Rashmi Singh

Last week TRAC's (the collaborative research network in terrorism, radicalisation and organised crime) annual conference came back after a 4 year hiatus thanks to pandemic. We partnered with @UNODC this year for 2 days of closed sessions. Happy to say it was a resounding success!

Excellent article by @IrishTimes journalist @sallyhayd on the attacks on health workers here in Lebanon.

There’s something almost insulting to the public’s intelligence in the recurring claim that Jewish violence and terrorism in the West Bank is the work of a “fringe,” a handful of “bad apples,” a few hundred individuals. It isn’t fringe, it isn’t marginal, and it certainly isn’t incidental. This is a widespread, consistent, and well-documented phenomenon. Anyone willing to look at a map, even briefly, will see a picture that simply does not align with the comforting narrative: a broad geographic distribution of incidents across nearly the entire West Bank. The source is not a mystery either. The perpetrators do not emerge out of nowhere. In most cases, they come from illegal outposts and pastoral farms. And these, not coincidentally, are all located within the jurisdiction of regional councils. Not cities, not local councils. There is a clear geography to this violence. When you examine the data, the pattern becomes even sharper: Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, Shomron Regional Council, aMount Hebron Regional Council lead both in the number of outposts and in incidents of violence. In Jordan Valley Regional Council the phenomenon exists but to a lesser extent, while in Megilot Dead Sea Regional Council—a secular regional council—it is largely absent. Calling this coincidence requires a very creative imagination. And then there’s the uncomfortable part: these outposts and farms do not exist in a vacuum. They are established, maintained, and connected to infrastructure by the state. It wasn’t “hilltop youth” with a toolbox who paved roads, connected electricity and water, built kindergartens, or arranged transportation. This is public funding, government ministries, and local authorities. It is policy, even if some prefer to call it “looking the other way.” Nor does this begin yesterday. Maps from 2020–2022 already show a well-established pattern. But since the current government took office, there has been a clear acceleration. Data up to July 2025 point to a significant increase, and since then—as anyone paying attention already knows—there has been a further escalation, both in scope and in severity. It’s always possible to keep rolling one’s eyes and cling to soothing phrases. It’s convenient, it avoids confrontation. But reality, quite consistently, is unimpressed by slogans

a nuclear scientist just got killed in an airstrike in Iran and honestly i need to talk about this because western media won't & i think most people don't understand what they're looking at as i've been explaining for weeks now in multiple threads, Israel through Mossad has been assassinating Iranian scientists for over a decade and i genuinely think the Fakhrizadeh case is one of the most terrifying operations in modern intelligence history this man was killed in 2020 by a remote controlled ai-powered machine gun smuggled into Iran in pieces over several months, the whole thing weighed a ton, it was mounted on a pickup truck on the side of the road and operated via satellite from a Mossad command center 1 600 km away, 15 bullets fired in under 60 seconds, the AI compensated for the satellite delay the recoil and the speed of the car in real time, that's how far they're willing to go to eliminate Iranian brainpower one by one but here's what i find fascinating, the assassinations didn't break the ecosystem because it runs too deep, so they escalated, US just bombed Iran's university of science and technology, one of the oldest and most prestigious in the country and if you've been following me you already know why this matters these are the same institutions that took Iran from 58th to 4th in the world in nanotechnology in 20y that produce the engineers who designed the Arvand rocket engine and the maneuverable reentry vehicles, that trained the physicists behind the MRBM to IRBM leap to 4 000 km on Diego Garcia, i've been writing about this scientific ecosystem for years and everything happening right now is the logical continuation of what i already laid out and i think that's the part nobody wants to say out loud, this war was never about nukes or regime change, i believe it's about dismantling the only sovereign state in the Middle East and i mean the ONLY ONE look at every other country in the region, Saudi Arabia outsources its entire defense to the Pentagon & couldn't fight a war in Yemen for 8y without American logistics and still lost, the UAE bought F-35s in exchange for normalizing with Israel, Qatar hosts the largest US air base in the region at Al Udeid, Bahrain hosts the US Fifth fleet, Kuwait, Iraq Jordan are military protectorates in everything but name none of these countries design manufacture or deploy their own weapons systems, none of them have an indigenous defense industry, their sovereignty ends where the next Lockheed Martin contract begins, if Washington calls tomorrow and says stop they stop because they literally cannot function without american hardware Iran is the ONLY country in that entire region that built everything from scratch under 40y of total embargo because NOBODY would sell them anything and that's exactly why they're the target they know the only way to stop this machine is to kill the people who build it…and when killing them one by one wasn't enough to crack an ecosystem too deep to break, they started bombing the universities directly and i'll say this as clearly as i can you don't bomb a university when you're winning a war, you bomb a university when you've realized the real threat was never the arsenal it was the intelligence behind it and you have no idea how to stop it

“i wish children would be temporarily elevated to the skies until the war ends then they would return home safe and when their parents would ask them, where were you? they would say, we were playing in the clouds” - ghassan kanafani, a palestinian poet

Today, we visited the Minab school in southern Iran, where US forces massacred 168 students and teachers at the outset of the Trump-Netanyahu war of aggression on Iran. About ten minutes after we left the Minab school today, it was hit with a drone strike. (The aftermath of that strike was captured in this video). Yesterday, we were in the Iranian city of Bushehr, which lies on the Persian Gulf to the north of Minab. Shortly after we left our hotel in Bushehr, there was an airstrike on a target directly across the street from our hotel. While we were in Bushehr, we visited a marine terminal that had sustained damage in airstrikes conducted earlier this month. Shortly after we left the marine terminal, it too was hit with an airstrike. Another site that we visited in Bushehr yesterday was also hit with an airstrike shortly after we left it. Now all of this could be random. On the other hand, it may be that U.S.-Israeli forces are sending us a message. If in fact they are sending us a message, we have a message for them. Our message is that no amount of intimidation will stop us from exposing their monstrous crimes. #Iran #Iranwar

🚨 REPORT | Israel has launched over 1,000 airstrikes on Gaza in the 167 days since the “ceasefire” was signed last October. And less than 25% of the minimum required aid has entered Gaza in the past week. The Palestinian resistance documented 2,166 violations of the ceasefire since it began in October, averaging 13 violations per day, including widespread live fire, artillery, and aerial attacks across the Strip. 📌 A document obtained by Drop Site, and shared with mediators, shows the following: ▪️ On the ground: • 1,014 airstrikes and shelling incidents recorded • 799 live fire incidents • Repeated strikes across Rafah, Gaza City, and northern Gaza • Children wounded in drone fire in multiple areas ▪️ Casualties: • 692 killed • 1,895 wounded • 44.2% of those killed are children, women, and elderly • 54.3% of the wounded are vulnerable civilians ▪️ Aid blockade: • Only ~40% of agreed aid allowed in • Fuel deliveries at just 14.8% • 993 trucks entered this week vs. 4,200 scheduled (23.6%) ▪️ Rafah crossing: • Only 2,134 of 8,600 planned civilian crossings carried out (24.8%) • Medical evacuations and humanitarian cases severely restricted The report also cites continued obstruction of infrastructure repairs, denial of heavy equipment entry, and ongoing torture and abuse of detainees, pointing to a systematic erosion of the ceasefire and worsening humanitarian conditions across Gaza.

Today was one of the most horrifying days of my life as an academic. Walking through Iran University of Science and Technology, a top-ranked public university in Iran, I was struck by the devastation. Only last month, this campus was alive with students, bustling between classrooms. Now, parts of the campus lie in ruins, classrooms shattered, hallways choked with dust and shattered glass. I saw the offices of professors burned. A newly renovated building, where students gathered for programs, for socializing, for life, destructed. One student, tearfully, told me: “My professor’s office was still burning a little. That’s where I used to wait for office hours. To ask questions. To appeal my grade.” This is the same university that launched Iran’s Omid and Zafar 2 satellites, symbols of homegrown technological achievement. A week ago, one of its professors was assassinated. Yesterday, they bombed it. From sanctions to targeted killings, to the bombing of research centers and universities, there’s a clear pattern: de-development & de-industrialisation/ the systematic dismantling of a nation’s indigenous development, its industrial base, its capacity to stand on its own. We will never forget that as the American and Zionist war criminals blatantly target universities, schools, hospitals/ assassinating professors and killing children, and after 2 years or genocice, western intellectuals are still debating whether or not to pass a symbolic, non-enforceable BDS resolution. Photos taken by me, full report incoming.

Just as in Gaza, the US is lifting the constraints on how Israel can use American bombs. As a result, Israel uses 2,000lb bombs to strike densely populated areas in Tehran. So, we are now seeing Gaza-style images of civilians and children being killed en masse in Iran.

The oil crisis is spreading throughout the world. Many countries are going to extreme lengths to ration their supply as a result. Here are all the cases I could find: 1) The Philippines declared a national energy emergency. Government offices have shifted to a four-day work week, and agencies must cut fuel and electricity use by 10–20%. 2) Sri Lanka instituted a weekly public holiday for public officials and schools. It has also revived a QR code-based fuel rationing system that limits private cars to 25 liters of petrol per week. 3) Pakistan closed schools for two weeks and cut free fuel allocations for government vehicles by 50%. It also hiked high-octane fuel prices by 60%. 4) Bangladesh, shut down universities and colleges and implemented five-hour rolling blackouts for households to prioritize the garment export sector. 5) South Korea launched a nationwide energy-saving campaign and released a record 22.46 million barrels of strategic oil reserves. It also temporarily lifted limits on burning coal. 6) Thailand ordered civil servants to work from home, set office air conditioning to 26–27°C, and halted petroleum exports to preserve domestic stock. 7) Japan and announced its largest-ever release of strategic oil reserves, approximately 45 days' worth, to stabilize local markets. 8) Egypt ordered early closures for malls, restaurants, and government offices while switching off illuminated billboards. 9) Myanmar introduced an "odd-even" rationing system where private vehicles can only purchase fuel on alternating days based on their license plate numbers. 10) Nepal is a state-run oil corporation has begun rationing cooking gas by filling cylinders to only half their normal capacity (7.1 kg) and is urging a nationwide switch to induction cookers. 11) India has invoked emergency powers to divert liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) away from industrial users to prioritize household cooking needs. 12) Slovenia became the first EU member to implement fuel rationing, limiting private drivers to 50 liters of petrol per week and businesses to 200 liters. 13) Bhutan has officially banned the sale of fuel in jerry cans to prevent hoarding and has established strict rationing priorities for emergency services. 14) Vietnam is accelerating a transition to ethanol-blended gasoline ahead of schedule to reduce its reliance on pure fossil fuel imports. 15) South Sudan has begun rationing electricity in its capital, Juba, due to the high cost of oil used for power generation. 16) Laos has made working from home mandatory for all non-essential civil servants and introduced rotational shifts to reduce commuting demand. It gets worse. Gulf producers are nearly at their maximum storage capacity; once they run out of space to put unsold oil, they will be forced to "shut in" (permanently close) wells, which can cause long-term geological damage to the oil fields. This is the worst oil crisis in history. And it is going to get so much worse. unlike previous shocks, this crisis has wiped out the world's spare capacity because major producers like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are physically cut off from their customers by the Strait of Hormuz closure. All for what?

🔺 IRGC Warning to U.S. Leadership: “The Zionist-American invading forces, by bombing the University of Science and Technology in Tehran, have once again targeted Iranian universities. 🔹 The rulers of the White House should know that from now on, all universities of the occupying regime and American universities in West Asia are considered legitimate targets, until two universities are struck in retaliation for Iranian universities that were destroyed. 🔹 We advise all staff, professors, students, and residents near American universities in the region to stay at least one kilometer away to ensure their safety. 🔹 If the U.S. government wants its universities in the region to avoid further retaliation beyond two strikes at this stage, it must officially condemn the bombing of universities by 12:00 PM Tuesday, March 30 (Tehran time). 🔹If it wants its universities not to be targeted afterward, it must restrain its allied forces from attacking universities and research centers; otherwise, this threat will remain in effect. 🎥 VIDEO: Iran University of Science and Technology- Tehran heavily damaged by Israeli-US strikes earlier on Saturday.

I don't think people understand the gravity of the situation as the UN is preparing for possible nuclear weapon use in Iran. This is a picture of Tehran. For you uneducated, untraveled, never-served, warhawks licking your chops at the thought of bombing it. It's not some low population desert. There are families, children, family pets. Regular working class people with dreams. You're sick to want war. Tehran is a city of nearly 10,000,000 people. Imagine nuking Washington, Berlin, Paris, London, or beyond, bombed with nuclear weapons. I gave up my diplomatic career to leak this information. I suspended my duties so as not to be part of or a witness to this crime against humanity, in an attempt to prevent a nuclear winter before it is too late. Yesterday, nearly ten million people protested “No Kings” in the United States. The possibility of the use of nuclear weapons must be taken very seriously. It's dangerous. Act now. Spread this message worldwide. Take the streets. Protest for our humanity and future. Only the people can stop it. History will remember us.

The ethnic cleansing of the West Bank has reached a new stage. Area C, has been almost completely emptied of Palestinians and the ethnic cleansing of Area B is well under way. Now the cleansing of Area A, which is supposed to be under the PA, has begun: 1) Settlers established five new outposts overnight, with at least three located in Area A, where Israeli entry is illegal. A new outpost in the 'Ayun area, and others in the Wadi Tayasir and near Jenin and Nablus complete the picture. 2) Clashes broke out during a dispute at one of the newly established illegal outposts near the Palestinian village of Harmala. An Israeli civilian murdered Mohammad Faraj Al-Malhi, a 27-year-old resident of East Jerusalem. 3) Meanwhile, the settlers launched a large coordinated attack on the village of Deir al-Hatab, located east of Nablus. Settlers set fire to multiple homes and vehicles, often using Molotov cocktails. At least nine Palestinians were injured during the raid, including a 45-year-old man shot in the foot and a woman suffering from smoke inhalation. 4) Families from Yarza were forced to flee for the second time in March 2026. After the families fled, settlers reportedly set fire to the abandoned structures to prevent any potential return. As you can see in the map, Area A is a tiny area. The only thing left for the Palestinians and now the settlers are coming to take it. Full ethnic cleansing.

One of the most heartbreaking examples of nonverbal communication to emerge from Iran. I cannot call this a mere propaganda piece. It is the unbearable truth, laid bare through the profound art of cinematography and animation.

As the US military bombs Iran, besieges Cuba, and fights in Ecuador, it plans to launch even more attacks across Latin America. The new war is called "Operation Total Extermination". The name is explicitly fascist. This is the murderous US empire. theintercept.com/2026/03/23/tru…

Israel executed Hassan today in Aaitit, South Lebanon. Not a combatant. Not armed. Just a paramedic on the front lines saving lives. Israel dropped a bomb on his ambulance, killing him and wounding 4 others. Read that again.

Yesterday, once again, I had to explain on national television in Belgium that the right to freedom, sovereignty, and armed resistance against occupation is not reserved for Europeans alone, but applies equally to non-European peoples.

The appointment of Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council is not a routine bureaucratic reshuffle. It marks another step in a broader and increasingly visible trend: the consolidation of Iran’s strategic decision-making within the security establishment, and more specifically within IRGC-linked networks. - Zolghadr is not a diplomat, nor a technocrat. His career has been rooted in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and later in the judiciary, two pillars of the system that prioritize internal control, threat management, and regime security over political mediation or external engagement. - In practical terms, this suggests that key files, especially nuclear negotiations, regional posture, and responses to external pressure, are likely to be even more tightly aligned with IRGC threat perceptions and priorities. The space for diplomatic flexibility does not disappear, but it becomes narrower, more controlled, and more tactical. - Put bluntly: this looks less like a system preparing for compromise, and more like one preparing to manage prolonged confrontation. - The broader takeaway is hard to miss. The IRGC is not just influential, it is steadily absorbing the core nodes of decision-making. And with each appointment like this, the distinction between state, security apparatus, and strategic policy becomes thinner. #Iran #Iranwar

Absolutely right! I teach Cuban foreign policy in Africa. And my students are always surprised when I tell them that Cuba was the only country to defeat Apartheid South Africa militarily. Not once but twice (1975 & 1988), protecting Angola from occupation from Apartheid SA and playing big role in independence of Namibia. Cuba’s crucial role in the defeat of the Apartheid regime, at a time when it was supported by the US and its allies, is not a history Europeans and global elites are told or taught. Celebrate Mandela, sure, but don’t ask any questions…

As of March 2026, some 9,446 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons; 4,691 of them are under administrative detention, imprisoned without charge, trial, or the ability to defend themselves. Even during the illegal and deadly Israeli-American attack on Iran, Israel continues to operate a network of torture camps for Palestinian prisoners from north to south, where they are subjected to systematic abuse, including physical and psychological violence, inhuman conditions, starvation and denial of medical treatment. 84 identified Palestinians, including one minor, have died in Israeli torture camps over the last two years, and there is grave concern that the real number is higher. This policy persists with the full support of Israel’s political establishment, judicial system, prison authorities and media. The Israel Prison Service and the Minister for National Security have publicly bragged about the harsh conditions imposed on Palestinian prisoners. These torture camps are part of the planned, extensive assault Israel is waging against Palestinian society, intended to break down and destroy Palestinians as a group. Link to our report “Living Hell” >> btselem.org/publications/2…

Three attacks that happened in the past  6 hours confirm we are in global energy war. Valero's Port Arthur refinery exploded in Texas. Israeli strikes cut power to two Iranian cities. An Iranian drone knocked out electricity to part of Kuwait. This is not coincidence. This is the shape of a global energy war. Valero Port Arthur is not a random refinery. It is one of the largest in the US, configured specifically to process Venezuelan heavy crude. The Trump administration had just unlocked Venezuelan oil exports to US buyers to compensate for Hormuz disruption. That processing node is now offline. Valero Port Arthur is the next-door neighbour of Saudi Aramco-owned Motiva Port Arthur Refinery (1 km apart) with 640,000 barrels per day. The largest refinery in the United States. Motiva is the processing backbone for Venezuelan heavy crude that Saudi is helping the US redirect away from China and into Gulf Coast supply chains. Iran has been hitting Saudi energy infrastructure for weeks. The refinery that just exploded sits 1.3 miles from the crown jewel of Saudi oil processing on American soil. That is not a coincidence. Iran and its adversaries are hitting each other's downstream infrastructure. Refineries, power grids, gas terminals. The logic is simple. You cannot sustain a war economy without energy processing capacity. So you target the processing. What happened in Texas fits that pattern. This is not the first time a Gulf Coast energy facility has been hit during or after a Middle East war. It happened during the last conflict too. Port Arthur is close to the Mexican border. A drone launched from Mexican territory could reach it. That is not speculation. That is geography. The energy war is not coming. It is already global and running across 4 continents simultaneously.