World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Based on the statements by Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Monday, it seems that a deal is imminent between Iran and the United States. The issues pointed out by Raisi as necessary for the deal won’t be easy for US President Joe Biden to deal with…

After a year of negotiations and five years of sanctions, Iran and the West are on the cusp of announcing the revival of their comprehensive nuclear deal. I imagine the announcement will be accompanied by a large-scale Iranian “propaganda” portraying Tehran as the victor. Surely, Iran is a…

The power crisis of recent months has sent the prices of oil, coal and gas to multi-year record levels. It’s also given deep-pocketed energy transition advocates an opportunity that they haven’t had in years: to put their money where their mouths are. That’s the thinking driving the A$7.9…

It’s the $96 billion — and counting — question for investors in China. After last year’s bruising crackdown on Big Tech, Wall Street has been speculating on when Beijing will relent. The latest selloff in benchmark tech stocks is a wake-up call that the worst is far from over. The government…

When a major conflict like Ukraine breaks out, journalists always ask themselves: “Where should I station myself?” Kyiv? Moscow? Munich? Washington? In this case, my answer is none of these. The only place to be for understanding this war is inside Russian President Vladimir Putin’s head. Putin is…

To an ethnic Russian who came of age in the twilight of the Soviet Union, nothing feels more absurd than the idea of war between Russia and Ukraine. Partly, that’s personal. In the south of Russia, where I grew up, half of the people I knew had Ukrainian last names. My younger cousin’s nickname…

Regardless of the occasion, the leader of the terrorist Hezbollah has been making frequent television appearances – even more than most Lebanese politicians - to talk about everything and nothing. In his latest appearance, he said that "we have the ability to convert our thousands of missiles…

“Lebanon is a country of freedoms.” So it is. So it should be. Today, Hezbollah is its guarantor of freedoms, guaranteeing its status as a “country of freedoms.” That is what the party’s secretary-general, in his own way, said during his last speech (or has he given one since then?). The…

It is possible for the fate of a nation and people to hinge on a decision taken by the president. We, the children of the terrible Middle East know this story all too well. We know that the time of the state of institutions will not come any time soon. We know that the fate of peoples sometimes…

There are many tragic outcomes of the Syrian civil war, but the most tragic one should be the case of Syrian refugees. The events in Syria created the world’s largest refugee crisis since the Second World War. According to UNHCR, as of 31 January 2022, total number of registered Syrian…

Cryptocurrencies may be all the rage, but good luck figuring out how they fit in a portfolio. Money managers generally try to maximize gains and limit losses by estimating the expected risk and return of various investments and then assembling a mix that offers the best trade-off between risk…

There are two clashing arguments about whether the threat of economic sanctions can be effective now in deterring Russian aggression in Ukraine. One is that sanctions against Russia following the 2014 invasion of Ukraine didn’t prompt any improvement in behavior, nor did sanctions promote good…