World News Insights: Opinion Articles

More than a hundred years ago, Greater Lebanon had its premature birth. It was a difficult birth, and was completed by the 1943 formula, which has nurtured its natural and atypical growth up to this moment, to the extent that whoever took charge of it, i.e. its political class, grew old, but the…

Torture at ringside! This is how Antoine Blondin, perhaps the greatest contemporary French sports writer, described the agonies of hard-core fans of combat sports. They are glued to the ringside, watch the fight, see or imagine that they see the mistakes of the adversaries in the ring, wish they…

The dangerous escalation of military operations on the southern Lebanese front, with Israeli raids to hitting targets around 40 km from the border as to US mediation efforts of Amos Hochstein, have instigated the countdown to an Israeli war on Lebanon that threatens to demolish the country. War…

In the mid-19th century, the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard published his famous book “Either/or,” in which he argues that individuals must choose between an aesthetic life and a religious and spiritual life. “Either/or” consists of two volumes: one about the first life, or the first…

In 2009, the Iraqi Prime Minister at the time, Nouri al-Maliki, called on the Security Council to investigate Syria's role in the bombings of "Bloody Wednesday." He accused the Damascus regime of harboring Baathists and terrorists targeting Iraq. Now, in 2024, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry has…

The joint US-British strikes on the Houthis in Yemen broke the rhythm of the Iranian-backed militia’s escalation. It seems that these strikes, the first of their kind since 2016, are in themselves “too little, too late.” Yemen experts agree that the US could not have turned a blind eye to the…

By striking Houthi rebel targets in Yemen with Britain on Thursday, Washington sent a searing message to both the Houthis and its Iranian backers that the United States has ended its longstanding defense-only posture in the Red Sea and is determined to stop the group’s attacks against commercial…

What we are undergoing, including the recent Anglo-American raids in Yemen, is nothing more than "maneuvering warfare" through which the trajectory of the region is being negotiated. There's a realistic Western saying: "Making a mistake once is an opportunity to learn from it, repeating it…

Last Thursday, military forces from the United States and the United Kingdom struck nearly thirty different locations across Western Yemen to degrade Houthi military capabilities and dissuade the rebel group from further attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. It will take a bit more time to…

This was before the outbreak of the “Arab Spring.” The meeting was neither official nor public. A number of politicians decided to reflect on the situation in the region. The discussion reviewed the conditions in the Middle East in light of the US army’s uprooting of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Then…

A few days ago, Riad Al-Turk (Syrian) and Karim Mroueh (Lebanese) passed away. The two men, who died a few days apart, were born in the same year, 1930. They were communists for decades and then became leading communist figures, before they walked back, each in his own way, from their commitment to…

No one following developments in Syria disagrees that the situation has deteriorated to an unprecedented degree. Most observers believe the decline is accelerating, further exacerbating the situation in Syria, thereby prolonging the conflict, deepening the obstacles to resolving it, and raising the…