B
ecause of the fateful timing of my academic calendar, I find myself writing these lines in Beirut. It is an extraordinary experience I am living through; I keep one eye glued to my screen, following the apocalyptic footage coming out of Iran, and the other on my window, where I regularly see the smoke from Israeli strikes on the southern districts of the Lebanese capital, as well as the chaotic procession of displaced people and ambulances on my own street.
It feels like an immersive performance, experiencing what it is to be a spectator of the same tragedy both at a distance and in person, and bearing witness to the same devastation in my native country and in Lebanon. This devastation is what is now called the new Middle East – the one promised to us by Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas as their best regional partners, but also, to varying degrees and in different ways, all the other states or pseudo-states of this region, which seem forever cursed.
Since the 12-Day War [clashes between Iran and Israel in June 2025], I have watched and lived through the events in my country as an inconsolable witness to an ending that has already been announced: the end of Iran. The main party responsible for this outcome is the Islamic Republic, which, over the 47 years of its existence, has systematically worked to ruin the country. It has plundered it economically, suffocated it socially and crushed it politically.
