By JOSEPH DAHER*

Israel has failed to achieve its primary goals in Gaza of destroying Hamas and ethnically cleansing the population, and has been discredited and delegitimized globally as a genocidal, colonialist and apartheid state.

The ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, which has waged a genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza for more than a year, poses strategic questions for the Palestinian liberation struggle and those in solidarity with it. Until now, the dominant strategy has been to cultivate an alliance with Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance” to support military attacks on Israel, but this Axis has suffered devastating setbacks from the combined might of Israel and the United States.

Israel’s repeated assassinations of Iranian leaders and direct attacks on Iran itself have exposed the weaknesses and challenges Iran faces in the region. Tel Aviv’s brutal war on Lebanon has significantly damaged Hezbollah, the crown jewel of Iran’s Axis, and collectively punished the Lebanese people, particularly Hezbollah’s base among the country’s Shia population. The fall of Iran’s other close regional ally, Bashar al-Assad, has further undermined the Axis. Only the Houthis in Yemen survived the onslaught relatively intact.

It is clear that Israel has not achieved its main objectives in Gaza of destroying Hamas and ethnically cleansing the population, and has been discredited and delegitimized globally as a genocidal, colonialist and apartheid state. However, the strategy of military resistance to Israel based on Axis support has shown its limitations, if not its inability to achieve liberation. So what have we learned about the Axis? What is its future? What do the masses in the region think of the Axis? What is the alternative to the military strategy against Israel? How should the international left position itself in these strategic debates?

Origins and development of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance”

In the 2000s, the Iranian regime expanded its influence in the Middle East, primarily through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It took advantage of the defeat suffered by the United States and its allies in the so-called War on Terror in the Middle East and Central Asia. George W. Bush's ambition for regional regime change was stymied by resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran secured allies in several of Iraq's Shia Islamic fundamentalist parties and militias and their representatives in state institutions, becoming the most influential regional power in the country.

Iran has also increased its influence in Lebanon primarily through its alliance with Hezbollah, which grew in popularity following its resistance to Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon. Since the mid-1980s, Tehran has supported Hezbollah by providing it with funding and weapons. In the 2010s, the Iranian regime also strengthened its relations with other organizations in the region, particularly the Houthi movement in Yemen, especially after Saudi Arabia's 2015 war on the country. Since then, Iran has provided military support to the Houthis. In addition, Tehran has formed a close alliance with Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Iran's regional alliance reached its peak in the late 2010s, with Hezbollah dominating the political scene in Lebanon, Iraqi militias asserting their power, Iran's own forces combined with Hezbollah's in supporting Assad's counterrevolution in Syria, and the Houthis securing a truce with Saudi Arabia. The IRGC has been the main agent in consolidating the Axis. It is to some extent a state within a state in Iran, combining military force, political influence, and control over a large sector of the national economy. It has carried out armed interventions in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

Seeking regional power, not liberation

Iran has been trying to achieve a regional balance of power against Israel and the US, as well as to pursue its own military and economic objectives in the region. The regime views any challenge to its influence in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and the Gaza Strip, whether from below by popular forces or from Israel, other regional powers and the US, as a threat to its interests. Its policies are entirely driven by its state and capitalist interests, not by any liberatory project.

This explains why Iran and its Axis allies oppose not only other antagonistic powers, but also popular struggles for democracy and equality. The Iranian regime denies its workers basic rights to organize, bargain collectively, and strike. It crushes any protests, arresting and imprisoning dissidents, tens of thousands of whom languish as political prisoners in the country’s jails. The regime imposes nationwide oppression on the Kurds, as well as on people in Sistan and Balochistan, repeatedly provoking resistance, most recently in 2019. It also subjects women to systematic oppression, creating conditions so intolerable that they sparked the mass “Women, Life, Freedom” movement in 2022.

Tehran also opposes popular protests against its Axis allies. It condemned mass protests in Lebanon and Iraq in 2019, saying the United States and its allies were behind them in spreading “insecurity and unrest.” In Syria, Iran has provided its forces, fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Hezbollah militants as ground troops, while Russia has deployed its air force to support Assad’s brutal counterrevolution against the democratic uprising in 2011.

Iran’s Axis allies have also crushed popular movements. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has worked with the rest of the country’s ruling parties, despite their differences, to oppose social movements that challenged its sectarian and neoliberal order. For example, they rallied against the Lebanese Intifada of October 2019. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed that the uprising was financed by foreign powers and sent party members to attack protesters.

In Iraq, militias and parties allied with Iran, such as the Popular Mobilization Units, have cracked down on popular struggles. They have launched a violent campaign of assassination and repression against civilian protesters, organizers, and journalists, killing hundreds and injuring thousands. Both Hezbollah and the Iraqi militias justified their crackdown on protests in 2019 by claiming that they were the pawns of foreign powers. In reality, these were the expressions of aggrieved people fighting for legitimate demands to reform their countries, not executing some hidden agenda of another state. This is why activists raised slogans such as “No Saudi Arabia, No Iran” and “No US, No Iran.”

Truth be told, Iran is not a principled or consistent opponent of US imperialism. For example, Iran collaborated with US imperialism in its invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran is also not a reliable ally of Palestinian liberation. For example, when Hamas refused to support the Assad regime and its brutal suppression of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Iran cut off its financial assistance to the Palestinian movement.

That changed after Ismael Haniya replaced Khaled Meshaal as Hamas leader in 2017, restoring closer relations between the Palestinian movement, Hezbollah and Iran. But schisms between Iran and the Palestinians remain, especially on the issue of Syria. Large sections of Palestinians in the occupied territories and elsewhere celebrated the fall of Iran’s ally Assad, who was widely seen as a murderous tyrant and enemy of the Palestinians and their cause.

Furthermore, Hamas’ alliance with Iran has been criticized by segments of Palestinians in Gaza, even those close to Hamas’s base. For example, a group of Palestinians tore down a billboard in Gaza City in December 2020 featuring a giant portrait of the late General Qassem Soleimani, who commanded Iran’s Quds Force, just days before the first anniversary of his death. Washington’s airstrike that killed Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020 was condemned by Hamas, and Haniyeh even traveled to Tehran to attend his funeral.

This group of Palestinians denounced Soleimani as a criminal. Several other posters and banners bearing Soleimani’s portrait were also vandalized. In just one video, an individual called the Iranian leader a “murderer of Syrians and Iraqis.”

All this demonstrates that Iran and its allies have played a counterrevolutionary role in several countries in the region, opposing popular protests for democracy, social justice and equality. They have never been an Axis of Resistance, but an alliance committed to the self-preservation of its members and the assertion of regional power.

The axis of limitation

This reality was confirmed by Iran’s response to Hamas’s October 7 attack and Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. While the Iranian regime affirmed its support for Hamas and the Palestinians, it consistently sought to avoid any all-out war with Israel and the US out of concern for its survival in power. Because of this, Iran has restrained its response to Israel’s repeated attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria and its assassinations of senior Iranian officials, including in Iran itself.

Tehran initially attempted to pressure the United States by ordering pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria to attack American bases in Syria, Iraq, and, to a lesser extent, Jordan. However, following the US airstrikes in February 2024, Iran reduced such attacks to a minimum. Only the Houthis in Yemen continued to target commercial shipping in the Red Sea and launch a few missiles at Israel.

Iran has conducted direct military operations against Israel for the first time since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, but always in a calculated manner designed to avoid any all-out confrontation. Every exchange between the two powers has proven this. In April 2024, Iran launched Operation True Promise in response to Israel’s missile attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus on April 1, which killed sixteen people, including seven IRGC members and the commander of the Quds Force in the Levant, Mohammad Reza Zahedi.

Before Iran retaliated, it gave its allies and neighbors 72 hours’ warning to give them time to secure their airspace. Given this warning, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates helped defuse the attack by sharing intelligence with Israel and the United States. The Saudi and Iraqi governments also allowed U.S. Air Force tankers to remain in their airspace to support U.S. and allied patrols during the operation.

Only after all this did Iran launch three hundred drones and missiles at Israel, but this attack was largely symbolic and calculated to avoid causing real damage. The drones took hours to reach their destination and were easily identified and shot down. Most importantly, Iran did not call on its allies like Hezbollah to join its attack. After the operation, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council declared that no further military action was planned and that it considered the matter “closed.”

In other words, Iran carried out the attack primarily to save face and deter Israel from continuing its attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. In doing so, the Iranian regime made it clear that it wanted to avoid a regional war with Israel and especially any direct confrontation with the US. Iran acted primarily to protect itself and its network of allies in the region.

Tehran then launched a second strike of nearly 200 missiles against Israel on October 1 to “avenge” the assassinations of Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. While this was certainly an escalation on Iran’s part, it was entirely designed to avoid losing credibility among its allies and Lebanese supporters of Hezbollah. Once again, the strike was limited and done in a way that minimized confrontation with Israel and the US.

It proved so unconvincing as a deterrent that on October 26, Israel launched three more waves of strikes against Iran’s air defense systems, around energy sites and missile manufacturing facilities. Tel Aviv also wanted to bomb Iranian nuclear and oil facilities, but was restrained by the US. Several Arab countries, with which Israel has direct or indirect relations, also refused to let Israeli bombers and missiles fly over their territory. Nevertheless, the strikes revealed Iran’s vulnerability.

Its regional allies were similarly exposed, both in their weakness and in their restraint in response to Israel’s genocidal war. Although Hezbollah launched attacks in northern Israel, these were again limited and largely symbolic. And Israel called its bluff. It responded with a brutal state terror attack by detonating rigged pagers carried by Hezbollah cadres, killing countless civilians in the process. It also launched a brutal war in southern Lebanon, decimating Hezbollah as a military force and collectively punishing its supporters in the Shia population. As a result, Hezbollah was significantly weakened.

Furthermore, Iran lost its other key ally, the Assad regime in Syria, when its forces overthrew his regime almost without a fight. Assad has never been an ally of the Palestinian liberation struggle. His regime has maintained peace on its borders with Israel, and in its counterrevolutionary war in Syria, it has attacked Palestinians in the Yarmouk refugee camp and elsewhere. This is why large sections of the Palestinians celebrated the fall of the Syrian regime.

With Assad’s fall, however, Iran has lost its Syrian base for logistical coordination, weapons production, and arms shipments throughout the region, especially to Hezbollah. All of this has significantly weakened Tehran, both internally and regionally. This is why Iran has an interest in destabilizing Syria after the regime’s fall by fomenting sectarian tensions through its remaining networks in the country. It does not want a stable Syria, especially one with which its regional rivals can form an alliance.

Iran's only ally that remains relatively intact is the Houthis in Yemen. Prior to the ceasefire, Israel repeatedly bombed Houthi forces in an attempt to weaken them and the Axis of Iran. In December 2024, Tel Aviv stepped up its campaign of attacks on Houthi-controlled ports in Hodeida, al-Salif, and Ras Isa to undermine their economic base, which is derived from port taxes, customs duties, and oil shipments, reduce their military capabilities, and block Iranian arms shipments.

Israel also wanted to stop Houthi attacks on merchant ships in support of Hamas and the Palestinians. They disrupted shipping at the Bab el-Mandeb passage between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a passage through which up to 15 percent of global maritime trade passes.

As a direct result, Egypt lost considerable revenue as international shipping was diverted from the Suez Canal to other routes. The southern Israeli port of Eilat was also paralyzed. In response to this threat to global capitalism, the US, Britain and Israel launched missile strikes and bombing campaigns against Houthi targets.

Although Iran promised to retaliate against Israel, it ultimately did little, again wanting to avoid any direct war with Israel and the US. All of this demonstrates that Iran’s main geopolitical goal is not to liberate the Palestinians, but to use them as leverage, especially in its relations with the United States.

Likewise, Iran's passivity in response to Israel's war on Lebanon and its assassination of Hezbollah's top political and military leaders has further demonstrated that its first priority is to protect its own geopolitical interests and the survival of its regime. This includes achieving a modus vivendi with the US itself. Indeed, the main goal of President Massoud Pezeshkian and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is to reach some kind of agreement with Washington, to get it to lift the crippling sanctions on its economy and normalize relations with the United States.

Iran, Russia and the search for multipolarity

At the same time, Iran’s weakened position has driven it deeper into Russia’s arms in an attempt to protect its regime. It recently signed a 20-year “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement” with Moscow promising cooperation in trade, military projects, science, education, culture and more. The agreement includes a clause promising that neither country would allow its territory to be used for any action that would threaten the other’s security, nor would it provide any aid to any party that attacks either country.

The deal involves cooperation against Ukraine, efforts to evade Western sanctions and collaboration on the North-South Transport Corridor, Moscow’s initiative to facilitate trade between Russia and Asia. Even before the deal, Iran was selling drones to Russia to attack Ukraine, while Russia was selling advanced SU-35 fighter jets to Iran.

The fall of Assad and the return of Donald Trump to the US presidency certainly accelerated the finalization of the partnership agreement. But it was mainly a result of the growing challenges faced by both countries in recent years. As noted, Tehran has suffered a tremendous setback in the Middle East, while Moscow’s failure to achieve total victory in its imperialist war against Ukraine has undermined its geopolitical position. And both states are suffering the consequences of unprecedented Western sanctions.

Each country is desperate to find a way out of its predicament. Their agreement is part of that effort. It promises to “contribute to an objective process of shaping a new, just and sustainable multipolar world order.” This language of “multipolarity” is a cornerstone of Russian, Chinese and Iranian geopolitical strategy. It is used to justify their own capitalist economy, imperialist or sub-imperialist policies and reactionary social programs.

Unfortunately, some leftist figures and movements have adopted their rhetoric, promoting a vision of a multipolar system in opposition to what they see as a US-dominated unipolar world. In reality, the emergence of more major and regional powers and a multipolar world of capitalist states is not an alternative to unipolarity, but a new and frankly more dangerous stage of global imperialism. While Washington’s unparalleled rule has been horrific, the growing inter-imperial conflict between the US, China, Russia and regional powers such as Iran risks a world war. Recall that the last multipolar world order triggered World Wars I and II, when rival imperialist states fought for hegemony over global capitalism.

Furthermore, great powers such as China and Russia that advocate multipolarity offer no alternative for the Global South or for the working class and oppressed peoples around the world. They are capitalist states whose economic policies reinforce old patterns of underdevelopment; they deindustrialize developing countries, lock them into extracting and exporting raw materials to China, and then consuming finished products imported mainly from China. While the ruling classes of these developing countries may benefit from this arrangement, the working class and the oppressed suffer unemployment, precarity, and environmental devastation.

More generally, China, Russia and the rest of the so-called BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and others) do not in any way challenge the Global North’s hegemony over institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, nor its neoliberal structure. In fact, the BRICS states are actually seeking what they see as their rightful place at the global capitalist table.

The expansion of BRICS proves that it is not an alternative. In January 2024, its new members invited to join include Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. No one in their right mind can claim, for example, that the state of Argentina, ruled by the deranged devotee of Ayn Rand and Donald Trump, Javier Milei, offers a solution for the Global South, its workers and oppressed. In reality, the BRICS states do not challenge the global capitalist system, but fight for their share of the pie within it.

It is therefore a disastrous mistake for any section of the left to side with one camp of imperialist and capitalist states against another. This does nothing to advance anti-imperialism, let alone the struggles of workers and oppressed people in any state. Our political orientation should not be guided by a zero-sum choice between unipolarity versus multipolarity. In all situations, we must side with the exploited and oppressed and their struggle for liberation, not with their exploiters and oppressors.

Those on the left who imitate the call of Russia, China and Iran for a multipolar order align themselves with capitalist states, their ruling classes and authoritarian regimes, betraying solidarity with the struggles of the popular classes within them. Supporting these struggles does not and should not imply support for US imperialism and its allies. Our solidarity should not be with any of the camps of capitalist states, but with the workers and the oppressed. Of course, each camp of states will try to turn these struggles to its advantage. But this danger cannot become an alibi for withholding solidarity with legitimate struggles for emancipation.

If internationalism—the hallmark of being on the left—is to mean anything today, it must imply supporting the popular classes in all countries as an absolute duty, regardless of which camp they are in. Such struggles are the only way to challenge and replace repressive and authoritarian policies. This is true in the US as well as in China or any other country.

We must oppose any regime’s cynical slander that legitimate protest is the result of foreign interference or a challenge to its sovereignty. That is the politics of right-wing nationalism, not socialist internationalism.

Against imperialism and sub-imperialism, for emancipation from below

Such an approach is essential, especially with the reconfiguration of regional power in the Middle East and the return of Donald Trump to power in the US. Iran and its Axis have been dramatically weakened. The US, Israel and their allies are now emboldened. Iran’s position in future negotiations with Donald Trump is weakened, and its economy continues to deteriorate under sanctions and its own capitalist crisis.

Faced with this situation, Tehran is likely to reconsider its regional strategy. It could conclude that its best option may be to acquire nuclear weapons to strengthen its deterrence capabilities and improve its position in future negotiations with the United States.

The left, especially in the US and Europe, must oppose any further belligerence by Israel and the US against Iran or any other regional power. We must also oppose their economic war against Iran through sanctions, which disproportionately impacts the working classes in the country. No one on the left should support the US state and its Western allies; they remain the greatest opponents of progressive social change in the world.

However, we should not fall into the “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” policy and support Washington’s main imperial rival, China, nor lesser enemies like Russia. They are no less predatory and greedy imperialist states, as Beijing’s record in Xinjiang and Hong Kong attests, as well as Moscow’s similar brutality in Syria and Ukraine. No one on the left should support the authoritarian, neoliberal, and patriarchal Iranian regime and its reactionary and repressive policies against its own people and those in other countries like Syria.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is an enemy of the working classes in Iran and the region and is not fighting for the emancipation of its people. The same goes for Iran’s allies, such as Hezbollah in the region, who have played a counter-revolutionary role in their respective countries. And as its record during Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza proves, neither Iran nor any other force in the so-called “Axis of Resistance” has genuinely come together to fight for the liberation of Palestine. Iran, in particular, has only opportunistically used the Palestinian cause as leverage to achieve its broader goals in the region.

In the current situation, US imperialism is likely to benefit in the short term from the weakening of Iran and its regional network. At the same time, the crisis of capitalism in the region remains unresolved, inequality continues to grow, and with it, grievances among workers and the oppressed are growing by the day. All of this will continue to produce explosive struggles, as has been the case in the last decade and a half. Therefore, in opposing the US and other regional imperialisms and powers, our solidarity must be with popular struggles that expand the democratic space for the popular classes to self-organize and constitute a counterpower to their own ruling classes and their imperial sponsors.

What is the path forward for Palestinian liberation?

Only such a strategy has the chance to transform the existing order in the region in a progressive and democratic way. It is also the cornerstone of an alternative strategy for Palestinian liberation to the failed Axis dependency on Iran.

As the past year has proven, Israel relies not only on the United States, its imperial sponsor, to defend its colonial rule, but also on all neighboring states. All of them have either normalized relations with Israel, reached de facto mutual recognition agreements, or offered, at best, a self-serving, inconsistent and unreliable opposition.

Furthermore, Washington’s rivals, China and Russia, have proven to be unreliable. They invest in Israel, offer only token criticism, and agree with the two-state solution proposed but never implemented by US imperialism, a false solution that, if enacted, would at best ratify Israeli conquest and apartheid. As a result, Palestinians cannot look to any of the regional states or any imperialist power as reliable allies in their liberation struggle.

But the Palestinians alone cannot win liberation. Israel is a great economic and military power far superior to the Palestinians. And unlike South Africa, apartheid, which depended on and exploited black workers, Israel does not depend on Palestinian labor. It does not play a fundamental role in its process of capital accumulation.

In fact, Israel’s historical goal as a settler colonial project has been to replace Palestinian labor with Jewish labor. Therefore, Palestinian workers alone do not have the power to overthrow the apartheid regime, just as black South African workers did.

So who are the natural and reliable allies of the Palestinians in the struggle for liberation? The popular classes of the region. Given their own history of colonial rule, the overwhelming majority identify with the Palestinian struggle. Furthermore, Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine has driven its people into all neighboring states as refugees, cementing ties between the peoples of the region. Finally, the masses in the Middle East and North Africa oppose their own governments’ collaboration with or false resistance to Israel.

Thus, the popular classes of the region are collectively oppressed by the state system, their interests in challenging this system are intertwined, and they possess tremendous power to shut down their economies, including the oil industry – a power that can undermine the entire world economy. These facts promote regional solidarity from below based on tremendous power capable of winning collective liberation against the regional state system. This is more than just potential.

Over the past century, the dialectical relationship between Palestinian liberation and regional popular struggle has been demonstrated time and again. When Palestinians resist, their struggle has triggered regional struggles, and these struggles have fed back into the struggle in occupied Palestine. The power and potential of this regional strategy has been demonstrated on numerous occasions. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Palestinian movement sparked a rise in class struggle across the region. In 2000, the Second Intifada ushered in a new era of resistance, inspiring a wave of organizing that finally exploded in 2011 with revolutions from Tunisia to Egypt to Syria.

Similarly, inspired by these revolutionary uprisings a few months later, tens of thousands of refugees organized protests in May 2011 at the closest point to the Palestinian borders in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip to commemorate the Nakba and demand the right of return. Hundreds of Palestinian refugees residing in Syria managed to penetrate the Golan Heights barriers and enter Palestine, waving Palestinian flags and the keys to their Palestinian homes. Predictably, Israeli forces violently suppressed these demonstrations, killing ten near the Syrian border, another ten in southern Lebanon, and one in Gaza.

In the summer of 2019, Palestinians in Lebanon held weeks of mass protests in refugee camps against the Labor Ministry’s decision to treat them as foreigners, an act they saw as a form of discrimination and racism against them. Their resistance helped inspire the broader Lebanese uprising of October 2019.

This story demonstrates the potential of a regional revolutionary strategy. A united uprising has the power to transform the entire Middle East and North Africa, toppling regimes, ousting imperialist powers, and ending the support of both forces for the state of Israel, weakening it in the process. Far-right minister Avigdor Lieberman recognized the danger that regional popular uprisings posed to Israel in 2011 when he said that the Egyptian revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak and opened the door to a period of democratic openness in the country was a greater threat to Israel than Iran.

This regional revolutionary strategy must be complemented in the capitalist metropolises by working class solidarity against their imperialist rulers. This is not an act of charity, but in the interests of those classes whose tax dollars are diverted from desperately needed social and economic programs to support Israel and whose lives are routinely wasted in imperial wars and interventions to reinforce Israel and the existing state order in the region.

But such solidarity will not happen automatically; the Left must cultivate it politically and agitate for it in practice. The most important task of the Left is to win unions, progressive groups and movements to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel to end imperialist political, economic and military support for Tel Aviv. Such anti-imperialist struggle and solidarity can weaken the imperialist powers, Israel and all other despotic regimes in the region, opening up space for mass popular resistance from below.

This regional and international revolutionary strategy is the alternative to dependence on the so-called Axis of Resistance in Iran. It has failed. We now need to build a genuine axis of resistance from below: the popular classes in Palestine and the region supported by anti-imperialist solidarity in all major power states rooted in the popular struggles of the workers against their ruling classes. Only through such a strategy can we build the counterpower to liberate Palestine, the region and our world from the clutches of imperialism and the global capitalist system behind it.

*Joseph Daher is a professor of political science. Author of, among other books, Syria after the Uprisings (Pluto).

Translation: Sean Purdy.

Originally published on the website Tempest Magazine.

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