Mustafa Fahs

The Coordination Framework’s nomination of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to head the government has exposed a major crisis of Shiite politics in Iraq. This crisis cannot be reduced to a struggle for political power, influence, or wealth. Rather, it reflects a deeper conflict that reflects…

The existential challenges facing the Iranian regime will end with this wave of protests or their suppression. They would not be overcome if negotiations with Washington succeed and a strike is averted either. Recent developments are the culmination of problems that have been accumulating for years…

It is too early to judge whether Iran’s president can contain the anger on the streets. The protest movement that erupted days ago in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar — triggered by the collapse of the Iranian currency — quickly spread to universities, some state-run industrial facilities, and other cities. …

In the 22 years that passed between September 11, 2001, and October 7, 2023, many things changed and much remained the same in Iraq. It continued to occupy a crucial geopolitical position, and the nature of its politics changed. After 9/11, Iraq became the arena for a globalization of regional…

Lebanese equivocation is a chronic existential threat engendered by successive periods of subjugation and occupation. These factors have generated two discourses: both considered “patriotic” by those who espouse them but irreconcilable. Together they encapsulate Lebanon’s divisions over major and…

The reformist and conservative wings of Iran’s political elite and ruling class converge around former Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Driven by imperial aspirations to retrieve Iran’s historical strategic orbit, the 1979 regime developed its geopolitical narrative by fusing imperial and…

Lebanese people - especially southerners - tied their anxiety about the possibility of war to the period following the visit of Pope Leo XIV, assuming that the countdown would begin once he departed. Some residents of the South and the southern suburbs began preparing to relocate beyond what was…

The advisor to the Iranian Supreme Leader, Dr. Ali Velayati, went to extreme lengths in trivializing the lives of Lebanese people. He borrowed from religious text books to narrowly tailor his conception of the situation to his ideological priorities, disregarding the lived experience of the…

Armies exist to defend national borders and prevent adversaries from occupying their country. The Lebanese Army is no different; it has the same duties as all other armies. Lebanon is currently being subjected to daily Israeli strikes, and these cannot be called anything but assaults. Whatever the…

The Iranian citizen Ahmad al-Baldi and Tunisia’s Mohamed Bouazizi share many commonalities that neither the vast distance, nor the complex differences of the two countries’ political dynamics, nor borders, nor their ideological, ethnic, or linguistic differences can erase. The two young men,…