David Patrikarakos

The depressing durability of dictatorships

7 January 2023 9:00 am

Authoritarian regimes that have emerged out of violent social revolutions have survived on average three times as long as their non-revolutionary counterparts

Edward Luttwak, the uncontained strategist

3 January 2023 11:35 pm

“Christ, Edward! No!” Edward Luttwak has just lunged at me with a knife in the study of the house he…

Putin’s mistake was to discard the velvet glove

9 July 2022 9:00 am

To study international politics since the turn of the century has been, in large part, to study the changing nature…

The romance and rebellion of an Iranian picnic

7 May 2022 9:00 am

Iranians adore a picnic. During the country’s most ancient festival, Nowruz, the Persian new year, they brandish baskets of food…

Iran and Russia are probing Biden’s weaknesses

14 March 2022 2:08 am

The world seems to have got a lot more dangerous since Joe Biden took office last January. It wasn’t long…

Ukrainians are living through a hell on earth

26 February 2022 6:48 pm

‘Live long enough and you watch everyone go mad,’ the man said to me gloomily. It was around 2009, and…

What Bernard-Henri Lévy sees for the West

17 November 2021 3:29 pm

I meet Bernard-Henri Lévy at his apartment in central Paris on a chilly autumn afternoon. Considerations of security prohibit me from…

Is Russia preparing to invade Ukraine?

17 November 2021 8:30 am

I can still hear the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Just a mile or so from us, thousands of Russian troops…

How drones are transforming modern conflicts

1 November 2021 8:00 am

Last week’s announcement that US officials believe Iran was behind the October drone strike on the al-Tanf US base in…

Iran is an immediate winner of the Taliban takeover

25 August 2021 5:00 pm

A staple of observing politics is watching rhetoric curdle into reality. Operation Enduring Freedom, thought up and slapped together in…

Pakistan is the true winner from the Afghan debacle

18 August 2021 8:16 am

‘Everyone is getting out – and fast’, the man tells me over a crackling line. He is tired, clearly subdued.…

My roots burnt with Greece

14 August 2021 11:30 pm

On 11 March this year my father passed away from prostate cancer after several weeks in a hospital in central…

Iran is running out of water

27 July 2021 8:50 am

It’s far from an exact science, but if you want to get a sense of where the world is heading…

The tragedy of Lebanon — from safe haven to bankruptcy

24 July 2021 9:00 am

Mountains are humanity’s most comforting topographical feature. Wherever you find them you will also find those who have flocked to…

Tehran is repeating the Shah's mistakes

22 July 2021 8:11 am

The Iranian province of Khuzestan is oil-rich but water-poor. At the best of times, the southwestern region is a problem…

The dark past of Iran's new presidential favourite

19 June 2021 9:22 am

‘Each vote counts…come and vote and choose your president. This is important for the future of your country.’ These were…

Israel's shadow war with Iran explodes into 'nuclear terrorism'

13 April 2021 2:41 am

If time flows at an even pace, then history does not. Joe Biden may still be new in the job,…

Greece and Britain’s long history of fighting autocracy

26 March 2021 3:28 am

As I write, it is mid-morning in Athens and fighter jets are roaring overhead. My windows rattle, the sky splinters,…

Walls go up after the Berlin Wall comes down

6 March 2021 9:00 am

In her 2017 travelogue Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, the writer and poet Kapka Kassabova meets Emel,…

Iran’s missile diplomacy

19 February 2021 7:00 pm

It’s a time for delivering messages in the Middle East, where messages rarely come without their near constant attendant: violence.…

The toxic side-effect of the Trump Twitter ban

19 January 2021 1:33 am

Almost two weeks on from the storming of the US Capitol it’s becoming plainer that the most substantive changes to…

Iran's people will pay a heavy price for Khamenei's vaccine politics

9 January 2021 9:05 pm

The Middle East is changing. Israelis now splurge at Gucci and Rolex in Dubai. Saudi women speed down desert highways;…

John le Carré’s London of exiles is alive and well

20 December 2020 7:00 pm

    ‘I’m an Englishman born and bred, almost.’ So says Karim Amir, protagonist of Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of…

Why Egypt's brutal regime is cracking down on critics

1 December 2020 3:19 am

History is accelerating in the Middle East once more. Nuclear scientists are dying in Iran; and again, in Egypt, the…

Why Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed now

29 November 2020 12:53 am

Yesterday afternoon someone assassinated yet another scientist working on Iran’s nuclear programme. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh headed up the ministry of defence’s…