Sardar Aziz is a senior adviser in the Kurdish parliament as well as a researcher and writer. His areas of interest include civil-military relations, Middle East regional politics, and governing. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the University College Cork.
Brief Analysis
The concept of the civilizational state helps explain how Iran is challenging the liberal international system and weakening Iraqi sovereignty.
When a part of the Taq Kasra archeological site—also known as Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian and Sassanian Persian empires—fell down in Iraq at the beginning of the year, Iran expressed its readiness to help rebuild it.