Azerbaijan's September 21 school uniform decree, which keeps girls and teachers who wear headscarves out of state classrooms, has given Iran's hardliners a story that joins Shia solidarity, the domestic hijab fight and the war with Israel. Clerics in Qom and Tabriz and the Kayhan newspaper have revived the old charge that Baku serves as an Israeli base against Iran, while the government has kept its distance. We assess that rhetoric will intensify without a material break, because the blockade makes Iran's land routes through the Caucasus more valuable than at any point in the war. An Iran Dossier special report for October 17, 2026.
The Patience Trap. Iran has turned waiting into a weapon. It will absorb dead generals, crushed protests, and a closed strait, and it is betting that Washington's attention runs out before Tehran's resolve does. Plan for the long war, because Iran already has.
A senior Lebanese Shia cleric has told his own community what Hezbollah has spent forty years trying to prevent them from hearing: that the men who sent their sons to die and their families into exile owe them an answer. Sheikh Ali al-Amin is not asking permission.