World News Insights: Opinion Articles

That was on September 11, 2001. Security informed President Saddam Hussein of the news from New York. He turned to the screen and did not comment. At first glance, he might have thought that the event was far away. But days later, when George Bush Jr. spoke of an “axis of evil” that included…

Ghassan Charbel

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain has taken to tweeting the price of a gallon of gasoline on a daily basis, a habit that’s convenient for him as long as it continues its steady decline. The idea that President Joe Biden’s administration is somehow responsible for this decrease is wrong, of…

Matthew Yglesias

“The end of an era” will become a refrain as commentators assess the record-setting reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Like all monarchs, she was both an individual and an institution. She had a different birthday for each role — the actual anniversary of her birth in April and an official one in June —…

Maya Jasanoff

Death holds up a mirror to everything — moments of love, stretches of strife, memories that punish and exalt. This is true if your family is far removed from the public eye, and it’s true if your family is ensconced in the world’s spotlight. Queen Elizabeth II was the matriarch both of a country…

Patti Davis

On 6/18/2021, we all got a glimpse of four of Ebrahim Raisi's front teeth. The man who does not giggle giggled. He had been elected president of Iran. Artists and filmmakers held their breath: the hero of the 1988 executions has become president. Around five thousand men and women were executed…

Hazem Saghieh

On Friday, the world lost one of the wisest personalities in contemporary history. Elizabeth II, Queen of Britain, passed away at the age of 96 in Scotland’s Balmoral Castle, only a day after she had confirmed Lizz Truss as the new prime minister. During her seventy years of reign over Britain and…

Camelia Entekhabifard

We have been hearing talk that Iran will cooperate ever since the term of US President Barack Obama. In the region, we have been hearing these remarks since the time of Hashemi and Rafsanjani, and now the Europeans and American administration are repeating them. Of course, none of this…

Tariq Al-Homayed

The summer of war in Ukraine, while brutal for soldiers and civilians on the front lines, has been experienced from afar as a stalemate, depressing enough in its grinding sameness to slip out of American headlines for a time. The autumn and winter will be different, supplying answers to the two…

Ross Douthat

Some Arab politicians and journalists have been frequently using the term "old continent" recently, often in the context of mocking Europe's current troubles. The challenging problems Europe is facing as a result of the Russian war on Ukraine go beyond the acute shortage of energy supplies,…

Najib Saab

Abraham Lincoln’s first Inaugural Address was a 3,600-word olive branch to a South on the eve of the Civil War. His second promised malice toward none after the war left 620,000 dead. Americans have long revered both speeches because they offered a measure of redemption, and a means of…

Bret Stephens

To function in an otherwise normal democracy, a hereditary monarchy requires that the citizenry accept a bit of fiction — namely that one family, standing above politics, can represent the nation and its values. That takes a bit of doing, especially with that most scrutinized royal house of them…

Serge Schmemann

Liz Truss isn’t Boris Johnson. That was the main crumb of comfort for European Union diplomats and leaders as congratulations from Paris to Helsinki flowed to the new resident of 10 Downing Street. After years of Johnson’s antics, from threats over post-Brexit trade to calling the French “turds,”…

Lionel Laurent