A Letter from Tehran, Sent from Berlin

Following the Israeli strike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus and Iran’s retaliatory reaction, fears of a full-scale conflict in the Middle East rose. A personal contextualisation. Dude, they struck back!” is a notification on my phone from a close friend when I come back home from a Berlin evening on 13th April. I immediately open a flight radar website and notice the sky of Jordan is cleared while a US Air Force stratotanker is seen cruising over the Iraqi sky. Iranian news channels by then were already filled with propaganda about the operation “True Promise,” attacking Israel in retaliation …

Herr Schulz, Frau Merkel and the tiny state of Saarland

On Sunday, 26-March-2017, Saarland, Germany’s smallest state inhabited by only a million people elected their state parliament. Given the national elections scheduled for coming September, the regional elections prior to them are interpreted as important indicators. The regional election campaigns in the country’s province are joined by chancellery candidates of both major parties CDU and SPD fighting for the votes of the people and the tiny state of Saarland has set off the election season.