI tools. A study found that AI narrowed the gap between the most and least productive staff, with the largest improvements among lower-ability workers.

In customer service, novice agents benefited most. The most experienced staff experienced little improvement and, in some cases, slight quality declines. The industry experiment mentioned above found below-average performers improved by 43%, while top performers gained 17%. So the biggest gains go to the least experienced workers, narrowing the gap between top and bottom performers within firms.

That sounds like good news. But there’s a catch.

While AI may compress skills inside firms, the broader labour market is telling a different story. Entry-level roles are shrinking in AI-exposed occupations. The routine tasks that once justified hiring juniors – jobs which provided learning opportunities for those on the bottom rung – are the first to be automated.

Economic theory has long warned that automation displaces workers from tasks, and the creation of new tasks to counterbalance this is neither automatic nor guaranteed. An estimated 60% of jobs in advanced economies face some AI exposure.

In most realistic scenarios, inequality worsens without deliberate intervention – partly because higher-income workers hold more capital assets and stand to gain from rising returns on AI-related investments.

The pattern that is emerging is this: AI helps those already inside the door while quietly narrowing the door for those trying to get in.

Paying attention to the right question

Sector matters. Firm size matters. Job type matters. The AI transition is not one story. It is many – unfolding at different speeds, with different consequences, depending on where you sit in the economy.

The debate has been stuck between breathless optimism and existential dread. Neither is useful. The evidence points somewhere more uncomfortable: a transformation that is real but partial, fast in some corners and stalled in others – and distributing its costs and benefits in ways that are shaped by existing inequalities.

If the productivity gains are genuine, the question is: who captures them? If entry-level work is disappearing, what replaces it? And if the gap between firms that adopt and those that cannot is widening, the focus should be on what we are building in response. Just talking about it won’t be enough.

Vivek Soundararajan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. AI and work: an expert assesses how far this revolution still has to run – https://theconversation.com/ai-and-work-an-expert-assesses-how-far-this-revolution-still-has-to-run-277650