Several Arab regimes do not want the Arab-Israeli conflict to end. They cannot afford to want it to end. The conflict is the central instrument by which they generate their domestic legitimacy, their strategic relevance to the West, and the rents that keep them solvent. Resolution would dissolve the instrument. So they manage the conflict instead, keeping it cold enough to prevent open war, hot enough to maintain its political utility, and arrayed in such a way that any approach to genuine resolution can be pulled back to the starting line at the necessary moment.

The mechanism is the Industry of Security. The pitch the regimes make to the West is the operative content of the industry:

“we are the only thing standing between you and the Jihadists. The populations we govern are hostile to your interests, hostile to Israel, hostile to liberal civilization, and only authoritarian rule by us prevents the hostility from translating into action. Pay us. Arm us. Tolerate our human rights record. Because the alternative is what would happen if the people we suppress were free to act on their own preferences. “

This pitch has been the foundation of Western policy toward several Arab states for fifty years. It has produced something close to a hundred billion dollars in cumulative aid. And it has produced a powerful structural incentive, inside the regimes themselves, to ensure that the populations remain exactly as hostile as the pitch requires.

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One such community is the Assyrians, also known as Syriacs.

Ancient Mesopotamia was home to a number of different groups of peoples and civilizations. However, historical evidence demonstrates that Assyrians are indigenous to the land with a long and glorious history in the region. With a calendar dating back to 6,776 years, Assyrians contributed greatly to a region which is often referred to as Cradle of Civilization. From agricultural innovation, trade and commerce, record keeping, literature, governance, and military organization, Assyrians played a monumental role in the development of the world civilization.

The Assyrian Empire was a dominant ancient Mesopotamian civilization that expanded from its heartland in present-day Iraq to unite most of the Middle East. The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the largest and most powerful Assyrian state. It lasted from 911 BC to 609 BC. For 300 years, Assyrian kings ruled the largest empire the world had yet known.

For more than two millennia, Assyrians have been a people without a state. This began with the fall of the empire and sack of Nineveh in 612 BCE.

Assyrians are also one of the first nations to embrace the Christian faith. According to the Assyrian Church of the East, within a generation following the death of Jesus, Apostle Thomas, Saint Bartholomew and Saint Addai converted the Assyrian people to Christianity.

To this day, Assyrians continue speaking a version of Aramaic, the language of Jesus. “Aramaic was a broader family of languages,” said Dr Nicholas Al-Jeloo, a prominent expert of Assyrian and Middle East history. “Jesus spoke Galilean Aramaic and Assyrians speak Assyrian Aramaic.”

The Aramaic language has immense historical and religious significance. It became the official language of the Assyrian Empire (722 BC), as well as the subsequent Babylonian and Achaemenid Empires (539–331 BC). These administrations adopted it as the language of governance and official communication.

Dr. Efrem Yildiz, a full Professor at the Department of Philology of the University of Salamanca in Spain, told IDI Center:

“Aramaic is a linguistic branch within the Semitic family that developed into a variety of linguistic forms spoken by various peoples in different regions. Although the Assyrian language belongs to the Aramaic branch and retains its grammatical structure in this language and is largely rooted in the Aramaic linguistic tradition, its ethnolinguistic identity is fundamentally Assyrian.”

The contiguous territory that forms the traditional Assyrian homeland includes parts of southern and south-eastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syria. For at least four thousand years, this land has been known as Assyria.

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Yet today, it is majority-Muslim. Assyrians experience threats to their existence within their indigenous homeland because their population has decreased as a result of centuries-long persecution at the hands of Islam.

This began with the Islamic conquests of the Middle East.

Following the seventh century Arabic and later Ottoman invasions of the Middle East, the Assyrians (as well as other non-Muslims) were reduced to persecuted communities. For centuries, Islamic supremacists have placed a target on indigenous peoples due to their religious beliefs and ethnic identities. Muslim rulers turned them into dhimmis, second-class subjects of Islamic empires who were obliged to pay a poll tax called jizya to be able to remain Christians or Jewish.

Hannibal Travis, a Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law, noted in his article “Native Christians Massacred: The Ottoman Genocide of the Assyrians during World War I:”

“With the Arab conquests of Mesopotamia and neighboring Persia and Syria, as well as Armenia, Egypt, and the Levant, the Eastern Christian peoples fell to a subordinate status. Arab officials decreed the destruction of many churches, the cessation of Christian religious services, the deportation of Christians from the land, the expropriation of their property, and the executions of those who resisted.”

“For more than a thousand years before Mesopotamia and Persia fell under Turkish domination, Turks had begun infiltrating Mesopotamia from Central Asia, as nomads and imported slaves. The Seljuk Turks seized power from the Baghdad caliphs in the eleventh century, only to be overthrown by the murderous Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan, Hulagu Khan, and Timur the Lame. These forces massacred thousands of people and destroyed many ancient cities, claiming countless Assyrian churches and [lives of the] faithful and driving the Assyrian community into the nearly inhospitable Hakkari mountains.”

During the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Turks re-conquered Mesopotamia. They retained control until World War I. This era was defined by violent territorial conflicts with Safavid Persia and distinct periods of semi-autonomous governance by Georgian Mamluks.

Historians record that the first massacre of Assyrians in modern times occurred in the 1840s in northern Mesopotamia. Professor Travis writes:

“The Ottoman Turks allowed the Assyrians to be massacred by the Kurdish chieftain Badr Khan Bey, who summoned the surrounding Muslim population to a ‘Holy War,’ killing 10,000 Assyrians, enslaving many women and children, and ravaging villages. Turkish soldiers and their Kurdish allies murdered the Christians of half a dozen Mesopotamian Christian villages; the surviving women and children were kidnapped and enslaved. Slavery was a common fate of Ottoman Christians in the nineteenth century.”

The Christian persecution in the Ottoman Empire culminated in the Assyrian, Armenian and Greek Genocides of 1914-23. Professor Joseph Yacoub writes in his book “Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide, A History,”

“The advent of the First World War gave the Young Turks and the Ottoman government the opportunity to exterminate the Assyrians in a series of massacres and atrocities inflicted on a people whose culture dates back millennia and whose language, Aramaic, was spoken by Jesus. Systematic killings, looting, rape, kidnapping and deportations destroyed countless communities and created a vast refugee diaspora. As many as 300,000 Assyro-Chaldean-Syriac people were murdered and a larger number forced into exile.”

“The ‘Year of the Sword’ (Seyfo) in 1915 was preceded over millennia by other attacks on the Assyrians and has been mirrored by recent events, not least the abuses committed by Islamic State.”

Professor Travis adds:

“The evidence is overwhelming that Turks and their Kurdish allies massacred tens, and more likely hundreds, of thousands of Assyrians in order to exterminate the Christian population; raped and enslaved hundreds, and more likely thousands, of Assyrian women in a systematic fashion; and deported the Assyrians en masse from their ancestral lands under conditions that led to famine and widespread death.”

Even following the genocide, the persecution against Assyrians did not end in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. It was followed by the 1923-24 massacres in Hakkari, Turkey, the 1933 Simele massacre in Iraq, the Islamic Revolution of Iran that severely restricted freedoms for Assyrians and other Christians, the emergence and growth of al-Qaeda since 2004, and the 2014 genocide committed by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq.

The Simele massacre and the earlier Armenian and Assyrian Genocides in Ottoman Turkey were direct inspirations for lawyer Raphael Lemkin when he coined the term “genocide” and advocated for its recognition in international law.

The Current State of Assyrians Within and Beyond the Middle East

According to a May 2026 report by the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), the Assyrian communities in Iraq and Syria continue to face violence, displacement, and political marginalization which threaten their survival in their ancestral homeland. The organization called for the protection of Assyrian rights, land, cultural heritage, and meaningful political inclusion.

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Global Assyrian populations are currently estimated to range between 3 million and 5 million worldwide. In the diaspora, the Assyrian community continues to learn its native language— particularly through their churches. Yet, some public schools have also been founded. Australia’s Assyrian schools, St. Hurmizd Assyrian Primary School and St Narsai Assyrian Christian College, for instance, are located in Western Sydney and successfully help Assyrian students thrive.

According to a 2017 report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

“In the 15 years since St. Hurmizd was founded, the Assyrian primary school in Western Sydney has grown from a cohort of 85 students, to more than 700.”

“As the only school in the Western world offering Assyrian faith and language classes, it’s perhaps no wonder St. Hurmizd’s has expanded at such a fast pace.”

Turkey

In Turkey, Assyrians are denied rights to receive an education in their mother tongue. They are denied cultural autonomy and the establishment of their own communal schools. This has been the case ever since they were excluded from the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the final treaty which concluded World War I and settled many issues, including the rights of religious minorities in the country. Assyrians are still not officially recognized as a distinct ethnic minority in Turkey.

Yet, Assyrians are one of Turkey’s indigenous peoples. Tur Abdin, an ancient region in southeastern Turkey, means “Mountain of the Servants of God” in the Aramaic language. It is the historic, spiritual heartland of the Assyrian people in Turkey. According to a report in the Assyria Post:

“Tur Abdin, one of the regions of Assyria most severely affected by genocide, persecution, and emigration, still boasts fifteen villages inhabited exclusively by Assyrians. Many of the other Assyrian villages in the region have a strong Assyrian presence but have been settled partly by Kurdish settlers. A number of villages, however, have been completely taken over by Kurdish settlers to the region.”

The last Assyrian/Syriac school in the city of Mardin in Tur Abdin closed in 1928, leaving the community without formal education in its mother tongue for decades.

That changed in 2014 following a legal battle. Some activists of the Assyrian community applied to Turkey’s Ministry of National Education in 2012 for permission and support to open a Syriac kindergarten in Istanbul. When their application was rejected, they began a legal struggle and were finally able to open the Mor Efrem kindergarten without any economic support from the government.

\Unfortunately, there is still not an Assyrian/Syriac elementary school in Turkey where the graduates of Mor Efrem could enroll. The officials of the Virgin Mary Ancient Syriac Church Foundation in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul stated in 2017 that it was impossible for them to open an elementary school without governmental support.

Nine years later, the Mor Efrem Kindergarten remains the only school in Turkey where the community’s native language is formally taught.

Speaking to Mezopotamya Agency on February 20, Evgil Türker, President of the Syriac Associations Federation (SÜDEF) based in Midyat, said that “There is no other school.” Ahead of International Mother Language Day on February 21, Türker described the language’s decline as both rapid and deeply concerning.

“Syriac [Aramaic] once spread across Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and almost all of Turkey,” he said. “It influenced many other languages and made important contributions to Arabic. But today it faces a serious danger.”

As governments in the Middle East have severely restricted or even ended the institutional use of the language of Assyrians/Syriacs, Arabic has eventually become dominant across much of the region.

“In Syria, Lebanon, Iraq—even in some parts of Turkey—our language was replaced by Arabic,” Türker said. “Today, I would say that 80 percent of Syriacs from Syria speak Arabic as their mother tongue.”

Emigration has further accelerated the decline. Beginning in the 1980s, large numbers of Syriacs/Assyrians were forced to leave southeast Turkey as a result of the war between the Turkish army and the Kurdish PKK. Many emigrated to Europe. As communities shrank in Tur Abdin, so did the everyday use of the language.

“In the Botan region, Syriac/Assyrian was once the strongest spoken language,” Türker said. “In Midyat, even Kurdish families who had lived there for 150 or 200 years spoke Syriac. It was the dominant language in the market, in the streets, and in schools.”

Today, he said, that reality has reversed. “Our children speak Turkish among themselves. When I started school in 1972, I did not know a single word of Turkish.”

Under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, Greeks, Armenians and Jews in Turkey were recognized as minorities with certain educational rights. Assyrian/Syriac community leaders state that these protections should be extended to their community, as well.

“If we are citizens, if we have this right, and if Lausanne is considered one of the most important agreements, then the state must uphold it. It must finance our schools,” Türker said. “If the Ministry of National Education has a budget, there should be a budget for these [Assyrian/Syriac] schools, as well.”

Türker called on church foundations, civil society organizations and Assyrian/Syriac institutions abroad to work together:

“It should be one of our primary tasks. Otherwise, there is a serious danger even in the places where our people use Syriac extensively… We need to build a school in Midyat. We need to create such a school and ensure that our children are educated in their own mother tongue. Otherwise, we will disappear.”

He also called on local governments to revive earlier initiatives promoting multilingualism. In 2014 and 2015, some municipalities in southeastern Turkey adopted a “multilingual municipality” model reflecting the region’s linguistic diversity, including Syriac/Assyrian, Turkish, Kurdish, and Arabic. Those efforts stalled in subsequent years amid political changes and the appointment of state trustees in place of elected mayors.

One hopeful development was the 2025 initiative led by Adem Coşkun, an expert on the history of the Assyrian/Syriac people and president of the Tur Abdin Institute. Coskun launched the first Syriac language class in the history of the Turkish Republic in March of 2025 in the town of Midyat. He taught Syriac to 29 students over the three-month course. In an interview with the newspaper Agos, Coskun said: “The Syriac people must preserve their mother tongue.”

Syria

Since the 1920s in Syria, constitutions have exclusively recognized Arabic as the official language. While widely preserved in liturgical and cultural spheres, Syriac, Aramaic or Assyrian is not legally recognized as a national language or integrated into official state education or administrative documents. Hence, this language remains institutionally unrecognized in Syria.

Assyrian/Syriac groups in Syria are actively campaigning for their native language to be constitutionally recognized as an indigenous national language. Their key demands include its integration into the public education system, use in official state institutions, and guaranteed representation in the country’s constitution.

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The conquest of the Syrian capital of Damascus by al-Qaeda affiliated forces of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in December 2024 has severely escalated Christian persecution in the country. The past year has seen a sharp increase in the murder of Christians, and attacks on churches—including the bombing of a church in Damascus in June 2025.

Christian communities are increasingly targeted by violence, discrimination and marginalization. Churches are subjected to insults, bombings and intimidation, including leaflets demanding conversion or jizya. In public schools, Christian children face pressure to attend Islamic lessons—especially if no Christian teacher is present. Syria’s curriculum has been Islamized by the new regime, who has reframed history through an Islamic lens and removed female figures.

In an interview with the IDI Center, Professor Travis emphasized the dangers posed by the new regime in Syria against the country’s Christian minorities:

“Recent developments, including the rise of an extremist regime in Syria and its dispersion throughout the country of most persons who had been detained on suspicion of conspiring with ISIS to destroy minority religions, languages, and cultural heritage, represent an extraordinary threat to Assyrians’ Article 1 and Article 27 rights under the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights). The decision of the United States, some European countries, and other countries to proclaim a false dawn of freedom, democracy, human rights, and stability prevailing in the country will only serve to drive nails into the coffins of the Assyrian communities that formerly resided in Aleppo, Qamishli, and Hasakah province along the Khabur river prior to the ISIS-related invasions of foreigners from Turkey, Iraq, Libya, and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.”

Iran

In Iran, the Assyrian community is repressed. The organization Open Doors reports that although Assyrian and Armenian Christians are recognized by the Iranian state, they are treated as second-class citizens who are subject to systematic human rights abuses with restrictions on language use and contact with Persian-speaking Christian converts. They also face legalized discrimination in marriage rights, inheritance laws, and restrictions on employment opportunities. Open Doors adds:

“The state’s control of over 80% of the economy enables systematic discrimination, with Armenian and Assyrian Christians facing business obstacles while other Christians rarely receive business permits. The mandatory hijab requirement applies to all women regardless of faith. All high government positions are reserved for Shia Muslims, with Christians banned from public office except for three token parliamentary seats allocated to Armenian and Assyrian representatives. In addition, Armenian and Assyrian Christians’ children face mandatory Islamic classes.”

In Iran, the right to obtain official public education in the Assyrian language is heavily restricted; the Iranian constitution mandates Persian as the sole language of instruction in the public system.

Dr. Eden Naby, an independent scholar who specializes in religious and ethnic minorities of the Middle East, noted in her 2006 article,

“The dwindling of the Middle East’s non-Muslim population is nowhere more clearly observable than among Assyrians, the last substantive Aramaic speaking population of the world. With the establishment of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, the Assyrian population dropped within a decade from 100,000 to 20,000.”

Directive #62123 of Aban 20, 1360 (October 13, 1981) from the Tehran provincial office of education, “sent alarm throughout the Assyrian community,” wrote Dr. Naby:

“The strict enforcement of such directives from the Ministry of Education and Training—and especially from the Ministry of Culture and Religious Guidance—led to eventual disintegration of Assyrian schools. Assyrian schools were forced to accept Muslim principals to conform to the law forbidding non-Muslims to serve as head administrators of any organization. Clearly this decision affected other minorities as well, including the Jews, Zoroastrians, and Armenians. Moreover, Assyrian schoolgirls were obligated to wear the hijab (veil) in accordance with Muslim Shari’a law. The schools were also forced to introduce Koranic instruction into the curriculum, as they accepted Muslim students.”

Iraq

In Iraq, the ancient homeland of Assyrians and where their ancient cities of Assur and Nineveh once stood, Assyrians maintain some public schools. These schools are located in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).

Although 22 Assyrian schools reportedly remain operational across the region, eight have closed in recent years due to sustained population decline in Assyrian villages. These schools produce strong academic outcomes despite the challenges they face such as chronic underfunding and insufficient infrastructure, the Assyria Post reported in April 2026:

“As Assyrian schools continue to operate under mounting financial, institutional, and demographic pressures, their survival remains inseparable from the survival of the Assyrian language itself. Without meaningful government support and long-term investment, one of the most significant achievements in modern Assyrian education risks gradual erosion, along with the cultural identity it was created to protect.”

Sam Darmo is a prominent Assyrian-American activist and the head of the “Assyrians for Justice,” a US-based organization that advocates for the rights, cultural heritage, and protection of the Assyrian people. He credits the Assyrian Church of the East for the preservation of the Assyrian language.

In an interview with IDI Center, Dermo said that the Assyrian schools in the Kurdistan region of Iraq need remodeling and better infrastructure. His organization has relayed those requests to the Kurdish administration during their visit to the region. He said:

“Unemployment is a major problem throughout Iraq, which is forcing the youths to leave the country in large numbers. Another major problem is the confiscation of Assyrian lands and properties by some Kurdish individuals. We are working on a daily basis to resolve those issues, help our Assyrian people maintain their property rights and help them live on their lands in freedom and safety.”

As the persecution of Assyrians in Iraq remains ongoing, they need wider political representation, security, civil rights, and cultural autonomy. Many members of the Assyrian community request an autonomous region or protected districts for Assyrians in Iraq, their ancient homeland, as the community faces growing pressures from multiple actors in Iraq—such as the Islamic Republic of Iran. The European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ) calls this threat:

“Iran’s project of establishing a Shiite crescent, in which Christians are merely obstacles to be moved aside.”

The ECLJ issued a report on May 26 entitled “Iraqi Christians: An Ancient People Driven into Exile:”

“Christians are not only leaving in pursuit of a better future,” the report said. “They are being pushed out by various political and military actors who view this minority as an obstacle to their strategic goals. This is particularly true of the Shiite militias of the Popular Mobilization Forces (Hachd al-Chaabi), which number between 140,000 and 238,000 fighters. Supported by Iran, they form a powerful, largely uncontrolled faction within the Iraqi army, with growing political and military influence. In the Nineveh Plains, these militias are gradually taking over territory, checkpoints, and establishing Shiite settlements in traditionally Christian areas. The Hammurabi Organization denounces this and proposes countermeasures: ‘We are witnessing a real demographic shift—they are distributing land to Shiites in Christian areas. We demand the creation of protected districts where land would be reserved for Christians!’”

Meanwhile, a large group of Assyrian Christians is currently seeking refuge in countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The Iraqi Christian Relief Council (which is now called the “Here I Am Charitable Foundation”) has helped those refugees for years. In an interview with IDI Center, Juliana Taimoorazy, a leading Assyrian-American advocate and founding president of the Here I Am Charitable Foundation, said:

“In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Assyrian parents, much like their ancestors who were forced to escape their homes, decided to leave to save their children from imminent danger. Between 2003 and 2026, over 90 percent of the Christian population left Iraq, with most seeking refuge in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan where they endured dehumanizing living conditions. Prohibited from working, burdened by exorbitant cost of living, lack of adequate medical care, and limited access to safe educational opportunities for their children are all conditions that deprived them of their dignity and created an environment that posed real dangers to their physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. These children who endured such hardship have come to be known as the ‘lost generation.’ The memory of their suffering and resilience has become one of the defining narratives in the modern history of the Assyrians of Iraq, shaping our identity in exile.”

Legal Framework for the Protection of Assyrians and Their Language

In an interview with IDI Center, Professor Travis, a legal scholar who focuses on global human rights, said that the question of what could be done to support the Assyrian language “can be helpfully thought of in four ways: Lemkin’s anti-genocide perspective, minorities treaties and national-minorities law, universal human rights law, and national indigenous language policy innovation.” He explains:

“First, Raphael Lemkin considered genocide to be a mosaic of activities to limit population numbers and resistance by interfering with biological and cultural processes of group reproduction. In the Assyrian case, as with other small indigenous groups, mass killings combined with drastic reductions in the number and strength of cultural and religious institutions like schools, churches, and nationalist movements led to forcible and adaptive assimilation and language loss, which may be irreversible. “

“In the Genocide Convention and post-World War II political practice, legal judgments against perpetrators along with measures on behalf of victim group survival are a main bulwark against the elimination of ethnical, national, and religious groups. The Assyrians qualify as three of these group types by virtue of their language and historical ties to kin, language, and specific lands (ethnical); traditions of self-rule particularly as quasi-independent tribes under loose empires and later millet systems; and religious differences from other Christians such as the Catholics, Russian Orthodox, or Protestants who sought to displace their hereditary and ancient rites.

“Second, the minorities treaties of the interwar period and the subsequent UN and EU instruments on minorities and indigenous peoples establish a variety of helpful norms, which result in recommendations from groups like Helsinki Watch, Human Rights Watch, UN special rapporteurs, the European Court of Human Rights, etc. Here is a report by the Helsinki Watch, whose officials were experts in the 1990s on European minorities treaties and human-rights situations.

“The Greek and Assyrian situations in Turkey are similar in that both communities were reduced to a smaller numerical remnant than the Armenians or Kurds were in the 1909-1939 period.

“Third, universal human-rights law, while focused in the main on governments not prohibiting the use of minority languages in private or communal life as opposed to in public institutional settings, has a nexus with the anti-genocide prophetic teachings of Lemkin in the following respect:

‘[The UN] Human Rights Committee has pointed out that Article 1 of the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights], on the right to self-determination for ‘peoples’, may have significance on the interpretation of the individual rights in the Covenant, including Article 27. Indigenous peoples in particular have a way of life that is closely related to land, and there may therefore be a need to restrict states’ right to intervene in such lands. HRC [Human Rights Committee] General Comment No. 23, paragraph 3.2: ‘The enjoyment of the rights to which Article 27 relates does not prejudice the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a State party. At the same time, one or other aspect of the rights of individuals protected under that article—for example, to enjoy a particular culture—may consist in a way of life which is closely associated with territory and use of its resources. This may particularly be true of members of indigenous communities constituting a minority.’

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‘The content of indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination was a challenging question during the negotiations on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is assumed that the term, as used in ICCPR Article 1, refers to both external and internal right of self-determination, but that the threshold for requiring external right of self-determination (status as a state) is extremely high. Article 1 on ‘self-determination’ for ‘all peoples’ in both ICCPR and ICESCR [International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights] must be seen against the background of the decolonization that had taken place after World War II, and which was still an inflamed political theme in the 50s and 60s. In any case, Article 1 on self-determination must be read in the light of the provisions of the UN Charter on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. The wording of UNDRIP [United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples] Articles 3, 4 and 5 reflects that indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination encompasses a right to internal self-determination within a state.

‘In several cases, the Human Rights Committee has pointed out that Article 1 of the ICCPR may be relevant to the interpretation of Article 27…

‘In two individual complaint cases on Sami rights in Finland from 2018, the Human Rights Committee emphasized the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination. HRC, Tiina Sanila-Aikio v Finland (Communication No. 2668/2015), Klemetti Näkkäläjärvi et al. v Finland.... In the decisions, the Committee expressed its view on the significance of ICCPR Article 27 in light of the right to self-determination. The Committee observed that Article 27, interpreted in the light of the Indigenous Declaration and ICCPR Article 1 on self-determination, gives indigenous peoples a fundamental right to ‘freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’”

As for methods to support the language of Assyrians, Professor Travis says:

“There are various models for indigenous language promotion or revival. One might include in this trend the establishment of academies of sciences in various new states inhabited by peoples that had been subject to genocide in the preceding decades of the twentieth century. Or, for a different example, the establishment in Canada of a network of indigenous language instructional institutions in relation to the residential schools compensation system and Indigenous Services Canada.”

“The preservation of the Aramaic language is important for several reasons,” Dr. David Fischler, a pastor and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Here I Am Charitable Foundation, told IDI Center:

“One is that it’s the language of Jesus, and the Assyrians are still speaking it, giving them some unique insights into His words in the gospels. (The gospels were written in Greek, but there’s an Aramaic version, the Peshitta, that isn’t translated from the Greek that contains nuances that are uniquely Semitic.) A second is that as one of the oldest languages still being spoken (dating from circa 1100 B.C.), it has a connection to humanity’s origins in the Middle East unsurpassed by any other. Finally, every language encompasses a culture, which is why it’s always a tragedy to see a language die out. The Assyrian culture is one of the world’s oldest, and their Aramaic language is intimately tied to that culture.”

Other scholars also emphasize the significance of keeping Assyrian as a living language. Dr. Anahit Khosroeva, visiting professor at Harvard University, told IDI Center:

“The question is not only how the Assyrian language can survive, but how it can remain a living, intergenerational language rather than becoming primarily a liturgical, symbolic, or heritage language. Culturally, Assyrian must remain a language spoken in homes and families, not only in churches, cultural events, or heritage programs. We also need more literature, music, films, media, and youth activities in Assyrian so that the language remains relevant to everyday life. Intellectually, Assyrian must be developed as a language of modern knowledge. Scholars, educators, and institutions should create terminology for contemporary fields such as technology, science, economics, and politics. We need more books, research, digital resources, and educational materials in Assyrian so that the language can function in both academic and public life. Linguistically, we should work toward greater standardization in writing and education while respecting the richness of our dialects. At the same time, endangered dialects should be documented and preserved. The development of language-learning programs, digital tools, and artificial intelligence resources will also be essential for ensuring Assyrian’s place in the modern world.

“The future of Assyrian language depends on cooperation between communities in the Middle East and the Diaspora. The homeland provides historical continuity and cultural roots, while the Diaspora offers educational, technological, and institutional opportunities. If we strengthen language transmission, invest in cultural and intellectual production, and embrace modern technology, the Assyrian language can remain a living language for future generations rather than becoming merely a language of memory and heritage.”

Before Islamic military conquests, massacres, and persecution started in the seventh century, most of the Middle East and North Africa (including lands which are now called Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt, amongst others) were predominantly Christian. They were part of the Eastern Roman/ Byzantine Empire. There were large Jewish and other non-Muslim communities throughout. People spoke Greek, Assyrian/Aramaic/Syriac, Armenian, Hebrew, Coptic (an ancient Egyptian language), and other indigenous languages. The linguistic diversity existed long before Arabic or Turkish largely erased and then replaced many of these languages—a process that occurred simultaneously with Islamization.

After centuries of persecution, Assyrians should finally have an autonomous region in the Middle East to secure their survival in a Muslim-dominated region that is hostile to Christianity and to non-Arab and non-Turkish communities. The Assyrian language should enjoy official administrative and guaranteed educational status in its indigenous homelands in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. It should also be taught as an elective foreign language course at more universities in the West.

Some activities that could be carried out include the opening of Assyrian language schools, academic institutions, and research centers in the Middle East and the Assyrian diaspora. The governments of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria should be obliged to officially recognize the Assyrians, their language and their national and human rights, including their right to obtain education in their native language. Concrete actions should be taken to help this unique nation thrive and live in dignity in a way that their identity, language, rights, and freedoms will be recognized, respected, and protected.

Uzay Bulut is a fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute.

In the year 628, Muhammad marched toward Mecca with some 1,400 followers, intending to perform a pilgrimage. The Meccans, who controlled the city, blocked him. Rather than fight from a position of weakness, Muhammad negotiated. The result was the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, a ten-year truce, and on its face the Muslims got the worse end of it. The terms were humiliating enough that his closest companions, Umar among them, openly objected. Muhammad would not enter Mecca that year. Defectors fleeing Mecca for the Muslim camp would be returned; defectors fleeing the other way would not. It looked like a surrender.

The truce was a ten-year agreement. It lasted two. In those two years, the breathing room it bought was used exactly as a strategist would use it. Freed from confrontation with Mecca, Muhammad turned and conquered the Jewish stronghold of Khaybar, distributing its spoils. The community grew faster in those two years of “peace” than in all the years of open war before it. The truce was the most productive military and political instrument of his career, precisely because it was peace on paper and consolidation in fact.

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When an allied tribe gave Muhammad a pretext, he declared the treaty void, marched on Mecca in 630, no longer with 1,400 men but with 10,000, and took the city. The ten-year truce had served its entire purpose in twenty-four months: it let the weaker party become the stronger party, after which the paper was torn up.

The Pattern Across the Centuries

You might think a seventh-century episode has no bearing on a 2026 negotiation. The opposite is true. Hudaybiyyah is not remembered as a one-time event; it is enshrined as sunnah, the normative example every devout Muslim is taught to imitate. Surah 48 of the Quran, titled “The Victory,” was revealed about this very truce, recasting a humiliating compromise as a divine triumph. When scripture itself canonizes a tactical retreat as victory, the lesson is accept the weak terms now, call it a win, and wait.

This is why modern Muslim leaders cite Hudaybiyyah by name whenever they sign with an adversary. Yasser Arafat did it most famously. In May 1994, months after signing the Oslo Accords with Israel, he spoke in a mosque in Johannesburg and compared the accords directly to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, while calling for jihad to reclaim Jerusalem. He was telling his fellow Muslims that Oslo was exactly what Hudaybiyyah had been: a temporary arrangement with a stronger enemy, to be honored only as long as it served the cause. He said it again years later, declaring that he had chosen the “Peace of the Brave” out of faith in the Prophet’s conduct at Hudaybiyyah. The West heard “peace process.” His base heard “Hudaybiyyah,” and they understood exactly what he meant, that the handshake on the White House lawn was a tactic, not a reconciliation.

The pattern recurs across Islamic history wherever a Muslim power found itself temporarily outmatched. The early caliphates signed truces with Byzantium and broke them when the balance of forces shifted. In Islam the world is divided into the House of Islam and the House of War, and between them there can be no permanent peace, only the temporary suspension of hostilities. The jurists capped the hudna “truve” at ten years precisely because of the Hudaybiyyah precedent, a truce was understood as a finite, renewable tactical instrument, not a final settlement. Permanent peace with a non-Muslim sovereign was a theological impossibility, because it would mean conceding that some portion of the earth would remain permanently outside the rule of Allah.

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The Ottoman Empire signed and broke treaties with European powers as the military balance dictated, treating each agreement as binding only while Istanbul was the weaker or the satisfied party. Closer to our time, the logic surfaces every time an Islamic movement enters a ceasefire while openly describing it as a pause. Hamas has used the word hudna explicitly and repeatedly, offering “truces” while stating plainly that the underlying objective never changes. The truce buys reconstruction, rearmament, the rebuilding of tunnels and rockets, and then it ends.

What This Means for Friday

Look at what the Islamic Republic itself said today, on the very day of the announcement. Iran’s own deputy foreign minister, confirming the agreement, stated that it “does not signify trust in the enemy and was drafted in an atmosphere of continued distrust.” Their state television aired a banner declaring that the United States “was forced to sign an agreement to end the war.” This is not the language of a party seeking reconciliation. This is the language of a party that views the agreement as a tactical necessity extracted under pressure, which is to say, the language of Hudaybiyyah.

The blockade that was strangling them lifts immediately. The Strait of Hormuz reopens, and their oil flows again, refilling the treasury that funds Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the militias in Iraq. Sanctions relax. In exchange, The U.S. receives promises, an end to military operations, a pledge to abandon the nuclear weapon, assurances about nuclear waste to be verified later. You are giving them the tangible and immediate restoration of their strength. They are giving you the intangible and deferred promise of their restraint.

This is the exact shape of Hudaybiyyah. The weaker party, cornered, accepts terms that relieve the immediate pressure and restore its capacity to fight another day, while conceding nothing that cannot later be reclaimed. The regime that has chanted “Death to America” for forty-six years, that calls your nation the Great Satan as an article of faith, has not undergone a conversion this week. It has run out of room, and it is buying time.

Mr. President,

Every concession you grant should be reversible and conditioned on sustained, verified performance over years, not gestures delivered before the ink dries. Front-load their obligations; back-load your relief. Do not hand over the permanent restoration of their economy in exchange for promises that can evaporate the moment you leave office.

Keep the pressure latent and instantly restorable. The only thing that makes a hudna hold is the certainty that the stronger party will re-impose the cost the instant the truce is violated.

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Hudaybiyyah held for two years because Muhammad was not yet strong enough to break it; it broke the moment he was. Your deterrent must be structured so that the day they calculate they can resume is the day they also calculate they will lose. Peace with this regime will last exactly as long as their weakness lasts, and not one day longer, unless you make the weakness permanent and the cost of breaking faith unbearable.

The men signing in Switzerland on Friday know the story of Hudaybiyyah. It is in their scripture, their schools, their sermons. The question is whether the man signing across from them knows it too. Now you do.

Danny Burmawi is the Chief Executive of the Ideological Defense Institute.

The ruin of Lebanon that we see today cannot be explained by the usual talk of a fragile sectarian mosaic that simply failed to hold. From the founding of the Lebanese state and the departure of the French, the whole story can be compressed into three words: Palestine, Islam, and the rejection of Westernization. Those three are bound together—three faces of a single ideology—and they have been the engine of Lebanon’s destruction for seven decades.

It does not matter whether that ideology was carried by Arab peoples, by Arab regimes, or by Islamic movements. Nasserists, Wahhabis, Baathists, the Iranian axis, on these three points they all agreed, and they all turned against Lebanon. The deepest fault line in the country was a contest over what Lebanon would be: a free, independent, secular state and a bridge to the West, or a piece of the so-called Arab and Islamic world, subject to its will and its agenda. The Christians of Lebanon carried a vision of prosperity. Arrayed against them stood an ideology of terror. In Lebanon, tragically, the ideology of terror won.

To understand the hostility, one must understand what offended the region in the first place. Lebanon’s very existence as a secular identity and a bridge to the West was an irritant to the entire Arab world. A country with a Christian president, the only state in the Middle East where Islam was not the religion of the state, a nation that wanted its primary relationship to be with the West and that took pride in its secular character, this disturbed everyone around it. Were it not for the existence of Israel, the Arab states would have treated Lebanon exactly as they treated Israel: as a target to be eliminated.

So they pursued both. Israel was target number one; Lebanon was target number two. They failed against Israel. But against Lebanon they succeeded, and the tools they used to break it were the same two words they used against everything else, “Israel” and “Palestine.” That is the whole story of Lebanon in miniature. Understand those two words and how they were weaponized, and you understand how the country was dismantled.

Nasserism

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On January 27, 2026, Egypt’s Court of Cassation issued a ruling that the state then kept confidential for almost three months. The ruling overturned a 2020 Family Court decision that had recognized the marriage of an Egyptian Bahá’í couple who had been married since September 1981, forty-five years. The Egyptian public learned of the ruling in mid-April, when activists noticed that married Bahá’ís renewing their identity cards were being recorded as single.

Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution establishes Sharia as the principal source of legislation. Article 64 guarantees the freedom of religious rites only for adherents of the three heavenly religions, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Marriage is a religious rite. Bahá’ís are not adherents of a heavenly religion. Their marriages are therefore outside the legal framework that recognizes marriage at all.

A Bahá’í couple cannot register their marriage. Their children’s parentage is legally ambiguous. Pensions and inheritance pass through formal recognition that does not exist. Non-Egyptian spouses of Egyptian Bahá’ís cannot obtain family residency. Egyptian Bahá’í mothers cannot pass their citizenship to children they have with non-Egyptians, a right the state grants to every other Egyptian woman. The Bahá’í citizen is a citizen with the legal status of a stateless person inside his own country.

This ruling is the latest episode in a pattern that has run through the Egyptian state for almost a century. In 1948, the Egyptian Jewish community numbered approximately 80,000 people, descended from communities documented in Alexandria and Cairo since the Hellenistic period. After the founding of Israel, and especially after the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Nasser regime conducted a systematic campaign of dispossession, confiscation of property, revocation of citizenship, mass expulsions framed alternately as voluntary departures and as security measures. After 1967, the residual community was effectively eliminated. By 1970, fewer than a thousand Jews remained. Today, the Egyptian Jewish community of antiquity exists in diaspora.

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The Copts, the descendants of the pre-Islamic Christian population, whose church traces its founding to Saint Mark in the first century, six hundred years before the Arab conquest of 641 CE, were the majority of the Egyptian population at the time of the conquest. They are now estimated at roughly 10 percent. Coptic numerical decline across fourteen centuries has been the product of jizya pressure, social marginalization, intermittent violence, and the steady administrative friction of life as a tolerated minority. The friction has not stopped. Coptic churches have been bombed in Cairo, Alexandria, and Tanta within the last decade. Coptic girls continue to be kidnapped, forcibly converted, and forcibly married to Muslim men in a pattern the community has documented and the state has refused to address.

The Bahá’ís are now in the position the Jews were in before 1948 and the position the Copts have occupied for centuries. The community in Egypt dates to 1863. Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the faith, transited Egypt in August 1868 on his way from Adrianople to ʻAkká, with the ship stopping at Alexandria and Port Said. The first native Egyptian converts were recorded by 1896. In 1900, al-Azhar issued a fatwa declaring Bahá’ís infidels. In 1960, Nasser’s Decree 263 dissolved all Bahá’í institutions. In 1975, the Supreme Constitutional Court upheld the decree. In 2006, the Supreme Administrative Court banned the entry of Bahá’í in the religion field on identity documents. In 2009, the same court allowed a dash (–) in the religion field, the closest the Egyptian state has come to acknowledging that Egyptian Bahá’ís exist. The January 2026 ruling forecloses the last remaining legal pathway for state recognition of Bahá’í marriages.

The Bahá’í case matters beyond the Bahá’í community because it exposes the actual structure of Egyptian religious freedom. A community whose marriages are not recognized cannot pass property to children. A community whose family structure is administratively invisible has trouble registering children in schools and hospitals. The result is reduced fertility and accelerated emigration, with younger Egyptian Bahá’ís leaving for countries where their families will be recognized as families. The Egyptian Bahá’í community was, by mid-twentieth-century estimates, in the tens of thousands. It is now estimated at 2,000 to 7,000.

The world headquarters of the Bahá’í Faith is in Haifa, in the State of Israel. The Shrine of the Báb sits on the slopes of Mount Carmel, surrounded by terraced gardens that draw nearly a million visitors a year. The Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the faith, operates from a building of marble and Corinthian columns overlooking the Mediterranean. The shrine of Bahá’u’lláh himself, the founder of the faith, sits at the Mansion of Bahjí near Acre, where he died in 1892 and where Bahá’ís from around the world come on pilgrimage. The Israeli state protects these sites, funds their preservation, and treats the Bahá’í presence in Haifa as one of the cultural and architectural treasures of the country.

Israeli Bahá’ís marry, raise children, pass property, and worship without administrative interference of any kind. Across the border, in Egypt, the Bahá’í couple of forty-five years cannot register their marriage. In Iran, the country of the faith’s origin, Bahá’ís are imprisoned, executed, and stripped of property under formal state policy. Across the broader Islamic world, the same pattern repeats. The faith that the Islamic world has spent a century-and-a-half persecuting is the faith that the one Jewish state protects, honors, and shelters.

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The West, which criticizes Israel for its alleged sins against minorities, has shown no equivalent interest in the actual condition of religious minorities in the Islamic states that surround Israel. This is a scandal.

Muhamad Saad Khairalla is a fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute.

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Subject-matter experts, former Muslims, Arab Christians, and Western thought leaders, coming together to equip policymakers to prevent destructive foreign ideas from being translated into law, restore confidence in the biblical principles that built the West by empowering the Church to reengage the public square, and provide the public with solid analysis to combat the confusion that is making the West vulnerable.

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Armed Islamic groups were filmed on motorbikes while they were bragging about storming the Christian town of Al-Suqaylabiyah. They greeted the passing General Security vehicles, who did nothing to intervene, according to a 27 March post by the X account @GrecoLevantines.

See another video here showing Islamic mobs loyal to Syria’s new regime attacking Christian properties in Al-Suqaylabiyah.

This is the latest outbreak of deadly jihadist violence in the country following al-Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS)-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces overthrew Syria’s Assad regime in December 2024 with the help of Turkey.

The new Islamic regime of Syria, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani), the former head of the Syrian al-Qaeda, has since systematically led the targeting, abduction, and massacring of Druze, Christians, Alawites, and other ethnoreligious minorities.

The Islamic violence conducted against these communities by HTS military units and affiliated militias has resulted in the deaths or enforced disappearances of thousands of people.

Abu Mohammed al-Julani previously rose through the ranks of ISIS (Islamic State). In 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then head of ISIS, sent al-Julani into Syria. There Julani founded an al-Qaeda affiliate: Jabhat al-Nusra. HTS was, until recently, listed as a terrorist group by the US. Julani had fought US troops in Iraq and was jailed by the Americans for several years.

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HTS is still designated as terrorists by the UN, EU, and the UK because of its ties with ISIS and al-Qaeda.

On 22 March 2026, EALA (the Ethnikos Association of Latakia-Antaradus) issued an urgent briefing regarding the escalating attacks and threats against Christians in Western and coastal Syria.

The organization said that the Christians in Kfarbo, Mhardeh, Al-Suqaylabiyah, Wadi al-Nasara (Valey of Christians), and surrounding areas were assaulted by armed groups affiliated with the new “Ministry of Defense” of Syria:

“The armed Bedouin groups, operating alongside or under the effective control of government-affiliated forces, have entered the Christian towns of Kfarbo, Mhardeh, [and] Al-Suqaylabiyah, where they are actively carrying out armed robberies, destruction of Christian cultural and religious symbols, as well as vandalism and desecration of cemeteries across all three towns.”

EALA noted that “the Church of the Holy Martyrs has been converted into a military site, and Christian religious symbols have been deliberately destroyed. Armed Bedouins are consistently harassing, threatening, and terrorizing Christian residents, including issuing explicit threats. Multiple attempted abductions of Christian girls have been reported. These attempts were only prevented by the intervention of local civilians. A Christian family in Kharbeh was robbed at gunpoint inside their home. Armed perpetrators held the family at gunpoint while looting the house.”

EALA called for “immediate withdrawal and removal of all irregular and affiliated armed elements from the vicinity of churches, Christian towns, and civilian areas in Mhardeh, Kfarbo, and Al-Suqaylabiyah; full demilitarization of the Church of the Holy Martyrs, the Shrine of Saint George and all surrounding compounds, with their immediate return to civilian and religious use; and deployment of neutral forces or locally recruited community-based civilian protection structures.”

The “Greco-Syrian Nation,” an online platform that advocates for the human rights of the Greeks and other indigenous peoples of Syria, has called the attack against Al-Suqaylabiyah “a crime against our people, our faith, and our right to exist”:

“What transpired in Al-Suqaylabiyah was not a spontaneous disturbance, but a coordinated and deeply alarming act of hate. Armed groups from the neighboring Sunni villages of Qalaat al-Madiq (Ἀπάμεια) and Al-Asharinah— operating with the shameful complicity or outright protection of the so-called ‘General Security Service’ - descended on Al-Suqaylabiyah in organized waves, unleashing chaos and terror.

“These savages — self-styled followers of al-Julani — stormed our streets like vandals from the darkest ages. Armed men roamed freely, firing into the air, issuing threats, and filming their crimes—all while so-called ‘security forces’ stood by, either unwilling or unable to intervene. They smashed our shops and cafés, burned our homes, and beat innocent civilians in the open. They even desecrated a statue of the Holy Virgin Mary, a symbol of our Christian faith. What began as the harassment of our daughters and young men on Al-Meshwar Street exploded into a coordinated pogrom designed to terrorize, loot, and break the will of a peaceful Rûm (Ρωμαϊκή) city.

“Let us be clear: this is ethnoreligious targeting. This is an existential threat. The events in Al-Suqaylabiyah are part of a broader pattern aimed at uprooting the Christian presence from its ancestral homeland through fear, violence, and forced displacement. The message being sent is unmistakable: leave, submit, or face annihilation.”

Reports from the country confirm that Syria’s jihadist regime and affiliated groups are escalating their campaign of persecution and violence against Christians. This follows previous massacres committed by Julani’s forces towards the Alawites and Druze.

In March 2025, regime forces attacked the Alawite-dominated coastal areas of Syria, massacring hundreds, abducting women, and turning them into sex slaves. According to Reuters, a photo from Sonobar, confirmed by two surviving Alawites from the town, showed a message scrawled on the wall of one home: “You were a minority, and now you are a rarity.”

In July 2025, the Druze towns in southern Syria were attacked by Islamic groups led by Julani. The violence erupted in the predominantly Druze city in the province of Suwayda (also known as Sweida) on 12 July, two days after a Druze merchant was reportedly abducted on the highway to Damascus. Large numbers of civilians (mainly the Druze), as well as children, were massacred by Muslims. Many cases were filmed and posted by perpetrators on social media. Hundreds of Druze women and children were abducted. Today, many remain missing.

In September 2025, Father Tony Al Boutros of St. Philip Greek Catholic Church announced the destruction which the Julani regime had inflicted upon the 36 villages in his hometown of Suweyda. He said those villages were attacked by Julani’s forces and Bedouin tribes, violating the Druze and Christians, destroying homes, burning churches, terrorizing the whole population, and forcibly displacing them.

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“They did not leave a house in any area they reached without stealing, burning, destroying and violating human dignity by assaulting women, the elderly, and children,” the bishop said in his open letter:

“All residents of these 36 villages, both Christians and Druze, were displaced and moved to schools, homes, churches, clubs, and public parks, where they remain refugees to this day. More than 1,500-2,000 civilians were killed in this aggression. Many citizens were also executed in the field simply because they belonged to a different sect or religion. Women, children, and the elderly were attacked in a barbaric manner unprecedented in human history.”

The situation of the St. Michael’s Church in As-Sawara al-Kubra, one of six churches vandalized during the regime’s assault on the province, was documented by Father Boutros. He confirmed that “even the graves weren’t spared, a disgrace to humanity.”

Benedict Kiely, a Priest of the Ordinariate and founder of the Nasarean organization, told IDI,

“It is incomprehensible why western Christians are silent in the face of the ongoing persecution of Syrian Christians. I often think of the words of Jan Figel, for EU Commissioner for Religious Freedom, that ‘ignorance and indifference are allies of evil.’ Perhaps many are ignorant, far worse if they are indifferent.

“Rather than greeting Al Julani warmly and spraying him with perfume, the Trump administration should make any aid contingent upon the freedom and protection for all religious minorities. The current U.S. Ambassador to Syria should also be replaced.”

Kostas A. Lavdas, a Professor of European and Comparative Politics, told IDI that the support that Julani’s regime obtains from several governments should be understood in the wider context:

“It could only come as a surprise to those who took at face value the declarations regarding a ‘rules-based order’ that was supposed to provide the normative framework regulating international interactions. In fact, what we have today is the à la carte intensification of aspects of international behavior that were always in supply by security providers, the east and the west. Julani’s role at this moment is seen as instrumental in two ways, one dealing with present stability and another with US interests, until a better option presents itself. First, maintaining the basic border scheme and the general spirit of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty. Neither the US nor Europe are ready for the breakup of Syria at this moment. Second, the perception in Washington is that the Julani regime will be positive regarding US plans to take part in further exploiting the oil and gas sector in Syria. Months ago, Reuters reported that American firms were working on an ‘energy master plan’ on Syria.”

Today, Syria is a Sunni-Muslim majority country. The 2012 Syrian Constitution stipulates that the president must be Muslim and Islamic law is a major source of legislation. This provides a constitutional basis for discriminatory treatment of non-Muslims.

However, indigenous Christians (of Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian descent) have lived in Syria for thousands of years. Most of Syria’s Christians belong to historical churches (mainly Orthodox and Catholic, plus some traditional Protestant congregations).

Syria was a majority-Christian country and was part of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire before Muslim Arabs invaded in the seventh century. After the Muslim conquest of this region in 634 AD, Christians and other non-Muslims lived for centuries as oppressed, beleaguered “dhimmis” who were allowed to retain their religion in exchange for a high poll tax, also known as “jizya.”

Today, while religious and ethnic communities in Syria are facing an actual genocide at the hands of the Julani regime, Julani is received by Western heads of state who ignore the fact that he is a jihadist terrorist.

While Julani was addressing the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the U.N. headquarters in New York on 24 September 2025, his regime in Syria was burning Christian-owned homes, villages, and forests in what is known as the Valley of Christians.

In their recent statement, the “Greco-Syrian Nation” announced that they “call upon Greece — as our ethnic and civilizational kin — to take an unequivocal stand. We urge Greek political leadership to raise this issue at the highest international levels, to demand accountability and concrete measures to shield Al-Suqaylabiyah and every Rûm [Greek] village from further barbarism.

“We also call upon the international community and all civilized nations that claim to uphold human rights to condemn this attack in the clearest terms. Silence in the face of such violence is complicity. Immediate measures must be taken to protect civilians in Al-Suqaylabiyah and across Syria, to hold perpetrators accountable, and to guarantee that the Rûm and all indigenous communities can live in safety and dignity in their own homeland.

“History is watching. The world must decide whether it will stand by as another ancient Christian community is driven to extinction—or whether it will act, decisively and without delay.”

Uzay Bulut is a fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute.

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The most trusted source of information on the Middle East, Islam, and the ideological threats facing the West.

Subject-matter experts, former Muslims, Arab Christians, and Western thought leaders, coming together to equip policymakers to prevent destructive foreign ideas from being translated into law, restore confidence in the biblical principles that built the West by empowering the Church to reengage the public square, and provide the public with solid analysis to combat the confusion that is making the West vulnerable.

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Today, the entity known as Greater Lebanon is effectively controlled by the Shiite nation. Nabih Berri holds the real political power, while Hezbollah controls the military power. Figures such as Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam function largely as placeholders. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Army remains paralyzed and largely ineffective, as it has always been.

Greater Lebanon is not a unified nation. It is composed of four distinct nations.

If the Shiites negotiate a peace agreement on behalf of everyone, it will inevitably prioritize the interests of the Shiite nation. The Sunni nation will not remain passive either. Backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Sunni leadership will ensure its interests are protected in any negotiations. The result would likely become a de facto Israeli–Islamic agreement rather than a balanced and equitable deal for all.

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The Druze factor must also be considered. The influential Druze nation in the Golan Heights within Israel would never allow their Lebanese brethren to be marginalized.

This leaves the Christian nation, whose largest component is the Maronite people.

Today, most Christian political leaders have become vassals to either Shiite or Sunni power structures. With no Western Christian sponsor willing to advocate for them, Lebanese Christians are left dependent on the goodwill of regional powers such as Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Under such circumstances, the best-case outcome for Lebanese Christians under Islamic political dominance would be relegation to a form of dhimmi status. The worst case could be far darker, see Syria.

This reality ultimately places the future of the Christians of Mount Lebanon greatly in Israel’s hands.

In the absence of effective Maronite leadership within Lebanon, Israel faces two strategic options.

Option One: Pursue a short-term approach and conclude a quick peace deal with the current Shiite-led Lebanese structure. Such a deal may last three or four decades. But history shows that when circumstances change, Muslim political factions tend to unite against Israel. A supportive American administration may not always be present.

Option Two: Pursue a sustainable, long-term peace framework by engaging directly with the Christian nation of Mount Lebanon, bypassing the current Christian political figures who have lost popular legitimacy and whose mandates are nearing expiration without elections scheduled.

Israel can choose to engage with the Christian Mount Lebanese resistance, currently operating from New York, much like Charles de Gaulle led the French resistance from London during the Nazi occupation. Or it can choose the easier path: making a fragile agreement with what would effectively resemble a Vichy-style government in Lebanon.

The choice is not for history to judge, it must be made now. Israel must choose wisely today.

By https://x.com/fredbeltran604

_____________________________

* “Greater Lebanon” refers to the political entity established by France in 1920, which expanded Mount Lebanon to include surrounding regions with significant Sunni, Shiite, and Druze populations. The term distinguishes this construct from the historically Maronite-dominated Mount Lebanon.

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The most trusted source of information on the Middle East, Islam, and the ideological threats facing the West.

Subject-matter experts, former Muslims, Arab Christians, and Western thought leaders, coming together to equip policymakers to prevent destructive foreign ideas from being translated into law, restore confidence in the biblical principles that built the West by empowering the Church to reengage the public square, and provide the public with solid analysis to combat the confusion that is making the West vulnerable.

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To achieve this objective, the regime reorganized the entire education system—from elementary school through the university level—to reflect an Islamic curriculum. The media was seized and repurposed to promote the ideological worldview of the new state, while censorship protocols were implemented and later extended into the digital age.

Even infrastructure became a tool of indoctrination. Electricity was expanded to smaller towns and villages not only as a development project but also to ensure that television broadcasts and religious programming could reach every corner of the country.

Yet four decades later the result has been the opposite of what the revolution intended.

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Iran today is experiencing a profound cultural shift marked by mass de-Islamization. Public trust in the clerical establishment has eroded, and growing segments of society reject not only the ruling clergy but also the religious framework that legitimizes their authority. Christianity is widely reported to be growing rapidly, Zoroastrianism—the pre-Islamic faith of ancient Persia—has experienced a revival, and atheism and agnosticism are increasingly common among younger generations.

Several structural factors explain why the project of Islamization ultimately failed.

First, Iran possesses a deep civilizational identity that predates Islam by millennia. The arrival of Islam did not erase Persian civilization; it layered itself upon it. Beneath the Islamic veneer, the memory of Iran’s ancient identity remained alive.

Persian language, literature, philosophy, and historical consciousness continued to shape Iranian society. Historians often describe this dynamic as cycles of “Persianization,” in which external systems are gradually absorbed and reshaped by Iran’s underlying civilizational character.

This civilizational memory re-emerged dramatically after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, when protests erupted across the country and large numbers of Iranians flocked to Persepolis—the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire—to reconnect with their pre-Islamic heritage.

Second, Iranian nationalism proved stronger than Islamist universalism.

Iran historically functioned as an imperial civilization that governed vast territories through strong political cohesion and a powerful sense of national identity. Khomeini’s revolutionary ideology attempted to subordinate that identity to the concept of the Islamic Ummah, a transnational religious community.

For many Iranians, however, this required abandoning their civilizational heritage. The attempt to redefine Iranian identity primarily in Islamic terms collided with a deeply rooted sense of national pride. In the end, Iranian nationalism proved stronger than ideological Islamism.

Third, technological and social change opened Iranian society to the world.

Satellite television, the internet, and global communications exposed the younger, post-revolutionary generation to life beyond Iran’s ideological isolation. A growing middle class gained access to travel, global culture, and new ideas.

Many began to see Iran not as a revolutionary outpost but as one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations—one that should be building modern global cities comparable to London, Paris, Shanghai, or Tokyo rather than remaining locked within a revolutionary ideological framework centered on the cult of the Mahdi.

Fourth, the imposition of religion ignited a deeper spiritual search.

Initial exposure to the Bible often came through the Iranian diaspora, as families living abroad shared the scriptures with relatives inside the country. As curiosity grew, organized ministries and distribution networks began importing Bibles into Iran, and by many accounts they struggled to keep up with the demand.

Among a population historically drawn to poetry, philosophy, and spiritual inquiry, these encounters opened new theological debates. As alternative ideas spread, the ideological foundations that once united Islamism and revolutionary Marxism within Iran’s revolutionary narrative began to weaken.

The result has been a diversification of belief systems across Iranian society: renewed interest in Zoroastrianism, the rise of agnosticism and atheism, more moderate forms of Islam, and the growth of Christianity.

Ironically, while these ideologies have weakened inside Iran, elements of Islamism and revolutionary Marxism have gained influence in parts of the West—often through academic institutions and activist networks influenced by similar ideological currents.

Iran’s experience offers an important lesson.

Societies confronting ideological radicalism cannot defeat it solely through political or security measures. They must also reconnect with their own civilizational foundations.

For the West, this means rediscovering the civilizational framework that shaped its institutions in the first place. The biblical worldview that influenced Western law, philosophy, and moral reasoning helped produce a culture that values freedom of conscience, open debate, and the right of individuals to question authority.

These principles allowed Western societies to cultivate intellectual pluralism rather than enforce ideological conformity.

The Iranian experience suggests that ideological systems—whether Islamist or Marxist—lose their grip when people rediscover both their civilizational identity and the freedom to think, debate, and question.

A living, informed Christianity combined with the protection of freedom of conscience may therefore prove one of the most powerful cultural antidotes to ideological authoritarianism.

Ali Siadatan is a fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute.

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The most trusted source of information on the Middle East, Islam, and the ideological threats facing the West.

Subject-matter experts, former Muslims, Arab Christians, and Western thought leaders, coming together to equip policymakers to prevent destructive foreign ideas from being translated into law, restore confidence in the biblical principles that built the West by empowering the Church to reengage the public square, and provide the public with solid analysis to combat the confusion that is making the West vulnerable.

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