Iran is holding elections on Friday for its 290-seat Majles parliament, but many analysts are expecting a record low turnout despite intense cajoling by the clerical regime for the masses to signal their support for the current system by casting ballots. Amidst widespread dissatisfaction with the regime and a rapidly deteriorating quality of life for many in the Islamic Republic, voters seem to have little interest in legitimizing the regime by participating in a meaningless election. These sentiments have been stoked by the disqualification of over half the people running for a parliament which, in any case, has very little real power in a country ruled by the aptly titled “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his enforcers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Meanwhile Iran announced that it had identified the Middle East’s first cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus this week, giving Iranians one more reason not to go to the polls.

On February 21, Iran will hold its eleventh parliamentary election, along with its fifth election for the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with naming the next Supreme Leader. It is safe to predict that the next Majlis will be predominantly loyal to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; in fact, it will probably be Iran’s least autonomous legislature in decades. This forecast puts President Hassan Rouhani in a perilous position: his political role compels him to encourage public participation in an election that his camp is guaranteed to lose.

Israel’s southern flank is the Red Sea, a body of water through which billions of dollars worth of commercial shipping travels every day. The Red Sea is also becoming an area of increasing strategic competition between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other regional powers. Additionally, global powers such as the US, EU, China and Russia are expanding their presence in the Red Sea to safeguard their own strategic, geopolitical and economic interests. A presentation of these issues was recently made at the US Army War College.

Originating from more than a dozen different nations and speaking as many languages, ICEJ staff members represent a varied cross-section of educational, family and cultural backgrounds. All are united, however, with a single purpose to see the Kingdom of God manifest in the world in these days, and to follow the biblical injunction of Isaiah 40 to comfort God’s people Israel.