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...