On our way to Damascus’ main Umayyad Square, I meet Abul Hammam, a Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighter, and his cousin Mohammad.

They hug each other tightly, meeting after 15 years apart.

Abul Hammam, 30, originally from Damascus, says he was fighting in Aleppo for years at the beginning of the Syrian revolution where he joined HTS. He has been in Azerbaijan for some years.

I speak to him in Azeri a little.

“Your name is Arabic but you are not Arab. Where are you from?” he asks me.

I cautiously tell him that I am originally from Iran’s West Azerbaijan.

He smiles, saying: “Many of our ancestors are from Balkan and old Soviet Union countries near Iran. I like Iranian people but not the regime. We fought with them.”

He goes on to ask me whether I am a Christian – I smile, trying to avoid talking about religion. He continues: “May I give you a brotherly nice advice? Do you have headscarf?”

I say yes I have it with me.

“I think you will be nicer if you wear it as a Muslim woman,” he says.

Out of respect and for security reasons I take my headscarf and cover a part of my hair similar to how I would wear it in Iran.

“If you bring it further and cover all, it will [be] much better,” Hammam adds.

My answer was an airbase, for the following reasons: Airbases are quite spread out hardened targets, with everything you want to strike spread out over kilometres, and usually protected by hardened shelters, in the case of forward airbases that are likely to be hit first. You can either do this with a lot of high precision weapons, or with a wide area of effect weapons, such as using cluster warheads/submunitions, or even a tactical nuclear weapon in a total war scenario.

The problem with a lot of submunition or cluster munition based weapons, is that the smaller conventional explosive munitions lack the power to seriously damage any hardened shelters, for aircraft, resources or personnel. That’s fine if the airbase is relatively unprotected, but if it’s full of hardened shelters, it poses a serious issue. But Oreshnik is unique in this regard: it is suspected to use kinetic submunitions that travel fast enough and with enough energy to penetrate these hardened shelters and cause damage to them. That’s why I thought Oreshnik would be an ideal weapon to seriously damage forward airbases. It’s a submunition weapon, without the drawbacks of typical submunition weapons.

To support my argument, we’ll be using imagery and data from Iran’s retaliatory strike on Nevatim Airbase during Operation True Promise II. We know that there were 33 observed impacts on the base. So what if, instead of each impact being from a single warhead, it was from a grouping of submunitions with a 175m radius for the grouping. 175m is the estimated damage radius of a Chinese DF-15 SRBM with a submunition warhead, so it’s why I’m using that figure (also I’m lazy and some OSINT guy on twitter already did the math and imagery with that radius). 33 groupings would be the approximately the equivalent of six Oreshnik IRBMs, as each Oreshnik is estimated to carry 6 MIRVs, with six submunitions each. Six Oreshniks would give you 36 groupings, so three more than the Iranian strike. But close enough for this comparison. Now Iran did not use submunitions for the reason I described in the previous paragraph, but we know that reasoning does not apply to Oreshnik, so here we go:

As you can see, we go from singular impacts mostly missing key targets, to getting good coverage over key buildings on the base as a whole. Let’s look at the potential hits in detail:

As for the aircraft shelters in the north west of the base, the strike has gone from hitting none of them, to hitting 9 aircraft shelters within the radius of the cluster strike. And those 9 shelters only required two groupings to take out. Now let’s move on to the F-35 hardened shelters at the heart of the base:

Iran achieved one direct hit here with a couple of near misses. But now with a potential cluster munition strike, 19 of these hardened shelters are hit, along with a couple of other buildings. A huge difference. Now moving on to the aircraft hangars to the east:

Here Iran did manage a some good hits on these hangars, so the difference is not large. But there is full coverage over the hangars, and six large aircraft could have been destroyed if they were unable to get in the air before the strike.

So in conclusion, from the Iranian strike, to a potential Oreshnik strike with six Oreshniks on the same target, we’ve gone from a direct hit on 1 F-35 hardened aircraft shelter and a couple of hits on unprotected hangars to the east, to hitting 19 F-35 shelters, 9 other fighter jet shelters, 5 unprotected hangars (for 33 hangars/shelters total), and 6 large parked aircraft. And that’s if Oreshnik has the same accuracy as Iranian MRBMs. If it has greater accuracy, the same damage could be done with less Oreshniks, or more damage with the same amount. If the Oreshnik was incredibly accurate and always hit it’s mark (very unrealistic, but just for the sake of argument), only one Oreshnik would have been needed to take out those 33 hangars/hardened shelters, as only six groupings were required here. That’s an incredible amount of damage from one conventional missile, to be able to take out 30+ fighter aircraft with one missile, while they are still on the ground. Even if multiple Oreshniks are required for such a strike (which is likely), it’s still a massive amount of damage. This is what Putin means when he says it’s equivalent to a tactical nuclear weapon. Taking out an entire airbase with half a dozen missiles, or even less if they are highly accurate.

This Latin American country is home to approximately 23 million people who identify themselves as Indigenous. On Tuesday, President Claudia Sheinbaum signed a decree recognizing the rights of Mexico’s Indigenous peoples and establishing the Presidential Commission for Justice Plans for Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples.

During the morning press conference at the National Palace, Sheinbaum emphasized the significance of the reform to Article 2 of the Constitution, which was approved in September under the presidency of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and declares Mexico a “multiethnic nation.”

“Today, we will publish the reform in multiple languages, celebrating this International Human Rights Day,” she stated, referencing a law that recognizes 68 Indigenous groups as subjects of public law, granting them legal personality and their own patrimony. Additionally, the reform to Article 2 mandates consultations on projects that may impact the communities of the Indigenous peoples.

The constitutional reform was translated into over 50 indigenous languages ​​thanks to the joint work of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI), the University of Indigenous Languages ​​of Mexico (ULIM) and the National Institute of Indigenous Languages ​​(INALI), the outlet Quadratin reported.

Currently, Mexico is home to approximately 23 million people who identify themselves as Indigenous. Around 7.4 million of them speak a native language, with Nahuatl, Maya, Tzeltal, and Zapotec being the most common. The creation of the Presidential Commission aims to oversee justice plans for Indigenous peoples initiated during AMLO’s administration. To date, Mexico has implemented 17 justice plans benefiting 26 Indigenous peoples across 12 states, reaching approximately 420,000 people with a total investment of US$1.4 billion.

On 10 December 2023, Javier Milei assumed the presidency of Argentina. 12 months later, the far-right outsider who campaigned by lifting a chainsaw over his head arrives at his first year in office with relative economic stability at the expense of millions of new poor and medically retired.

The “chainsaw” model involved cuts that led to tens of thousands of students taking up university studies; social organizations constantly denounced the implementation of hunger policies against vulnerable sectors; the staff of clinics and hospitals mobilized in demand for decent wages and the departure of hundreds of thousands of Argentines to the streets that was appeased through repression, Arbitrary arrests and physical and digital persecution of those who express criticism of the official discourse.

To date, according to the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), at least two people lost their sight during repressions when exercising the right to protest and in a single day 31 people were arrested, without any crime against them being bought at this time. However, the financial sectors are looking favourably on their management and certain economic indicators show a slight improvement, such as a sustained fall in the inflation rate and a matching of parallel dollars to the dollar sold by the State through the central bank.

Inflation: After a peak of 25.5% in December 2023, inflation managed to slow down to 2.7% in October 2024, the lowest figure in three years.

Economic activity: The Argentine economy suffered a strong recession and many sectors such as tourism, industry and commerce suffered significant declines in sales and production.

Wages: Workers’ incomes are below the November 2023 levels, with a 6.8% drop in real terms in the public sector.

Unemployment: The unemployment rate grew to 7.7% in the first quarter of 2024, marking an increase of almost 2% compared to the same period of 2023.

Poverty: Poverty increased to 52.9% in the first half of 2024, reaching almost 25 million people, with this number increasing by four million from 2023.

Retirees: Retirees with minimum assets experienced a 6.6% loss of purchasing power, while those with higher incomes received real increases.

Trade balance: The trade balance recorded a surplus of US$ 21 billion in the first 10 months of 2024, after more than ten years of negative accounts. Since 2008, under the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina has not closed the year with a positive trade balance.

Country risk: The country risk, which is used as a benchmark for borrowing and rating of a nation’s bonds, has declined to less than 1,000 basis points, indicating improved access to international debt markets.

Exchange gap: The gap between the official dollar and the parallel has narrowed to less than 5%, the lowest level since 2019.

Consumption: Private consumption fell by 8.2% year-on-year in the first half of 2024, with indicators such as sales in supermarkets and food consumption showing a sharp decline.