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Who Are You, Iran? The Collage of Conflicting Powers and Interests

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 By  Professor Michael Shlomi June 2026 Michael Shlomi is a policy analyst specializing in geopolitical and diplomatic affairs with a focus on the Middle East EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Iran presents the world — and the United States in particular — with a carefully constructed image of unified sovereign authority. A single leadership, a coherent state, a government that speaks and acts with one voice. This image is a strategic fiction. Beneath the surface of the Islamic Republic lies a deeply fractured polity: a collage of competing factions, rival institutions, conflicting ideologies, and irreconcilable agendas — each pulling the country in a different direction. This analysis maps those factions, examines their internal dynamics, and draws the critical policy implication: that any diplomatic agreement reached with Iran’s current negotiating representatives may be structurally incapable of binding the forces that actually govern the country. Understanding who Iran really is may b...
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"He saw his glory" Whose glory? John 12:37-45 does NOT claim that "Jesus is Yahweh"

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“Deity of Christ” believers have claimed that Isaiah saw Jesus, the “second person of the Godhead”, in Isaiah’s vision of God recorded in Isaiah 6. The deity-of-Christ claim is that John 12:41, “Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him” means that when Isaiah saw God sitting on his throne in a vision, Isaiah saw Jesus.  For video/podcast version, click here . There are many interpretive problems that the deity of Christ claim creates, e.g., why didn’t Isaiah see the trinity or the Father on the throne? Israel’s God is the Father (Exo. 4:22, Deut. 32:6, Mal. 2:10, John 8:54, etc.). The prophet Isaiah – he himself who saw the vision - declares several times that Israel’s God is the Father. For example, two times in Isaiah 63:16, and also 64:8: “You, O LORD, are our Father.”   But the key interpretive error in the deity-of-Christ claim is that John 12:41 “Isaiah… saw his glory” does not refer to the Lord God’s glory, but to the glory of the Servant of the Lord...
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Dwelt in Us, or Dwelt Among Us? John 1:14 (part 2)

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"And the Word became flesh and dwelt in us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of a unique son with a father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). In a previous podcast we noted that “the Word became flesh” can be interpreted as a metaphorical declaration. Based on Old Testament parallels and Jesus’s “flesh” being the topic again in John 6, “the Word became flesh” means that the man Christ Jesus, the Word, became God’s provision for restoration and eternal life.   In another previous podcast/article called, “The Word BECAME Flesh? Why John 1:14 does NOT say God became man" I gave reasons why John 1:14 does not say God became man. Now, in this podcast I want to focus on a few additional interpretive issues of specific words in John 1:14 that mainstream Christians interpret as evidence that God became man.   The Meaning of "Dwelt" (ἐσκήνωσεν)   The first issue concerns the verb translated "dwelt" (ἐσκήνωσεν, eskḗnōsen ), the aorist activ...
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What about John 1? (What John 1:1-4 Means)

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  The first verses of John’s Gospel introduce the Gospel of John. I know, crazy, right!   This article interprets the first four verses of the Gospel of John as part of an introduction to the Gospel of John, not as an introduction to or summary of Genesis creation. John 1:1a John’s Gospel starts out “In the beginning” (1:1a), John’s beginning is a parallel to Genesis 1:1, but is not a direct reference to or a commentary on the Genesis creation. John’s Gospel introduces a new “beginning” in the life and ministry (that is, the gospel) of the human person Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of John elsewhere used “the beginning” to refer to the beginning of Jesus Gospel, e.g., Jesus says in John 15:27, “and you also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning” (cf. 8:25, 16:4). [1]   “In the beginning was the Word” The human person Jesus is metaphorically called the Word because through Jesus God spoke and worked to bring about the ongoing new creati...
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