Qamishli Locals Fear Return of Syrian Regime Control
The Qamishli town center on Sunday. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
At first glance, it seems as though life has returned to normal in the Kurdish-run northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli. Even though the wind-down of anti-ISIS operations last month and Turkey's daily threats of invasion have helped dull obvious tensions, fears of future violence have continued to reemerge with every regime statement communicating Damascus’ determination to regain control over all Syrian territory.
Shavan, 56, is a café owner working a few blocks down from pro-regime barracks. He reports on his clients being ridden with anxiety over the East Euphrates region soon descending into chaos.
In a faint whisper as regime tanks and convoys drive by, Shavan said: “We need to find a way to avoid more violence in our already war-ravaged country, a military solution will raze everything to the ground.”
Qamishli is currently being run by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which have established the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.
“Yes, I worry about the fate of the region. No one knows what’s coming next, and I am frankly afraid for my family and work. The Kurds must unite and determine their own future,” Seiban, one of Shavan’s workers, said.
Sarkhaboun, a 42-year-old local who owns a money exchange and transfer shop, noted that regime official’s renewed aggressive rhetoric has driven residents to switch their savings to foreign currencies.
“Fearing that it will come down to displacement, locals have taken the preemptive measure to switch currencies,” Sarkhaboun explained.
State civil bureaus are still open in Qamishli, as well as its only airport.
Schools, however, are split among those which adopted the Damascus-based regime’s curriculum and others who opted for the SDF’s academic curricula.
Regime forces’ pull-out from a number of areas by the end of 2012 gave Kurds, who make up 15 percent of the population, the opportunity to establish and strengthen their own administrations in the northeastern regions.
As a key power in Syria, the SDF was partnered with the US-led international coalition in the fight against the ISIS terror group.
The SDF and the regime, headed by Bashar Assad, have been held last year a series of meetings to shape the future of territories under Kurdish autonomous rule. Should a SDF-regime arrangement fall into place it would mean the reunification of the two largest areas in a war-torn country. However, two other swathes of land in the north and west will remain under the control of the opposition and Turkey-backed extremist opposition factions.
Iran's Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi briefs the media on elections in Tehran, Iran, March 4, 2024. (AP)
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Iran’s Guards Seize Wartime Power, Blunting Supreme Leader’s Role
Iran's Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi briefs the media on elections in Tehran, Iran, March 4, 2024. (AP)
Two months into a war with the US and Israel, Iran no longer has a single, undisputed clerical arbiter at the pinnacle of power — an abrupt break with the past that may be hardening Tehran’s stance as it weighs renewed talks with Washington.
Since its creation in 1979, the Islamic Republic has revolved around a supreme leader with final authority on all key matters of state. But the killing of Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war, and the elevation of his wounded son, Mojtaba, have ushered in a different order dominated by commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and marked by the absence of a decisive, authoritative referee.
Mojtaba Khamenei remains at the apex of the system, but three people familiar with internal deliberations say his role is largely to legitimize decisions made by his generals rather than issue directives himself.
Wartime pressure has concentrated power into a narrower, harder-line inner circle rooted in the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), the Supreme Leader’s office and the IRGC, which now dominates both military strategy and key political decisions, Iranian officials and analysts say.
"The Iranians are painfully slow in their response," said a senior Pakistani government official briefed on peace talks between Iran and the United States that Islamabad has been mediating. "There is apparently no one decision-making command structure. At times, it takes them 2 to 3 days to respond."
Analysts said the obstacle to a deal is not internal infighting in Tehran, but the gap between what Washington is prepared to offer and what Iran’s hardline Guards were willing to accept.
The diplomatic face of Iran at the talks with the US has been Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, more recently joined by parliament speaker Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf -- a former Guards commander, Tehran mayor and presidential candidate -- who has emerged during the war as a key conduit between Iran’s political, security and clerical elites.
On the ground, however, the central interlocutor has been IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi, according to a Pakistani and two Iranian sources who identified him weeks ago as Iran's pivotal figure, including on the night a ceasefire was announced.
Mojtaba, who was severely injured in the opening Israeli and US strike that killed his father and other relatives and left him disfigured with serious leg wounds, has not appeared publicly and communicates through IRGC aides or limited audio links because of security constraints, two people close to his inner circle said.
There was no immediate reply from the Iranian foreign ministry to a request for comment on the issues raised in this article. Iranian officials have previously denied any divisions over negotiations with the United States.
People ride motorcycles near a billboard featuring an image of Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, amid a ceasefire between US and Iran, in Tehran, Iran, April 20, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters
REAL POWER WIELDED BY WARTIME LEADERSHIP, INSIDERS SAY
Iran submitted a new proposal to Washington on Monday, which according to senior Iranian sources envisions staged talks, with the nuclear issue to be set aside at the start until the war ends and disputes over Gulf shipping are resolved. Washington insists the nuclear issue must be addressed from the outset.
"Neither side wants to negotiate," said Alan Eyre, an Iran expert and former US diplomat, adding that both believed time would weaken the other -- Iran through leverage over Hormuz and Washington through economic pressure and a blockade.
For now, neither side can afford to bend, Eyre said: Iran’s IRGC is wary of appearing weak to Washington, while President Donald Trump faces midterm election pressure and little room for flexibility without political cost.
"For either, flexibility would be seen as weakness," Eyre said.
That caution reflects not just the pressures of the moment, but the way power is now exercised inside Iran.
While Mojtaba is formally Iran's ultimate authority, he is a figure of assent rather than command, insiders say, endorsing outcomes forged through institutional consensus, rather than imposing authority. Real power, they say, has moved to a unified wartime leadership centered on the SNSC.
"Important deals probably pass through him," Iranian analyst Arash Azizi said, "but I can’t see him overruling the National Security Council. How could he go against those running the war effort?"
Hardline figures such as former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and a cluster of radical MPs have raised their profile using forceful rhetoric during the war, but they lack the institutional clout to derail decisions or shape outcomes.
Mojtaba owes his elevation to the Guards, who sidelined pragmatists and backed him as a reliable guardian of their hardline agenda. Already strengthened by war, the Guards’ growing dominance signals a more aggressive foreign policy and tighter domestic repression, sources familiar with the country's inner policy-making circles told Reuters.
Driven by revolutionary sectarian ideology and a security-first worldview, the Guards see their mission as preserving the regime at home while projecting deterrence abroad.
That outlook, often shared with hardliners across the judiciary and the clerical establishment, prioritizes rigid centralized control and resistance to Western pressure, particularly on nuclear policy and Iran’s regional reach.
POWER SHIFTS FROM CLERICS TO SECURITY SECTOR, ANALYSTS SAY
In practice, the Guards' ideology shapes strategy and decision-making rests firmly in their hands. With the country at war and Ali Khamenei gone, no actor inside the system has the power or scope to resist them, even if they wished to, the people close to internal discussions said.
The choice facing Iran’s leadership is no longer between moderate and hardline policy, but between hardline and even harder line. A small faction may argue for pushing further still, two Iranian sources close to power circles said, but even that impulse has so far been kept in check by the Guards.
The shift marks a decisive reordering of power from clerical primacy to security dominance. "We’ve gone from divine power to hard power," said Aaron David Miller, a former US negotiator. "From the influence of the clerics to the influence of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. This is how Iran is being governed."
While differences of opinion exist, decision-making has consolidated around security institutions, with Mojtaba acting as a central convening figure rather than a lone decider, added Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. Despite sustained military and economic pressure from the United States and Israel, Iran has shown no signs of fracture or capitulation nearly nine weeks into the war.
Nor, as Miller noted, is there evidence of fundamental rifts within the system or meaningful opposition on the streets.
That cohesion suggests that command now sits with the Guards and security services, which appear to be driving the war rather than merely executing it. A strategic consensus has emerged — avoid a return to full-scale war, preserve leverage, especially over the Strait of Hormuz, and emerge from the conflict politically, economically and militarily stronger, Miller said.
Netanyahu’s Rivals Are Joining Forces. Would They Shift Israel’s Security Policy?https://english.aawsat.com/features/5267272-netanyahu%E2%80%99s-rivals-are-joining-forces-would-they-shift-israel%E2%80%99s-security-policy
Former Israeli Prime minister Naftali Bennett and Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid gesture as they announce their political union ahead of this year's general election, the new party will be called "Together", in Herzliya, Israel April 26, 2026. (Reuters)
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Netanyahu’s Rivals Are Joining Forces. Would They Shift Israel’s Security Policy?
Former Israeli Prime minister Naftali Bennett and Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid gesture as they announce their political union ahead of this year's general election, the new party will be called "Together", in Herzliya, Israel April 26, 2026. (Reuters)
Two of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top rivals announced they would join forces in an upcoming election to oust his coalition government, with a focus mainly on domestic issues such as military conscription for the ultra-Orthodox.
But on issues like Iran, Gaza and Lebanon, the joint party led by right-wing Naftali Bennett and centrist Yair Lapid is expected to pursue a security posture similar to that of Netanyahu - who heads the most right-wing government in Israel's history - meaning Israel's foreign policy would remain largely unchanged.
The new party, called "BeYachad" meaning "together" in Hebrew, has not released a formal policy platform. But below is what is known about their positions on regional conflicts, based on recent public comments.
IRAN
Bennett, 54, and Lapid, 62, have staunchly backed Netanyahu's decision to jointly attack Iran with the US, reflecting broad public support in Israel for the war.
At the start of Israel's aerial bombardment in Iran, Lapid told Reuters in an interview that it was a "just war against evil."
Both Bennett and Lapid have since criticized Netanyahu, 76, for what they describe as a failure to achieve Israel's main objectives in the war, including toppling Iran's clerical government.
However, neither man has called for a resumption in fighting since Israeli and US attacks and Iranian missile fire was halted by an April 8 ceasefire.
A source close to their new party described Bennett and Lapid as "hawkish" and "tough on Iran."
They are also "pragmatic and understand the need for diplomatic agreements and the work that happens after the military use of force to achieve strategic goals," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe their party's priorities.
LEBANON
Bennett and Lapid have also both staunchly supported Israeli military operations in Lebanon while questioning an April 17 ceasefire that has failed to halt fighting between the Israeli military and Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Shortly before Israel's military invaded southern Lebanon in March, Lapid said that Israel must take whatever steps were necessary to protect Israelis.
After the ceasefire with Hezbollah was announced in April, Lapid said the only solution was the permanent removal of the threat to northern Israel.
Bennett sharply criticized the ceasefire, saying in an April 17 Facebook post: "One can already count backwards towards the next round. Hezbollah began this morning to rebuild southern Lebanon and is becoming stronger with missiles ahead of the next round."
GAZA
On the war in Gaza, where Israel has continued to carry out deadly strikes despite a ceasefire last October, both Bennett and Lapid have criticized Netanyahu for not fully destroying the Hamas group after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that it led.
In January, Lapid said Netanyahu's government had achieved the "worst possible outcome" in Gaza, saying that Hamas still has tens of thousands of armed fighters. Hamas retained control of a sliver of territory on Gaza's coast under the ceasefire.
In a Facebook post this month, Bennett said Netanyahu's policies -- including allowing some aid into the enclave after restricting all humanitarian supplies for three months in 2025 -- had helped Hamas regain control.
"This is with the help of hundreds of aid trucks that Netanyahu's government brings them every day," Bennett wrote.
Netanyahu has cast Israel's devastating military assault that destroyed much of Gaza and killed more than 72,000 Palestinians as a success. He has held out the possibility of resuming a full-scale war if Hamas fails to disarm under a US-backed process, something the group has thus far rejected.
PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD
With public opinion polling showing that most Israelis oppose the formation of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, a Bennett-Lapid government would be unlikely to bring a major policy shift on the Palestinians.
Netanyahu opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state, and his government has accelerated settlement building plans in the West Bank, in what ministers in his government say is part of a bid to destroy any future for Palestinian independence.
In 2022, Lapid, who like many in Israel's political center and left are not outright opposed to Palestinian sovereignty, said that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the right thing to do.
When asked by US broadcaster ABC during a 2024 interview why he opposes a two-state solution, Bennett said he believed it would lead to violence against Israelis.
"What we've learned over the past 30 years is that every time we gave the Palestinians a piece of land, instead of building it into a beautiful Singapore they turned it into a terror state and began killing Israelis," Bennett said.
On the West Bank, Netanyahu, Bennett and Lapid have all spoken forcefully against settler violence toward Palestinians. Such attacks have escalated under Netanyahu, who critics accuse of allowing settlers free rein to burn Palestinian villages and harm villagers. Netanyahu's office denies this.
As Some Hijabs Come Off in Iran, Restrictions Still in Placehttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5267216-some-hijabs-come-iran-restrictions-still-place
Iranian women walk along a busy street in Tehran on April 25, 2026. (AFP)
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As Some Hijabs Come Off in Iran, Restrictions Still in Place
Iranian women walk along a busy street in Tehran on April 25, 2026. (AFP)
Images of bareheaded women sipping coffee in cafes in Tehran, in apparent defiance of the country's strict dress rule, have stirred interest outside Iran -- but for Elnaz, 32, it is no breakthrough.
"It is not at all a sign of any change in the government in my opinion. Because no achievement has been made regarding women's rights," said Elnaz, a painter in Tehran, who like other women in the capital and elsewhere contacted by AFP in Paris asked that her full name not be published.
"Under the surface, in reality, no real change has taken place in people's freedom, especially when it comes to women's basic rights," she said.
Wearing the headscarf in public has been mandatory for women since shortly after the revolution of 1979 in what was long seen as an ideological pillar of the clerical leadership.
But enforcement of the rule appears to have slackened, at least in parts of Tehran and other cities.
The trend began following the 2022-2023 protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested in Tehran for allegedly ignoring the dress code.
It continued through the June 2025 war with Israel, January protests sparked by the cost of living and now the war against the US and Israel that is on hold with a ceasefire.
There is little sign of the dreaded white patrol vans of the so-called morality police that used to lurk in squares and on street corners to haul in women deemed to have violated the rules.
But the picture remains mixed and the situation evolving, with wearing hijab still a matter of choice for some women. It is not uncommon even in more liberal areas of Tehran to see women with and without the headscarf walking together.
- Years ago 'only a dream' -
In some areas the change has been startling, with scenes of women casually strolling without a headscarf that would have been unthinkable half a decade ago.
"I'm happy for all of them, because until just three years ago this was only a dream," said Zahra, 57, a housewife from Isfahan in central Iran.
"My youth has passed and I didn't get to have this experience; now I don't wear it anymore, but I wish I could have experienced these days when I was young."
But women can still be summoned by authorities for not wearing hijab, and cafes shut down for failing to enforce the rule, while often women must wear the garment to enter banks, educational establishments and official buildings.
Moreover, the rights of women are still restricted and they live under a system that arrested tens of thousands of people following the January protests and thousands more, including women, in the current war, according to rights groups.
"Beautiful photos of cafes and girls are being shared everywhere, but as cafe owners, we've been paying a lot for that," said Negin, 34, who owns a cafe in Tehran.
"We've been treated very harshly over these years, continuing until this day. We've been shut down multiple times, fined and had to pay bribes... What makes me even angrier is when they call this 'freedom' and they say women are being freer," she added.
- 'More widespread' -
Amnesty International said this month that "widespread resistance" to the obligatory hijab "forced authorities to retreat from the violent mass arrests and assaults of previous years".
"However, authorities continued to use existing laws and regulations to enforce compulsory veiling in workplaces, universities and other public sector institutions, leaving women and girls who resisted facing harassment, assault, arbitrary arrest, fines and expulsion from employment and education," it added.
One noticeable change has been state television broadcasting images of Iranian women not wearing hijab -- but only so long as they back the regime and denounce Iran's enemies in what critics see as a cynical ploy.
"More women are putting their fear aside each day and trying out what it's like to go out without hijab, and it's gradually becoming more widespread," said Shahrzad, 39, a Tehran housewife.
"But I don't see any change in the government system. It's the same as before, aside from those videos of girls going in front of state news cameras without hijab and saying 'my leader, my leader, I will sacrifice myself for him'."
- 'Don't see any significant change' -
The situation is far from uniform across Iran.
Mahsa, a 32-year-old student, said rules and observance are tighter in the major eastern city of Mashhad.
"Before the 12-day war (against Israel in June), in Mashhad they wouldn't let us in anywhere without hijab," she said.
"Now they do let people in, but unfortunately, we haven't had the same level of change that people in Tehran have seen over the past three years."
Farnaz, 41 from Isfahan, which is generally seen as one of Iran's more conservative big cities, said she had been summoned to appear in court over hijab observance later this month.
"In Isfahan, for the past few days they've started sealing cafes again over hijab issues. They didn't even wait for the situation with the war to be clarified.
"Here, you're dealing both with the government and with people. Like before in some neighborhoods, religious people sometimes warn you and harass you. It's not just about the morality police."
"I don't see any significant change," she added.
Maryam, 35, also from Isfahan, said women without hijab would not be served in some banks and shopworkers have to wear it.
"If you are involved in social or economic activity, you are expected to observe hijab."
Zahra, the housewife from Isfahan, said "we paid a very high price to get here", after the crackdown on the Mahsa Amini protests killed hundreds of people according to rights groups.
"Right now, they (the authorities) are just distracted by the war. But after that, who knows what they will do about it," she said.
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