World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Conservatism on college campuses has traditionally mixed tweedy intellectualism, shock-value provocation and ruthless training for future G.O.P. operatives. All of these forms — and I say this with familiar affection — have tended to attract nerds and dorks and oddballs, campus outsiders, the…

Going over Lebanon’s modern history, one cannot fail to notice that every watershed moment was dovetailed with lots of debate and controversy that put countless ideas up for public discussion. In 1946, three years after Lebanon’s independence, for example, Michel Asmar established the "Lebanese…

I will not call it arrogance; this is madness. The military strike in Doha targeting Hamas is a turning point. It has rung the alarm and presented lessons. The apprehensions it has fueled in the Gulf and across the Arab world are justified, isolating Netanyahu and the Israeli mindset that drives…

Several weeks before the Israeli assault on the Qatari capital, US Special Envoy for Syria and Lebanon Ambassador Tom Barrack had said that Tel Aviv believes the Sykes–Picot borders as meaningless during an interview with Mario Nawfal. “In Israel's mind, these lines that were created by Sykes-Picot…

Having just ended its ninth month in office, French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou stepped down after the National Assembly endorsed a non-confidence vote with a huge majority. That handed President Emmanuel Macron with a hot potato in the shape of naming yet another Prime Minister, Sebastien…

Just before the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) was officially inaugurated two days ago, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed reiterated controversial statements about his country’s need for access to the sea. He insisted that Ethiopia is determined to regain a presence on the Red Sea and …

Will the newly released images of Imam Musa al-Sadr, which have been analyzed through a face-recognition algorithm, solve the mystery of his disappearance? Or will this new information about the former head of Lebanon’s Supreme Islamic Shiite Council simply fuel another round of political…

A campaign was launched against Deputy Paula Yacoubian after she criticized the "ideological indoctrination" she considers more dangerous than weapons. The keyboard warriors' smear campaign released a flood of racist and misogynistic slurs: Yacoubian’s gender and Armenian heritage, to Hezbollah’s…

The other members of Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah’s (General Supervisor of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center) delegation and I arrived in Damascus at eight o’clock in the morning last Sunday. We were there for the inauguration of several ambitious humanitarian, medical, educational, and…

The sanctions announced by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on organizations documenting Israeli war crimes and human rights violations in the Gaza Strip were striking. This announcement came just days after the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, which had brought China, Russia, and India…

A limp caudillo. That was a phrase I once applied to Donald Trump’s pretense to be a strongman, in a first term that was actually characterized by the imperial presidency’s retreat. Barack Obama and George W. Bush were far more successful at consolidating presidential power, and Trump 1.0 mostly…

Returning to Beirut from a trip to Damascus, I recalled what I once heard, “Damascus and Baghdad paid in recent decades the price of reckless decisions, while Beirut paid the price of a lack of ability to take decisions.” It has been 15 years since I last took this road, and I remember the…