Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Charlotte Setijadi, Lecturer in Asian Studies, The University of Melbourne

In the first two weeks of March, two young Indonesian women died alone in a hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The first, who Indonesian officials have identified as 22-year-old Susi Yanti Br. Sinaga died following a critical illness, despite having no prior health conditions.

Her family said Susi left Indonesia in December 2025 with her boyfriend and a promise of a job in Malaysia. She ended up being trafficked into a scam compound in Cambodia. Within three months, she was dead.

The other woman, a 20-year-old shopkeeper from Pekanbaru, Riau province, arrived in Cambodia under similar circumstances and died only a few days after Susi. According to multiple NGO sources who assisted her in her final days, her death was linked to the physical and sexual abuse she suffered in the compound.

These women are among the thousands of young people who have found themselves stranded in Cambodia in recent months after leaving scam compounds that had opened their doors in anticipation of rumoured police raids.

Many who have made their way to the Cambodian capital are Indonesian. They began lining up outside the Indonesian embassy in Phnom Penh in mid-January, seeking help to return home.

By March 9, the embassy said it had received more than 5,400 requests for assistance from Indonesian citizens in less than three months. Over 1,800 have so far been repatriated with the embassy’s assistance. Most of the others are now hosted in a dedicated facility, where they wait for their turn to leave.

These numbers represent a sharp increase from 2025. They highlight the scale of trafficking of young Indonesians into “scam factories” across Southeast Asia, mostly in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines.

Clearly, what is happening to these Indonesians is a complex structural problem, shaped by regional labour precarity and weak regulation.

Yet, Indonesia is largely overlooked in existing media coverage of the issue. Relatively little is known about how Indonesians are entrenched in the industry as victims, operators and stakeholders.

Why young Indonesians are in the industry

In March last year, the Indonesian government reported that, with the assistance of the Thai government, it had rescued and repatriated 569 of its citizens from online scam compounds in Myanmar.

This drew national attention to the issue, raising urgent questions about why and how so many young people are being lured into this work.

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Read more:
Scam Factories: The inside story of Southeast Asia’s fraud compounds – Part 1

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Spurred by limited employment opportunities, low wages and political discontent, Indonesian youths have been leaving the country in droves.

Some of these young people enter the scam economy willingly. Others go voluntarily but find themselves trapped once inside. Many more are deceived from the outset, lured into becoming so-called “cyber slaves”.

Among rescued trafficking victims, familiar stories emerge. Most are recruited through friend referrals or fake job offers on social media. Once at their destination, however, they are abducted and trafficked into scam compounds. Their passports are confiscated. They are told they owe large fees for flights, visas, accommodation or training, and must work to repay this debt.

Some of these victims eventually rise through the ranks to become scam operators, supervisors or even recruiters who lure other Indonesians, often friends or family, into the industry.

As NGOs have highlighted, however, progression in the industry often involves coercion and debt bondage. Many are compelled to recruit others as a condition for repaying imposed debts, avoiding punishment or securing improvements in their living conditions.

These dynamics blur the boundary between victim and perpetrator.

This contributes to the criminalisation of trafficked individuals. They should instead be recognised and protected as victims of modern slavery.

Escaped from slavery, greeted as suspects

In Indonesia, public discourse tends to frame those who end up in scam compounds either as criminals or gullible youths who fell for false promises.

Following the mass repatriation of Indonesian nationals from Myanmar scam centres last year, returnees were detained and questioned before being released.

They were processed primarily through law enforcement procedures rather than victim support mechanisms.

Indonesian police have also noted some citizens returning from Myanmar’s scam centres refused to be repatriated because of the money they were earning as scammers.

Those who have recently emerged from scam compounds in Cambodia are even more likely to be perceived as willing perpetrators. Cambodia’s growing reputation as a regional hub for cybercrime has fostered a widespread assumption that Indonesians who travel there already know what kind of work awaits them.

Recent news coverage highlighting the large number of Indonesians working in Cambodia’s online industries has further entrenched this narrative, casting them as complicit actors deliberately scamming fellow citizens.

In the wake of the reports of the recent Cambodian raids, some government officials have called for returnees to face criminal prosecution under Indonesian law.

On social media, some popular commentators have argued Indonesian scam workers should not be repatriated. Some have even called for them to be stripped of their citizenship.

Who benefits from blaming trafficked workers?

Framing returnees as potential criminals is politically convenient but counterproductive. It discourages victims from seeking help from authorities.

It also makes it more difficult for civil society organisations, already strapped for funding, to mobilise support for these young Indonesians.

This ultimately benefits traffickers and industry operators.

This narrative also obscures how Indonesians are now involved at all levels of the scam industry, from recruiters and transnational operational staff to elites with financial stakes in the businesses.

The persistent focus on criminalising trafficked workers diverts attention from the deeper structures of deception and exploitation underpinning the industry.

With youth unemployment still high in Indonesia, this issue is not going away. Until trafficked workers are treated as victims rather than criminals, and the structures that feed this industry are addressed, the cost will continue to be borne by vulnerable young people like Susi and the young woman from Pekanbaru who died alone in Phnom Penh.

Charlotte Setijadi has previously received research funding from Singapore’s Ministry of Education and the Singapore Social Science Research Council. She is currently one of the co-convenors of the University of Melbourne’s Indonesia Forum.

In 2024, Ivan Franceschini co-founded EOS Collective, a non-profit organisation dedicated to investigating the dynamics of the online scam industry and the criminal networks behind it, and supporting survivors of forced criminality in these operations.

– ref. Desperate to flee abuse in Cambodian scam compounds, these young Indonesians are now facing suspicion back home – https://theconversation.com/desperate-to-flee-abuse-in-cambodian-scam-compounds-these-young-indonesians-are-now-facing-suspicion-back-home-274853

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Natalie Kon-yu, Associate Professor, Creative Writing and Literary Studies, Victoria University

In 2016 and again in 2024, Donald Trump ran against two supremely qualified presidential candidates, who both lost. Both had decades of service to government and high-ranking jobs within Democratic administrations. Both were women.

Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris’ losses have prompted a thousand think pieces on whether or not the United States is ready to elect a female president. The old adage, dating back to the Cold War, is that women are too emotional to be trusted with the nuclear button.

But the men in the current White House might be the most emotional leadership group the US has ever had. And while their outbursts often seem spontaneous and even silly, we should take them seriously.

War and fury

Trump chronicler Michael Wolff shared his belief this week that “nothing” Trump says is ever “related to meaning” but it’s “all related to what he is feeling” – which, he says, informs Trump’s behaviour around the Iran war. The Daily Beast, which reported Wolff’s comments, approached the White House for comment.

Communications director Steven Cheung responded by calling Wolff “a lying sack of s–t” who has “been proven to be a fraud”. (Wolff has been criticised for his casual approach to fact-checking, including in his Trump biography.) Cheung continued:

He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.

This in itself is unusually emotional (and colloquial) language for an official White House communication, but is not surprising in the era of Trump 2.0.

From “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” to the president’s many legal suits against those who have wronged him and his apparent need for his name to be on buildings – including the former Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts – big feelings are on full display in the era of Donald Trump.

Those big feelings are also reflected in the Trump administration’s policies. What is ICE but an agency dedicated to the irrational fear of foreigners? Greed, envy, anger, lust, fear: they are all on constant display in Trump’s White House. They come from his chief of staff Stephen Miller, former DOGE head Elon Musk, Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance.

Even the name for the current war on Iran, Operation Epic Fury, is emotional. Compare it to the names of the initial wars on Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) and Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom).

This comes after Trump renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War last year, to make it sound more aggressive. “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” Hegseth said of the change, which is reflected in his language about Iran this week:

Death and destruction from the sky all day long […] This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.

Fear, anger and MAGA

Sociology professor Thomas Henricks explains how fear, a negative emotion “that feels bad to possess”, is often converted to anger, “an emotion that restores agency, direction, and self-esteem”.

Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild has long focused her research on feelings. She was studying MAGA supporters before they had a name. For her latest book, she looked at how shame and pride motivated this cohort in Kentucky. Many of those she spoke to “saw Trump as a bully — but a bully who stood up for them, against what they perceived as urban liberal elites”.

Giving loyalty to a dynamic leader, writes Henricks, can seem “the surest route to regaining” personal power that feels like it is “slipping away”.

English professor Lauren Berlant believes Trump supporters are attracted to the president’s performance of freedom, through saying whatever he feels. When expression is policed in the name of civil rights and feminism, she observes, it rejects “what feels like people’s spontaneous, ingrained responses”.

But the “Trump Emotion Machine” delivers “feeling ok” and “acting free”. It means “being ok with one’s internal noise, and saying it, and demanding that it matter”.

Gender and emotion

For centuries, political philosophy has noted that much social power is “affective”, relating to moods, feelings and attitudes. Whatever you think of Trump, his policy and style make him exactly the kind of case study political affect theorists have been waiting for.

He is the most conspicuous proponent yet of what we call aesthetarchy – or rule by feelings.

Many feminists and other writers have critiqued the gendered inequity of displays of emotion. Explaining the politics of sex roles, feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye says we all internalise and monitor ourselves to adapt to outside expectations – or “the needs and tastes and tyrannies of others”.

For example, “women’s cramped postures and attenuated strides and men’s restraint of emotional self-expression (except for anger)”.

The crying man was once mocked as womanly and the athletic or politically powerful woman was seen as manly. Both transgressions maintain positive valuations of the masculine and negative valuations of the feminine. Sex roles were once a stronger form of control than they are now.

Yet in MAGA, we have something different happening.

Tantrums and explosions: MAGA men

Hegseth has been criticised, even ridiculed by some media outlets, for his emotional outbursts in media briefings. A Pentagon briefing on US strikes on Iran last June, during which he lashed out at reporters, was labelled a “tantrum” by The Daily Beast.

Miller, too, has been criticised for on-air “temper tantrums”. Insiders revealed his daily conference calls “routinely descend into him loudly berating staff and launching into full-on meltdowns”.

Vance, who made headlines for leading a verbal attack on Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House last year, wrote in his memoir about his struggles to control his anger: “Even at my best, I’m a delayed explosion.”

It is hard to imagine Democrat women getting away with such behaviour. Just this week, Fox News titled an article: “Hillary Clinton storms out of Epstein deposition after House lawmaker leaks photo from inside.” It described a “stunning moment” when Clinton was made aware of the fact that Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert violated House rules by taking and sending a photo of her during her deposition.

Caricatures of femininity: MAGA women

What about the women of MAGA? How does emotion drive their involvement?

In 1983, Andrea Dworkin published Right-Wing Women, a confronting study of Republican women’s active participation in conservative politics in the US. She proposed that right-wing activist women submit to men and the patriarchy in exchange for structure to their lives: shelter, safety, rules and love from men.

As these rewards are conditional on their ongoing obedience to men, right-wing activist women become not just complicit, but enthusiastic perpetrators of violence and discrimination against other women.

What motivates the trade? Fear of vulnerability to men and male violence, which they believe naturally finds a target in “an independent woman”.

The “hates” Dworkin documents are just as relevant now, more than 40 years later: anti-abortion, antisemitism, homophobia, anti-feminism, disregard for female poverty, and more. The tirades of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt against diversity, equity and inclusion are prime examples of a woman attacking feminine solidarity to strengthen her quest for power.

MAGA women can be emotional – but we only see them unleashing emotions that serve the needs of the most powerful men.

Instead of embodying soft emotions such as empathy, care and kindness (like New Zealand’s former prime minister Jacinda Adern), the women of MAGA strive to be as tough as the men in their administration.

Look at Kristi Noem, who was secretary of homeland security – until she was ousted last week. A new book reports Trump saw Noem’s pre-election admission of shooting her own dog as a reason to appoint her to implement his mass-deportation agenda.

And she did play this hard-nosed role. She responded to the murders of mother Renee Nicole Good and intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by ICE agents by saying the victims were involved in “domestic terrorism”.

MAGA women often nod to conventional femininity with their hyper-feminine looks. Both Noem and Leavitt have been described as having what commentators dub “Mar-a-Lago Face”. This “caricature of femininity”, often achieved through surgery, Botox or fillers, not only signals wealth, but is a form of submission.

“The unspoken message Mar-a-Lago face gives to men in power,” HuffPost reporter Brittany Wong suggests, “is that the woman is willing to tear into their flesh and change their entire individual appearance to gain approval.” (Admittedly, a few men, such as Matt Gaetz, have also been accused of having Mar-a-Lago face: a masculine, rather than feminine, caricature.)

Yet, as we have seen, power for MAGA women is always conditional. Noem’s “toughness” was not enough to save her. Many possible reasons have been cited for Noem’s firing, including the US$220 million advertising campaign for ICE featuring her on horseback, and alleged misuse of public funds.

But she is not the first administration official to be accused of such things – or incompetence. Remember when Hegseth accidentally sent a top-secret group chat detailing an upcoming US strike to a journalist? He still has his job.

Macho sensitivity

Men’s anger, lust or avarice has often been rationalised as acceptable or inevitable on a gendered basis. Women’s emotional outbursts were long labelled hysterical.

But on Truth Social, X and other MAGA forums, emotional outbursts no longer need rational underpinning to be positively valued. They can be seen as perfectly masculine. As Berlant says, unleashed emotion by MAGA types on social media is seen as anti-political-correctness: “being ok with one’s internal noise, and saying it, and demanding that it matter”.

Trump’s actions, such as his threat to sue comedian Trevor Noah for a joke at the Grammys, are seen as another example of strongly anti-woke, pro-white leadership, rather than thin-skinned emotional hysteria. So is Trump calling Robert De Niro “another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely Low IQ” last month, in response to the actor calling him an “idiot”.

Behind the machismo there is a strange vulnerabilty, a heightened sensitivity to the slightest criticism or perceived threat to the white, male order.

Last month, Daily Show host Jon Stewart pointed out the hypocrisy, after MAGA complaints about Bad Bunny performing in Spanish at the Super Bowl. “When did the right become such fucking pussies?” he said. “Remember 2017? Remember what you hated about liberals? Perpetually offended, safe spaces, censoring free speech, culture of victimhood. Remind you of anyone?”

In some ways, perhaps this public outpouring of emotion from the predominantly white men in Trump’s government should not be surprising. A former high-school acquaintance of Miller told Vanity Fair that, even as a student, he was “all about this victimhood idea, that he was this lonely soldier crusading”.

The rise of the alt-right, which contributed to Trump’s arrival in office, coalesced through movements such as GamerGate: the online social harassment campaign against female video-game journalists by predominantly white men on 4chan, who felt both victimised and infuriated by calls for more inclusive casts in video games.

Stewing in the same digital sewers were the incels: single men who consider themselves hard-done by women who have not deigned to have sex with them. The number of lives this cohort has claimed through violent attacks is comparable to those killed by Islamic State terrorists in the same period. They are particularly known for their appetite for violence.

These acts are, in part, fuelled by the irreconcilable shame and humiliation they feel at the wounding of their masculinity, along with a desire for retribution against women and any men who provoke their jealousy.

Trump’s administration, and indeed his own emotionally volatile behaviour, validates these hurt feelings through his slashing of funding support for diversity and inclusion initiatives, and violent roundups of people deemed “un-American” — even some US citizens. In this way, the current administration is a GamerGate fantasy brought to life.

Power through feeling

Political philosophy tells us social power often manifests primarily through aesthetics, or how things feel, rather than logic. The rise of totalitarianism in Europe during the 1920s and ‘30s motivated many journalists and commentators to pay close attention to this problem. Much of the work was published after 1945, some of it posthumously, by well-known writers such as Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Primo Levi and Simone Weil.

Emotions – particularly anger and fear – are classic tools used by authoritarian leaders. But anger can work the other way, too. Political science professor Bryn Rosenfeld argues it can power action against repressive regimes, fuelling resistance and encouraging risk.

Either way, Trump’s electoral success and political power – helped by his supporters’ deep emotional identification with him – show that the philosophers are onto something important.

Emily Booth receives funding from the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator.

Michael Burke, Natalie Kon-yu, and Tom Clark do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Friday essay: ‘epic fury’ – the men of MAGA might be the most emotional US leaders ever – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-epic-fury-the-men-of-maga-might-be-the-most-emotional-us-leaders-ever-277227

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Tamer Morris, Senior Lecturer, International Law, University of Sydney

Since the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran, most international law experts appear to be speaking with one voice on the legality of the attacks.

Legal experts have said the attacks violated Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force against states. The US and Israel have not produced any evidence that Iran posed an imminent threat to either of them. And neither has brought the matter to the UN Security Council. As such, this was a clear breach of international law.

But even though most scholars agree the strikes were unlawful, the public and political debate has shifted somewhere else entirely.

Instead of wrestling with the legal questions, many politicians, commentators, and everyday observers are counterbalancing the illegality with arguments about legitimacy.

Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump have cast the war as a “necessary” fight between good and evil. Netanyahu said:

I know the cost of war. But I know sometimes that war is necessary to protect us from the people who will destroy us. […] We have to understand that we’re fighting here the bad guys. We’re the good guys. These people massacred their own people.

Canada and Australia, two of the US’ closest allies, have both used strikingly similar language in their statements about the war, saying they supported the US:

acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.

This idea of legitimacy – that is, what is “right”, “necessary”, or “just” – is now being thrown around in almost every conversation about the war.

Two arguments for a ‘just’ war

These arguments echo centuries‑old thinking about “just” wars.

Christian philosophers such as St Augustine (4th–5th century) and St Thomas Aquinas (13th century), for example, were early proponents of what is known as the “just war theory”. Basically, this means you
may violate the moral rule against violence if the cause is “just”.

In modern debates, arguments about the legitimacy of wars tend to fall into two categories.

The first claims attacks like the ones launched by the US and Israel are morally just and therefore ought to be permitted, regardless of what international law says.

This line of reasoning goes something like this: “So what if the action breaches international law? We removed an evil dictator.” Or: “Do we really want Iran developing nuclear weapons or long-range missiles?”

The statements by Netanyahu and Trump frame the use of force as morally necessary, implying that if an action feels righteous, legality should not be a hindrance.

The second argument dismisses international law altogether as ineffective or irrelevant.

The strand of legitimacy reasoning is also becoming common. It’s reflected in statements like: “Where was international law when people were being killed on the streets in Iran?” or “How can international law matter if Iran is constantly threatening western states and funding a proxy war?”

The conclusion drawn here is simple: if the law fails to prevent harm, it must be irrelevant. And if international law is irrelevant, then the US-Israeli strikes on Iran are legitimate.

Both of these lines of reasoning carry their own risks, not least the danger of allowing subjective morality to replace objective legal constraints.

Can a morally just war be deemed illegal?

The first argument hinges on the notion that the US and Israel strikes on Iran are just, given the brutal, repressive nature of the Iranian regime and the fact it is pursuing nuclear weapons. And international law should allow just actions.

But who decides what is just?

For the US and some of its allies, this is a binary moral equation: Iran is bad, we are good.

But this argument can also be made from Iran’s perspective: Israel and the US are bad. Therefore, we need nuclear weapons to protect ourselves.

Once states are permitted to act on their own sense of morality and justice, the international system goes down an extremely dangerous road. Every state can consider itself the “good” actor in its own story. If we allow individual morality to override the law, moral chaos follows.

Historically, moral arguments about “civilisation”, “enlightenment”, or “improvement” were also used to justify colonisation and slavery.

This is still happening in different contexts today: one group assumes its moral compass is universal, superior and mandatory for all others. If the world returns to that mode of thinking, the strongest states will once again become the arbiters of what counts as “good”.

International law must therefore remain objective, free from claims of moral exceptionalism.

Does international law still have relevance?

The second argument is even stranger: where was international law when a state like Iran committed atrocities?

This requires a clearer understanding of the role of international law. If we disregard international law because someone violates it, it’s like rejecting the rule book while still using its language to call out a foul.

Without it, there would be no norms to appeal to, no expectation of protection, no shared belief that certain harms are prohibited.

This argument also doesn’t follow logic. Murders still happen in countries like Australia. Should we therefore abandon domestic laws that prevent them?

Of course, there are double standards in international law. Powerful states have greater impunity and weaker states face more scrutiny.

But double standards also exist in domestic legal systems – wealthier people generally receive better outcomes than those with less means.

The existence of inequality in international law, then, shows the need for reform, not the abandonment of the law altogether.

Why this matters

The Iran war reveals a dangerous shift in the way states justify their actions: a growing preference for moral storytelling over legal reasoning.

Once the narrative of a “just war” replaces the rule of law, there is little left to restrain the powerful states from dominating the weaker ones.

The purpose of international law is not to determine who is morally good; it is to maintain order in a world where every state believes it is waging the “good” fight.

Tamer Morris 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. ‘We’re the good guys’: why moral storytelling doesn’t make the war on Iran necessary or legal – https://theconversation.com/were-the-good-guys-why-moral-storytelling-doesnt-make-the-war-on-iran-necessary-or-legal-277952

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Anna Marie Brennan, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Waikato

When the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran nearly two weeks ago, the first confirmation didn’t come from governments. It came from commercial satellites.

Images from US companies Planet Labs and Vantor captured smoke billowing over central Tehran and ships burning at the coastal city of Konarak – evidence of strikes on naval bases, airfields and missile sites that global media confirmed within hours.

But space-based technology was not just observing the conflict, it was also a target. US officials said early strikes hit “Iran’s equivalent of Space Command”, undermining Tehran’s ability to coordinate via satellite.

Iran has also used extensive “spoofing” to create false GPS signals to mislead receivers about their true location.

Simultaneously, US Space Command and Cyber Command launched operations to jam, hack and disrupt Iranian software systems, known as “non-kinetic” attacks in the jargon of modern warfare.

Such operations are a kind of “silent sabotage”, disabling communications or corrupting GPS signals without blowing anything up with conventional “kinetic” attacks.

This combination of advanced battlefield tactics and the rapid commercialisation of space technology, as well as the erosion of the old rules-based order in general, means international law is now falling well behind.

Blurred lines of accountability

Non-kinetic tactics have quickly spilled into civilian life. In January, amid anti-government protests, and later during the first wave of strikes, Iran used GPS jamming and spoofing to disrupt Starlink terminals, which civilians and protesters depended on to stay online and share information during internet blackouts.

At the same time, commercial satellite imagery became part of the conflict itself. After Planet Lab’s images revealed Iranian retaliatory strikes on US and US-linked sites in the Persian Gulf, the company delayed releasing new imagery to avoid aiding real‑time damage assessment by Iranian forces.

On March 10, Planet Labs extended the delay time to two weeks for non-government users, but the US military still receives immediate access.

Modern warfare depends heavily on these kinds of commercial, dual-use space systems. The same satellites that time financial transactions, support hospitals and manage global logistics also guide military operations.

This blurs the traditional legal boundary between civilian and military objects and activities. The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned repeatedly that interference with satellites can harm civilians by disrupting power grids, navigation, emergency services and humanitarian operations.

Outer space is not a legal vacuum. The United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty, the UN Charter itself, and international humanitarian law all apply to warfare in orbit. But the Iran war shows how real‑world practice is advancing faster than these legal frameworks.

A proper treaty is unlikely

Dual-use satellites providing both civilian broadband and military communications also complicate decisions about what constitutes a lawful target.

Legal experts say satellites providing essential civilian services should be presumed to be non-military unless direct military use is demonstrated. But this precept is tested daily over Iran.

Another challenge is political neutrality. If a private company based in a neutral state provides data that can assist military operations elsewhere, the neutral state may face serious questions and diplomatic pressure from other governments about whether it should be held responsible.

The law has not caught up with these commercial realities. Planet Lab’s imagery delays show how companies are having to improvise policy themselves during armed conflict.

And because cyber-attacks can disable military systems without causing physical destruction, they can fall short of “armed attack” thresholds under international law. States can exploit this legal grey zone to gain strategic advantage.

New legal norms may eventually evolve out of the behaviour of governments and commercial operators rather than through formal agreements and treaties. Indeed, geopolitical tensions make a new treaty on military space operations highly unlikely.

This leaves companies, regulators and militaries to define the boundaries of acceptable conduct through their real‑time responses. The result is a battlefield where satellites shape strategy faster than lawmakers can respond.

Anna Marie Brennan 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. Commercial space technology is shaping the Iran war – the law can’t keep up – https://theconversation.com/commercial-space-technology-is-shaping-the-iran-war-the-law-cant-keep-up-277940

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Steven Roberts, Professor of Sociology, School of Social Sciences, Monash University

Over the past two years, viral clips, news headlines and TV series such as Adolescence have ensured much of the public has encountered the “manosphere” – an online ecosystem that repackages misogyny, anti-feminism and male grievance as self-improvement and hustle.

Journalist Louis Theroux is further lifting the lid on this dangerous ideology with his new Netflix documentary, Inside the Manosphere, in which he showcases the individuals driving this culture.

In his measured and sometimes risky style, Theroux traces not only the rhetoric of “high-value men”, but also the livestream formats and business models that sustain this world. The result is both illuminating and unsettling.

An insidious ideology

What emerges in Theroux’s exposé is not just provocation, but a clear misogynistic worldview. Across interviews and through influencers’ own content, we see the defence of a regressive gender hierarchy – and attempts to restore it.

Women are described as having innate value through their beauty and sexuality, yet dismissed as less rational and emotionally stable. Monogamy is framed as binding for women, but optional for men. Gender equality is blamed for cultural decline.

At times the language is openly authoritarian. Infamous influencer Myron Gaines describes himself to Theroux as a “dictator” in his romantic relationship. He casts intimacy as something he permits, and domestic care as something owed to men.

But Gaines also rejects that he is a misogynist; he claims he loves women, but that women don’t know what they want, and must be led.

The hypocrisy is striking. Several manosphere figures such as Harrison Sullivan publicly deride women who use platforms such as OnlyFans, while claiming to privately profit from managing their accounts.

Misogyny as a business model

Theroux also shows how the audiences of these influencers form.

In one early scene, young boys who look to be around tween age (with blurred faces) repeat lines about hating women and gay people with unsettling ease. Later, young adult men speak of having “no value” unless they accumulate wealth, status and dominance. Working a nine-to-five job is framed as submission to the “matrix” and the “hustle” as freedom.

The complaint that stable work no longer guarantees security will resonate with many. But in the manosphere, economic strain becomes personal failure: if you are struggling, you have not worked hard enough. This is not just ideology. It is a business model.

Subscription “academies”, private groups and coaching schemes convert insecurity into income. In one example from the documentary, we see American influencer Justin Waller promoting The Real World – an online university run by his close friend and business partner Andrew Tate (who is currently facing charges of rape and human trafficking in multiple countries).

Young men and boys are told they are deficient unless wealthy, muscular and emotionally invulnerable, and then charged for access to the mindset said to fix them. The hierarchy that elevates dominant men and denigrates women simultaneously and exploitatively monetises the boys beneath it.

The worldview is not confined to provocation. In one segment, Waller’s partner Kristen explains that she feels fulfilled staying in her “lane”, and caring for the children and home, while he occupies his role as provider and leader.

She speaks warmly of their respective “masculine and feminine energies”, presenting inequality not as constraint but as comfort – despite viewers learning she has no legal right to his wealth as they are not legally married.

Breeding ground for conspiracies

Running alongside the hustle narrative is a thread of conspiracy theorising. The “matrix” is invoked as a metaphor for societal and institutional systems said to keep men compliant and blind to alternative paths to power.

From there it darkens into talk of shadowy elites engineering cultural decline, including “moral” decline and the erosion of men’s place in the world (which they bizarrely link to the growth of pedophilia).

The “manfluencers”, notably Sullivan and Gaines, suggest recent political developments – such as the rise of President Trump – vindicate their worldview.

Theroux’s instinct is to return to the manfluencers’ own accounts of absent fathers and unstable upbringings. That humanising impulse tilts the story toward sympathy and, problematically, to trauma as a key explanation.

But misogyny does not require trauma to flourish, nor are most boys who experience hardship drawn into sexist worldviews. These ideas are ideological and structural, with long-standing gender hierarchies repackaged and broadcast at scale.

The real-life consequences

Inside the Manosphere does acknowledge harms to women, but doesn’t dwell on it very long.

One segment on schools uses news clips from English-speaking countries to signal the spread of misogynistic language among boys. But the documentary could have done more to highlight these significant manosphere-inspired flow-on effects.

Research I conducted with Stephanie Wescott and colleagues extensively documents how manosphere narratives have permeated schools internationally. This has resulted in higher levels of harassment and gender-based violence by some boys against girl peers and women teachers, eroding women’s workplace safety and girls’ participation.

Theroux is right to suggest we are all, in some sense, now living inside the manosphere. Understanding what drives the men at its centre matters – as does focusing on the real-world harms they cause.

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Read more:
Andrew Tate’s extreme views about women are infiltrating Australian schools. We need a zero-tolerance response

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Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere is on Netlix from today.

Steven Roberts receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is also a Board Director at Respect Victoria, but the article is written wholly independently from this role.

– ref. Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere exposes the business model of misogyny – https://theconversation.com/louis-therouxs-inside-the-manosphere-exposes-the-business-model-of-misogyny-277509

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

Film critics – myself included – love to bemoan the death of high-quality cinema in the age of streaming, pointing to mediocre Best Picture Oscar nominees as evidence that the production of great (or even good) films is on the wane.

But perhaps things are changing. Are people sick of being inundated with short videos on TikTok and Youtube, and once again hankering for a cinematic experience? The quality of this year’s nominees suggests they are.

For the first time in a while, most of the nominated films are excellent – and nearly all of them are watchable.

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Read more:
The Oscars aren’t a meritocracy – there’s a complex formula for winning

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My top pick: Sentimental Value

Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value is my pick for the Best Picture Oscar. It’s the kind of meticulously crafted film in which the naturalism seems effortless.

The narrative follows acclaimed filmmaker Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), a quintessential Euro-auteur, who comes back into the lives of his estranged daughters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) following their mother’s death.

Gustav is making a new film, and wants his daughter Nora – an acclaimed theatre actress who has her own demons to battle (stage fright among them) – to star in it.

Nora assumes it’s a cynical manoeuvre for funding on her father’s part and refuses. So Gustav casts American star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) instead, who is immediately out of her depth.

The drama unfolds around the family home in Oslo, interweaving narratives of the home’s history across generations with the tensions plaguing its current inhabitants.

Sentimental Value has a strikingly lyrical quality. Some may say it’s overdone, but every element is so perfectly executed that it doesn’t come across as pretentious or laboured. It is, in many respects, thoroughly sentimental – yet never feels like it’s performing this as some kind of effect.

Despite its considerable formal and narrative complexity, it plays in a starkly simple fashion, thanks to the light touch of Trier, coupled with stunning cinematography by Kasper Tuxen Andersen.

The lead performances by Reinsve, Lilleaas and Skarsgård are extraordinarily convincing and, perhaps more surprisingly, Fanning is awesome as the uncomfortable American trying to please the European artiste.

Sentimental Value brilliantly weaves a sense of European social and cultural history with carefully observed character moments, becoming, by the end, a kind of treatise on the affirmative potential of art to transcend and transform interpersonal barriers.

Despite the difficulties of life, the detritus of broken promises and hearts, and the disappointments minor and not so minor, we can still come together – beautifully and wholeheartedly – through the practice of that abstract dream that is called art.

Other excellent contenders

There are a few other strong contenders – films which, any other year, would have stood out above the pack.

Bugonia

Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of the past decade, and yet his films have been hit and miss. After his last great film, the 2015 black comedy The Lobster, Bugonia marks a return to form.

The film follows bumbling paranoiac conspiracy nut Teddy (Jesse Plemons) as he and his half-witted cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) kidnap Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the CEO of pharmaceutical company Auxolith.

Fuller is the kind of ruthless business leader who appears on the cover of Forbes magazine with the caption “Breaking Barriers” and who spouts endless nonsense about diversity while her company wreaks havoc on the planet and the people around them.

According to Teddy, she is also an “Andromedon” alien sent to Earth to enslave and exploit the human population, bringing death to humans as it has been brought to the bees.

The brilliance of the film largely revolves around its manipulation of our identification with the two leads. At times Teddy seems like a lunatic serial killer, and Fuller a heroic victim. At times we empathise with Teddy, while Fuller looks like a manipulative, cold-hearted sociopath.

The whole thing builds up to an immensely satisfying resolution, suitably nihilistic and absurd in equal measure.

As is often the case with Lanthimos’ films, the figures are caricaturish, but the comedic timing – and the oscillation between humour and discomfort for the viewer – is spot on, so it works.

Sinners

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is a great yarn: a well-executed rock ‘n’ roll fable slash vampire siege, full of electrifying music.

It’s 1932. Twin gangster brothers Smoke and Stack (a dual role played by Michael B. Jordan) return from working for Al Capone in Chicago to Clarksdale, Mississippi, to open up a juke joint.

Their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), a cotton picker and bluesman – with Charley Patton’s guitar – steals the show at the hugely successful opening night, fulfilling the legend of a musician who can play so well the barriers between the living and the dead come down. Everything seems to be going well – until some redneck vampires decide to assail the venue.

The whole thing is rather gaudy and silly. But like its forebear From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) – it’s so energetically (and pleasurably) handled that it doesn’t matter.

Michael B. Jordan is brilliant in the two roles, and the end result is a muscular, satisfying film that feels like a good pulp novel or comic book – capped off with a Buddy Guy jam session in the final moments.

Sinners is a delicious dream. It’s unlikely to win Best Picture; there was a time, not so long ago, when this kind of genre film wouldn’t have made it into the mix. But it’s well worth its more than two-hour runtime.

Marty Supreme

It would be hard to think of a stupider premise for a movie. In the 1950s, fast-talking entrepreneurial New York hustler Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) has to raise money so he can make it to Japan to beat world number one Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) in the table tennis showdown of the century.

Yet, director/co-writer Josh Safdie treats the premise with enough seriousness that we end up with a high octane sports film to rival Rocky IV. This is helped by the stunning cinematography by Darius Khondji. Shot on 35mm film, the images have a rich colour and texture rarely matched in digital cinematography.

There’s also a dynamite score from Daniel Lopatin, and an anachronistic soundtrack featuring several stellar 1980s pop tunes from the likes of Public Image Limited, New Order and Tears for Fears, to name a few.

Despite Marty’s arrogance, sweet-talking, womanising, con-artistry and generally bad behaviour, Chalamet invests the character with enough pathos and humour that he comes across as a thoroughly loveable – or at least likeable – rogue.

He is a crackpot whose self-belief and willingness to do anything to achieve his dream tricks the viewer into becoming equally invested in his absurd quest as he (and the film) bounce around New York and the world like a bright ping pong ball.

Marty Supreme is an odd – and oddly arresting – film capturing something of the madness at the heart of the American dream. Mauser does whatever he can to make it to Japan. And after several escapades – and some downright brutal scenes featuring cult director Abel Ferrara as an ageing gangster – he does make it.

The rest

Unusually for the Oscars, the pack of 2026 nominees is rounded out by several other good films.

Although not as good as some of his other films, such as Neighbouring Sounds (2012) and Bacurau (2019), Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent is a rollicking political thriller. Set in the 1970s, it features a standout performance by Wagner Moura as a dissident academic evading persecution from a brutal dictatorship.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a wacky comedy occasionally masquerading as a serious political action thriller. It follows the burnt out leftist Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) as, with his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), he evades capture by police and a militia led by the moronic Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). The whole thing is pretty silly, but like its inspiration – Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland – it is fun nonetheless.

F1 is likewise good. This finely wrought racing flick follows all of the delightfully dumb cliches of the genre. Hard-boiled and burnt-out old timer Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) makes it to Formula One for the first time, and contends with a new era of racing epitomised by his nemesis, the brash young gun Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris).

It’s hard to imagine such a film being nominated for Best Picture in any other era; Tony Scott’s Days of Thunder (1990) is equally stupid, but better made, and has been universally lampooned by critics. But people seem to be craving (and appreciating) big screen popcorn films in an era where streaming and second-screen viewing has all but destroyed commercial narrative cinema.

Only three nominees stick out as dreary

Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams is an earnest but visually unappealing Netflix film, following a ho-hum period love story about class, racism and the American Dream. Joel Edgerton is solid as usual, and the film is watchable enough, but the whole thing seems rather tired. And the digital video look really doesn’t work with the kinds of exterior, panoramic images that dominate the film.

In Frankenstein, director Guillermo del Toro takes one of the duller, more proselytising novels in the Gothic canon and gives it a suitably ponderous treatment. Oscar Isaac hams it up in full actor mode as Dr Frankenstein. Jacob Elordi is ridiculous as the monster. And Christoph Waltz as Harlander delivers such humdingers as “Can you contain your fire, Prometheus, or are you going to burn your hands before delivering it?” (in case you didn’t know, the novel’s subtitle is The Modern Prometheus).

Made for Netflix, Frankenstein tries hard to look sumptuous with period décor, but it can’t mask the sterility of its digital images. While the novel, at least, has a simple elegance to it, del Toro’s version is meandering, gaudy and cheap-looking.

It is difficult to treat Hamnet – the unbearably pretentious latest film from director Chloe Zhao – seriously, because the filmmakers do it for you. Though there are some things to like – Paul Mescal, for instance, is nice to watch, the cast are generally proficient, and the score is fine – this self-satisfied nonsense plays more like an Instagram video performing its own seriousness than a genuinely engaging feature film.

7 hits out of 10

As usual, the best films of 2025 haven’t been nominated for Best Picture (where’s Sirât, Redux Redux, or Harvest?). Nonetheless, most of this year’s nominees are films that warrant watching more than once for a variety of reasons: pleasure, complexity, nuance.

Perhaps Hollywood is starting to make good films again after decades of superhero trash. Or, at least, the Academy has started to recognise them.

Ari Mattes 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 Oscars are usually a mess, but this year’s Best Picture nominees are strong. Here’s who should win – https://theconversation.com/the-oscars-are-usually-a-mess-but-this-years-best-picture-nominees-are-strong-heres-who-should-win-274431

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Gabriel da Silva, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, The University of Melbourne

Reports are emerging of black rain falling over parts of Iran in the hours after US-Israeli airstrikes on oil depots on the weekend, with some outlets describing it as “acid rain”.

Iranian residents have reported headaches, difficulty breathing, and oil-contaminated rain settling on buildings and cars. Iran’s Red Crescent Society warned rainfall following the strikes could be “highly dangerous and acidic.”

As an atmospheric chemist and chemical engineer who researches air pollution, these reports are very worrying, and indicate much more than just acid rain.

This rain would include acids but also likely a host of other pollutants that are harmful to humans and the environment in the short and long term. It may even be worse than the term “acid rain” conveys.

More broadly, the thick clouds of toxic smoke over densely populated areas in Iran are also a major problem for anyone breathing this air right now.

What could this ‘acid rain’ be?

One of the primary ways air pollutants are removed from the atmosphere is through rain. When you have significant levels of pollutants in air they will be collected by falling water droplets and “rain out” of the atmosphere.

That’s why we are getting these reports of black rain falling from the sky after the oil depots were struck – evidence of just how contaminated the local air must be.

To me, this black rain indicates toxic pollutants such as hydrocarbons, ultrafine particles known as PM2.5, and carcinogenic compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have made their way into the rain.

On top of this there would be a mix of other unknown chemicals, likely including heavy metals and inorganic compounds from the building materials and everything else caught up in the initial explosions and the ensuing fires.

The smoke from the bombed oil depots would also contain sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, which are precursors to forming sulfuric acid and nitric aid in the air. This acid then makes its way into water droplets, and is responsible for what we conventionally label acid rain.

The acid rain we heard so much about in past decades was primarily caused by sulfur dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. Sulfur is naturally present in crude oil but is now mostly removed at the refining stage.

Aside from the rain, it’s worth remembering that all smoke is toxic; if you can smell it, it can be at levels that are harming you.

So that level of black smoke seen over densely populated areas in Iran is extremely worrying and can cause chronic short- and long-term health problems.

What are the potential health risks?

In the short term, people exposed to this black smoke in Iran might have headaches or difficulty breathing, especially if they have asthma or lung disease.

Vulnerable populations – such as older people, young children and people with disabilities – are more at risk. Exposure to toxic air pollution during pregnancy can also lead to lower birth weights.

In the longer term, exposure to the compounds in the air and in this black rain is potentially increasing people’s cancer risk. When ultrafine particles (PM2.5) are inhaled, they can get into your bloodstream. This has been linked to a range of health impacts including cancers, neurological conditions (such as cognitive impairment), and various cardiovascular conditions.

Once these heavily polluted plumes of air have their pollutants rained into natural waterways, they can also start to affect aquatic life, as well as human drinking water sources.

Another issue is that this black rain is depositing these compounds on buildings, roads and surfaces, which means they can make their way back into the air when disturbed by strong winds.

A legacy of war

There has been growing attention on the environmental impact of conflict worldwide. Part of this has emerged in the wake of past wars in Iraq and Kuwait, where there was large-scale deconstruction of oil wells and the use of burn pits.

We now know there are long-term health impacts on returning service people, including Australians. So we can assume local populations are also profoundly affected.

In the short term, people exposed to this smoke and black rain in Iran should try to wear masks or face coverings, seek refuge from it, stay indoors, close doors and windows, and try to keep the air out. It is also important to clean hard surfaces where possible, particularly indoors, to reduce exposure to deposited pollutants.

On the ground, of course, this may be very difficult to achieve in the chaos of war.

Gabriel da Silva 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 is the ‘acid rain’ in the wake of US bombings in Iran? An atmospheric scientist explains – https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-acid-rain-in-the-wake-of-us-bombings-in-iran-an-atmospheric-scientist-explains-277849

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Mehmet Ozalp, Professor of Islamic Studies, Head of School, The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation, Charles Sturt University

The death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, during the holy month of Ramadan marks one of the most consequential turning points in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

His successor, his son Mojtaba Khamenei, represents both continuity and contradiction in the revolutionary system established after the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

At stake is not only who leads Iran, but what the Islamic Republic has become, nearly half a century after the revolution that promised an end to dynastic rule.

Who is Mojtaba Khamenei?

Mojtaba Khamenei is a cleric who has spent most of his career outside public office but close to power, working within the Office of the Supreme Leader. He was often seen as a gatekeeper and powerbroker rather than a public political figure with a formal portfolio.

At 17, he briefly served in the Iran–Iraq war. He only began attracting public attention in the late 1990s, by which time his father’s authority as supreme leader was firmly established.

Over time, his reputation has centred on two key features. The first is a close relationship with Iran’s security establishment, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and its hardline networks.

The second is a strong opposition to reformist politics and Western engagement.

Critics have linked him to the suppression of protests following the disputed 2009 presidential election. He is also believed to have wielded influence over Iran’s state broadcasting organisation, giving him indirect control over parts of the country’s information landscape and state narrative.

In 2019, the first Trump administration sanctioned Mojtaba, accusing him of acting in an official capacity on behalf of the supreme leader despite holding no formal government position.

Mojtaba’s legitimacy as leader

Iran’s constitution dictates that the Assembly of Experts (an 88-member clerical body) selects the supreme leader.

The assembly lists the religious, political and leadership qualifications of possible candidates. But in practice, it is not a neutral electoral body. Candidates for the assembly itself are vetted through institutions ultimately shaped by the supreme leader’s orbit, and its deliberations are opaque.

This creates a familiar Iranian scenario – the constitution supplies the choreography, while the security-clerical establishment supplies the music.

That matters when assessing why Mojtaba is seen as a viable supreme leader amid critiques he lacks the senior religious standing traditionally associated with the office.

A mid-ranking cleric, he was only given the title ayatollah in 2022. The title is necessary to become supreme leader, so the promotion signalled he was being groomed to take over from his ageing and ill father.

The revolution’s founding myth was clearly anti-dynastic. After toppling the shah, the revolution’s leaders rejected hereditary rule.

To many Iranians, a son following his father as supreme leader looks like an ideological backslide. The regime appears more like a theocratic monarchy, less the famous “guardianship of the jurist”.

Yet, it is also important to be precise. Mojtaba cannot inherit the position by bloodline alone. The assembly must select him.

Still, political systems can become dynastic without rewriting constitutions. Dynastic outcomes emerge when informal power networks, such as family ties, political patronage, security ties, and control over the media, can make one candidate appear more natural, safe or inevitable.

That has essentially been the Mojtaba story in Iran for years: a man who built influence not by winning elections, but by managing the gate to the most powerful office in the country.

The circumstances of Ali Khamenei’s death add another layer of significance and, ironically, legitimacy to Mojtaba’s ascension.

For many Shi’a Muslims, being killed during Ramadan carries deep symbolic resonance. The first imam of Shi’ism, Ali ibn Abi Talib, was assassinated during the dawn prayer in Ramadan in 661 CE, an event still commemorated each year by Shi’ite Muslims.

Shi’ite historical memory places strong emphasis on martyrdom. In particular, the death of Husayn ibn Ali, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at Karbala in 680 CE, symbolises the struggle between justice and oppression.

Because of this tradition, violent deaths of leaders in the past and today are framed within a broader narrative of sacrifice and resistance.

Iran’s revolutionary ideology has long drawn on these themes. If the state presents Khamenei’s death in this light, it could strengthen a narrative of martyrdom and defiance.

This, in turn, gives his son Mojtaba an aura of religious legitimacy that is very strong in the Shi’ite Muslim psyche.

How different would he be from his father?

This is the most consequential question for Iran. The answer is likely less different than many might expect.

Ali Khamenei was a figure of the revolutionary generation. His authority rested on ideological legitimacy, decades spent amassing and consolidating power, and his ability to arbitrate between competing factions. Over time, he became the system’s final referee.

Mojtaba Khamenei, by contrast, is often portrayed as a product of the security establishment, rather than a public theologian or statesman. He is known less for speeches or religious authority than for his influence and the networks he has built behind-the-scenes coordination.

If that assessment is correct, the shift would be from a leader who balanced institutions to one who may lean more heavily on the might of the IRGC. This would deepen an existing trend toward the securitisation of Iranian politics.

In a period of war and instability, regimes typically prioritise continuity and control. Mojtaba’s appeal to the establishment, therefore, appears to rest on several factors:

• his close ties to the IRGC and intelligence networks
• his long experience inside the supreme leader’s office
• his ideological alignment with hardline positions sceptical of reform and Western engagement.

A figure trusted by the most powerful security institutions also reduces the chance of power struggles or fragmentation at the top.

What might this mean for the war?

A new supreme leader rarely produces an abrupt ideological shift, especially during a military conflict. Continuity is the more likely outcome.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s profile suggests a more security-centred style of leadership with three possible ways forward.

First, domestic control may harden. Given Mojtaba’s reported ties to the security establishment, unrest is more likely to be met with swift repression rather than political accommodation.

Second, the IRGC could expand its influence in regional affairs, given how closely aligned Mojtaba is with the guards.

Third, any negotiations with the West would likely be tactical rather than transformative. They would be framed as a strategic necessity rather than an ideological shift.

And given the fact his father was killed in US-Israeli airstrikes, this will only reinforce a more hardline posture toward both countries.

In short, Iran under Mojtaba Khamenei would likely remain confrontational in rhetoric, but pragmatic when regime survival is at stake.

Mehmet Ozalp is the Executive Director of ISRA Academy

– ref. Who is Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader? And would he bring change – or more brutal suppression? – https://theconversation.com/who-is-mojtaba-khamenei-irans-new-supreme-leader-and-would-he-bring-change-or-more-brutal-suppression-277483

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jennifer Parker, Adjunct Professor, Defence and Security Institute, The University of Western Australia; UNSW Sydney

News that a United States submarine had torpedoed and sunk the Iranian warship IRIS Dena about 40 nautical miles off Sri Lanka this week took many observers by surprise. An attack like this so far from the Persian Gulf – and in a key trade route connecting China to the Middle East – suggests the arena of this war may be widening.

But the incident also highlights something rarely well understood outside military and legal circles: the law of naval warfare.

Many have wondered: was this attack lawful? And who was under an obligation to rescue survivors?

When does the law of naval warfare apply?

The law of naval warfare is a subset of the law of armed conflict.

The law of naval warfare sets out permissions and protections for combatants, civilians and neutral actors engaged in conflict at sea.

Importantly, it applies regardless of whether the resort to force was lawful.

In other words, you’re supposed to follow the law of the sea even if your whole justification for war in the first place isn’t legal under international law.

What’s more, the conduct of operations at sea is regulated by the law of naval warfare whether or not war has been formally declared.

The law of naval warfare also takes precedence over the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (where the two come into tension).

This reflects the principle of lex specialis in international law, meaning the more specific body of law applies.

These rules have developed over centuries as states sought to regulate the conduct of conflict at sea while still allowing navies to operate effectively.

So, was it legal for the US to sink the Iranian warship?

Yes, it was a lawful target.

Under the law of naval warfare, warships belonging to a state engaged in an international armed conflict are military objectives by nature. The rules say they may be lawfully targeted.

Such attacks may occur on the high seas or within the 12 nautical mile territorial waters of the states that are party to the international armed conflict (the belligerents). This means, effectively, that such an attack could happen anywhere outside the 12 nautical mile territorial waters of neutral states.

If the Iranian warship was within Sri Lankan waters (that is, within 12 nautical miles of the Sri Lankan coast) at the time, the attack wouldn’t have been lawful.

But in this case, IRIS Dena was reportedly operating outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters and therefore constitutes a lawful military target.

What does the law say about rescue of survivors?

The law of naval warfare also sets out obligations regarding the rescue of survivors.

Under the Second Geneva Convention of 1949, parties to a conflict must – after each engagement – take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded and sick.

These rules apply to naval warfare and require belligerents, so far as military circumstances permit, to assist survivors at sea.

In practice, however, submarines face particular challenges in fulfilling this obligation. Surfacing to rescue survivors may expose them to significant risk. You also can’t usually fit a large number of survivors on a submarine.

If a submarine cannot safely surface to rescue survivors, it may instead facilitate rescue by reporting their location to other vessels or authorities.

This practice has been noted in some key legal commentary on submarine warfare.

The swift response of the Sri Lankan navy, which rescued 32 sailors from IRIS Dena, suggests authorities were informed quickly of the incident. (Sri Lankan officials say 87 bodies were also retrieved).

How Sri Lankan authorities were informed is not yet clear, but it seems likely the US navy transmitted the location of the survivors.

Given the damage suffered by IRIS Dena and the reported casualties, the ship’s crew was unlikely to have been able to transmit their location themselves.

This may also explain why early reports suggested a submarine had sunk the vessel, before the US confirmed its involvement.

It is also unlikely the crew of IRIS Dena would have immediately known they had been struck by a submarine-launched torpedo. Such a torpedo would typically be fired from very far away, beyond the detection range of a ship’s hull-mounted sonar.

A lawful military target

While debate continues over the legal justification for the United States entering the conflict with Iran, the conduct of hostilities at sea is nonetheless governed by the law of naval warfare.

Under that framework, IRIS Dena therefore constitutes a lawful military target, and efforts to facilitate the rescue of survivors are consistent with those obligations.

Jennifer Parker 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 US sank an Iranian warship and didn’t rescue the survivors. Is this legal in war? – https://theconversation.com/the-us-sank-an-iranian-warship-and-didnt-rescue-the-survivors-is-this-legal-in-war-277606

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Mehmet Ozalp, Professor of Islamic Studies, Head of School, The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation, Charles Sturt University

The death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, during the holy month of Ramadan marks one of the most consequential turning points in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

His successor, widely expected to be his son Mojtaba Khamenei, represents both continuity and contradiction in the revolutionary system established after the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

At stake is not only who leads Iran, but what the Islamic Republic has become, nearly half a century after the revolution that promised an end to dynastic rule.

Who is Mojtaba Khamenei?

Mojtaba Khamenei is a cleric who has spent most of his career outside public office but close to power, working within the Office of the Supreme Leader. He was often seen as a gatekeeper and powerbroker rather than a public political figure with a formal portfolio.

At 17, he briefly served in the Iran–Iraq war. He only began attracting public attention in the late 1990s, by which time his father’s authority as supreme leader was firmly established.

Over time, his reputation has centred on two key features. The first is a close relationship with Iran’s security establishment, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and its hardline networks.

The second is a strong opposition to reformist politics and Western engagement.

Critics have linked him to the suppression of protests following the disputed 2009 presidential election. He is also believed to have wielded influence over Iran’s state broadcasting organisation, giving him indirect control over parts of the country’s information landscape and state narrative.

In 2019, the first Trump administration sanctioned Mojtaba, accusing him of acting in an official capacity on behalf of the supreme leader despite holding no formal government position.

Mojtaba’s legitimacy as leader

Iran’s constitution dictates that the Assembly of Experts (an 88-member clerical body) selects the supreme leader.

The assembly lists the religious, political and leadership qualifications of possible candidates. But in practice, it is not a neutral electoral body. Candidates for the assembly itself are vetted through institutions ultimately shaped by the supreme leader’s orbit, and its deliberations are opaque.

This creates a familiar Iranian scenario – the constitution supplies the choreography, while the security-clerical establishment supplies the music.

That matters when assessing why Mojtaba is seen as a viable supreme leader amid critiques he lacks the senior religious standing traditionally associated with the office.

A mid-ranking cleric, he was only given the title ayatollah in 2022. The title is necessary to become supreme leader, so the promotion signalled he was being groomed to take over from his ageing and ill father.

The revolution’s founding myth was clearly anti-dynastic. After toppling the shah, the revolution’s leaders rejected hereditary rule.

To many Iranians, a son following his father as supreme leader looks like an ideological backslide. The regime appears more like a theocratic monarchy, less the famous “guardianship of the jurist”.

Yet, it is also important to be precise. Mojtaba cannot inherit the position by bloodline alone. The assembly must select him.

Still, political systems can become dynastic without rewriting constitutions. Dynastic outcomes emerge when informal power networks, such as family ties, political patronage, security ties, and control over the media, can make one candidate appear more natural, safe or inevitable.

That has essentially been the Mojtaba story in Iran for years: a man who built influence not by winning elections, but by managing the gate to the most powerful office in the country.

The circumstances of Ali Khamenei’s death add another layer of significance and, ironically, legitimacy to Mojtaba’s ascension.

For many Shi’a Muslims, being killed during Ramadan carries deep symbolic resonance. The first imam of Shi’ism, Ali ibn Abi Talib, was assassinated during the dawn prayer in Ramadan in 661 CE, an event still commemorated each year by Shi’ite Muslims.

Shi’ite historical memory places strong emphasis on martyrdom. In particular, the death of Husayn ibn Ali, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at Karbala in 680 CE, symbolises the struggle between justice and oppression.

Because of this tradition, violent deaths of leaders in the past and today are framed within a broader narrative of sacrifice and resistance.

Iran’s revolutionary ideology has long drawn on these themes. If the state presents Khamenei’s death in this light, it could strengthen a narrative of martyrdom and defiance.

This, in turn, gives his son Mojtaba an aura of religious legitimacy that is very strong in the Shi’ite Muslim psyche.

How different would he be from his father?

This is the most consequential question for Iran. The answer is likely less different than many might expect.

Ali Khamenei was a figure of the revolutionary generation. His authority rested on ideological legitimacy, decades spent amassing and consolidating power, and his ability to arbitrate between competing factions. Over time, he became the system’s final referee.

Mojtaba Khamenei, by contrast, is often portrayed as a product of the security establishment, rather than a public theologian or statesman. He is known less for speeches or religious authority than for his influence and the networks he has built behind-the-scenes coordination.

If that assessment is correct, the shift would be from a leader who balanced institutions to one who may lean more heavily on the might of the IRGC. This would deepen an existing trend toward the securitisation of Iranian politics.

In a period of war and instability, regimes typically prioritise continuity and control. Mojtaba’s appeal to the establishment, therefore, appears to rest on several factors:

• his close ties to the IRGC and intelligence networks
• his long experience inside the supreme leader’s office
• his ideological alignment with hardline positions sceptical of reform and Western engagement.

A figure trusted by the most powerful security institutions also reduces the chance of power struggles or fragmentation at the top.

What might this mean for the war?

A new supreme leader rarely produces an abrupt ideological shift, especially during a military conflict. Continuity is the more likely outcome.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s profile suggests a more security-centred style of leadership with three possible ways forward.

First, domestic control may harden. Given Mojtaba’s reported ties to the security establishment, unrest is more likely to be met with swift repression rather than political accommodation.

Second, the IRGC could expand its influence in regional affairs, given how closely aligned Mojtaba is with the guards.

Third, any negotiations with the West would likely be tactical rather than transformative. They would be framed as a strategic necessity rather than an ideological shift.

And given the fact his father was killed in US-Israeli airstrikes, this will only reinforce a more hardline posture toward both countries.

In short, Iran under Mojtaba Khamenei would likely remain confrontational in rhetoric, but pragmatic when regime survival is at stake.

Mehmet Ozalp is the Executive Director of ISRA Academy

– ref. Who is Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s presumed next supreme leader? And would he bring change – or more brutal suppression? – https://theconversation.com/who-is-mojtaba-khamenei-irans-presumed-next-supreme-leader-and-would-he-bring-change-or-more-brutal-suppression-277483