World News Insights: Opinion Articles

When a nation’s options are narrowed by dramatic developments, it is left with two choices: gloating or denial... Both affirm that this nation has resigned itself to a life on the margins of history. We Arabs currently constitute a strong majority in West Asia and North Africa. Our…

This war had been brewing for two decades - long anticipated but repeatedly avoided. Both the Iranian and Israeli sides had succeeded in avoiding direct confrontation, limiting themselves to proxy wars, until the October 7, 2023, attack happened. At that point, the Israelis decided to eliminate the…

It’s no simple feat to make Tehran live at the mercy of Israeli fighter jets and for the Israeli army to declare that the skies leading to the Iranian capital are open to its aircraft. It’s no simple feat to make Tel Aviv come under a barrage of Israeli missiles and for its people to come out of…

The war that erupted at dawn last Friday, triggered by a series of painful Israeli strikes on Iran, is unlike any of the region’s modern conflicts. It is not a repeat of the Gaza wars, nor of the Lebanon front. It bears little resemblance to the US invasion of Iraq or the grinding Iran-Iraq war of…

This conflict cannot be resolved with a two-state solution. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed this point recently, warning the Security Council that hope for a two-state solution may dissipate entirely. This conflict cannot be settled through perpetual war and the firepower…

In South Lebanon, the faces of the massacre’s survivors were terrifying and harrowing. Amid the rubble of what used to be homes, the people are visibly apprehensive, in pain, and broken. No one was celebrating Eid-Al-Adha, not even the children. Both north and south of the Litani River, everyone in…

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa has a knack for politics. He owes his political instincts to his layered character, his remarkable personal journey that took him from the leader of the al-Nusra Front to President of Syria in a few years, and a keen reader of the lessons of history. Sharaa has…

While President Donald Trump prepares for G-7 and NATO summits later this month political circles and media in Europe are busy trying to cut him down to size before the two events. “Trump will come empty-handed,” says one commentator. “None of the things he announced with fanfare has been achieved…

In a normal country, political life is structured around a constitution that outlines its system of governance. Recent developments, however, have shown that Lebanon has not yet reached this stage. Disappointment has prevailed once again after the inauguration of President Joseph Aoun raised…

A brutal civil war continues to wreak havoc in Sudan, and foreign actors are clearly fueling the conflict. Most recently, we saw the campaign to weaken the Sudanese army at the border triangle between Sudan, Libya, and Egypt. Some are now openly hoping for its defeat and others, behind the veil of…

The question of the future has gradually begun to outweigh the poetry and ruins of the past since schisms ripped through parts of the region (whether in Lebanon, Yemen, or Syria, where things have radically shifted) and the rogue militias waged their so-called “support war.” Dithering is not…

Must any pair of would-be great men of history always find a path to conflict? Ask Caesar and Pompey, Octavian and Antony, Lennon and McCartney. But the specific thing they fight about is less predictable. I would not have guessed, six months ago, that Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s version of the…