Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ben Rider-Stokes, Post Doctoral Researcher in Achondrite Meteorites, The Open University

Asteroids are some of the oldest objects in the Solar System: leftovers from the chaotic time when planets were assembling from dust and rock. They’re time capsules, preserving clues about what the early Solar System was like, and, ultimately, what the building blocks of planets are.

Knowing what an asteroid is made of also matters for very practical reasons. If an asteroid were ever on a collision course with Earth, its composition would affect how dangerous it is, how it breaks up in the atmosphere, and how we might successfully nudge it away. This area of research is called planetary defence.

Understanding the make-up of asteroids also matters for the future of exploration: some asteroids may contain metals, minerals, and even water – potentially useful resources. But how can we tell what asteroids are made of when most of them are millions of kilometres away?

Asteroid ‘fingerprints’

One of the most powerful techniques is spectroscopy, the science of splitting light into components and measuring what wavelengths are absorbed or reflected. Minerals interact with light in characteristic ways, leaving subtle dips and slopes in a spectrum. In effect, an asteroid’s surface leaves behind a chemical fingerprint in sunlight.

These fingerprints let us place asteroids into broad families. One of the most common groups near Earth is the S-complex, a class of relatively reflective asteroids often associated with silicate minerals such as olivine and pyroxene. For decades, researchers suspected that S-complex asteroids were linked to a particular category of meteorites that frequently fall to Earth: the ordinary chondrites.

A phenomenal example of how well this can work came from Japan’s sample-return mission Hayabusa, which visited the near-Earth asteroid (25143) Itokawa. Hayabusa reached the asteroid in September 2005. From its reflected light, Itokawa was inferred to be an S-complex asteroid, and spectroscopic comparisons suggested it should resemble ordinary chondrites, particularly the LL subgroup.

Hayabusa returned tiny grains of asteroid regolith to Earth, and laboratory analyses showed the mineralogy and mineral chemistry were identical to LL chondrites. In other words, the remote spectral prediction matched the physical reality of the samples.

Then Dart arrived — and raised the stakes. In September 2022, Nasa deliberately slammed a spacecraft into the small moonlet Dimorphos, which orbits the larger asteroid Didymos, in the Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission.

The goal wasn’t to destroy the asteroid; it was to test whether a kinetic impact could measurably change its orbit. Didymos has been observed extensively with spectroscopy and is classified as an S-complex and inferred to have a LL chondrite composition.

But is there a possibility we could we be misreading the make up of some space rocks? A 2026 paper argues that another meteorite group, brachinites, can show spectral properties that overlap with S-complex asteroids. One sample (NWA 14635) even shows spectroscopic band parameters similar to Didymos.

This is a big deal, because it means there may not be a neat one-to-one mapping between asteroid types and meteorite types. Asteroids are the left over building blocks of planets in our Solar System, often termed “space rocks”. Meteorites are space rocks that have survived the journey through a planet’s atmosphere, reaching the surface.

For planetary defence, this distinction matters. A chondritic “rubble pile”, composed of loosely bound rocks, and a more strongly processed, coherent igneous body (which would cover the brachinites) might respond differently when hit.

An ordinary chondrite-like surface might absorb energy like a “cosmic beanbag”, while a more magmatic surface might behave more like brittle rock. If we want to predict what happens when we try to deflect an asteroid, we need to know what its surface resembles.

This is exactly why the European Space Agency’s Hera mission is so exciting. Hera isn’t repeating Dart; it’s doing the follow-up crime scene investigation. Hera launched in October 2024 and is now on its way to the Didymos system, with arrival planned for late 2026. Once there, it will map both asteroids in detail.

Hera also comes with two small satellites known as cubesats: Juventas and Milani. Milani will help study the surface composition. This will give insights into not just what Dimorphos looks like from a distance, but what it’s made of, how it’s structured, and how it responded to Dart’s impact.

In the context of the new brachinite result, Hera’s role becomes even more important. If Didymos and Dimorphos turn out to be less “ordinary chondrite-like” than we assumed, or if their surfaces disguise a more complex origin, Hera is the mission that can test that assumption directly. It’s a reminder that asteroids still have the power to surprise us.

Ben Rider-Stokes 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 do we know what asteroids are made out of? – https://theconversation.com/how-do-we-know-what-asteroids-are-made-out-of-275244

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Benjamin Quail, Lecturer in US Cultural and Social History, Queen’s University Belfast

The Anglo-American “special relationship” has hit a low ebb following American strikes on Iran. US president Donald Trump disparaged British prime minister Keir Starmer with a negative comparison to Winston Churchill, making clear his “disappointment” over British reticence to offer logistical support to the American military.

This is the latest in a series of comments Trump has made about Starmer’s authority on foreign policy concerns – particularly the British return of Diego Garcia to Mauritius.

For his part, Starmer has publicly broken from the president on the matter of Greenland, offering “strong support” to Denmark in response to US threats to take over the territory. In January, when Trump disparaged British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Starmer called the remarks “appalling.”. Despite Trump’s attempts on Truth Social to smooth the matter over following a “stern” call from Starmer, one controversial exchange has bled into the next. Trump is understood to be very unhappy that the UK won’t join strikes on Iran. Starmer has stood by his decision and insists it is his duty to decide what action is in “Britain’s national interest,”.

This breakdown in relations between the two heads of state is remarkable – but it is not unprecedented. Britain’s refusal to follow America into a foreign conflict has inflamed tensions before. President Lyndon B Johnson and prime minister Harold Wilson endured a breakdown in the 1960s over Vietnam. The way Wilson handled this situation should be Starmer’s guiding light has he charts his own course on Iran.

Vietnam

The UK did not publicly participate in the Vietnam war. At the time it was searching for a way to join the European single market against French wishes and extricate itself from its military bases in the Arabian Peninsula and Southeast Asia. Wilson was seeking to move away from costly military commitments abroad.

Publicly, Wilson pushed for an end to the war, meeting with the Soviet Union’s Alexei Kosygin to try and move negotiations forward. He backed Johnson when the US agreed to what Wilson called “unconditional negotiations” with North Vietnam in 1966. Behind closed doors, Wilson reiterated his private support for Johnson regularly. He also met with the president to justify British reticence to join the war on several occasions, using trips to Washington as a way of trying to bolster the public image of a strong affiliation.

However, the Wilson and Johnson governments clashed over a number of concerns. Johnson faced criticism in Britain for failing to attend the funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965. LBJ was allegedly so infuriated by the lack of British troop commitment to the war that he called Wilson a “little creep” behind closed doors. The Americans also lamented the weakness of the British pound, as Wilson had it devalued by 14.3% in 1967. This threatened the stability of the US dollar and other western currencies.

The White House began to see Britain as a much less valuable – or stable – ally in the ongoing cold war. The British in return felt pushed to acquiesce to American pressure, while also relying on American support on issues such as Rhodesia, which unilaterally declared independence from the UK in 1965.

With this change in attitude, Johnson turned to other allies for public support. The then Australian prime minister, Harold Holt, went “all the way with LBJ,” joining other Pacific allies in sending troops to fight alongside Americans. Johnson lavished support on them, granting Australia its first state visit by a sitting US president in late 1966.

Conversely, he never visited Britain once. Johnson’s antipathy towards the UK is perhaps best summed up by an act of political disrespect towards Wilson in 1965, when he had the White House band play “Plenty of Nuttin’” at a diplomatic dinner following economic talks – a sarcastic rejoinder for Wilson’s lack of what he deemed proper support.

A third way

Ultimately, the “special relationship” cooled significantly during the Johnson-Wilson era. But despite the sometimes-wretched relations between the two leaders, the connection between the two countries in terms of intelligence sharing, training and support on other matters remained intact. Wilson saw the value of American support, travelling to the United States several times during the 1960s despite criticism from anti-war campaigners and from some in parliament. Wilson’s conciliatory approach is mirrored by Starmer’s attempts to carve a third way over the first year of Trump’s government. Starmer was heavily criticised for inviting Trump to carry out a second state visit – the first US president to receive a return invite.

The situation has changed since then, and the Iran strikes have indeed put pressure on the US-UK relationship. But there is precedent for resistance to American pressure in the Wilson-Johnson relationship. The effects were stark – it was not until Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were in charge that the relationship truly felt “special” once again – but it endured and thrived again despite what had been a severe clash in personalities.

Trump’s climbdown over the criticisms he made of Nato troops in January shows that the United States still values its British ally to some extent. The prime minister should remember that the relationship will endure long after the current occupants of both the White House and 10 Downing Street leave their respective offices.

Benjamin Quail has received funding from the US-UK Fulbright Commission.

– ref. What Keir Starmer can learn from ‘little creep’ Harold Wilson in dealing with an angry US president – https://theconversation.com/what-keir-starmer-can-learn-from-little-creep-harold-wilson-in-dealing-with-an-angry-us-president-277695

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Joanna Syrda, Assistant Professor in Business Economics, University of Bath

Couples often disagree about who does more housework. Part of that disagreement reflects real differences in behaviour. But part of it is perception: what each person notices, remembers and counts as “work”.

That same problem turns out to influence the research that feeds headlines about gender equality at home. Many household surveys ask just one person to report how much housework both partners do. My research shows that this seemingly minor design choice – whether the husband or the wife in a heterosexual couple answers – can fundamentally change what the data appears to say about money, gender and chores.

For decades, researchers have tried to understand how couples divide housework when both partners earn money. Two broad explanations dominate the debate.

One focuses on economics. Exchange and bargaining theories predict that the higher earner does less unpaid work at home, because their time has a higher opportunity cost and more negotiating power. From this perspective, as women’s earnings rise, their share of housework should fall, while men’s should rise.

The other explanation emphasises gender norms. Sociologists have argued that when couples depart from the traditional male-breadwinner model – especially when wives earn more than their husbands – they may “do gender” at home to compensate. In this view, women may end up doing more housework, and men less, to symbolically reassert traditional roles.

The evidence has been mixed. Some studies support bargaining. Others find patterns consistent with “doing gender”. One reason for this discrepancy may lie not in how couples behave, but in how their behaviour is measured.

To explore this, I analysed 24 years of data (1999-2023) from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics – a nationally representative longitudinal survey of US families run by the University of Michigan and funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

I focused on married, dual-earner heterosexual couples, the group most often studied in research on housework and income. The survey repeatedly interviews households and asks how many hours per week each spouse spends cooking, cleaning and doing other work around the house.

In each wave, one person answers on behalf of the household. Sometimes it is the wife, sometimes the husband. This creates a valuable opportunity. Because the survey follows the same couples for years, we can compare households to themselves and ask a simple question: what changes when the respondent changes?

Who answers changes the story

Previous research has long shown that husbands and wives report housework differently, and the same pattern appears in my research. When husbands answer surveys, they tend to report a more equal division of labour than wives do, crediting themselves with a larger share of household work and reporting slightly fewer hours for their partners. Even before income enters the picture, who answers the survey shapes what “sharing the load” appears to look like.

The more revealing differences emerge once income is taken into account. When wives are the respondents, the relationship between earnings and housework looks like economic bargaining: as wives’ share of household income rises, they report doing less housework and their husbands doing more, in a largely linear way.

When husbands are the respondents, the same households tell a different story. Their reports show a non-linear pattern: husbands report increasing their own housework as their wives’ earnings approach parity. They then report doing less once wives earn more than they do, while reporting higher housework hours for their wives. This pattern is consistent with what sociologists call gender deviance neutralisation, where departures from the male-breadwinner norm are symbolically offset at home.

The crucial point is not that one theory is right and the other wrong. It is that the same couples can appear to support competing explanations depending on who answers the survey.

The results do not reveal the “true” number of hours someone spent cleaning in a given week. Instead, they reveal something more fundamental about the evidence base: reported housework is filtered through gendered perceptions and self-presentation, especially in situations that challenge traditional expectations, such as near equal or reversed earnings.

Housework is not just a set of tasks. It is a socially loaded activity tied to ideas about fairness, competence and identity. When people report on it, they are likely not just simply recalling time, they are also telling a story about how their household works.

Housework statistics are widely used to judge whether societies are becoming more equal, and to evaluate policies affecting dual-earner families. If researchers pool responses without treating respondent identity as central, they risk averaging away meaningful differences and drawing muted – or misleading – conclusions.

In the end, the question is not only who does the chores. It is also who gets to describe them – and how much our conclusions depend on that storyteller.

Joanna Syrda 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 big is the housework gender gap? It depends if the husband or wife answers the question – https://theconversation.com/how-big-is-the-housework-gender-gap-it-depends-if-the-husband-or-wife-answers-the-question-274448

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sanam Mahoozi, Research Associate, City St George’s, University of London

From brutal crackdowns on nationwide protests in January, to Israel and the United States’ recent strikes, Iran has been in the international spotlight for weeks. Reporting on Iran is challenging, both from inside the country and from outside. During periods of unrest and political turmoil, it becomes even harder and more restrictive.

Iran’s media landscape is divided between outlets closely affiliated with the state and those considered reformist. State-aligned outlets include organisations such as Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), Tasnim, Fars News and Mehr News.

These conservative outlets often promote narratives that support Iran’s ruling clerical establishment. Their coverage frequently aligns with the views of hardline leaders such as the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the initial strikes on February 28. Other state-affiliated outlets, including Mizan, which is linked to Iran’s judiciary, similarly publish coverage that portrays the Islamic Republic as the victim of foreign aggression in the current conflict.

There is also a smaller group of reformist publications, such as Shargh Daily, Ham-Mihan and Donya-e-Eqtesad, which tend to offer more analytical and critical coverage of political and economic issues in the country.

But reformist papers operate under constant pressure. During the height of the protests in early January, Iranian authorities imposed a severe internet shutdown and communications blackout. Many domestic news outlets became inaccessible online. A small number of hardline outlets, such as Fars and Tasnim, continued to distribute information through Telegram channels.

For more than two weeks, much of the information emerging from Iran downplayed the scale of the government’s crackdown on protesters. Instead, official narratives emphasised alleged foreign interference, blaming the unrest on the US and Israel.

Reformist outlets that challenge this narrative often face retaliation. Journalists are frequently arrested and newspapers are suspended or closed. The authorities shut down Ham-Mihan in January 2026 after its editor-in-chief published an opinion piece reflecting on the current political unrest and the 1979 revolution that ended the monarchy.

These restrictions mean that state-aligned media outlets often dominate the narrative out of Iran, shaping how events inside the country are presented to the outside world.

Challenges for international media

International media organisations face a different but equally complex set of obstacles. Foreign journalists have a limited presence inside Iran, largely because of the risks involved.

Several reporters working for major outlets such as The Washington Post and The New York Times have been detained by Iranian authorities in the past, creating a climate of caution among international news organisations.

As a result, only a small number of outlets maintain reporters in the country. Organisations such as the Financial Times and Al Jazeera have limited representation on the ground, while many others operate regional bureaus in Turkey or the United Arab Emirates. Agencies such as Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN and CNBC often rely on these regional hubs, while others report on Iran from Europe or North America.

Even from outside, gathering reliable information remains difficult. Many sources inside Iran are afraid to speak with foreign media, as authorities routinely intimidate or arrest individuals who communicate with international journalists. Government officials are also reluctant to speak with foreign reporters.

Internet shutdowns during protests and wartime further complicate reporting. With communications frequently restricted, journalists must rely on information from human rights organisations, activist networks and official social media accounts.

Diaspora media organisations, which operate outside Iran but broadcast and publish in Persian, play a crucial role in filling some of the gaps in information. These outlets reach audiences both inside and outside the country. Examples include Iran International, BBC Persian, IranWire, Manoto and Voice of America. Though Voice of America was defunded and taken down by the Trump administration, its Persian-speaking news is still operating and providing news from the US to the public. However, it has been accused by some of its staffers of censoring coverage of Iran’s exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, who has emerged as the leading opposition figure during the latest uprising.

Pahlavi frequently appears on other disapora outlets, which provide a platform for opposition voices that rarely appear in Iran’s domestic media unless to be discredited.

Because they maintain extensive networks of sources inside Iran, diaspora outlets are often among the first to receive videos, images and eyewitness accounts of protests or military activity. After verification, this material is frequently used by international media organisations such as The New York Times, CNN and BBC World.

They also report more on the nuances that may be less obvious to foreign journalists, such as how Iranians feel about the war or the death of the supreme leader. While international outlets focused on those mourning the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the reality is that many ordinary Iranians were celebrating.

Read more:
Mourning, celebration and a divided legacy: why the death of Ali Khamenei reverberates far beyond Iran

Whether working for reformist newspapers inside Iran, international news organisations abroad or diaspora media outlets, journalists covering the country face extraordinary pressures. Many are subjected to hacking attempts, online harassment and, in some cases, physical threats. The work is emotionally demanding, particularly for Iranian journalists who are reporting on events impacting their own country, communities and families.

Sanam Mahoozi is a freelance Iran reporter for the New York Times

– ref. Iran’s divided media landscape makes getting information during wartime even harder – https://theconversation.com/irans-divided-media-landscape-makes-getting-information-during-wartime-even-harder-277321

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mira Al Hussein, Research Fellow at the Alwaleed Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World, University of Edinburgh

Iran immediately responded to US-Israeli strikes on February 28 by launching coordinated missile and drone attacks against US military installations in the Gulf region. Since then, its targeting has expanded to airports, seaports, hotels and oil refineries. The debris from missile interceptions has produced several casualties.

The first official statements from governments in the Gulf, with the exception of Oman, refrained from condemning the US-Israeli strikes. Those strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with several senior Iranian officials and nearly 180 civilians. Many of these were schoolgirls killed in an attack on a school in southern Iran.

This lack of condemnation did not go unnoticed. Across social media, a wave of debate broke out, with many Gulf citizens asking how governments that style themselves as voices of measured multilateralism could fail to register the illegality of the US-Israeli aggression against Iran.

However, as the barrage continued and many Gulf citizens and residents found themselves stuck indoors, the initial sympathy for Iran’s position began to give way. For most Gulf citizens, the sound of explosions and aerial interceptions is new. The exception is Kuwait, whose population carries the memory of Iraq’s 1990 invasion and occupation.

Like many anxiously watching from a distance, I have been calling family and friends in the Gulf every day. They send voice notes offering insights on the conflict that rarely make it into official Gulf channels.

Those who had been through war before knew what to do. An Emirati friend described a message from her Lebanese colleague, who had lived through multiple cycles of conflict and passed along a piece of practical advice: “Keep your windows and doors slightly ajar, so that pressure from nearby explosions does not drive the glass to shatter inward.”

She went on to recount how a Serbian woman in Dubai, who had survived two wars and believed she had exhausted her capacity to do so again, had told her she found the sounds so triggering that she spent the night sleeping in her car in the basement of her apartment building.

The sight of a long queue outside an Emirates airline office in a Dubai mall offended at least one Emirati observer. Expatriates rerouting their lives away from a conflict that had not yet become catastrophic, by any measure, was something this person found “cowardly”, she told me in an indignant voice note.

A Qatari friend put the asymmetry differently. Western governments, she remarked, could be relied on to extract their nationals from the consequences of foreign policy decisions they had supported. In contrast, Gulf populations would be left to absorb them – including rising food prices that could strain household budgets if traffic through the strait of Hormuz remains disrupted.

To date, the casualty figures in the Gulf are relatively low. Three people have died in Kuwait, three in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), three in Oman and one in Bahrain. None were Gulf citizens. Two of those killed in Kuwait were members of the Bidoon, a stateless community that has existed in Kuwait for generations without formal legal recognition.

For now, the absence of citizen casualties has softened the psychological impact of the conflict, exposing the racial hierarchies that have long plagued Gulf societies. But it is possible the Gulf governments are managing disclosure carefully, wary of provoking panic.

The information environment there is tightly controlled. The UAE has warned the public against filming or sharing footage of strikes and interceptions, with violations carrying a fine of 100,000 UAE dirhams (roughly £20,000) and potential imprisonment.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar have also issued directives urging citizens and residents to rely only on official sources.

Regional security questions

The conversation has taken on a different register among Gulf scholars and commentators. Despite the narrow space for debate, the war has opened an unexpected aperture for introspective commentary.

Conspicuously absent have been Emirati voices. Scholars and commentators in the UAE operate under tighter constraints than their Gulf counterparts. Views that interrogate state policy also rarely find their way into public circulation.

Saudi analyst Sulaiman al-Oqaily, speaking on Al Jazeera on February 28, gave voice to a frustration that has also appeared in local media. He argued that the US, nominally a security partner to the Gulf, had revealed itself as focused overwhelmingly on Israeli security, with scant regard for the Gulf states.

Omani scholar Abdullah Baabood put it plainly in a social media post on March 3: “The Iran-US war is not the Gulf’s war, yet Gulf states have become sitting ducks – exposed by geography, constrained by alliances, and vulnerable to escalation they neither chose nor control.”

Qatari commentator Abdulrahman Al-Marri offered a more layered analysis. Also in a post on social media, he insisted any serious engagement with the crisis must begin from its most basic fact: this is a war of choice, manufactured by the US and Israel. But he was equally insistent that this should not obscure the Gulf’s own reckoning with Iran.

The US and Israel and also Iran, in Al-Marri’s framing, are respectively engaged in forms of “state terrorism” and “counter-state terrorism” that have cost the region dearly. Iran’s conduct is not absolved by US-Israeli aggression, he writes. Its support for armed proxies and interventions in Iraq and Syria have left a residue of enmity and distrust that are etched in collective memory across the Gulf.

Yet on one point, the commentary has converged: the Gulf states must stay out of the war. Restraint and diplomacy have been the consistent recommendations.

Alongside this, Al-Marri and others have pointed out that US military bases in the Gulf, long presented as guarantors of security, have revealed themselves as liabilities. They have made Gulf territories a target in a confrontation they did not initiate.

Fifty years after independence, the Gulf region has yet to build a security framework that does not depend on outsourcing its defence to external partners whose interests, as this war has shown, do not reliably align with its own.

Mira Al Hussein is affiliated with DAWN MENA- Democracy in Exile.

– ref. How people in the Gulf are reacting to the Iran war – https://theconversation.com/how-people-in-the-gulf-are-reacting-to-the-iran-war-277566

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Louise Kettle, Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Nottingham

When Keir Starmer briefed the House of Commons on the situation in Iran, the UK’s prime minister ended with a clear message: “We all remember the mistakes of Iraq, and we have learned those lessons.”

Tony Blair’s decision to bring British forces into the Iraq war in March 2003 has long loomed over the Labour party and British foreign policy. In 2011, then prime minister David Cameron was keen to stress to parliament that any action in Libya would “not [be] another Iraq”.

Two years later, the same reassurance was provided for intervention in Syria – only this time, the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, led the opposition to block military action.

For the current prime minister, the lessons from the events of 2003 were to ensure the legality of any military intervention, and that a clear plan for the future was in place.

It is unsurprising that he has picked up on the question of legalities, given his previous career. However, Starmer also specifically campaigned against action in Iraq. On the eve of the war, he wrote to The Guardian warning against military action: “Engaging in armed conflict in breach of international law is a precarious business.”

In the case of Iran, legalities remain just as sticky. There was no United Nations Security Council resolution to support US-Israeli activities, and it remains unclear how the current intervention relates to individual or collective self-defence.

When Starmer decided to instigate the use of British military assets in the region, and allow the US to use British bases for actions against missile sites, the language used in his statement was careful and specific. It focused on Iran’s “indiscriminate attacks” and “unlawful strikes”, allowing the UK to argue its position under international law as acting in self-defence.

There does not appear to be a “phase 4” – a post-combat plan for Iran. Nor is it clear what the US’s objectives are before combat operations can end.

Donald Trump has explicitly stated that he would like to see regime change. But whether a different leadership is sufficient, or if the full roots of the Islamic Republic have to be removed, remains unknown.

Lessons from the Iraq inquiry

Iran is not Iraq. There are many key differences in their political situations, geography and people, not to mention the amount of time to plan the military operation (despite pre-deployment at the beginning of the year and assets already in the area).

There are also differences in the intelligence situations, the recent diplomatic progress that has been made over nuclear issues, and the fact that the war in Iran is not an ideological pursuit akin to the neoconservative agenda of the 2000s.

However, both wars are ones of choice, and it is clear that Starmer intends to take a different approach to Blair. He would do well to return to some of the key lessons identified by the formal inquiry into events surrounding Britain’s role in the Iraq war.

In 2016, the results of the public inquiry – comprising 12 volumes and 2.6 million words – were published. Inquiry chair John Chilcot’s key points (as Starmer has alluded) were that “the circumstances in which it was decided there was a legal basis for UK military action were far from satisfactory” – and that “the planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate”.

However, more issues remain relevant today. In particular, the ongoing Operation Epic Fury is a US military operation. It will not be possible for the UK to exert any significant influence in its planning. Any participation will be – as it was in Iraq – in subordination to the US.

As the Iraq inquiry report noted: “The US and UK are close allies, but the relationship between the two is unequal.” Despite the UK providing significant military assets and personnel to Iraq, it failed to exert any significant influence on US decisions.

Chilcot also reflected on the UK-US relationship in general. He stated that prime ministers will always exercise their political judgment in how to handle the US, depending on personal relationships and the issues under discussion. He also recognised there is no standard formula for this relationship.

Trump has made no secret of his frustration with the prime minister, telling journalists: “This is not Winston Churchill that we are dealing with.” Nonetheless, Starmer has so far refused to be pressured into a different approach.

The prime minister would do well to remember one of Chilcot’s points: that “the UK’s relationship with the US has proved strong enough over time to bear the weight of honest disagreement. It does not require unconditional support where our interests or judgments differ.”

While this may be challenging in the short term when dealing with the Trump administration, it will remain true in the long term.

Chilcot offered one final point that rings true today: “Above all, the lesson is that all aspects of any intervention need to be calculated, debated and challenged with the utmost rigour. And when decisions have been made, they need to be implemented fully.”

Thus far, Starmer is following this advice, and should continue to do so.

Louise Kettle has received funding from the AHRC.

– ref. How lessons from Iraq are shaping Starmer’s Iran response – https://theconversation.com/how-lessons-from-iraq-are-shaping-starmers-iran-response-277642

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Hind Elhinnawy, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University

For more than three decades, Iran tried and failed to silence Women Without Men (Zanan bedun-e Mardan in Persian). Shahrnush Parsipur’s novella exposed the brutality of Iranian patriarchy with rare clarity. It did so long before global audiences recognised that violence.

Published in 1989, the book was banned almost immediately and Parsipur was imprisoned twice for writing openly about women’s sexuality and autonomy – an act of artistic courage the Islamic Republic deemed intolerable.

Despite the regime’s attempts to erase it, the novella endured. It moved through underground networks and crossed borders with quiet determination. Today, Parsipur lives in exile in northern California after years of harassment. At 80, she remains one of Iran’s most fearless literary dissidents.

Women Without Men follows five women who flee violent marriages, stifling social expectations, and political chaos. Together, they build a sanctuary in a garden outside Iran’s capital, Tehran.

The book is now available in translation by Faridoun Farrokh in the UK for the first time. It still reads as a fierce, mystical act of feminist refusal, echoing the Woman, Life, Freedom movement – a Kurdish slogan that became a rallying cry for women’s rights when it was adopted during the 2022 Iranian protests. The book also lays bare, yet again, how violently regimes react when women claim the right to live unbounded.

When history tried to silence women but failed

Set against the turmoil of 1953, the novella unfolds in a charged political landscape. That year, a US- and UK-backed coup toppled Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and reinstalled the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to protect western oil interests. That event reshaped Iran’s future and remains one of its most consequential political ruptures.

In the years leading up to the coup, Iranian women had been inching towards greater legal and social equality. But the political chaos and regime change set the stage for decades of instability. The tensions paved the way for the revolution 25 years later, and the Islamic Republic’s tightening grip on women’s lives. While these seismic events stay outside the novella’s frame, their presence is palpable in the background.

It is in the shadow of the 1953 coup that Parsipur exposes the intimate humiliations that patriarchy inscribes onto women’s bodies. Virginity becomes a weaponised measure of worth. Menopause is recast as an insult. Sexuality is monitored, contained and punished. Women’s desires are treated as destabilising forces that must be disciplined. Each character carries a different wound from this system.

Munis resists a brother who would rather kill her than allow her freedom. Faizeh absorbs the misogyny that confines her, and turns it inward. Zarrinkolah escapes a life in which her body is endlessly bought, sold and consumed. Mahdokht, pushed beyond the limits of social expectation, seeks literal rebirth as a tree. Farrokhlaqa endures an affluent marriage that strips her of dignity.

These violences mirror the misogyny embedded in the political order itself. That order disciplines women through shame, silence and constant surveillance of their bodies.

The women’s retreat to the garden outside Tehran is not an escape, but a feminist rupture that marks a refusal to live within a world that insists on defining them. It is a choice to build, however precariously, a space where those rules collapse.

Through mysticism and magical realism, the women’s transformations gain political force. Each metamorphosis becomes an act of resistance: women reclaiming autonomy, dignity and possibility in a society intent on erasing them.

From 1953 to Woman, Life, Freedom

The global cry of “zan, zendegi, azadi” (Woman, Life, Freedom) carries the same insurgent energy that animates Parsipur’s Women Without Men. The slogan rose during the 2022 uprising, after the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in police custody.

The beginning of this spirit of resistance can be seen in Parsipur’s narrative, decades earlier. Her novella advanced a vision of women actively confronting and exceeding patriarchal limits decades before the slogan gained global force.

Reading the book today, it is clear how accurately Parsipur mapped the machinery of state violence, gender policing and systemic oppression – the same forces now driving women into the streets in Iran.

What anchors the novel’s contemporary relevance is its central idea: women imagining and constructing a world outside patriarchal control.

The five women of Parsipur’s story carve out a space where they are no longer defined by violence or expectation. Their garden becomes a blueprint for refusal, one that aligns directly with the ethos of Woman, Life, Freedom: not to endure patriarchy but to reject it, rewrite it, and build a life entirely beyond its reach.

Iran is once again engulfed in turmoil. Women Without Men enters the UK at a moment when Iranian exiles, scholars and activists are issuing urgent warnings about escalating state violence. Public awareness of the daily repression faced by Iranian women is higher than ever, and global literary circles are increasingly spotlighting works that confront authoritarianism with resistance.

In this context, the novella’s English-language publication operates as a bridge between past and present. It makes visible how the structures that constrained women’s lives in the 1950s continue to shape Iran’s political realities today.

This is not simply a reissue. The UK publication marks a hard‑won return for a work that has outlasted bans, by a writer who has survived incarceration and forced displacement. Its re‑entry into global circulation arrives precisely when its analysis of gendered domination carries heightened relevance.

Hind Elhinnawy 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. Women Without Men: the feminist book that Iran’s regime has failed to silence since the 80s – https://theconversation.com/women-without-men-the-feminist-book-that-irans-regime-has-failed-to-silence-since-the-80s-276679

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jane Ohlmeyer, Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Modern History, Trinity College Dublin

Irish politician Thomas Gould has become a bit of star in the Caribbean after a video of him speaking in the Irish parliament drew comments for the surprising similarity of his Cork accent to the Jamaican one.

His viral speech is a powerful reminder of the shared histories of Ireland and Jamaica, which date back to the mid-17th century and lasted for the next 200 years. During this period Jamaica became an important destination for Irish people.

In the 1650s, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, was on a mission to expand the British empire. Having completed the conquest of Ireland in 1653, he captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655.

During the later 1650s, the Cromwellians transplanted hundreds of Irish Catholics to Jamaica where they worked as indentured servants. This form of labour involved an investor who covered the cost of the indentured servant’s passage, food, clothing and shelter on the plantations in return for up to seven years of contracted labour (ten years in the case of convicts).

On termination of the indenture, masters were legally bound to offer “freedom dues”, roughly £10 to £12, in the form of a small parcel of land and a sum of money or its commodity equivalent. Unlike enslaved people, indentured servants had some legal rights, even if it proved difficult to exercise them. However, during the period of indenture the person was, like an enslaved person, at the mercy of their master.

During the 1660s, Irish men and women relocated from elsewhere in the Caribbean to Jamaica on the promise of up to 20 acres of land on the condition that they re-indentured themselves for two or three years.

The Irish poet, Seán Ó Conaill, memorialised these transplantees in The Dirge of Ireland when he wrote in a poem “Transport, Transplant go to Jamaica”.

Relegated to marginal areas in the interior of the island, these poor Irish were vilified and perceived to be unruly, rebellious and loyal to the French because of their Catholicism. They worked as domestic servants or as labourers cultivating sugar, indigo, cotton, cocoa and other commodities. Living in a tropical climate, where hurricanes and other natural disasters occurred regularly, and where deadly diseases were rife shortened life expectancies. Only one in three children reached the age of five.

By 1690 Irish men and women, Catholic and Protestant alike, formed a significant part of the white population, which numbered between 10,000 and 12,000 with around 40,000 enslaved people. While Catholic indentured servants laboured, Protestants from Ireland owned plantations and governed.

When Governor William O’Brien, second earl of Inchiquin, died of “the flux” (dysentery) in 1692, Coleraine-born John Bourden, who owned a plantation in the parish of St. Catherine, filled his shoes. Others included Sir George Nugent (1801 to 1804), Eyre Coote (1806 to 1808); and the earl of Belmore (1828 to 1832).

Migration from Ireland to Jamaica continued well into the 18th century. In 1731, the governor of the island complained that “native Irish papists … [were] pouring in upon us in such sholes [shoals]”. Some Irish remained on the margins, but others prospered as modest planters or as artisans, coopers, carpenters and merchants in Port Royal, Jago de la Vega (Spanish town), Irish town and Kingston.

Read more:
Entangled Islands exhibition explores the history of Irish people in the Caribbean – an expert review

Jane Fitzgerald, a garment trader, was listed in an inventory, as were Irish men like Michael Farrell, a millwright, John Casey, a tavern keeper, Michael Hanigan, a tailor, and Conn Connelly, a bricklayer and builder. The survival of a census dating from 1679 for St. John’s parish, Jamaica, shows that men with Irish names headed three (of 49) households: “Teag Macmarrow” with two white servants and eight enslaved Africans (including three children); Thomas Kelly with two enslaved Africans; and Gilbert Kennedy with a wife and two children, four white servants, and ten slaves (including four children).

Some left wills when they died. These paint pictures of close-knit Irish communities comprised of extended family members and reinforced by intermarriage. Many were upwardly mobile and well connected.

One of the best examples of an Irish family succeeding in Jamaica is the Kelly family, whose grand estates and sugar mills were painted by Isaac Mendes Belisario in 1740. Edmund Kelly became attorney general of Jamaica in 1714. Elizabeth Kelly, his granddaughter and heir, owned plantations of 20,000 acres and 360 enslaved Africans when in 1752 she married Peter Browne of Westport.

The Brownes became Ireland’s premier absentee (run from abroad) plantation owners in the Caribbean. When slavery was finally abolished in 1830s, around 400 people from Jamaica had Irish connections, including many who owned enslaved Africans.

Today Irish surnames – Kelly, Lynch, Murphy, McCarthy, O’Brien, O’Connor, O’Reilly, and O’Hara – are common on the island. Placenames also testify to the presence of early Irish settlers: Irish town, Irish Pen, Irish Road, Sligoville, Bangor Ridge Square, Leinster Road, Leitrim Avenue, Antrim Crescent, Longford Road, Kinsale Avenue, Waterford, and Portmore. Shared speech patterns, especially accents from Munster, are also common.

So with Jamaicans being surprised to hear aspects of their own accents in Thomas Gould’s it’s an opportunity to think about the culture’s complicated shared history and the lasting legacy of the Irish in Jamaica,

Jane Ohlmeyer receives funding from the European Union for an Advanced ERC.

– ref. What Irish politician Thomas Gould’s accent going viral in Jamaica reveals about colonial history – https://theconversation.com/what-irish-politician-thomas-goulds-accent-going-viral-in-jamaica-reveals-about-colonial-history-277452

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicole Westmarland, Professor of Criminology, Durham University

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of violence against women and girls that we see in the news on a daily basis. Horrific cases such as that of survivor Gisèle Pelicot can make us wonder how such distressing crimes can still be happening.

Violence against women and girls accounts for almost 20% of all recorded crime in England and Wales. That’s more than one million crimes a year. At least one in every 12 women will be a victim in any given year. Child sexual abuse and exploitation crimes, which are more likely to affect girls, increased more than 400% between 2013 and 2022. Over one in four adult homicides is domestic related (partner, ex-partner or family member).

This is why police chiefs have declared violence against women and girls a national threat – on a par with terrorism.

The government strategy, published in December 2025, pledges to halve violence against women over the next decade. While this is the first time that an actual target has been put on reducing such violence, efforts to improve criminal justice responses have been increasing since the mid-1990s. But are women today any safer or freer now than they were back then?

While recorded increases in crimes such as rape and sexual assault are probably due to victims being more likely to report and improvements in police recording them, there are other factors at play. Certainly, more types of violence and abuse are crimes now – such as coercive and controlling behaviour (since 2015) and the sharing (or threat of) of intimate images without consent (since 2024).

Some forms of violence do appear to have decreased since self-report surveys began in the 1990s. As social attitudes have become less tolerant of physical forms of male violence against women, those physical acts of violence have reduced. Physical violence from a partner is now less common than emotional abuse, economic abuse, domestic sexual assault or domestic stalking. (Though physical violence remains high in domestic abuse by family members).

Likewise, the oft-quoted statistic that two women per week are killed by a partner or ex-partner is now out of date. The number is now around 90 per year – although that will be of little consolation to the family and friends of those who have died.

As well as new criminal offences such as coercive and controlling behaviour, there is now greater recognition of some forms of abuse such as economic abuse (controlling a partner’s finances or financial freedom). However, the numbers quickly quell any optimism of an increased awareness leading to a corresponding reduction in abuse. The number of female domestic abuse victims who kill themselves is now thought to be even higher than the number killed by their partners.

Non-fatal strangulation or suffocation, a criminal offence in its own right since 2021, has skyrocketed with nearly 50,000 offences recorded by the police last year. This is in part due to the normalisation of “choking” in mainstream pornography. Choking porn is now itself set to become a criminal offence.

Read more:
Sexual strangulation has become popular – but that doesn’t mean it’s wanted

New forms of violence

We often focus on whether violence and abuse is reducing – can we measure it and can we halve it? But the reality of the problem is that it is constantly changing. In my latest book I argue that violence and abuse “shapeshifts”.

We would never have imagined 30 years ago that the new mobile phones we were so impressed with would be used as a weapon of abuse, or that technological advances could “nudify” a women in an instant and be shared with the world.

Violence against women is not static. It is essential to get ahead of the problem. We now have a strong understanding of what survivors need. The resources to provide them is another matter – particularly for women with insecure immigration status and no recourse to public funds.

However, we still have a huge knowledge gap on how to actually reduce violence – by half or otherwise.

To be serious about halving violence against women we must get ahead of the problem in terms of prevention – starting with children and young people. Child-to-child violence now accounts for more than half of child sexual abuse offences reported to the police. We need to invest more effectively in better interventions and research these to understand more about how to stop perpetrators from continuing their abuse including in new relationships.

A well-functioning criminal justice system feels a long way off, with average rape trials now routinely taking more than two years to reach court. And outdated gender norms and misconceptions about rape still stop women from getting justice in court.

The argument for prevention – stopping violence against women before it starts or at the earliest opportunity to intervene if it has – has never been clearer. These parts of the strategy require a bolder focus if we are to actually see levels of violence against women start to fall.

Nicole Westmarland currently receives funding from the ESRC, Home Office and Cabinet Office. She is a trustee of Darlington and Co. Durham RSACC.

– ref. Are women more safe today in England and Wales than they were in the past – or less? What the evidence shows – https://theconversation.com/are-women-more-safe-today-in-england-and-wales-than-they-were-in-the-past-or-less-what-the-evidence-shows-275973