Hannes Baumann

Iraq must not be a staging ground for war with Iran | Brookings Iraq has long balanced between Washington and Tehran, but the coming weeks will test Iraq’s resolve and capability like never before.

My article for @brookings.edu with @hamzehhadad.bsky.social on the value of Iraqi stability for the region, and the cost of allowing it to descend into the regional war: www.brookings.edu/articles/ira...

1) GCC among world's largest arms markets: Saudi & Qatar top 5, Kuwait top 10, UAE top 15, Bahrain top 30
2) These 5 GCC states account for 20% of global arms imports vs. 2% of global GDP
3) USA biggest supplier. Relations with US may be strained but structural security dependence remains.

Every U.K. job ad is like “we seek a dynamic, world-leading expert to care for priceless, load-bearing activities. Salary: £28,000 p.a.”

Lebanon’s Ministry of Health reports 394 people died since Monday from Israeli attacks.

22 percent of those are children. That’s 86 children in a week.

Gulf states could review investments due to financial strains caused by Iran war, FT reports Gulf states could start ​to review their overseas investments and future ‌commitments as they consider options to ease the pressure on their budgets following the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, the Fin...

Gulf states could start ​to review their overseas investments and future ‌commitments (ie: the billions they pledged to Trump and the US) as they consider options to ease the pressure on their budgets following the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran www.reuters.com/world/middle...

"For the most part, however, he appears blasé about the social costs of hierarchical currency arrangements — the unequal distribution of economic power and opportunity they entrench — even in those countries that enjoy currency dominance, to say nothing of those on the wrong end of it." 🔥💵

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi | The dry and the wet burn together The war launched against Iran by the United States and Israel is a war of choice and of hubris. There is scarcely even...

What began as an attempt to alter the regional balance may instead hasten the erosion of the order that presumed it could interfere with impunity.
Great overview of the current moment by @eskandarsadeghi.bsky.social
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

Widespread panic in #Beirut after Israel issues unprecedented evacuation order for southern suburbs. Traffic is choked, people rushing to leave & head north. Drones in the air. WhatsApp messages urging ppl to crack windows open to avoid shattering from expected blasts #lebanon

Israeli army just ordered all of Dahiyeh residents to evacuate. Yesterday the entire south, now all of Dahiyeh (Beirut's southern suburbs).

Still have yet to see comments on proportionality from the international community. Macron asked Israel not to launch ground invasion but seems too late

TWAS-DFG Cooperation Visits Programme

The DFG (German Research Foundation) has a programme funding stays of up to three months at German academic institutions for researchers in early career phases and of all disciplines from MENA (www.dfg.de/en/news/news...) and Sub-Saharan Africa (www.dfg.de/en/news/news...).

Gulf states in race to secure more US interceptors Washington’s allies in region burn through defensive munitions as they fend off Iranian barrages

"Iran’s relentless barrages are testing alliances, further exposing holes in western production capacity and underscoring the benefits — at least for now — of asymmetrical warfare, in which the west spends millions of dollars taking down projectiles made for a few thousand."

"The Middle East’s authentic structure — a mosaic of tribes, clans and local emirates."

"It will be Americans and Israelis assembling a new reality that acknowledges the dismantling of old structures and their reconstruction. Lebanon and Syria will likely be the first laboratories."

We're doing this again? In one of my Middle East IR lectures, I show about half a dozen slides with maps all drawn soon after 2003 by Americans & Europeans, all aimed at "improving" on or "solving" the follies of Sykes-Picot. I could easily have included more, all of them neocolonial fever dreams.

🔴🇱🇧The Israeli military has ordered all residents in southern Lebanon to move north of the Litani River.

This is area consists of dozens of villages close to the border.

The Lebanese government said the army has cleared it from Hezbollah military presence in recent months.

Lehrstühle für Bevölkerungswissenschaften und kritische Islamforschung statt emanzipatorische Wissenschaft. Da scheint jemand Anleihen bei unserer "tausendjährigen" Wissenschaftskultur nehmen zu wollen, klingt jedenfalls sehr völkisch in meinen Ohren.

"[The Gulf's] business model is ... built on connectivity: trade lanes, capital flows, data systems and energy logistics. Interrupt any of that, and you do not just dent growth; you puncture the very business model that the Gulf states have successfully built in recent decades."

Iranian attacks on energy sites in the Middle East triggered the biggest rise in natural gas prices since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. ft.trib.al/EBwQ7Fq

Israel intensifies war on Lebanon after Hezbollah attack Israel's response to Hezbollah attack kills at least 31 people and leads to mass displacement in Lebanon.

My reporting from today.

www.aljazeera.com/features/202...

Iranian scholar friends, who would like to have their name passed on to media outlets (print or air)?

After Hezbollah’s first attack on Israel since 2024, Israel responded with attacks on south Lebanon and Dahiyeh and then gave evacuation demands for 53 Lebanese villages, warning them to say 1km away “for your safety”

My childhood home was 500m away

After Khamenei, who rules Iran? Under fire from US and Israeli jets, the Islamic republic’s leaders turn to succession

Good FT piece on Iran's complex political system and opaque struggles among elite factions on issue of succession and country's trajectory. All well known to scholars & analysts of Iran of course and something I feel confident those running things now know or care little about sadly.

Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has all but stopped since yesterday.

Read the @financialtimes.com Economics editor, Sam Fleming's analysis of what the impact the war in Iran will have on the global economy
www.ft.com/content/31bf...

Strike on Iranian primary school kills 148, authorities say Girls’ education facility hit as US and Israel launch joint military operation

And details of the strike on a girls school with 148 reported killed. www.ft.com/content/055d... via @FT

FT reporting from Iran. Panic buying of a population still dealing with June war and January crackdown. www.ft.com/content/97db...

Skeptical about this. I can think of many reasons why they’d want to frame MBS as a warmonger. The whole Saudi-Iran rapprochement didn’t sit well with many, and became an irritant following the Saudi-UAE tiff.

Saudi would have been hit just as hard as UAE and Bahrain if this were true.

MBS playing dangerous game, amazing details if true

Trump’s strikes on Iran are an illegal war of choice—and Europeans should say so – European Council on Foreign Relations As the conflict threatens to escalate, European governments must make an assertive case for diplomacy and prepare for humanitarian catastrophe

New @ecfr.eu: Trump’s strikes on Iran are an illegal war of choice—and Europeans should say so, by Ellie Geranmayeh with a strong list of immediate action for Europeans who need to quickly snap out of passivity & acceptance of this new regional conflict ecfr.eu/article/trum...

From our November Issue: Precolonial Elites and Colonial Redistribution of Political Power by @ashartnett.bsky.social and Mohamed Saleh. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I'm experiencing Übersetzungsgelächter, a German expression meaning cracking up about translations of terminologies that simply don't exist in the supposed original.