A Moderate’s Tale
NEED TO KNOW
A Moderate’s Tale
IRAN
A moderate candidate, Masoud Pezeshkian, 69, shockingly and decisively won the Iranian election earlier this month after his hardline conservative predecessor died in a helicopter crash in May. The cardiac surgeon’s victory over his conservative rivals, despite the purported wishes of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the orthodox cleric who really runs the country, has inspired young Iranians who want change, reported the BBC.
The question now is: Will they get it?
Amid the protests that engulfed Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 while in custody over a dress-code violation, Pezeshkian, a former health minister and lawmaker, said it was “unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family,” the Associated Press wrote.
During a presidential debate, he criticized the country’s elites, including himself, for failing to control living costs, censorship and the treatment of women. Pezeshkian was allied with moderate officials who negotiated the 2015 agreement to shutter Iran’s nuclear weapons program, CNN reported. The US pulled out of the deal in 2018, however.
Whether Pezeshkian can end Iran’s political isolation from the West and solve the country’s economic woes is an open question, however, because of two political truths, the Washington Post noted. First, the Iranian president’s powers are limited compared with the supreme leader’s. Second, tensions in the Gaza Strip because of the war between Israel and Hamas also threaten to put Iran further at odds with the US and its allies.
Iran, for example, supports Hamas. Pezeshkian will almost certainly uphold that policy.
“The Islamic Republic has always supported the resistance of the people of the region against the illegitimate Zionist regime,” said Pezeshkian in a message to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed political party and militant group in Lebanon, according to Reuters. “I am certain that the resistance movements in the region will not allow this regime to continue its warmongering and criminal policies against the oppressed people of Palestine and other nations.”
American officials, meanwhile, don’t expect many other changes, added Voice of America. They think it unlikely that Pezeshkian would re-launch the nuclear talks, for example. Others are more optimistic, however.
Writing in World Politics Review, Abolghasem Bayyenat of the University of Oklahoma says that the recent past in Iran has shown that “a change in presidents in conjunction with other favorable conditions can contribute to foreign policy shifts.”
“He is expected to advocate for a more prudent and less confrontational foreign policy in tune with reformist politicians’ balanced conception of the ideological, economic and national security interests of the state,” he wrote.
One big reason for a change of heart in foreign policy might be the state of the Iranian economy, which is on a negative trajectory. Capital is flying out of the country. Few have confidence in local markets, businesses, and industries.
As a result, injecting optimism and growth into that mix will be hard for Pezeshkian because the economic situation is the result of an increasingly interfering government and the growing presence of military organizations in all economic sectors – and rising corruption that cripples business plans and economic interactions, wrote Ali Dadpay, an associate professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center and specialist on Iran, for the Stimson Center.
“Iranians are not impressed by Pezeshkian’s promise to lift sanctions,” he wrote. “They know that without curbing the influence of military organizations and security apparatuses, the economic situation stands little chance of improvement, even if sanctions are eased.”
He added: “To hope for a better future is a luxury many Iranians can ill afford.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
The Balancing Act
NEPAL
Veteran communist politician Khadga Prasad Oli was sworn in as Nepal’s prime minister Monday, after his predecessor and former coalition partner Pushpa Kamal Dahal lost a vote of confidence last week, Agence France-Presse reported.
Oli, head of the Communist Party of Nepal – Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), returned as prime minister for the fourth time after his party formed a coalition with the center-left Nepali Congress earlier this month.
Following the creation of the coalition, the CPN-UML withdrew its support for Dahal’s governing alliance and forced him into a confidence vote. Dahal lost that vote Friday having repeatedly switched coalition partners since being elected prime minister in late 2022.
The CPN-UML and Nepali Congress now hold more than the 138 seats needed for majority support in Nepal’s 275-member lower house of parliament, according to Nikkei Asia.
Under a coalition agreement, Oli will share the prime minister’s post with Nepali Congress leader Sher Bahadur Deuba until the next legislative elections scheduled for 2027.
Deuba previously served five terms as Nepal’s prime minister.
Oli’s new task will be to balance Nepal’s relations with its two big neighbors, China and India, both vying for control of the Himalayan nation. While he has kept relations cordial between the two, Oli has sought closer ties with Beijing, observers noted.
During his term as prime minister between 2015 and 2016, he signed a trade and transit agreement with China, which ended India’s monopoly of Nepal’s foreign trade.
Meanwhile, analysts said that the leadership change underscored the political volatility in Nepal, which has had 14 prime ministers since 2008 when it abolished the monarchy and became a federal republic.
The Deeper State
BRAZIL
Brazil’s intelligence agency spied on members of the judiciary, lawmakers, and journalists during the administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro between 2019 and 2023, according to a federal police investigation, the Associated Press reported.
According to documents released by Brazil’s supreme court, authorities issued five arrest warrants to dismantle a “criminal organization” that allegedly used systems within the agency – known by its Portuguese acronym ABIN – to illegally monitor public officials and disseminate fake news.
Court records said the detained individuals ran a “parallel structure” within the ABIN to facilitate these operations, including efforts to interfere with police investigations targeting Bolsonaro’s sons.
Some of the people who were spied on included Supreme Justice Alexandre de Moraes and journalists Mônica Bergamo and Vera Magalhães.
The 187-page police report also includes incriminating WhatsApp conversations discussing threats against Justice Moraes.
Brazil’s attorney general hinted that the infiltrated ABIN cell was part of a broader criminal organization targeting opponents and institutions.
Bolsonaro’s name is mentioned five times in the records, but he is not formally accused of ordering the espionage. Even so, the police probe found “that the ABIN had been instrumentalized, with a clear institutional deviation from clandestine actions, to monitor people related to investigations involving family members” of Bolsonaro.
The recent investigation sparked outrage among the victims of the alleged illegal spying, with Senator Alessandro Vieira describing the acts as “typical of dictatorial governments.”
It also puts further pressure on the embattled former president, who is already facing a slew of charges.
Last week, authorities indicted Bolsonaro for embezzlement and asset laundering over an illegal scheme to sell $1.2 million in jewelry and luxury gifts from foreign governments, the BBC wrote.
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro also faces investigations into whether he incited rioters to storm government buildings on Jan. 8, 2023, after losing the 2022 presidential election.
Despite expressing regret for the unrest, he denies responsibility and has called the cases against him politically motivated.
Feeling the Blues
EUROPEAN UNION
European Union regulators have charged Elon Musk’s social media platform X – formerly Twitter – with breaching the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA) by charging for its blue checkmark system without verifying users, allegations that could lead to large fines and major operational changes for the tech giant, Reuters reported.
The European Commission’s allegations against X – the first under the landmark DSA – follow a seven-month investigation targeting the use of the firm’s so-called “dark patterns” to shape user behavior, its advertising transparency and its accessibility to the public.
In their preliminary findings, regulators accused X of failing to provide reliable advertising information and blocking researchers from accessing public data.
A key issue is also X’s blue checkmark system: Before Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it, the blue checkmark indicated to users that an account belonged to a public figure whose identity had been verified.
But when Musk bought the company in 2022, he changed the system to show that the account belonged to a paid subscriber.
The commission warned that the new system misleads users about account authenticity and does not correspond to industry practice.
X has several months to respond to the charges. If found guilty of failing to comply with the DSA, it could face fines of up to six percent of its global turnover and be required to make significant changes.
Musk disagreed with the assessment and threatened litigation. He previously claimed that the commission offered X an illegal secret deal to censor speech, which the company rejected.
EU industry chief Thierry Breton denied those claims.
In a separate development, EU antitrust regulators accepted commitments from Apple to open its tap-and-go payments technology to rivals, ending a four-year investigation, CNBC News noted.
The EU began investigating Apple Pay in 2020, examining its terms for its app and website integration, as well as concerns over exclusive access to its tap-and-go technology.
In 2022, regulators found Apple Pay’s exclusivity limited competition, prompting the US tech giant to propose a series of commitments, including granting rivals access to its contactless payment and mobile wallet technology.
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said these commitments – now legally binding for 10 years – will enhance competition and consumer choice in mobile payments.
Apple must implement these changes by July 25, ensuring all developers can offer mobile wallets with contactless payments on iPhones.
DISCOVERIES
The Little Engineers
Scientists recently found the world’s oldest inhabited termite mounds along the Buffels River in Namaqualand, South Africa, dating back an astonishing 34,000 years.
Locally named “heuweltjies” – or “little hills” in Afrikaans – these prehistoric structures are inhabited by the southern harvester termite, Microhodotermes viator and give scientists an amazing glimpse into what shaped the world then.
“These termite mounds were already ancient when woolly mammoths still roamed the Earth,” lead author Michele Francis said in a statement. “During the Last Glacial Maximum, around 20,000 years ago, massive ice sheets covered parts of North America, Europe, and Asia. These mounds were already thousands of years old by then, providing a living archive of environmental conditions that shaped our world.”
Radiocarbon dating of organic carbon within the mounds shows ages between 13,000 and 19,000 years, while carbonate dates to 34,000 years, making them the oldest active termite mounds ever dated, according to a new study.
Francis and her colleagues explained that the structures are not just an example of termite engineering and persistence: Found in an area that covers around 20 percent of Namaqualand’s landscape, each mound harbors around 15 tons of carbon, Live Science noted.
The team explained that the industrious termites are masters at carbon sequestration.
They do this by injecting younger organic material deep into their nests, preserving soil carbon reservoirs. The calcareous mounds also undergo chemical processes during heavy rains, converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into long-term storage.
The ancient mounds also provide insights into prehistoric climate conditions, revealing a much wetter climate in the region during their formation. This wetter environment allowed minerals like calcite and gypsum to dissolve and move into the groundwater, a process crucial for understanding natural carbon sequestration.
“By studying these mounds, scientists can gain a better understanding of how to combat climate change,” Francis explained. “They also highlight the importance of preserving our natural world, as these tiny engineers have been shaping our environment for tens of thousands of years.”
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