World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Iran’s rush to hold its summit in the same week as the Jeddah summit is not a coincidence. It is an act of desperation in response to the strong front put on in Saudi Arabia by ten states. Iran has given up hope on restoring the nuclear deal, which it coveted with Joe Biden’s election as US…

Lebanese presidents were never made in Lebanon. Foreign powers have always been involved in choosing them. The degree of Lebanese influence in this matter is always dwarfed during crises and “exaggerated” during good times. In the end, it is never a domestic decision as much as it reflects external…

On July 19, three sets of meetings were held in Tehran involving Presidents Ebrahim Raisi of Iran, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. The first meeting was the 7th High Level Cooperation Council (HLCC) meeting between Iran and Turkey. The second was a bilateral…

President Joe Biden’s administration is reportedly rewriting its National Security Strategy, which the White House is required to send to Congress annually, to account for the lessons of the war in Ukraine. One issue that this document will have to grapple with outside its traditional focus on…

Finally, someone is hitting the right tone on Europe’s energy crisis. On July 14th, as France was celebrating Bastille Day, President Emmanuel Macron accused Vladimir Putin of weaponizing energy supplies to punish Europe for assisting Ukraine. He argued that Russia would likely cut off gas…

Britain, and particularly its ruling Conservative party, is growing more diverse. Of that there is no question. But regardless of gender or ethnicity, an aspiring prime minister still must clear certain educational hurdles. The crowded field of eleven who threw their hats into the ring when…

One thing has always been clear since the founding of Saudi Arabia: The Kingdom always wins. No other country has encountered such challenges on various levels and adeptly come out on top at every turn. Its latest victory was claimed at the Jeddah summits where it achieved in two days what…

When one nervously and tensely says, time after time, that he does not like war but is not afraid of it or that he does not want war but is fully prepared to wage it, what he is actually saying is that he loves war and intends to wage one and that he is perhaps fanning its flames, preparing to set…

Last week’s urgent negotiations in the Security Council should finally push the so-called Friends of Syria to prepare for the day soon when the United Nations organization can no longer supervise the delivery of humanitarian aid into rebel-controlled northwest Syria. On July 8, Russia in the…

The voice recording attributed to head of the State of Law coalition of Iraqi former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki about Moqtada al-Sadr and other Iraqi parties spells the end of Maliki’s political career, even if he tries to push on. The recording, which Maliki’s office denied, warning of …

Regional powers have been watching China’s growing influence in the Pacific with rising alarm, and casting around for ways to counter it. After Beijing signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands earlier this year and offered a similar deal to other Pacific Island nations, efforts stepped up a…

Everything is going according to plan. That’s the line from President Vladimir Putin. The war in Ukraine, in its fifth month and with no end in sight, may be grueling. But senior Kremlin officials keep repeating that Russia, gaining the upper hand in Ukraine’s east, will achieve all its goals. …