Sam Menassa

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:…

"State weakness" or "complex domestic balances" can no longer encompass the current situation in Lebanon. We are facing something far more dangerous: a gradual, comprehensive collapse, as well as gaping vacuums in political and religious leadership. This vacuum is the result of a long series of…

With the escalation of the American-Israeli war on Iran, the question is no longer confined to the scale of the strikes and Iran’s retaliation. The potential repercussions of the conflict and the way in which it will reshape the regional order are now front and center. The assassinations of Supreme…

Once again, Lebanon is being dragged into the heart of a violent regional storm. After Hezbollah launched rockets toward Israel, Israel retaliated with extensive bombardment targeting villages in the South, the Beqaa, and Beirut’s southern suburbs, along with a deeper ground incursion into the…