Geopolitical Tensions Escalate Across Several Regions

Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei is an Iranian politician and Muslim cleric. The second eldest child of Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader of Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei served in the Iran–Iraq War from 1987 to 1988, and also reportedly took control of the Basij that was used to suppress the protests over the 2009 election.

Ben Saul is the current Challis Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow.

Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021.

Ali Ardashir Larijani is an Iranian politician and former military officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who has served as Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council since 2025. He served as the speaker of the Parliament of Iran from 2008 to 2020. He has been a member of the Expediency Discernment Council since 2020, having previously served from 1997 to 2008. He filed for candidacy in the 2024 presidential election, but was ultimately disqualified. He previously ran in 2005, but finished in sixth place, and was also disqualified from running in 2021.

Frederic Hauge is a Norwegian environmental activist. He is head of the Bellona Foundation which he co-founded in 1986. Bellona is an international environmental NGO based in countries such as Russia, the United States, Norway and also the European Union.

James David Vance is an American politician and author serving as the 50th vice president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Ohio in the United States Senate from 2023 to 2025.

Hoda Abdel Hamid is a war correspondent with Al Jazeera.

Esmail Baghaei Hamaneh is an Iranian diplomat who is the 14th and current Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran since 3 October 2024. He has previously served as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Office in Geneva from 2018 to 2022.

Rafael Mariano Grossi is an Argentine diplomat. He has been serving as Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since 3 December 2019. He was formerly the Argentine ambassador to Austria, concurrent with Slovenia, Slovakia and International Organisations based in Vienna (2013–2019).

State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom, also known as Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation,, or Rosatom State Corporation, is a Russian state corporation headquartered in Moscow that specializes in nuclear energy, nuclear non-energy goods and high-tech products. It was established in 2007 and comprises more than 350 enterprises, including scientific research organizations, a nuclear weapons complex, and the world's only nuclear icebreaker fleet.

Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch is a British politician who has been serving as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party since November 2024. Badenoch previously worked in the Cabinet for prime ministers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak from 2022 to 2024. She was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for North West Essex, previously Saffron Walden, in 2017.

Joel Kachi Benson is a Nigerian documentary filmmaker and virtual reality content creator. In 2019, he produced Daughters of Chibok, a virtual reality film on the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping. He is the Creative Director of virtual reality film studios VR360 Stories in Lagos, Nigeria.

Giorgia Meloni is an Italian stateswoman and politician who has served as Prime Minister of Italy since October 2022. She is the first woman to hold the office and the head of the third-longest government in the history of the Italian Republic. A member of the Chamber of Deputies since 2006, she has been president of the right-wing to far-right party Brothers of Italy (FdI) since 2014, and was president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party from 2020 to 2025.

The Federal Government of Somalia is the internationally recognised government of Somalia, and the longest running attempt to create a central government in Somalia since the collapse of the Somali Democratic Republic in 1991. It replaced the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia on 20 August 2012 with the adoption of the Constitution of Somalia.