The Politic

Yale's Political Publication Since 1947

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The Waterway Holding the World Hostage

Floris Brocklebank

“In general, I’m against war—I’m just against death,” Cyrus Pahlavi told The Politic.

As the grandson of Ashraf Pahlavi, the sister of Iran’s last Shah, who ruled from 1941 to 1979, Pahlavi is no stranger to the turbulence of Iran’s current climate. He spoke of recent protests, widespread blackouts, and the steadily degrading sense of despair among Iranian civilians. 

Yet despite this unrest, Pahlavi remained hopeful for a new era in Iran. That future, he argues, will depend on one channel: the Strait of Hormuz. The waterway is a powerful weapon of the Regime—critical for oil trade connecting the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

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“The Big Beautiful Game”: The 2026 World Cup in Trump’s America 

Eleanor Belinfanti

As the United States prepares to host the 2026 World Cup, the tournament has become entangled in the American politics of immigration enforcement and international perception. The fatal shooting of Renée Good by the United States Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) and the administration’s hardening immigration policies have fueled fears among international fans that the games will reflect not global unity, but a new era of visible state force. In a sport defined by openness and internationalism, the tension between spectacle and exclusion now threatens to shape what the world sees when it looks at America.

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Looksmaxxing, Behind the Manosphere’s Recent Craze

Lucy Dreier

Smashing their faces with hammers, injecting testosterone, and experimenting with unregulated peptides, a growing online subculture of men known as “looksmaxxers” is pushing self-improvement into dangerous territory. Framed as hyper-rational optimization, the movement—rooted in the manosphere—encourages young men to treat their bodies like test subjects in pursuit of mathematically “perfect” features. But psychologists warn that this ceiling-less quest for aesthetic ascension may be less about empowerment and more about deepening insecurity, financial exploitation, and self-harm.

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Operations That Start in the Market: Surgical Survival in Sub-Saharan Africa

William Shiu

It was 1:15 p.m. when Professor Sisay Ade, identified by a pseudonym, received a call from Mbale Regional Hospital that his sister, Kofi, also a pseudonym, 58, had gone into cardiac arrest. With a history of end-stage renal failure and diabetes, Kofi had checked into the Msaba Wing that morning to undergo routine dialysis treatment. Thirty minutes later, her heart abruptly ceased to function. 

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