29Nov/20

Nir Boms discusses Bahrain delegation visiting Israel

The Gulf, Uncategorized


In a discussion with the Israel Gulf Report, Nir Boms, a Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University and co-chairman of Israel-UAE policy forum, talks about exciting new developments with Bahrain.

“Today I met Sheikh Khaled bin Khalifa al-Khalifa along with a delegation of Bahrainis from the King Hamed Global Center for peaceful coexistence.”

Can you describe how this came about?

“In the last few weeks and months we have spoken a lot about the UAE which is important and significant and they are the larger players and they were there first and much of the attention went in their direction. But it is important to recognize that although Bahrain is smaller and we heard less about the country in the recent weeks, the normalization process there is significant and, has not been completely new. I have met emissaries from Bahrain first here in 2017 in a delegation that became public and received a lot of backlash from anti-normalization forces.

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23Oct/20

Iran’s Fear of the Popular Figure: The Execution of Navid Afkari

Iran, Middle East, , , , ,

Also available in العربية

October 21, 2020

Navid Afkari, a 27 year-old Iranian wrestling champion who won numerous medals, had rarely lost a fight in his life. There was, however, one struggle he could not win. Following torture and a forced confession, Navid was executed earlier this month following a verdict by the Iranian Supreme Court. 

Navid Afkari, along with his two brothers Vahid and Habib, were found guilty of participating in the nationwide protest that engulfed Iran in August 2018, along with several other charges that included insulting the supreme leader, waging war against God, and murder. Vahid and Habib were handed prison sentences of 54 years and 27 years respectively. Both were also sentenced to 74 lashes and are still behind bars.

Navid’s execution demonstrates that Iran’s decision earlier this year to commute the execution sentence of three young men represented an exception rather than a potential shift inside the country. Iran had halted the executions of three young protestors—Amirhossein Moradi, Mohammad Rajabi, and Saeed Tamjidi—under the pressure of an online campaign that attracted millions of tweets and a hashtag protesting their sentence.

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