Daniel Finkelstein in the Times on Starmer’s obsession with international law, reinforced by his choice for attorney-general, Lord Hermer: Can it really contravene international law to act against a regime that wages wars by proxy all over the Middle East, sponsors terrorist murderers all over the world and is building a ballistic missile and nuclear…

Why has Iran been targeting the UAE and other Arab states with missile strikes? Stirring up the old Sunni-Shia divide? Inadvertently perhaps, but, according to the WSJ, it’s less subtle than that: The apparent calculation was that, by targeting rich Persian Gulf monarchies that hold sway with the Trump administration, Tehran could force Washington and Israel into…

Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph: There will come a day when I don’t have to try to persuade anyone that medicalising and sterilising children is not a good idea. There will come a day when professional people do not lose their jobs or status after trial by X (Twitter), which is adjudicated by activist curtain-twitchers who pore…

From the JC: A student society has given advice on how to deal with “collective grief” following the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Israeli strikes on Tehran on Saturday. On university campuses across the country, dozens of Ahlul Bayt Societies, also known as Absocs, have posted messages mourning the regime leader. The Muslim Student…

Iranian activist Leila Farahbakhsh blocks a peace march in Florence against the US and Israeli military attack.She shouts her heart out as the “pacifists” try to silence her. “I am Iranian. I have a right to talk!”

In the verdict issued by the new authorities, she was found guilty of “spreading corruption on earth and denying Allah.”“I would rather face death with open arms than live in disgrace, forcibly covered with a veil. I will not kneel before those who expect me to repent for half a century of my struggle for…

An interesting piece by Shiraz Maher on the late unlamented Khamenei’s career, and his downfall. At the New Statesman: Shias believe the twelfth imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, never died and is in occultation, waiting for God to restore him near the end of times when he will establish justice. Contemporary Shia Islam had therefore regressed into…