Inside a restored house in central Tehran, toys from every era, from ancient Persia to Soviet Russia and the United States, share the same space, stirring childhood memories from long ago.”I always thought that the target audience would be children and teenagers,” said 46-year-old Azadeh Bayat, founder of the museum, which opened last year after six years of renovations.”But now even adults visit the museum frequently,” she told AFP.Bayat, a researcher in children’s education, has gathered more than 2,000 toys from around the world.”By discovering the toys of their parents and grandparents, children learn to better understand and connect their own world with that of older generations,” she said. In the museum, a clay animal figurine from ancient Persia stood alone in a glass case.Nearby, a group of wooden “matryoshka” dolls, in traditional Russian dress with rosy cheeks, stood on one shelf, gleaming across from brightly painted Soviet tin cars.An Atari console, one of the early versions of video games from the 1980s, sits among the displays.American Barbie dolls, which were once heavily restricted in Iran as a symbol of Western influence, were also on display. Their popularity pushed Iranian authorities to create the modestly dressed “Sara and Dara” dolls as local equivalent in the early 2000s.For Maedeh Mirzaei, a 27-year-old employee in the gold sector, the experience at the museum was nostalgic. “There was so much publicity around the two Iranian dolls, their faces appeared on books and notebooks everywhere,” she said.Across the room, a museum worker demonstrated to a group of visiting schoolchildren the mechanics of a wooden acrobat puppet, known as “Ali Varjeh”, or “Ali the Jumper”, whose movements come to life with the pull of a string.The museum recently held an event themed around the Belgian character Tintin, as well as other shadow puppetry shows. “I remember playing with friends in the street or at home with these toys,” said 31-year-old Mehdi Fathi, a fitness instructor who was visiting the museum.”Some children nowadays may think that our dolls were silly and primitive,” he said.”But those toys helped us grow.”

Iraq will hold parliamentary elections on November 11, with analysts saying Iran will be watching closely as it hopes to retain influence over its neighbour after losing regional leverage during the Gaza war.The past two years have seen Iran-backed groups including Palestinian militants Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Huthis in Yemen suffer heavy losses at Israel’s hands.Iran itself was on the receiving end of an unprecedented Israeli bombing campaign in June, which the United States briefly joined, and also lost a major ally with last year’s overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.Weakened on the regional stage, Iran intends to consolidate its gains in Iraq, which since the US invasion of 2003 has become one of the anchors of its regional influence.Tehran exerts power in Baghdad through Shiite parties that play a key role in appointing prime ministers, including current premier Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, and allied armed factions.”Tehran retains its influence as long as its allies hold decision-making power,” political analyst Ihsan al-Shammari told AFP.Iraq, for its part, has for years navigated a delicate balancing act between Tehran and Washington and has long been a fertile ground for proxy battles.Pro-Iranian groups claimed responsibility for firing on US positions in Iraq early in the Gaza war, attacks that triggered retaliatory strikes from the United States.Those groups then stayed out of the 12-day Iran-Israel war, even after Washington joined the bombing.Analyst Munqith Dagher said that “Iran is no longer in a position to impose its conditions”.”But that does not mean it will not try to exert influence,” the director of the IIACSS think tank added.- ‘Performative act’ -In the 2021 general election, influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr’s faction won the most seats before withdrawing from parliament.The legislature is now controlled by the Coordination Framework, the Iran-aligned coalition that brought Sudani to power.This time, Sadr has refused to participate in what he described as a “flawed election dominated by sectarian, ethnic and partisan interests”, and called on his supporters to boycott the vote.The upcoming elections will be the sixth since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.Nevertheless, enthusiasm for voting appears to be on the wane.Chatham House, a think tank, has predicted that “participation may fall to the lowest level since 2003″.”Iraqis increasingly view elections not as a way to influence policy, but as a performative act with little impact on governance,” it added.More than 21 million voters are eligible to elect 329 lawmakers in the ballot, which will pave the way for the appointment of a new president — a largely ceremonial role — and a prime minister chosen after lengthy negotiations.In Iraq, the role of prime minister traditionally goes to a Shiite and the presidency to a Kurd, while the speaker of parliament is usually Sunni.- US influence -Observers also spoke of the influence of the United States. “There is a real desire on the part of the US to change the domestic political landscape” in order to reduce Iranian influence, former Sudani adviser Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie said.Washington has sanctioned Iraqis accused of helping Tehran evade US sanctions, and also strengthened its economic presence through contracts in oil, technology and healthcare.”Washington expects the next prime minister to deliver tangible steps that limit Iranian influence, regardless of the electoral outcome,” said Tamer Badawi, an analyst with the UK defence think tank RUSI.”The United States does not want to see… Iran-aligned groups retaining operational autonomy,” he told AFP.”Nor does Washington want Iran to use Iraq as a channel to resell oil products or secure access to hard currency,” he added.Washington also maintains about 2,500 troops in Iraq, alongside 900 more in Syria, as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group.Mark Savaya, the new US special envoy to Iraq, insisted on the importance of “a fully sovereign Iraq, free from malign external interference, including from Iran and its proxies”.”There is no place for armed groups operating outside the authority of the state,” he said on X last month.The upcoming election will include the autonomous region of Kurdistan, where the historic rivalry between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan remains fierce.At least 25 percent of parliamentary seats must go to women, according to the quota system that also reserves nine seats for minorities.More than 7,700 candidates, nearly a third of whom are women, are running for election in the country of around 46 million people.

Israel said on Sunday it had received the remains of three additional captives from Hamas as part of the ongoing hostage-prisoner exchange under a US-brokered ceasefire agreement for Gaza.Despite occasional flare-ups, a fragile truce has held in Gaza since October 10 under a deal focused on the return of all Israeli hostages, both living and dead.”Israel has received, through the Red Cross, the coffins of three fallen hostages that were handed over to IDF and Shin Bet forces inside the Gaza Strip,” the prime minister’s office said.An Israeli health ministry spokesperson said later that their bodies had arrived at a national forensic centre “for identification and investigation into the circumstances and cause of death”.Experts from the centre would then meet with the families of the deceased “to discuss and elaborate on the findings”, the spokesperson said.Hamas’s armed wing said it had found the remains earlier on Sunday “along the route of one of the tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip”.Hamas had been holding 48 hostages in Gaza, including 20 confirmed alive, when the ceasefire was announced.Since the start of the truce, Hamas has released the surviving hostages and begun handing over the remains of 28 deceased captives.Of the latter, it has so far returned 17 — including 15 Israelis, one Thai national, and one Nepali.Israel has accused Hamas of dragging its feet in returning the bodies, while the Palestinian group says the process is slow because many remains are buried beneath Gaza’s rubble.It has repeatedly called on mediators and the Red Cross to provide it with the necessary equipment and personnel to recover the bodies.Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement that the handover on Sunday showed that the group “was making every effort to return the bodies as quickly as possible”.  An Israeli campaign group representing the families of hostages urged the government to act decisively to ensure all the deceased are brought home.”The Hostage Families demand that the prime minister act with determination and firmness in order to bring about the immediate realisation of Hamas’s commitments under the agreement and to return all of the deceased hostages to Israel’s hands,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.- ‘Life is impossible’ -In addition to returning the bodies of the 17 hostages, Hamas has also handed over partial remains of a hostage whose body was recovered by the Israeli army last year.That incident sparked outrage in Israel, which accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire agreement by returning only partial remains instead of a complete body of another hostage.”We call for the return of all 11 deceased hostages who have still not been returned to Israeli soil,” Inbal Bachar, aunt of Sahar Baruch, whose remains were handed over earlier this week, said during Baruch’s funeral on Sunday.”We cannot continue our lives until they all return,” she said, according to a statement issued by the forum.In Gaza, Palestinians have been hoping that an Israeli military withdrawal will follow the truce and bring an end to their ordeal.”We want the second phase of the agreement to begin so that we can return to our homes,” said Naif al-Sulaibi, a resident of Jabalia in northern Gaza.”As long as the Yellow Line and the army remain here, life is impossible and conditions will stay unbearable,” he added, referring to the de facto boundary marking Israeli military positions inside Gaza.The implementation of the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan has yet to be agreed, particularly as it concerns disarming Hamas, establishing a transitional authority and deploying an international stabilisation force in Gaza.