World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Can healthy, normal relations be built between the Arab Gulf states, along with other Arab countries such as Jordan and Yemen, on the one hand, and Iran under the ideological rule of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the other? This question did not emerge only today, amid the exchange…

Does the Iranian experience since 1979 represent a model of political modernity rooted in religion, or is it better understood as a narrative that combines modern populism with traditional social and political structures? That question remains open, because understanding post-revolutionary Iran is…

Having led ceremonies marking the 250s anniversary of the United States’ independence on July 4 President Donald Trump will be heading to Ankara, Türkiye, for the 36th summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which some fear could be the stormiest the 75-year-old beast has seen. …

A former senior Arab official used to respond to questions about corruption in his country by saying, in effect, that corruption exists everywhere. While that was broadly true, his answer often sounded like an attempt to justify corruption at home. Many would reply, again in effect, that although…

This week, the spotlight fell on two migration-related developments that highlight the paradoxes, complexities, and challenges migration poses for countries around the world. In Britain, the Home Office's announcement of new measures to tighten immigration and asylum policies attracted widespread…

Chatter on social media cannot be used to determine the value of any language, since most of these exchanges answer to no scientific standards, and most users of these platforms cannot even spell correctly, let alone observe the rules of grammar. Every language in the world has changed, as…

The Arab Gulf states face security and existential challenges that may be greater than anything they have experienced before, including the Iraq-Iran War and the occupation of Kuwait. At that time, the world was clearer and more biased, whereas today, relying solely on alliances, agreements, or war…

With President Sadat's initiative in 1977, and then his negotiations with the Israelis, a minority in Egyptian and Arab cultural life, with the great Fuad Zakariya perhaps its most prominent symbol, emerged. Those who belonged to this minority did not necessarily agree with everything Sadat had…

The official Iraqi campaign against the networks of financial and administrative corruption — launched by the government marks a serious shift that has closed vast distances in a single step. It is the first serious indication of the policies and priorities we can expect from Iraq's new prime…

The first sparks of the Middle East war (which has not yet laid down its burdens) came from Gaza, through Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s response to it. Over almost three years, this war continued and expanded, eventually peaking with the United States and Israel’s two…

The American-Iranian memorandum of understanding and the "gifts" it presented the Iranian regime, have relieved the Resistance Axis. There was nothing contrived about it. It looked rather like a project for "regional peace" between the United States and its allies, on the one hand, and Iran and its…

The Syrian conflict battered Syrians between 2011 and 2024. It drove more than half of them into a diaspora around the world, spread across more than 100 countries on all continents. The majority of this diaspora has been concentrated in three main regions. The first is the nearby neighboring…