When the Pillars Fall
NEED TO KNOW
When the Pillars Fall
IRAN
Iran has had a bad year.
Israel has decimated Hamas, the Iranian-backed Palestinian group that perpetrated the Oct. 7 attacks last year, Times Radio said. Israel has also severely undermined Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group that attacked Israel in response to its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, explained McGill University international relations lecturer Daniel L. Douek in the Conversation. The recent fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad has eliminated Iran’s most important ally in the region, added NBC News.
These three groups were vital members of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” that Iran was coordinating with Russia’s help against American and Israeli influence in the Middle East, reported the New York Times. “Rump militias in Iraq and the Houthi tribe of Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East,” are Iran’s only standing allies in the region, Time magazine added.
Added to that was the Israeli destruction of Syrian military infrastructure that followed the ousting of the Syrian regime. Hundreds of strikes destroyed warplanes, helicopters, weapons caches, and the bulk of the country’s navy, which had buffered Iran. Iran was already exposed after Israeli strikes in October hit the country’s most sensitive military sites. Meanwhile, an Israeli overt aerial campaign on Iranian assets in Syria since October 2023 has killed dozens of Iranian officers, the United Nations said. In April, Israel killed seven more Iranian officers in a strike close to Iran’s embassy in Damascus.
Lastly, Donald Trump’s US election victory has put a staunchly anti-Iran leader in the White House. As the American Enterprise Institute wrote, Trump has promised to apply “maximum pressure” on the mullahs in Tehran.
These diplomatic and strategic setbacks are occurring as the Iranian economy is reeling under the strain of sanctions and global inflation. Food prices, for example, are on track to increase 40 percent next year in the country, said Iran News Update. Iranian leaders, incidentally, spent as much as $35 billion on Syria between when the country’s civil war kicked off in 2011 and then slowed to a simmer, for example, noted Iran Focus. That money has now gone up in smoke.
Not all is bleak. Iran has improved ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for instance, argued foreign policy expert James Durso in the Hill. Like Russia, Iran has also successfully bypassed sanctions to sell more oil on global markets to generate much-needed revenues.
Iranian leaders are also exploring whether or not they should risk creating a nuclear deterrent to stop Western leaders who might seek to disrupt the country internally.
“Science and technology are considered key factors in creating power and authority,” said Mohammad Eslami, who leads Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, in Iran Insight. “A country can maintain its independence and progress only if it pursues its development without reliance on others, especially the dominant global powers.”
The biggest challenges facing Iran are arguably internal, however.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 85 years old, the BBC reported. He and his political allies must choose a successor. This new leader must garner the support of hardline Muslim clerics and refrain from triggering protests among more liberal-minded Iranians.
That might be wishful thinking, however. A year after months of devastating protests broke out against the regime over the death of a young Kurdish woman in custody for violating the country’s strict dress codes for women, activists say they are energized by the fall of the Assad regime next door. Even though the Iranian regime had violently put down the protests and instituted even harsher controls on dissent since the protests, women continue to challenge the rules. And now, activists say they believe the disintegration of Iranian power abroad could force the loosening of authoritarian rule at home.
“The fingers of the Islamic Republic are being cut off and are getting weaker,” one activist from eastern Iran told the Washington Post. “The fall of Bashar Assad didn’t only raise the hopes of the opposition but also raised the spirits of the Iranian nation.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
The Price of Friendship
NORTH KOREA
More than 1,000 North Korean troops helping Russia fight Ukraine have been killed or wounded, South Korean military officials said Monday, with intelligence agencies warning of additional troop rotations and weapon shipments from Pyongyang to Moscow that could further prolong the conflict and complicate peace efforts, CBS News reported.
South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) confirmed that more than 11,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to fight Ukraine, primarily in the Kursk border region, where they have supported Russian forces in taking back territory Ukraine captured earlier this year.
Pyongyang has reportedly supplied 240mm rocket launchers, 170mm self-propelled artillery, and suicide drones, signaling a deepening military alliance with Moscow, the JSC noted.
The casualties mark North Korea’s first combat exposure since the Korean War ended in 1953.
Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened their military and political ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The two nations formalized their growing alliance through a landmark defense pact signed in June, enabling extensive cooperation on military strategies and technology.
Analysts say that North Korea views this partnership as an opportunity to gain access to advanced Russian military systems while bolstering its international relevance amid its continued isolation.
Reports from Ukraine allege Russia has used at least 60 North Korean ballistic missiles, and Pyongyang may expand production and supply of suicide drones for Russian use, according to Newsweek.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s intelligence agencies raised concerns that the presence of North Korean troops is part of Pyongyang’s plan to modernize its military capabilities using combat experience gained in Ukraine.
This development could escalate regional tensions in the Korean Peninsula, with the JCS warning of additional provocations from Pyongyang, such as more nuclear tests and the launching of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
On the domestic front, North Korea has intensified its border security measures, constructing a 25-mile electric barbed-wire fence to prevent defections. The country has also launched 7,000 trash balloons into South Korea since May in retaliation for propaganda efforts by South Korean activists.
The casualty figures come a month after South Korea and Ukraine pledged to strengthen security cooperation in response to the “threat” posed by the deployment of North Korean troops.
Even so, there has been no mention of potential arms shipment from Seoul to Kyiv.
Under Siege
GUATEMALA
Guatemalan authorities raided the compound of an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect on Friday, rescuing at least 40 women and 160 children following allegations of child abuse, including rape, reported ABC News.
The farm used by the Lev Tahor community about 55 miles southeast of Guatemala City was raided by police and the military, who took the women and children into protective custody, said Interior Minister Francisco Jiménez.
Jiménez added that the children were allegedly being abused by a member of the sect, prompting the search by the authorities.
In a statement on the social media platform X, the Central American country’s attorney general’s office said that bones suspected to be of one child were found. The office also said that a complaint was filed in November of possible crimes which included forced pregnancies, mistreatment of minors, and rape.
Following the raid, about 100 people from the sect gathered outside where some tried to take the children back forcibly, the attorney general’s office said.
The Lev Tahor movement, made up of an estimated 50 families, is under investigation for serious sexual offenses in several countries where they reside, including Canada, the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, and Israel, reported the BBC.
The small sect is known for extremist practices, the news outlet added, for example advocating for child marriage, inflicting harsh punishments for minor transgressions, and requiring women and girls as young as three to cover up with robes.
After hopping around the glove, much of the sect settled in Mexico and Guatemala between 2014 and 2017. Members of the community were arrested in a police operation in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas in 2022 but were later freed due to a lack of evidence.
Lev Tahor now claims they are facing religious persecution from the Guatemalan government.
The Jewish Community of Guatemala has disowned the sect, and expressed support for the Guatemalan authorities in carrying out necessary investigations “to protect the lives and integrity of minors and other vulnerable groups that may be at risk.”
Red Handprints
SERBIA
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the Serbian capital Belgrade this week to demand the resignation of the government, one of the country’s largest anti-government demonstrations in recent years, the Associated Press reported.
Sunday’s protests, led by university students and farmers, also took place in other cities, including Nis and Kragujevac.
The demonstrations are part of a growing movement demanding accountability and transparency over the Nov. 1 collapse of a canopy at a railway station in the northern city of Novi Sad that killed 15 people.
Protesters blame the tragedy on corruption and poorly executed renovations overseen by Chinese state companies under controversial government contracts, with many describing the incident as emblematic of broader governance issues.
In Belgrade, demonstrators accused officials of having “blood on your hands” and carried banners featuring a red handprint – now a symbol of the movement, the Guardian noted.
They are demanding that President Aleksandar Vučić and others involved face justice and that a transitional government be formed to ensure free and fair elections.
Fueling discontent is the government’s handling of the incident. Initially, authorities arrested 13 people, including a government minister, over their involvement in the accident.
However, that minister was later released, prompting many protesters to remain skeptical about the integrity of the investigation.
Despite growing unrest, Vučić has rejected the calls for a transitional government and accused opposition groups of exploiting students. The government has also accused foreign powers of funding the protests while attempting to placate demonstrators with affordable housing loans for young people.
Even so, the protests have gained momentum, with high school students joining university-led blockades and teachers going on strike in solidarity. Occasional violence has broken out when pro-government supporters have tried to disrupt the marches.
DISCOVERIES
The Scales of Experience
Scientists had long thought that crocodiles’ random and unique head scales arose from their genes. However, recently, they uncovered a surprising alternative explanation: The distinctive shapes are actually driven by physical forces.
In a new study, researcher Michel Milinkovitch and his colleagues found that the irregular scales on crocodile heads, as opposed to their bodies, follow a different pattern of formation, one that is purely mechanical. And now they know how it works.
“This is a completely different process, nothing to do with each other,” Milinkovitch told the Guardian.
During development, the skin on a crocodile embryo’s head grows faster than the underlying tissues, causing it to buckle and fold, said researchers. By day 51 of the Nile crocodile’s 90-day incubation period, these folds begin forming irregular polygonal scales.
The team tested this process by injecting Nile crocodile eggs with Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF), a hormone that increases skin growth and stiffening.
Their findings showed that treated crocodiles developed head-scale patterns resembling those of their relatives, the spectacled caiman.
“We saw that the embryo’s skin folds abnormally and forms a labyrinthine network resembling the folds of the human brain,” explained co-authors Gabriel Santos-Durán and Rory Cooper in a press release.
But researchers didn’t stop there.
Using advanced imaging and computer modeling, they created a 3D simulation of crocodile head-scale development to understand the effects of changing the specific growth rates and stiffness of the tissue layers.
“By exploring these different parameters, we can generate the different head scale shapes corresponding to Nile crocodiles both with or without EGF treatment, as well as the spectacled caiman or the American alligator,” Ebrahim Jahanbakhsh, another author of the study, said in the press release.
Milinkovitch emphasized that the study is a departure from genetics-focused biology.
The authors noted that findings not only shed light on crocodile evolution but also highlight the relationship between physical forces and biological development – showing us that sometimes, nature’s artistry doesn’t need a genetic blueprint.
“For the last 50 years or more, biology has been obsessed with genetics,” Milinkovitch told the Guardian. “So here, what is nice is that we have a process which is purely mechanical.”
Watch how it works here.