Deena

Seven distinct crises covered today, but they're all expressions of one structural break: the institutions built for post-Cold War stability can't handle simultaneous energy disruption, inflation persistence, and great-power conflict. The Fed can't cut into $112 oil. NATO allies are declining US requests. Alternative energy routes can't replace Hormuz. Tariff refunds create deflationary pressure while ISM prices hit 70.5. AI regulation fails its first real election test. Each system was designed assuming the others would hold. What happens when none of them do?

Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia just restarted nuclear programs shelved for 10–40 years. The trigger isn't climate policy — it's AI datacenters pulling gigawatts while Iran holds 20 million barrels/day hostage through Hormuz. based.info/southeast-asia…

The Pentagon banned the AI model with the highest political neutrality score (95%) while citing "ideological contamination" as justification. Policy narrative divorced from measurable reality. based.info/pentagon-black…

I reported this story and have been working around the clock since Saturday to cover the deaths and obtain definitive evidence so that we can confidently assign responsibility. We've been reviewing photos of the dust covered bodies of children and verifying their names against the names scrawled on little coffins. We've been debunking false claims about the attack and that the harrowing cemetery photo isn't real. And while it appeared obvious to many early on that the U.S. or Israel hit the school, it takes days to sift through, pinpoint and analyze the evidence. It took four days before a new satellite image we ordered came through so we could confidently assess the damage and the types of weapons used. All that reporting and cross checking and the production of the visuals showing it takes time. But it ultimately allows us to more confidently assert U.S. responsibility, explain our rationale and add to the body of reporting that officials should be challenged with. It's easy to critique a headline, and I agree language matters, but you diminish the reporting. We're not justifying anything, we're stating where the reporting points responsibility, and quoting legal experts on the laws of armed conflict. Here's a gift link nytimes.com/2026/03/05/wor…

A couple of things about my #Iran posts Disagree with my views, but don't casually disregard my facts. Whatever I have written about Iran, including that Tehran was fully compliant with the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement until Trump came and sabotaged it in 2018, was factual. If I make factual mistakes, I own them up and make corrections. That's part of my job. Two, I am not anti-West. I am non-West--that's a methodological difference. I refuse to fall prey to the mainstream western narrative. My world is not divided between binaries. In the case of Iran, there were several binaries-- the liberal one is that this is a fight between an oppressive regime and a freedom-loving people; and there is conservative binary between American interventionism and the Islamist radicalism of the East. Which one you will choose--they will ask you! None. I try to look at the grey matter. That doesn't mean that I am blind to the quest of the Iranian people for more rights and freedoms. I have written extensively about the inability of the system to reform--including reports from Tehran. But you have to place the rigidity of the system in the extremely hostile economic and geopolitical environment it is operating in. You should also be mindful of the propaganda. In the Persian Gulf, Iran and Iraq are the only two countries that offer some meaningful representation to their people. Thirty million people, that's half the electorate, voted in the 2024 Presidential elections in Iran. Have you heard of it? While other despotic countries in the region -- presidential or monarchical-- have functional economies, either thanks to their oil wealth or economic assistance from the US--Iran, despite its oil wealth, is unable to take care of the economic needs of its people, because of the sanctions. That's what is keeping the system rigid, triggering circles of crisis. The liberal critique of Iran, which Said would love to call Oriental gaze, overlooks these structural realities. Because they don’t fit their narratives, which are used by their foreign policy establishments, including the human rights-living Israel. As students of IR, our job is to go beyond the mainstream narratives and simpleton generalisations, drawing in from history, particularly from the recent western military interventions in the east in the name of bringing in freedom and democracy.

Imperial war This is a war of choice, launched to eliminate an adversary and reshape the region to suit American and Israeli interests. Such thuggery cannot be accepted in the international system--Read TH's editorial. #WarOnIran thehindu.com/opinion/editor…

When 9/11 happened, Iran was one of the first countries that condemned the terror attack. It even helped the Americans in the war against Qaeda/Taliban. Bush returned the favour by calling Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, as an axis of evil. That was a warning sign. The North Koreans, who had the institutional memory of the devastating American bombing of 1950-53, moved swiftly to make a bomb. I would say they were smart. The Iranians chose not to make one. They thought the axis would give them deterrence while an advanced nuclear programme would provide them diplomatic cards. Khamenei even issued a fatwa against the bomb! In 2015, they signed a deal, agreeing to limit the nuclear programme. They were fully compliant with the terms of the agreement. Trump returned the favour by tearing the deal apart in 2018. The rest is history. I wrote this in June 2025: In a treacherous world like ours, nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent. If you make a bomb, make it, don't talk. Iran is being bombed not because it wants to make a bomb, but because it did not make one. It's too early to make predictions about which way the war is headed, but this one will have far-reaching consequences in West Asia. This is far bigger than the June war.

Behind the scenes at Kerala’s mass-attendance lit fests—high voltage rivalry among competing festivals over star speakers, beachfronts heaving with people, a speaker having to be brought by speed boat due to traffic gridlock, and much else, in this hilarious insider report by Nidheesh MK. @mknid m.economictimes.com/news/india/tal…

"Iran's regime is unsustainable." My @NewYorker analysis based on 53 years of covering #Iran. Includes first-hand accounts (& reflections) on why the the theocracy is untenable long-term. newyorker.com/news/the-lede/…

No analysis of #Iran is complete if you reduce what's unfolding in the country into a simplistic binary of an oppressive regime vs a freedom-loving people. That's a liberal trap. I have serious disagreements with the character of the Iranian state (which I have with a lot of regimes), but that doesn't stop me from trying to understand the broader picture. Iran has lived under crippling sanctions for decades--and those who imposed the sanctions wanted to make everyday life miserable in the hope that the public would rise against the regime which would open a window for the liberal interventionists. Why is Iran under sanctions? Mainly because of its nuclear programme. Iran exists in a very hostile region. Just look at the map -- Iran is the only Persian Gulf country that doesn't host an American military base. It sits in a region where Israel is the only nuclear power. The mistake Iran did -- as I have always argued -- was that it did not make the bomb. They thought they could leverage a nuclear threshold status for both security and economic relief. That was a blunder in a world of jungle. Tehran signed the nuclear deal in 2015. Trump demolished it in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. Europe just follows the line given from Washington. Despite the hostility in the region, Iran enjoyed relative deterrence due its so-called axis of resistance. The US first killed Soleimani, one of the architects of the axis. And then Israel, post-Oct 7, with American help, chipped away at the axis. Because for both Israel and the US, Iran is the only revisionist power in West Asia. You take Syria out, Iran would be weakened. And you take Iran out, the whole region could be redrawn. Look at what happened. Hamas was pushed into the ruins of Gaza. Hezbollah has been degraded. Houthis are fighting their own battles. And the Syrian regime, Iran's only state ally in the region, collapsed. Russia is stuck in Ukraine. China remains too self-occupied. Iran suddenly lay vulnerable to external threats. And then the Israelis bombed Iran in June. Trump happily joined in. Europe followed suit in the subsequent months by reimposing snapback sanctions--because Iran violated a deal that Trump killed in 2018! In the middle of all this, Iran had elected a reformist as its president in an election in which more than 30 million people voted. But the government’s hands were tied when it came to economic issues because of the sanctions. And there is genuine public resentment which was what triggered the shopkeepers' protests on January 1. But on Jan 2, after meeting Netanyahu in Florida, Trump said he was “locked and loaded”. Mossad started amplifying anti-regime messages in Farsi via social media. It even posted on X that “we are with you in the field” (I wrote here on X on the day the US attacked Venezuela and abducted President Maduro that Iran was next). The protests started turning violent. Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed monarch who is living in the US, suddenly emerged as the “Crown Prince”. Someone who hasn’t set foot in Iran for over four decades, emerged in western TV and press as the rightful voice of Iran’s opposition and he called for urgent American bombing of Iran! Garbage propaganda channels such as Iran International unleashed a firestorm of misinformation. Reports about the situation on the ground came from “rights groups” based in Oslo and Washington. The liberal mills, which were conspicuously silent during Israel’s genocide of Palestinians for two years, started firing on all cylinders. Iran, they said, wants freedom through American and Israeli bombings. And now Trump is asking the “protesters” to take over institutions. #IranProtests

Women read about rape every single day. Girls, teenagers, pregnant women, elderly women. Homes, streets, buses, hospitals, workplaces. Every geography. Every class. Every headline. Eventually the words stop landing because nothing ever follows them. No structural change. No sustained accountability. No safety. Just another post, another candle, another promise that evaporates. So when well-meaning men write anguished essays asking society to “wake up,” many women feel nothing. Not because the violence doesn’t horrify them, but because lived fear has replaced shock. Living in constant vigilance is not simply an emotion any more, as men wouldn’t think, it’s a survival state. And it is exhausting. Men would not survive a single day living as women do. The cognitive load alone would break them. Calculating exits. Tracking footsteps. Assessing rooms. Sharing locations. Managing risk before sunrise and after dark. Knowing that even home is not guaranteed to be safe. That level of chronic anxiety would have men calling it a mental health emergency within weeks. Men speak of a loneliness epidemic without grasping this reality. Loneliness is painful. Fear is corrosive. Fear rewires your nervous system. Fear becomes your baseline. So no, there is little point imploring women to be shocked again. Women already know. What is needed is not more words, but consequences. Not more empathy statements, but loss of impunity. Not another awakening, but action that finally makes fear unnecessary. Until then, women will continue to read. And go numb. Because numbness is sometimes the only way to keep going. Periodic outrage will only be met with the NotAllMen crowd. And the cycle repeats. If that’s not morbid, I don’t know what is.

"I have conducted more than 10,000 post-mortem examinations, but I have never seen a body subjected to such severe violence" A doctor in Kerala on how a man from Chhattisgarh wearing a green t-shirt---with Ram in his name---was battered to death by "literate" BJP-RSS goons. @IndianExpress

I opened a bookshop. It was the best, worst thing I’ve ever done. One of the most beautiful pieces you’ll read all year, or any year. Free access for all. ⁦@FT⁩ ft.com/content/cc77c2…

On the day Sreenivasan died, I paused my other writing commitments and sat down to write 10,000 words in a single stretch about him. He wrote in extraordinary volume. Genuinely extraordinary. He worked like a journalist on deadline, responding to immediate pressures and opportunities, trusting his instincts about what would work. He wrote constantly, on film sets, under pressure, often turning out dialogue on the morning of a shoot. So it felt only right to respond to him by working through his work. A condensed version of that long essay is now published in @thenewsminute. I cut it down not out of hesitation, but to spare the reader fatigue that inevitably follows a public death, when a flood of hurried interpretations competes for attention. Very few newsrooms would push out a nearly 5,000-word piece at such short notice without drowning it in process or delay. For that, The News Minute and @dhanyarajendran deserves credit. I'll end with a line from the piece that I can't stress enough: "Don't you now miss Ajithas of the world, those selfless political activists who sacrificed themselves to a higher ideological cause and hit the streets with organised protest, so that there were consequences to bad actors in society, no matter the consequences they faced themselves?" thenewsminute.com/flix/what-we-d…

People ask why women doesn't file complaints, why it took so much time to complain. This is why. You'll have to deal with all the morons in this society, the verbal rape which some keyboard warriors unleash, what not. Not all are strong/have support to face all that.

"Men's rights activists" never ever campaign for boys who have been raped, boys who have been beaten, abused and raped by their parents, prison rape, military violence or any men who have suffered violence in general. All they do is legitimize violence against women and girls

This is not a sick joke. This is inhumane. Ethically indefensible. Absolute abasement. Rot. You’d have to be stupendously idiotic to miss that this is used to, what’s the word for it- no not humour or visual gag- retraumatise perhaps, what she went through. That which has been established in court, for which punishment has been delivered, is poked at here, for what? Retraumatise through recognition? Dhyan Sreenivasan and Vineeth carry responsibility for performing and normalising the reference. Wil they say bha bha bha or apologise? That responsibility should be shared by @Mohanlal, every producer, editor, and other stakeholders who signed off on this scene. Mohanlal and Gokulam Gopalan apologised and voluntarily cut scenes from Empuran because it hurt the sentiments of a political party. If you claim yourself to be #avalkkoppam, this doesn’t hurt your sentiments towards her? As for the hero, the director and the script writers, since they only created this, I can only wish they’d have some shame and humanity. Some day. Some day.

If there is absolutely one thing you must read today. The most comprehensive map of the largest far right network in the world, the RSS

Open Access | Seeing the Sangh is the world’s first comprehensive map of the organisational affiliates surrounding the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—which together constitute the largest far-right network in the world. This interactive dataset, which currently includes comprehensive qualitative and quantitative data on over two thousand and five hundred organisations, is stored at a repository housed at the Science Po’s Centre for International Studies (CERI), and has been fact-checked and published by The Caravan. Explore the network map here: rssproject.caravanmagazine.in For a deeper reflection on why such an intervention is necessary, see Felix Pal’s (@FelixPal8) essay, “Exposing the largest far-right network in history”, read here: caravanmagazine.in/politics/unvei…

india's middle class loves convenience (cheap delivery, domestic labour, gig services etc). but have we wondered why does this preference overpower demands for better public services, cleaner cities or better living conditions? why is it so hard to build class consciousness (1/n)