World roundup: February 25 2026
Stories from Iran, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cuba, and elsewhere
PROGRAMMING NOTE: I am sending out tonight’s roundup without a voiceover due to a bit of chaos we’re experiencing at FX headquarters at the moment. If we get that under control I will try to record a voiceover and send it out later so keep an eye out for it on your podcast feeds.
TODAY IN HISTORY
February 25, 628: Sasanian Persian nobles overthrow Emperor Khosrow II in favor of his son, Kavadh II, who promptly had his brothers and his father executed. Khosrow was on the verge of losing the 602-628 war against the Byzantines, which had begun very promisingly for the Sasanians but fell apart beginning with Khosrow’s ill-advised 626 siege of Constantinople. One of Kavadh’s first actions as emperor was to make peace with Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, after which his brutality toward the rest of his family plunged the Sasanian Empire into a civil war from which it never fully recovered.
February 25, 1943: The World War II Battle of Kasserine Pass, in central Tunisia, ends in an Axis tactical victory but a strategic stalemate.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
At least four people were killed in clashes between security forces and Saraya al-Jawad militants in northwestern Syria’s Latakia province on Tuesday. Saraya al-Jawad was formed last year by Suheil al-Hassan, a former high ranking officer in the Syrian military under Bashar al-Assad, and represents the first really organized militant group to emerge from elements of that regime. That Al Jazeera piece suggests some sort of connection between its activities and recent Islamic State attacks in the eastern part of Syria, but the case for that seems extraordinarily thin.
