How a split in the IRGC could break up Iran

How sick is Iran’s supreme leader?

That has been the question on the tongues of many a foreign policy analyst as protests rage from Tehran to Baluchistan.

Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, 83, had surgery some weeks ago for bowel obstruction after suffering extreme stomach pains and high fever, reported the New York Times in September.

“His doctors remain concerned that he is too weak to even sit up in bed,” they reported

A former president of Iran and protégé of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic republic, Khamenei assumed the position of the country’s top religious, political and military authority in 1989. But what happens when Khamenei dies? And who will succeed him?

The Assembly of Experts for the Leadership is an 88-member body of Islamic jurists, elected by direct popular vote every eight years. According to the Iranian Constitution, the Assembly’s mandate is to appoint, monitor, and even dismiss the supreme leader.

How a resurgent Turkey is seizing power from Russia and Europe

Sunsets over Kurdistan get caught in the air pollution. Their rays fracture against fine particulate matter, dampening them so that the light dims into a sleepy haze. Like many other things in the mountains of northern Iraq, it becomes part of the background.

It’s worse south of Erbil, where the oil refineries belch out black smoke into the horizon. Spiteful black clouds rise up from the flares in a dust storm of smoke, hovering over the Neo-Sumerian minarets as though plotting their descent. But like the many forces which have surrounded the city, from the Assyrians to the Romans to the Americans to ISIS, they come and they go.

It’s been a good year for books. Many an author was hard at work during last year’s lockdowns, and while we didn’t manage to read every single one which came out this year, the most thought-provoking novels quickly floated to the top of the list.

After a thrilling year, we are pleased to bring to your attention ten thrilling reads which we thought best encapsulated the literary achievements of 2021. That said, I heartily commend to you the best books we read over the last twelve months:

Below is a list of what Rough Estimate considers to be the best books of 2020, in order and with honorable mentions.

While some of these books came out in the months before the global spread of coronavirus, the year will undoubtedly be defined by the pandemic. We selected these books both for their implications for a post-Covid world as well as for their aesthetic appeal as interesting and evocative texts.

The list is not exhaustive, and with more time to read we both found the shortlist much more difficult than in 2019. Likewise, comparing a narratively complex novel with an interesting non-fiction book is akin to reviewing apples and oranges in the same listicle, and so a great deal of personal taste is inevitable in these lists. With that in mind, here are the best books of 2020:

John Martin and Francis Kett look back at the most important events of 2020, covering the end of the Syrian Civil War, the rising role of Africa in western foreign policy, China’s financial pull-back from the world stage, and the year to come:

What a comparison of creation stories tells us about the human species

When the Greek traveller Aristeas visited the Gobi desert in 675 BC, Scythian nomads told him about an area where griffins hoarded gold, fighting all who dared approach. They were said to be lion-sized, curved beaks like that of an eagle.

The nomads warned the traveller against his trespass on the guarded land. Aristeas headed their warnings, and as good fortune would have it, was able to make his way through the desert free of griffin encounters.

He survived to return and tell his tale to the Greeks, where griffins were recorded and became one of many inclusions in the mythos of the land.

In the 1920s, American adventurer Roy Chapman Andrews followed caravan trails across China to the Gobi desert, tracking down the same trail Aristeas had walked 2,597 years ago before.

Crossing Mongolia, the adventurer found the fossilised remains of a Psittacosaurus, a beaked dinosaur the size of a lion, the same shape as those described by the nomads.

After thousands of years, the griffin had finally been uncovered.

How postmodernism took over the literary world

Walking through the empty streets of Prague in 1979, a lone English philosophy professor approached the top of a staircase in a seemingly deserted apartment building. Two policemen were waiting at the top, seizing the stiff, bespectacled man and shouting for his papers, before throwing him down the stairs.

The professor would wipe himself down once the police had departed, continued up the staircase towards a room full of silent people. They were students and professors also: and the professor was there to teach a course on Wagnerian philosophy.

That professor was Roger Scruton, and he would later be arrested for his lectures in the school, banned from the country until the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989.

“There was a real consciousness that it was a life and death struggle,” said Scruton, talking of the school he helped run in secret. “Either these societies were going to be killed off by communism, or people were going to try and keep them alive in the catacombs.”

A guide to understanding libel law

In journalism, people will often threaten you, lie to you or claim what you are writing is inaccurate. Even on Facebook and Twitter, you can be sued for libel - and US companies will often bring the case against you in the UK in order to have a better chance of winning against you.

Here’s a guide on how to avoid that, whether you’re simply a humble commenter or running a full-blown news site.

Why finance will never get easier to understand

One of the largest meta analyses ever conducted into language development, headed by Steven Pinker among other scientists at Boston University, shows that our innate ability to learn multiple languages does not end as early as we think. 

All of us, I am sure, know at least one person who grew up speaking more than one language. Scandinavians, for example, are often raised speaking at least two in the household - exposed to music and film - until they pick up the grammar and vocabulary effortlessly. 

While language proficiency stays with us well into our teens - up until 18 according to the study - the meta-analysis also underlines that learning a second language after the age of ten will not guarantee fluency.

A fake news tale

On the first of November 2018, Brexit Britain was still in talks with the European Union over negotiating the terms of the Irish backstop when The Times Newspaper reported that the UK and the EU had sealed a deal on financial services.

The EU’s top negotiator, Michel Barnier, picked up The Times and began ranting to his secretaries about the cluelessness of the British press.

The new divide in journalism is between the heard word and the written

A writer sentenced to jail once said that a good newspaper, he supposed, is a nation talking to itself. A good local paper, it follows, must be a city, town or village talking to itself. That conversation has now been interrupted. Over the last 15 years more than half the jobs in the news industry have disappeared, [1] with over 40 UK local papers closing down last year alone. [2] What’s left of institutional journalism is faced with many preoccupations: how to cover uncorroborated accusations, whether to add to the hysteria over child disappearances, how many times should Nigel Farage be allowed on Question Time? Etc.