Nadim Koteich

“Damascus overwhelms and overpowers,” as the Syrian saying goes. With the layers of civilization that have accumulated over the city (Aramean, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Ottoman, French, and beyond) it has enjoyed a unique ability to adapt and evolve for thousands of years, becoming a…

Assad's regime has fallen. Syria’s eternal leader, who left the country brimming with prisons, death, and exile, has been toppled. The Syrians have turned the page on the worst chapter in their country’s modern history. This moment can only be one of overwhelming joy for every mother who lost her…

The Biden administration’s position on the recent developments in Syria, where extremist militias led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Al-Nusra Front) are making gains, seems to suggest more than mere indifference to the chaos unfolding there. True, Türkiye is the primary beneficiary of these…

Three documents offer the only window that grants us a glimpse into what the Middle East policy of President-elect Donald Trump's administration could look like. "The Trump Peace Plan" (also known as the "Deal of the Century") for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the "Abraham Accords"…

Hezbollah deceitfully sensationalizes the ambitions of its opponents, claiming that they are striving for an "Israeli Lebanon." This term is often invoked to frighten the people of Lebanon and force them into a lethal binary choice between Israel and the resistance state. Sheikh Naim Qassem, the…

The assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, preceded and followed by Israeli airstrikes and targeted killings, marks a rare turning point for Lebanon and the entire Middle East. For nearly three decades, Nasrallah embodied Hezbollah’s rise and its transformation into a massive military,…

The claim that Iran has sold out Hezbollah stems purely from political spite and the grudges it provokes. Strategic and geopolitical calculations shape Iran’s relationship with the most prominent formation that grew out of Khomeini's revolutionary ideology, Hezbollah, and its leaders. Regardless of…

To justify the severe blows it has received, Hezbollah and its supporters console themselves with the notion that "we have been sacrificing martyrs for 40 years." The party’s shrewd bi-pronged propaganda game is centered around this theme. Managing the contradictions of its narrative, it glorifies…

The political storm around Donald Trump's visit to Arlington National Cemetery should be understood in the context of the crude political spite we see during presidential election season. Democrats, along with liberal media outlets, have been up in arms over a photo op that Trump took alongside his…

If we set aside the vastly disparate geographic, political, and economic scales of the two countries, we can ask the following question: How can we explain China’s relative success at breaking the shackles of ideology, allowing it to reinvent itself and turn into an economic and political power…