The Levant Files

The UK and Iran are each making clear that they do not want open conflict, even as their competing red lines and military postures push the two sides toward an increasingly dangerous confrontation. A phone call on Friday between UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi revealed both the depth of the tensions and the shared, if fragile, desire to prevent them from spiralling into direct war. Diplomacy Under Pressure The Cooper–Araghchi call was itself a signal that both capitals consider the diplomatic channel worth keeping open. Cooper expressed the UK's desire to "see a swift resolution to this conflict" and questioned whether military action alone can deliver lasting security. She also signalled distance from automatic alignment with Washington, warning against decisions driven solely by US pressure. Araghchi, for his part, framed Iran's warnings in conditional terms: Tehran has no interest in confronting states that deny the US...

Iran's new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, delivered his first Nowruz message on March 20, 2026, in a text that serves simultaneously as a wartime communiqué, a legitimation exercise, and a foreign policy signal. The address, published by Mehr News Agency (MNA), reveals a leader seeking to consolidate authority under conditions of active military conflict and domestic fragility. Three Wars as Founding Narrative The centrepiece of the message is Khamenei's framing of the past Iranian year (1404) around three distinct conflicts. The "June war" is described as an Israeli strike — carried out "with the special help of the United States and in the midst of negotiations" — that killed senior commanders, scientists, and approximately 1,000 Iranian citizens. The "January Coup" is presented as an American-Zionist-orchestrated internal uprising exploiting economic grievances. The "third war," still ongoing, is the conflict during...

Dr. Nikolaos Stelgias The US-Israeli aggression against Iran, launched on 28 February 2026, has achieved something unprecedented in the modern history of the Middle East: the systematic elimination of the founding generation of the Islamic Republic. From Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (b. 1939) to Defense Council secretary Ali Shamkhani (b. 1955), from Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri to IRGC commander Hossein Salami — killed during the Twelve-Day War in June 2025 — the men who made the 1979 Revolution, who were forged in the anti-Shah underground and the seminaries of Qom, have been removed from the stage in a matter of months. The question now confronting the region is not whether Iran will endure, but what kind of Iran will emerge from the rubble. The roll call of the dead reads like a directory of the Revolution’s old guard. Khamenei, who studied under Khomeini and served as president before becoming Supreme Leader in 1989, was assassinated on the first day of the war. Shamkhani, a vet...

The ongoing US-Israel military campaign against Iran is triggering a sweeping realignment of the Middle East that could ultimately redraw the region's borders, senior Israeli political commentator Amit Segal argued in a sweeping analysis published Thursday in the Israeli outlet Israel Hayom. Writing under the headline " Israel's New Border, Pending Trump Approval ," Segal contended that Israel has effectively reversed the traditional dynamic of the US-Israeli alliance. Rather than relying on American protection, Israel now finds itself actively assisting Washington in achieving its principal strategic objective: neutralising Iran's capacity to threaten global energy markets by closing the Strait of Hormuz. "Remarkably, instead of Israel needing American assistance against Iran, it now finds itself helping its closest ally achieve its overarching goal," Segal wrote, noting that Gulf states have pressed the Trump administration to eliminate the Iranian thr...

The US-Israeli military campaign against Iran entered a new phase of intensity on Friday, marked by the killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' spokesman, a dramatic Swiss decision to suspend arms exports to the United States, and reports that the Trump administration is weighing a military seizure of Iran's strategic Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. Iran's official state television confirmed the killing of Ali Mohammad Naeini, spokesman and head of public relations for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in Israeli-American strikes. The announcement came only minutes after Naeini had himself appeared on air, asserting that Iran continued to produce missiles despite the escalating conflict — a direct rebuttal to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that Iran had lost the capacity to manufacture them. The Israeli military stated that the operation was part of "a series of eliminations of dozens of senior officials of the Iranian reg...

We usually look at a map of the world and find comfort in the solid lines. We assume international relations operate behind predictable, sturdy firewalls. But what happens when a geopolitical earthquake shatters those assumptions in a matter of days? Welcome to our latest exploration of the Levant Files. In this gripping presentation, we unpack the unprecedented, rapidly metastasizing conflict between Israel, Iran, and the United States—a war that evolved with staggering velocity from targeted precision strikes to the total weaponization of global energy. It began with a calculated "decapitation strategy," as Israeli forces systematically dismantled Iran’s veteran leadership, leaving a power vacuum quickly filled by unpredictable, desperate hardliners. Their retaliation shifted the paradigm of modern conflict: rather than targeting military bases, they aimed directly at the civilian economic hubs of the globe. By striking Qatar's massive Ras Laffan natural gas facility, t...

Yıl 2026... Avrupa'da doğal gaz fiyatları bir gecede %50 fırlamış, küresel enerji tedarik zinciri felç olmuş, Karadeniz'den Basra Körfezi'ne kadar tüm ticaret yolları tıkanmış durumda. Gemi taşımacılığındaki panik o kadar büyük ki, FIFA 2026 Dünya Kupası güvenlik gerekçesiyle apar topar ABD'den Meksika'ya taşınıyor. Peki, dünyayı bu kusursuz fırtınanın içine çeken kıvılcım neydi? Yeni bölümümüzde, The Levant Files platformunun çarpıcı saha analizlerinden yola çıkarak, İran Dini Lideri Hamaney’in suikastıyla tetiklenen ve tüm küresel sistemi sarsan o karanlık senaryonun derinliklerine iniyoruz. İsrail'in İran devlet aklını yok etmeyi hedefleyen acımasız "Jenga Stratejisi", hiç beklenmedik bir şekilde İran'ın hücresel yapılarını ve "otomatik pilot" protokollerini devreye sokuyor. Savaş, sınırların ötesine taşarak Katar'daki LNG tesislerini ve Suudi petrol rafinerilerini vururken, enerji piyasalarında eşi benzeri görülmemiş bir şok dalga...

The attack on the world’s largest LNG export facility threatens to reshape energy markets from East Asia to Europe Iran’s missile attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City on 18 March 2026 has struck at the heart of the global energy system. The facility, located approximately 80 kilometres northeast of Doha, is home to the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) export complex and accounts for roughly 20 per cent of global LNG supply. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry denounced the strike as a “dangerous escalation, flagrant violation of state sovereignty, and a direct threat to its national security and regional stability,” reserving the right to self-defence under international law. Emergency teams contained fires at the complex, with no casualties reported, but QatarEnergy confirmed that several additional LNG facilities suffered “sizeable fires and extensive further damage.” The Chain of Escalation The attack followed a sequence of events that began earlier in the day when Israel, i...

Saudi Arabia has begun rerouting crude oil exports through its Red Sea port of Yanbu, offering tankers — including Chinese supertankers — an alternative path that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, now effectively closed by Iran following United States and Israeli military strikes. But energy analysts caution that the workaround can only partially absorb the shock to global oil flows, and that security risks along the alternative route remain far from negligible. Reporting by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on 18 March tracks the movement of New Vista, a very large crude carrier (VLCC) owned by China Merchants Energy Shipping, as a concrete example of the emerging diversion strategy. The vessel approached the Strait of Hormuz on 1 March — the same day at least three tankers near UAE and Omani ports were struck by projectiles, causing fires and crew casualties — and chose not to transit. It instead redirected toward the Red Sea, arrived at Yanbu on 11 March, loaded, and departed two day...