Sam Menassa

The Houthi attacks on Saudi airports and passenger terminals go beyond political messaging. They endanger civilians and strike at security and economic life. This escalation by an armed group outside the state raises a question larger than how to stop the attacks: can it be treated as a…

Operation Dawn of Yemen, launched last week by Yemeni government forces with air support from the Saudi-led coalition, aims to recover the institutions of the state and end Houthi control of Sanaa. It raises a question that goes beyond military confrontation to the capacity of international and…

Mocha is not on Lebanon’s border, nor does Mayun Island overlook the eastern Mediterranean. Yet Houthi control over both could have direct repercussions for Lebanon. The transformation of the Houthis from an illegitimate armed group controlling key parts of Yemen into a more entrenched regional…

The US administration considers that it won the war with Iran. But this has reinforced the prevailing impression, particularly across much of the media, that Washington has not yet achieved its objectives, especially since the confrontation continues in various forms. That does not mean Iran…

The debate in Lebanon turns on the vacuum that the end of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) mission might leave behind. But the more useful question is not whether these forces should be kept, or a similar force substituted for them, but whether Lebanon is ready to move from…

The Turkish-Israeli tension is no longer merely a reflection of the disagreement over Gaza or of the political enmity between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Developments in Syria and Lebanon reveal that the relationship has moved to a deeper level of…

The Israeli elections set for October 27 carry exceptional weight- not only because they could close Benjamin Netanyahu's long chapter, but because they are being held amid upheavals stretching from Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria to the US-Iranian war and its regional fallout. Gadi Eisenkot has emerged…

The 60-day window that the American-Iranian memorandum of understanding set aside for negotiating a final agreement has now closed. Tension is rising, and there is no visible path toward addressing the causes of the war. As the United States and Israel move deeper into their election seasons,…

Unpredictability has been an essential part of Donald Trump's method of conducting foreign policy. The American president raises the ceiling of threat, pushes his adversary toward believing he is ready to go further than expected, then opens the door to negotiation or steps back from escalation…

If it is true that identifying those responsible for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, for the sustained campaign of killings that targeted “March 14” leaders over the years, for the Beirut port explosion, and for the loss of bank deposits threatens civil peace - then what of…