Sam Menassa

However which way one reads the visit of Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani to Beirut, it restored Lebanese-Syrian relations to their normal course and remains a step of great importance- provided the relationship rests on cooperation and coordination between two independent states. This was…

It has been nearly three weeks since the American-Iranian memorandum of understanding, and nothing in the course of the ongoing negotiations suggests that a final agreement is within reach. That brings the future of this negotiating track back into focus once the sixty-day period the memorandum set…

Why has Iran fought so fiercely for Hezbollah, even to the point of risking its agreement with the United States and making a ceasefire in Lebanon a precondition for the Switzerland talks? Is this insistence tied only to Lebanon's domestic situation, or does it also reflect Iran's broader regional…

Great power politics are governed less by principles or slogans than by interests; the personalities of leaders and their political ambitions can also leave clear imprints on them. In the case of the United States today, the state’s core calculations intersect with President Donald Trump’s style:…

In Lebanon, debate is widening over the usefulness of continuing direct negotiations with Israel. One political camp rejects them outright, while another calls for withdrawing from them, arguing that they are futile in light of continued Israeli attacks and incursions and the renewed targeting of…

Between France’s warning that Lebanon is approaching the brink of collapse, the domestic and foreign wars being waged against it, and its ongoing economic and political crisis, the Lebanese debate has become confined to how to avoid collapse or manage accumulated crises. Yet the more important…

States’ objectives are not always the problem in major conflicts. Often, the problem is they enter the confrontation fighting with different objectives. That is precisely why the relationship between the United States and Iran, for years, has been trapped in a vicious cycle of escalation,…

After President Donald Trump rejected Iran’s response to his proposals for peace talks to end the war, with Tehran calling the American demands as “unreasonable” nearly two months after the outbreak of the conflict, it is no longer an exaggeration to say that Iran is defying the Americans and…

As Hezbollah escalates rhetorically and raises the stakes, there is a need to examine the wave of treason accusations and verbal escalation it has directed at the Lebanese presidency, the premiership, and the Maronite religious establishment. At first glance, this virulence seems a purely domestic…

Amid the uncertainty surrounding the war in Iran, it is premature to speak of “the day after.” At this stage, it is more useful to draw lessons from six weeks of fighting and to assess the possible implications for the region’s future. The war has confirmed what many observers already believed:…