Burzine Waghmar

Burzine Waghmar, Centre for Iranian Studies @SOAS, London, #OnAir as #POTUS #Trump undertook #bombing of #Natanz, #Fordow #Isfahan, #Iran. Listen to my historic interview @WIONews, 2030 hrs London. #IsraelIranWar @RUSI_org @ISS_RUSI @UsanasF

#TrumpRetreat | ‘Guess who's talking? Mohammed Baqir Ghalibaf, the Speaker of Parliament Majlis, who controls the most potent IRGC faction within the Revolutionary Guards. He is powerful, and he is talking to Trump.’: Burzine Waghmar (@Criticastery), Centre for Iranian Studies, SOAS Watch #DebateWithArnab now, on-air, and online. Tune in and fire in your comments: youtube.com/live/GbQK4bqSb… #NationWantsToKnow #RepublicWorld #RepublicTV #BreakingNews #RepublicNews #IndiaNews #LiveNews #RepublicExclusive #RepublicWorldLive #ArnabGoswami #RepublicDigital #NationFirst

England! #GodBless the #USAF #BlessOurSoldiers #SpecialRelationship #USA250

Snuffing out the #Basij. There’s only so much a mourning, broke, battered #Iran will endure from the #IRGC during #IranWar‌.

His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, today chaired an extraordinary Cabinet meeting at Gudaibiya Palace. During the meeting, the Cabinet reiterated its condemnation of the hostile Iranian aggressions, stressing the importance of adhering to United Nations Security Council Resolution 2817, which strongly condemns and demands an immediate end to all Iranian attacks on the Arabian Gulf states and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The resolution also calls for an immediate and unconditional cessation of any provocation or threat to neighbouring countries, upholding the inherent right of the GCC states and Jordan to defend their territories. For more details, visit gdnonline.com #bahrain #gdnonline

I tell @TimesNow, 23 Mar 26, 1240 GMT, that #Tehran is desperate enough to claim anything. FM #Araghchi lied on both counts. He is in touch with #SteveWitkoff and the #Khorramshahr4 ballistic missile, contra his claim #Iran possesses nothing of that range, launched towards #DiegoGarcia, 3,800 km from the #Iranian coast. It can, theoretically, reach with a reduced payload, the UK 4,000 km away. #TrumpIranWar

🇺🇸 CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper to the Iranian people: "There will be a clear signal at some point, as the President has indicated, for you to be able to come out.”

Bahrain ‘entitled to seek compensation from Iran’ Legal experts have affirmed that Bahrain has a clear right under international law to seek compensation from Iran for damage caused to civilian facilities and infrastructure in recent attacks. Read: gdnonline.com/Details/137935… #bahrain #iranattack #gdnonline

@MothinAli, like so many progressive Britons who gravitate to let’s normalise #Jew-hate @TheGreenParty, find the British #UnionJack ‘problematic’. But not standing by the fluttering Islamic Republic of #Iran flag, under whose ‘colonial’ jurisdiction, #MuslimWomen are shot deliberately in their genitalia. Thoughts @CarolineLucas @muslim_greens @rachelmillward? #Antisemitism #London

Horrified by the antisemitic attack in our city. Antisemitism is vile and has no place here. Solidarity with the Jewish community in Golders Green - and with our communities across the country who will be feeling this today.

@Salansar1 @JEyal_RUSI Velayati was in my list of sober #lranians — the articulate forerunner, at several removes, of Javad Zarif from #IranIraqWar days. One who was the reasonable interface of a revolutionary regime. Clearly he’s aged badly.

This Iranian statement tells you everything about the regime, utterly detached from reality & addicted to fantasy: "The world will be different after the war ends, multipolar & Iran will be the central pole of the Islamic bloc" - Ali Akbar Velayati, Supreme Leader's top advisor

Salient features of my interview @BDUTT: • #Iran's malicious, monomaniacal obsession with #UAE is because it's a #Muslim polity to which the world flocks. A 'globally integrated economy, a cosmopolitan, flourishing, tolerant society with freedom of worship', something unobtainable in #Iran to #Bahais or #Sunnis, and an #AbrahamAccords signatory which has no existential qualms about #Israel. • #Iran is not attacking from a position of strength. It is a failing state which refuses to fail. Burzine Waghmar, Centre for Iranian Studies, SOAS, Univ of London.

Correction @AzadehMoaveni @NewYorker on #Iran #Persian #History: • Bahram V Gor (r. 420-38) was reared at the court of the #Arab ruler, Mundhir, of the #Lakhmid phylarcate in #AlHira, south-central #Iraq, a #Sasanian vasallage. Mundhir aided him in seizing the throne over the objections of #Iranian nobles who opposed his accession. • Kavad I (r. 488-96; 498/99-531) a Sasanian dynast like #PahlaviIran #Coup53, enjoyed a second stint thanks to the #Hephthalites. Imprisoned after being ousted, he fled and found refuge at their court in #Bactria, north-central #Afghanistan. He returned to rule for some three decades. • It was played out a century later when Khosrow II (r. 590-628) was supported by the Lakhmids and the then ruler, Nu'man III, to acquire the crown. That alliance subsequently broke down. A #Byzantine emperor, Maurice (r. 539-602), helped him regain it from the usurper and Persian general, #BahramChobin. • It was curtains for those ninth-century 'Robin Hoods' of southeast Iran, the #Saffarids, and their 36-year-reign when the #Baghdad-based #Abbasid caliph tacitly encouraged their removal by the #Samanids. @vali_nasr @AshkanKalashy @ManiBasharzad @KasraAarabi @BahmanKalbasi @IranWonk

@AzadehMoaveni in @NewYorker profile: "No monarch in two and a half millennia of Persian history has invited a foreign power to attack the land of Iran, and nowhere in the long literary tradition of royal counsel—known as andarznameh, or “mirror for princes”—has an exception been made for the cause of ending domestic tyranny. This is the current predicament of Pahlavi." 👇

This French diplomat would not be out of place at a north London dinner party. His superficially cultured, monolingual, British hosts would have lapped up #Baudrillard’s anti-Americanisms (in translation, of course!). But the Emiratis aren’t wearing it during #IranWar,‌ which sees the too clever by half crowd foaming in full colours as #PeteHegseth pummels away. Impotent, cerebral eunuchs aren’t the need of the hour.

Strange. It means deepening your dependence on a country that has led yours into a disastrous conflict without caring about your interests.

UAE foreign minister and deputy prime minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said the country would not be “blackmailed by terrorists” in a post on X on Sunday, responding to criticism of remarks by UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash. “We will never be blackmailed by terrorists,” Abdullah bin Zayed said. His comment came in reply to former French ambassador Gérard Araud, who criticized Gargash’s remarks on Iran’s attacks and the strengthening of security partnerships with Washington. iranintl.com/en/202603228953

Maybe you should’ve asked that #Iranian diplomat why #BOAC (pre-74 #BritishAirways) flew from #Tehran to #London via #TelAviv during the 1970s and nobody in #Iran saw anything remotely amiss about it. Tehran didn’t convene #HolocaustDenial conferences then but the #AsianGames, first in the #MiddleEast, which only returned to the region in #Doha, 2006. Ponder this and more. #Iran, to this Iranist, reminds me of post-68 #Czechoslovakia, and how Czechs would call it the ‘kingdom of forgetting’.

I will never forget what an Iranian diplomat told me some 15 years ago, off-the-record: “We have no issue reestablishing ties with the US. Israel is the problem — they won’t allow it.” Interesting quote I ponder as we watch this war unfold.

@KasraAarabi Sunday @Telegraph 22 Mar 26, p 19. ‘[P]ro-regime rallies are not an indication of the Islamic Republic’s strength or support. They are a clear sign of a weak and vulnerable regime — one that can and MUST be toppled.’ @UANI #IranWar‌ #DigitalBlackOutIran‌ #IranMassacre‌

@masonls1066 @MazMHussain Another eg: chauvinist claims of #PahlaviIran, but especially the IRI, to #Bahrain as #Iran irredenta. Of course, both deem the #PersianGulf as their natural quarry. #MonroeDoctrine isn’t exclusive to the #US just as whites have no monopoly on #imperialism.

@MazMHussain There is a book waiting to be written that analyzes the current IRI as largely continuous with the Pahlavi state (& with its ideology as in many ways continuous with early Pahlavism). Obviously both are similar in their anticommunism (irrelevant post-1991) & nationalism…

I actually find him and his father to be sympathetic figures when viewed on their own terms despite their flaws. Reza Khan helped maneuver Iran out of a situation where its sovereignty had been more or less eradicated during the late-Qajar period while Mohammed Reza Pahlavi mostly retained the traditional aversion to extremism one would expect of a monarch. His son Reza Pahlavi appears less canny and seems to have made some kind of Faustian bargain to become a neoliberal Masoud Rajavi for foreign powers who are trying to destroy his country.

My interview on #Pakistan’s #Buddhist ‘rock art gallery’ petroglyphs of #Gilgit #Baltistan, 2020. Excerpt: Almost 37,116 petroglyphs, including 3,618 inscriptions on 5,928 boulders (95 archaeological sites), will be forever submerged once the Bhasha dam is finished. Some will be submerged for eternity while others are expected to be partly visible seasonally when the shoreline dips while still others etched on higher elevations will be observable from the newer shoreline,” said Waghmar. Full article here: daily-sun.com/post/505512/bu…

@Kalhorozulfiqar Zabardast . Are the Diamer petroglyphs threatened by the planned dam ??

The Mountains Of Gilgit-Baltistan Are Covered In 2,000 Years Of Buddhist History fromlahorewithlove.org/2026/03/14/the…

Plain that fateful Friday evening, on the eve of #IranWar‌, #BadrAlbusaidi was economical with the truth. Never mind his ludicrous claim #IAEA inspectors would be back ‘in three months’ and all was going peachy keen. Had that #CBS anchor done her homework, she could’ve grilled him why: • #Oman actively abets #shadowfleet smuggling #Iranian oil transshipments, now verified by US Commerce Dept. • #Muscat a beach head for over 2,000+ dud companies, confirmed by Oman's Chamber of Commerce, linked to #IRGC military entities for #sanctions-evasion and illicit oil sales running into billions. • #Iran's economy has shrunk yet bilateral trade up by 24%, in first ten months of 2025, at $.135bn total trade. • #Salalah and #Sohar ports actively relabel and reexport Iranian goods as Omani while charging 20% commission for evasionary practices. • Currency laundering and repatriation of billions in frozen Iranian funds. Omani banks take their cut for such transfers by allowing Iranian banks access to global finance. US Treasury has sanctioned Omanis engaged in smuggled oil networks. @ManiBasharzad @IranWonk @mehdiy_fa @DanLinnaeus @MeirJa @jonathan_spyer @davidblairdt @patrickwintour @greggroman

In this interview with @margbrennan the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog pours some cold water on the Omani foreign minister's claim that a nuclear deal was imminent on the eve of the war Somewhat academic at this point, but a useful corrective. Oman (understandably) had an interest in making it seem as if negotiations were bearing fruit. In reality there was still an enormous gulf between the American and Iranian positions cbsnews.com/news/rafael-gr…

@ManiBasharzad @ZackPolanski @DawnNeesom Because some #MuslimLivesMatter, not all, especially #IranMassacre‌ for @ZackPolanski @TheGreenParty and @muslim_greens. Votes above all else. No price too high or bar too low.

Why were @ZackPolanski and his deputy leader silent when the Islamic Republic killed 30,000+ innocent civilians, but now that Trump is killing those murderers, they are suddenly worried about Iran? Always a pleasure to join @DawnNeesom show on GB News.

@prsundarji A pleasure to join all you yesterday on air about #IranWar.

"This war won't end, this war has only just begun", I countered. It was great to be on an informed panel discussion with a wide and thought-provoking range of views. It was great that we weren't moderated by hectoring, schoolmarm anchors in never-ending, foghorn monologues. It was great that we weren't yelled at by hyperventilating 'editors' in flak jackets, contorted over 'war tables' (all in Film City Noida). This is one of India's few real journalists who gets down and dirty on the ground: be it an epidemic or - a terror attack, or a war. Yes, who else but the intrepid @BDUTT. Great show ! @Criticastery @Hash_Tag_Most @AmbBhaswati1