Samir Atallah

In the fall of 1983, an Iranian-backed force carried out the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. The bombing caused enormous confusion within the Ronald Reagan administration and was seen as a major challenge to the president. He decided to withdraw US forces from Beirut. Would Washington…

The surprise agreement was given the name of Makkah. In its name, it assumed responsibility for security at a time of turmoil and amid an increasingly volatile global situation. No gesture or initiative was left untried in the effort to ease tensions with Iran. And Iran bombed every one of them. …

The first informal straw poll to select the next Secretary-General of the United Nations officially began on Thursday, with candidates competing to succeed Portugal's António Guterres, who has completed two five year terms in office. The occasion coincided with the election of Egypt's former…

Thinkers tend to view the international crisis we are living through as, above all, a moral catastrophe. Not a political, economic, or military one, but a moral one. So instead of delving into causes, consequences, and strategic calculations, some echo Ahmad Shawqi's famous verse: "Nations endure…

The car rental business took off in the United States during the 1960s. One year, the market leader, reaping enormous profits, launched a nationwide advertising campaign with the slogan: "Guess who's No. 1." Its rival responded: "Don't guess. We're No. 2." There is nothing insignificant about…

Talk of the New World Order has dominated almost every other topic in recent years. But what was the old order - the system that ruled the world after the end of World War II – that we are saying goodbye to? Historians agree that it was built on five myths: the imminent end of the world, the idea…

Today, we highlight Ibn Battuta's and the Italian Marco Polo's descriptions of the Strait of Hormuz. Marco Polo notes that the inhabitants of Hormuz were Muslims, commenting on their ethnic background and beliefs, which he describes as differing from those of Christians. He then turns to the…

Fouad Boutros was among the most brilliant foreign ministers Lebanon ever knew. Yet President Suleiman Frangieh would constantly mock his gloomy demeanor and perennial pessimism, calling him an owl that never stopped hooting bad omens. The difference between the two men was that the first was…

Some wars are known by a number, not a name, because people hoped for their swift end. Such as the Thirty Years' War and the Hundred Years' War. The war we are in has now exceeded a hundred days, and it is no longer appropriate to call it by the common number. Donald Trump had announced some time…

The simplified mind tends to attribute more power to the United States than it actually possesses. What is striking about this global phenomenon is that it sees only the negative side of American power. In this view, the United States fails to find solutions, yet somehow always succeeds in plotting…