Safa Joudeh

Postdoc researcher @ExeterIAIS | Teaching @SOASpolitics | Infrastructure, industrial policy, China in MENA | Usual caveats | 🇵🇸

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

My article, “Two wheels and two wings: the political economy of Chinese Industrial Park-Ports in the Middle East” is now in the current issue of New Political Economy.
It examines how Chinese investments are reshaping the region’s political economy; in the case analysed, functioning less as drivers of industrialisation, more as mechanisms of rent generation, reinforcing existing political regime: https://t.co/plDsFxyqeL

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

Our politicians and media outlets want to ban you from protesting against this.

[Andrew Feinstein @andrewfeinstein]

Not even apartheid South Africa codified executions for only one ‘race group’. Israel is now the most racist state the world has ever known.

Shame on every government, every company, every individual who offer it support.

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

A reckoning for those who exceptionalised or justified Gaza: what we’re seeing in Iran is the regional expansion of a doctrine first normalised in Gaza. A model of warfare where urbicide, scholasticide, and the systematic destruction of life have been made routine, both in this region and potentially beyond.

This should concern everyone who values human rights and the protections that make life possible.

[Helyeh Doutaghi | حليا دوطاقي @Helyeh_Doutaghi]

Today was one of the most horrifying days of my life as an academic. Walking through Iran University of Science and Technology, a top-ranked public university in Iran, I was struck by the devastation. Only last month, this campus was alive with students, bustling between classrooms. Now, parts of the campus lie in ruins, classrooms shattered, hallways choked with dust and shattered glass.

I saw the offices of professors burned. A newly renovated building, where students gathered for programs, for socializing, for life, destructed.

One student, tearfully, told me: “My professor’s office was still burning a little. That’s where I used to wait for office hours. To ask questions. To appeal my grade.”

This is the same university that launched Iran’s Omid and Zafar 2 satellites, symbols of homegrown technological achievement. A week ago, one of its professors was assassinated. Yesterday, they bombed it.

From sanctions to targeted killings, to the bombing of research centers and universities, there’s a clear pattern: de-development & de-industrialisation/ the systematic dismantling of a nation’s indigenous development, its industrial base, its capacity to stand on its own.

We will never forget that as the American and Zionist war criminals blatantly target universities, schools, hospitals/ assassinating professors and killing children, and after 2 years or genocice, western intellectuals are still debating whether or not to pass a symbolic, non-enforceable BDS resolution.

Photos taken by me, full report incoming.

[Farwa Sial @farwasial]

Unsurprising that no economic/social sciences curriculum teaches how people & economies resist and build (Iran,Cuba, Vietnam,North Korea, Yemen, Traore's Burkina Faso). The Resistance Economy has been an actual policy in Iran but no Global South country is taught to emulate it

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

A useful analysis of one under-discussed effect of the war:
Are tensions around Hormuz accelerating de-dollarisation and quietly expanding Yuan financial infrastructure in the Middle East?

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ��� @shanaka86]

BREAKING: The UAE has begun canceling residency visas for all Iranian nationals currently outside the country, including golden visa holders who own property and companies. Iranian schools closed. The Iranian hospital in Dubai shuttered. The consulate ordered to reduce to minimum staff. Repatriation running through Afghanistan via Herat. Iran International confirmed March 28. The IranianUAE portal verified the scope expanded March 27 to include property owners and company registrants with ten-year golden visas.

Here is the insight nobody has written.

For thirty years, Dubai was Iran’s back door to the global financial system. When sanctions locked Tehran out of SWIFT, Iranian money flowed through Dubai’s free zones, currency exchanges, and shadow companies to access dollars Washington denied. The WSJ reported March 5 that the UAE is exploring freezing billions in Iranian-held assets in these structures. Not the $530 billion Tehran Times claimed in propaganda inflation. Billions. Targeted. The arteries of a parallel financial system that kept the Islamic Republic liquid for decades.

The UAE is now cauterising those arteries with visa cancellations and asset freezes.

Iran built two financial operating systems. The first was the Dubai back door: dollar-denominated, SWIFT-adjacent, running through free zones and golden visa holders who served as nodes in a sanctions-evasion network. The second is the Hormuz front door: yuan-denominated, CIPS-routed, running through the Larak toll regime being codified into law. The war is destroying the first and accelerating the second simultaneously.

The dollar back door is closing. Schools shut. Hospital shuttered. Consulate downsized. Visas canceled. Assets frozen. Every currency exchange that processed dollar transactions for sanctioned entities is a target. Every golden visa holder who served as beneficial owner for a shell company is stateless outside the country.

The yuan front door is opening. The Larak toll booth collects in yuan via CIPS. The legislation advances. The IRGC escorts approved vessels. The system does not require Dubai. The system does not require dollars. The system requires only Iranian control of 21 miles of water.

Iran’s financial centre of gravity is migrating from Dubai to Hormuz. From free zones to a chokepoint. From SWIFT-adjacent dollar flows to CIPS-routed yuan flows. From an architecture requiring Emirati hospitality to one requiring only territorial control over water.

The UAE did not intend to accelerate de-dollarisation. It intended to punish Iran. But the punishment eliminates the dollar back door while the war builds the yuan front door. Iran’s financial system is being forcibly migrated from one currency to another by the combined actions of its enemies.

Read this against the intercept count. The UAE has engaged 398 ballistic missiles and 1,872 drones since February 28. The nation absorbing those strikes is dismantling the financial infrastructure its attacker used to survive sanctions for thirty years. The flag of the Islamic Republic has been physically removed from the Iranian hospital building in Dubai.

This is not a visa policy. This is the severing of a financial umbilical cord. And the severing happens at the exact moment Iran is building a replacement cord that runs on yuan through a chokepoint instead of dollars through a free zone.

The financial geography of the Middle East is being redrawn. The kinetic war destroys military targets. The financial war destroys the infrastructure that kept Iran connected to dollars. The replacement, built from necessity at Larak, runs on a different currency entirely.

Dubai was the dollar door. Hormuz is the yuan door. The war closed one and opened the other. Neither side planned it that way.

https://t.co/32ixeQpfif

[Nimer Sultany @NimerSultany]

1. What a huge loss. Professor Walid Khalidi was an intellectual titan. A doyen of modern Arab and Palestinian historians. A pioneer of debunking Zionist fictions, and uncovering historical truth. May he rest in peace.

Here is a reminder of some of his important publications.

[Prof Julia Steinberger @JKSteinberger]

6. IMO it is a mistake to look at this attack from an economic perspective, or straight up imperial-colonial perspective. I think the most explanatory lens is geopolitical, involving the military and political might of Israel over the region.
6/

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

Gaza’s ruins aren’t an anomaly, they’re the blueprint

[Kourosh Ziabari @KZiabari]

A journalist in #Iran: "Some proxy servers still work. Tehran is in its most sorrowful state. My childhood playground has been razed to the ground. Some of the districts I knew don't exist anymore. The worst scenario is playing out."

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

“Zionist ideology selectively invokes scripture to claim primordial ownership, while ignoring that the same scripture explicitly affirms prior Canaanite presence and violent dispossession.”

[Dyab Abou Jahjah @Aboujahjah]

Yesterday, it was difficult to watch two Americans debate who has a claim on our land based on the bible. Let's have a closer look at that biblical claim and what it really meant yesterday and today. It is time to talk about Canaan.
https://t.co/2RjK0fCfze

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

In 1948, my grandparents were violently expelled from our original hometown and forced into a refugee camp in Gaza. In 2024, history repeated itself when my parents were forcibly displaced from Gaza after Israeli soldiers seized and set fire to our family homes.

The refusal to recognise this systematic, decades-long dispossession is a stain on @hrw and a clear violation of fundamental principles of international law, which affirm our rights and guarantee our return.

Kudos to @OmarSShakir for taking a principled and courageous stance.

[Omar Shakir @OmarSShakir]

I've resigned from @hrw after 10+ yrs—most as Israel/Palestine Director—after HRW's new ED pulled a finalized report on the right of return for Palestinian refugees on eve of its release & blocked for weeks its publication in a principled way. Full story: https://t.co/npbjjwBqf5

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

Rafah isn’t “open”! This is the new face of occupation: militarised checkpoints, fronted by international forces under remote Israeli surveillance.
Israel determines who is “eligible” to leave and enter. Only a trickle of the displaced allowed to return.
Gaza remains under brutal siege but with new managers

[Kaja Kallas @kajakallas]

The opening of the Rafah crossing marks a concrete and positive step in the peace plan.

The EU’s civilian mission is on the ground to monitor crossing operations and support Palestinian border guards.

For Gaza’s sick and wounded, the reopening is a lifeline. It will allow families to reunite after far too long apart.

Practical steps like this help move the truce plan forward and must continue. At the same time, Gaza remains in urgent need of aid. Its reconstruction will depend on Hamas' demilitarization.

[Sharif Kouddous شريف عبد القدوس @sharifkouddous]

Israel has killed at least 26 Palestinians and wounded 30 others in attacks across Gaza today. This is happening while everyone talks about Phase Two of the “ceasefire.” Israel has killed over 500 Palestinians since the “ceasefire” went into effect in October.

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

MSF should not have even considered giving the names of its Palestinian staff to Israel, which has executed 1700 health workers in Gaza - including 15 of MSF’s own staff. International agencies have failed miserably in upholding their duty of care to local employees during the genocide.

[MSF International @MSF]

After months of unsuccessful engagement with Israeli authorities, and in the absence of assurances regarding the safety of our staff we have concluded that we will not share a list of Palestinian and international staff with Israeli authorities.

https://t.co/iUJ4kOpmNI

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

The Peace Board's infantilising, colonial mindset laid bare, as Tony Blair tells Gaza's representatives to "stay out of politics" and focus on service provision... Demanding silence from Palestinians while power and violence remain unchallenged https://t.co/Bbpyv64d9B

[Nimer Sultany @NimerSultany]

“Universities are targeted precisely because they sustain Palestinian social and national life... From the obliteration of every university in Gaza to the daily strangulation of academic life in the West Bank, this is an assault on a people’s past, present, and future”

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

Where is the body of detainee Dr. Adnan Al Barsh?
Where is the body of detainee Dr. Iyad Al-Rantisi?
Where are our missing, swallowed by the bombs but not even remembered?
Where are the thousands of bodies under the rubble…

[Dr.Muneer Alboursh د.منيرالبرش @Dr_Muneer1]

بين جثةٍ تُستعاد… وآلاف الجثث تُترك تحت الركام

يعثر جيش الاحتلال على جثة جندي له في غزة،
فتُفتح له السماء الإعلامية،
وتُقرَع طبول الإنسانية،
وتُستدعى كل مفردات الحزن والكرامة و"الحق في الدفن".
طيب…
ونحن؟
أين أسرانا؟
أين جثامين شهدائنا الأسرى في سجون الاحتلال؟
أين جثمان الأسير د. عدنان البرش؟
أين جثمان الأسير د. إياد الرنتيسي؟
أين مفقودونا الذين ابتلعهم القصف ولم يُبتلع ذكرهم؟
أين آلاف الجثامين تحت الركام،
التي لم تجد كفنًا ولا قبرًا ولا عدسة كاميرا تبكيها؟
جندي واحد يهزّ ضمير (العالم الحر)،
وآلاف الأجساد الفلسطينية ما زالت تحت الأنقاض
لا تهزّ إلا الغبار.
هم يبحثون عن جندي،
ونحن نبحث عن أحياء…
ثم نبحث عن موتى…
ثم نبحث عن أثر يدلّ أن هنا كان إنسان.
هم يقيمون خيمة لانتشال جثة،
ونحن نُقيم صلاة الغائب على مدن كاملة.
هم يقولون:
"لن نترك أحدًا خلفنا."
ونحن نقول منذ عام:
لم يتركوا لنا أحدًا أصلًا.
في غزة،
حتى الموتى مُحاصرون،
وحتى الجثامين تُعاقَب،
وحتى تحت الركام لا يُسمح للشهداء أن يكونوا خبرًا عاجلًا.
هذه ليست مفارقة إنسانية…
هذا ميزان عدالة مكسور،
يُساوي بين جثة وجثة،
إلا إذا كانت الجثة فلسطينية…
فهي خارج جدول الاهتمام في (ا��عالم الحر).

Between a Body Recovered… and Thousands Left Under the Rubble

The occupation army finds the body of one of its soldiers in Gaza,
and suddenly the media sky opens,
the drums of “humanity” are beaten,
and every word of grief, dignity, and the “right to burial” is summoned.
Alright…
and what about us?
Where are our prisoners?
Where are the bodies of our martyred detainees in occupation prisons?
Where is the body of detainee Dr. Adnan Al-Barsh?
Where is the body of detainee Dr. Iyad Al-Rantisi?
Where are our missing, swallowed by the bombs but not even remembered?
Where are the thousands of bodies under the rubble,
who found no shroud, no grave, and no camera lens to mourn them?
One soldier shakes the conscience of the (free world),
while thousands of Palestinian bodies remain under the debris,
shaking nothing but the dust.
They search for one soldier.
We search for the living…
then we search for the dead…
then we search for a trace that says:
a human once lived here.
They set up a tent to retrieve one body.
We hold absentee prayers over entire cities.
They say:
“We leave no one behind.”
We’ve been saying for a year:
they didn’t leave anyone for us at all.
In Gaza,
even the dead are besieged,
even the bodies are punished,
and even under the rubble,
martyrs are not allowed to become breaking news.
This is not a humanitarian paradox…
this is a broken scale of justice,
weighing one body against another,
except when the body is Palestinian…
then it is outside the table of concern in the (free world).

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

The Israeli narrative conveniently ignores the fact that over the past five decades, 1/6 of the Palestinian population has been imprisoned under Israel’s military detention system- massive, systemic, arbitrary incarceration of occupied men, women, and children, often accompanied by torture, medical negligence, and deaths in custody. This is the ugly reality of the apartheid state.

[Noga Tarnopolsky נגה טרנופולסקי نوغا ترنوبولسكي @NTarnopolsky]

💥For the first time since 2014, there are no Israeli hostages in Gaza. The story of the quest for Ran Gvili's body has to be heard to be believed.

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

From NEOM to Gaza- yet the same model of megaprojects built to sell an idea, enabling elite profit at the expense of populations and places, and ultimately failing or remaining unmaterialised.

[Financial Times @FT]

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship project is set to be significantly downscaled and redesigned as a review of the massive development nears completion after years of delays and budget overruns. https://t.co/pBAoOSyssz

[Safa Joudeh @SafaJoudeh]

The [Board of Peace] Charter is a stark example of US imperialism masquerading as legality, using unlawful intervention and a commercial framework to advance capitalist, neocolonial interests at the expense of the Palestinian people

[Al-Haq الحق @alhaq_org]

🧵In Trump’s so-called Charter for a US-controlled 'Board of Peace' (BoP), there is no mention of Palestine, the Gaza Strip, or the Palestinian people. The right to self-determination and return is entirely absent. Read on for a breakdown of the charter 👇 /1