World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Today, August 4, marks six years since the explosion that devastated the Port of Beirut. It reduced the heart of the city to ashes, caused immense destruction, and killed hundreds. The tragedy placed justice at the front of every demand made by the capital and its people. Yet despite a series of…

Ambiguity has always been a tool of war - a way to deceive an adversary, conceal intentions, or give a commander more room to maneuver. This Iranian-American war is different. Ambiguity is not one of its symptoms; it is the substance of which the war is made. From the outset, the most basic…

These days, memories of August 1990 are being revived, when Saddam Hussein’s regime invaded Kuwait and plunged the Gulf into the greatest danger it had faced up to that point. Was that invasion a surprise? Perhaps in terms of its timing, but not in terms of its ideological and political roots…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington last month again brought the nature of the US-Israeli relationship into focus, amid differences over Gaza, Iran, and the future of the region. The alliance remains strong, yet these developments raise a broader question: Does Donald…

After months of argument and refusal, Hamas has announced that it will hand its weapons to the National Committee for the Administration of the Gaza Strip. The step is more than the signing of an agreement: it lays bare the crisis of the ideological and doctrinal model that Hamas and its sister…

The current crisis cannot be reduced to a mere US-Iranian dispute that has recently escalated into a direct confrontation. It is inaccurate to frame the entire situation as a deep-rooted misunderstanding between Tehran and Washington. While the US-Iranian dimension of the crisis is significant,…

It is not precisely known how far the question of permanently disarming Hamas in Gaza has advanced. Will its weapons be surrendered in the manner Israel wants, letting Benjamin Netanyahu present the outcome as a major victory? Or will the matter be handled in a way that ends Hamas's armed role…

Lebanon marked Army Day on August 1. On this day in 1945, France - the mandatory power over Syria and Lebanon since 1920 - handed the military units under its control in the Levant to the national government of independent Lebanon. Yet, the occasion falls this year under abnormal circumstances. One…

Successive Iraqi governments were never forced to make such a choice. There had been no direct military confrontations between the Gulf states and Iran, particularly as the Gulf countries adopted a policy of restraint and containment in response to Iranian aggression, seeking to avoid a direct…

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…

Carolyn Rodrigues, the former Foreign Minister of Guyana, a country located in South America’s north, currently serves as her nation's representative to the United Nations. She is running in the race for the position of UN Secretary-General, which will become vacant early next year after Mr…

Only a thin thread remains of the Iranian-American memorandum of understanding, which expires on August 18, to borrow a metaphor from the diplomacy of the Umayyad Caliphate. Today, this thread is represented by the indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran, which mediators are keen to…