The Levant Files

The United States has emerged from its 39-day war against Iran with critically depleted munitions stockpiles and insufficient production capacity to rapidly replenish them — a vulnerability that Chinese military experts say could prove decisive in any future conflict with a major power adversary. According to a report published Tuesday by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the brief but intense conflict exposed deep structural weaknesses in American military readiness. The findings have drawn close attention from Chinese military analysts, who see in them a telling preview of how a potential confrontation with Beijing might unfold. Missile Inventories Cut in Half The scale of munitions expenditure during the Iran war was staggering. The CSIS report estimates that during the ceasefire period, the U.S. consumed roughly half of its Patriot air defence missiles and approximately half of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) interceptors — systems that form...

Forty-seven years after its founding, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) remains one of the most powerful and consequential institutions in Iran. But how was it created, who signed its first orders, and why was a heated debate over whether it should answer to the government ultimately resolved in favor of the Supreme Leader? Javad Mansouri, the IRGC's very first commander, sat down with Khabar Online to answer those questions on the anniversary of the Corps' establishment. Planning Before the Revolution According to Mansouri, the idea of forming a dedicated revolutionary force predated the Islamic Revolution itself. Speaking to Khabar Online, he explained that in 1978 — before the Shah's regime had fallen — he and a group of fellow activists in Tehran and other cities reached a shared conclusion: every Iranian revolution or popular movement over the preceding century had ultimately been hijacked by outside forces. From the Constitutional Revolution to the national...

For decades, the economy has been Iran's Achilles' heel — the one vulnerability its adversaries never tire of exploiting and its leaders never quite manage to remedy. Now, with the wounds of a fresh conflict still raw, that weakness is being laid bare with new and painful clarity. A spreading wave of mass layoffs, shattered supply chains and a business climate in freefall are forcing the question: when the shooting stops, can Iran rebuild? Writing in the Iranian daily Ettelaat, analyst Mohammad Ali Sanjideh warns that the economic fallout may ultimately prove harder to manage than the war itself. "The consequences of the recent war, compounded by the stagflationary conditions already gripping the business environment, are so severe and damaging that they simply cannot be concealed," Sanjideh wrote in his opinion column published by Ettelaat. News of layoffs — or what Iranians call ta'dil-e niroo, workforce adjustment — has become so widespread that it has generate...

Ukraine has asked Turkey to host a direct summit between President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kyiv's top diplomat confirmed on Wednesday, as efforts to end the more than four-year war hit a new low. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha made the disclosure on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomatic Forum, saying Ukraine had approached Ankara specifically — and signaled it would welcome any neutral capital prepared to stage the meeting. "We addressed the Turks specifically," Sybiha told reporters. "But if another capital, besides Moscow and Belarus, organizes such a meeting, we will go." Turkey has not yet responded to the proposal. Ankara's silence is telling: while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described Turkey as the "ideal host" for future Russia-Ukraine-US talks and reaffirmed that readiness during a meeting with Zelensky in Istanbul earlier this month, committing to a presidential-level summit carries significant po...

The Tudeh Party of Iran, the country's historic communist organisation, welcomes the announcement of a temporary ceasefire between Iran and the United States as a significant step toward lasting peace, while simultaneously issuing a firm demand for a popular and progressive government to lead the country's post-war national reconstruction. In a formal statement, the party described the conditional two-week ceasefire — brokered through the mediation of Pakistan in the final moments before a deadline set by U.S. President Donald Trump — as "an important step for the country's future." The agreement, which requires the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz to remain unimpeded, came after weeks of relentless bombardment of Iranian territory by U.S. and Israeli military forces. The Tudeh Party underscored the catastrophic scale of destruction wrought by the conflict. Tens of thousands of Iranians were killed or injured, with tens of thousands of residential uni...

Iran is signaling that it has not abandoned diplomacy as a path to ending its conflict with the United States, but a cascade of grievances — a continuing U.S. naval blockade, what Tehran describes as broken commitments, and what it calls Washington's excessive demands at the negotiating table — has pushed the Islamic Republic to the edge of walking away. In a series of developments on Tuesday, Iranian officials simultaneously expressed readiness to resume talks and announced they would boycott a scheduled second round of Pakistani-mediated negotiations in Islamabad, painting a picture of a country frustrated by what it sees as American bad faith. Iran's negotiating team informed the American side through Pakistan — which has been serving as a back-channel mediator — that it will not travel to Islamabad on Wednesday. According to Tasnim News Agency, the decision has been "finalized." Tehran's stated reason is that the United States has systematically violated the 1...

Regional tensions are escalating sharply following the U.S. Central Command's (CENTCOM) announced attack on the Iranian oil tanker "Tosca," Iran's declared intention to retaliate, and a significant surge in American heavy-lift air movements repositioning forces and equipment across the Middle East. Taken together, these developments indicate that the confrontation between Washington and Tehran has entered a more active phase — one that goes beyond mutual deterrence and is now characterized by operational repositioning on both sides. According to an analysis published by Nour News, the United States under the administration of Donald Trump has, in this phase, doubled down on a strategy combining political, military, and media pressure — a pattern designed to alter the adversary's calculations through pre-emptive action and the imposition of operational costs. The announced strike on the tanker Tosca by CENTCOM is assessed within this framework. Washington–Tel Aviv ...

Iran's Wars — Foreign and Domestic — Are Destroying Women When a 29-year-old woman in Tehran was laid off last October — her employer shuttered after a sudden liquidity crisis following the June 2025 war with Israel — she did what Iran's economy had left her no choice but to do. She had a university degree. She had applied to dozens of positions. The law allows her husband to bar her from certain jobs. There were no jobs to take. What happened next, she does not speak about openly. She is one of millions. Iran is in free fall. By late 2025, official inflation had surpassed 48 percent — with food prices up 72 percent year-on-year. The rial had collapsed to more than one million to the dollar on street markets. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported that 41 percent of Iranians suffer from moderate or severe food insecurity. Unofficial estimates by Iran's own economists suggest up to 70 percent of the population lives below the relative poverty line. Then, on Februa...

As a fragile 14-day ceasefire between Iran and the United States approached its expiration on Wednesday, both sides dug in on their positions, leaving the fate of a second round of negotiations in Islamabad deeply uncertain — and the wider Middle East on edge. U.S. Vice President JD Vance was reported to be traveling to Pakistan for the talks, with Axios citing three American sources who said he would depart the United States by Tuesday morning, according to BBC Persian. However, Iran had still not confirmed its participation. Iranian state television flatly denied that any delegation — either principal or preliminary — had arrived in Islamabad, calling media reports of a scheduled Iranian arrival "baseless," Al Jazeera reported. A Pakistani source cited by Reuters told Iran International that the second round of talks was nonetheless scheduled for Wednesday. The diplomatic uncertainty came against a backdrop of sharp rhetoric from both capitals. President Donald Trump, on th...