World News Insights: Opinion Articles

It is an absurdity of Middle Eastern politics that many politicians and analysts are still betting on the complete elimination of Iran’s role in the region. Even more absurd is the expectation that Israel will drag Washington into this "war of elimination." True, this is the most right-wing US…

Twelve years ago, former US President Barack Obama’s team and Iran began secret negotiations that lasted two years and led to what became known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It was implemented for three years before President Donald Trump came into office and courageously tore…

The Houthi youth cannot believe what he is reading. Positive messages have emerged from the Iranian-American meeting in Muscat. He had never expected that the supreme leader would allow Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi to meet with Steve Witkoff – the envoy of the man who ordered the killing of…

As the United States and Arabs are trying to convince Lebanon on the importance of state - and not Hezbollah – control over weapons and without imposing sanctions, the party continues to procrastinate with flimsy excuses, despite the ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and Israel. In contrast, the…

Two years into the war, Sudan remains the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 25 million people struggling to get enough to eat and over 12 million displaced. Nearly everyone has a tale of horror to tell, whether suffered themselves or experienced by a family member or friend. But horror…

Despite the great deal of sound and fury that it has generated, it is perhaps too early to assess the lasting impact of President Donald Trump’s latest fireworks on tariffs. Some things, however, are certain. Contrary to assertions by talking heads on the small screen, we are not heading for a…

A combination of two intertwined tendencies is driving the behavior of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel: absolute exceptionalism and pre-emptive-ness that feeds on assumptions of the worst intentions. Exceptionalism, in this sense, amounts to suspending the ordinary, with its laws and norms, and…

The most dangerous impediment to the Lebanese authorities’ current efforts to restore the state is that the country sits atop a dangerous minefield of “zombie” weapons and “zombie” banks. The camp of illegitimate arms intimidates rivals by clinging to narratives that defend its maintenance. Just 90…

There are several ways to interpret what we saw from the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. However, one thing we are sure of is that Trump knows exactly what he wants and how to get it, and he pursues it relentlessly. …

European Union officials are taking a two-part approach to President Trump’s unfolding trade war, offering to slash tariffs on American-made cars and industrial products even as they prepare to retaliate imminently with wide-ranging levies. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU’s executive…

Since Israel, and us with it, began to be plagued by the meteoric rise of Benjamin Netanyahu, there has been a consensus around his status as the king of Israel. This is a title that even the state’s founders and its historic leaders were never given. Netanyahu has broken every record in terms…

In the writing genre that falls into the “What if?” category, the author presumes the occurrence of hypothetical past events that never happened, and then infers the implications. This is not a futile literary exercise. These texts point to what had, to this or that degree, once been real…