Summary - SH

1) The killing of Ayatollah Khamenei in a coordinated US-Israeli strike marks a seismic rupture in Iran and potentially the wider Middle East order. With no clear successor and senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also eliminated, Tehran faces a power vacuum that could tilt the system from clerical rule toward direct military dominance. The operation signals more than regime decapitation — it suggests a broader bid to dismantle Iran’s regional network and cement Israeli strategic primacy, even as retaliation spreads across Gulf states and threatens oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz. History suggests airpower alone rarely topples regimes, and any move toward boots on the ground would dramatically raise costs and risks of wider regional escalation. 2) In a recent speech at the Munich Security Conference, Marco Rubio framed Western civilisation as “unique and irreplaceable,” rooted in Christian faith and shared heritage, and called for a renewed, self-reliant Western century. Critics argue the speech selectively invokes 5,000 years of history while ignoring other major civilisations and glossing over colonialism, empire, and anti-colonial struggles. They say it romanticises Western dominance, dismisses climate concerns and international institutions, and recasts migration and globalisation as existential threats. The bigger question now is whether Europe will fully embrace this civilisational, fortress-style vision of the West — or see it as a narrow and self-centred turn away from multilateralism and shared global responsibility. 3) "Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence... Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle." — Alexander Solzhenitsyn "If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake... I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone." — Marcus Aurelius "A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come." — Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)

YouTube - SH

Imran Khan's ailment triggered crisis; Eco progress sans political stability impossible

Principle vs. Pragmatism

Populism In Pakistan: Can Imran Khan’s PTI Rise Again?

Why Stability, Not Ambition, Shapes Pakistan’s Foreign Policy

https://intpolicydigest.org/trump-and-bibi-s-dangerous-dream-of-regime-change/

Pakistan's attack on the Taliban