Iraq

The city in Iraq is home to one of Shi’ite Islam’s holiest shrines and has long relied on Iranian pilgrims, who have traditionally made up the largest proportion of visitors.

"This arrest is a significant disruption to an alleged serious criminal and his alleged criminal enterprise in Australia," said the Australian Federal Police Commissioner.

The demonstrations, which began in Tehran last month, have spread to all of Iran's 31 provinces but have yet to reach the scale of the 2022-3 unrest sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.

An Iranian protester told KAN Reshet Bet that many Iranians admire Netanyahu and Israeli strikes, while blaming economic collapse, repression, and inflation for the unrest.

"The CIA has staged another hostile takeover of a country at the behest of a [sic] globalist psychopaths," wrote Owens. "That’s what is happening, everywhere. Zionists cheer every regime change."

The central framing of the move is explicitly geopolitical, aimed at blocking the China-Russia-Iran axis in the US's backyard.

A weekly selection of opinions and analyses from the Arab media around the world.

Assad's base was one of the few places the US remained, until Iran targeted the base with ballistic missiles in 2020 in response to the US killing Soleimani.

Iraq continues to face challenges as it navigates between the Iranian influence on the country and a push by the US and others to roll back Iranian-backed militias.

Iraq’s decision to introduce the Ja’fari law in January means that girls can be married based on perceived “maturity and physical capacity.”