World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Some Lebanese take pleasure in concocting a narrative that presents the pursuit of disarmament that establishes a state monopoly on arms and the fight against corruption in public life as contradictory objectives. Mind you, there is plenty of glaring evidence that impunity for one sustains the…

The Saudi-US relationship is a complex subject. In-depth discussions of their strategic vision for the global economy and Middle Eastern security necessarily branch out in multiple directions. Several books have been written about this strategic alliance that has ebbed and flowed over its eighty…

Last Tuesday, my colleague Nadim Koteich wrote a piece about the Middle East policy of the US under President Donald Trump on these pages, building on an interview that Trump’s envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, had conducted with journalist Tucker Carlson. Koteich did not endorse a position and…

Iran is a major and prestigious country that the region has an interest in seeing become stable and prosperous, away from the rhetoric of threats to shut the Hormuz Strait and support Houthi rockets attacks in the Red Sea. The Khomeini revolution was not just a major coup in Iran, but its…

I’m far from a Luddite. It is precisely because I use new technology that I know mid when I see it. Academics are rarely good stand-ins for typical workers. But the mid technology revolution is an exception. It has come for us first. Some of it has even come from us, genuinely exciting academic…

Yesterday, in Jeddah, Syrian and Lebanese defense ministers Murhaf Abu Qusra and Michel Menassa signed a promising agreement to end lingering border issues between Lebanon and Syria. In truth, neither the new Syrian government nor the current Lebanese authorities contributed to these issues, which…

A Turkish lady recently reproached her “Syrian friends,” in a Facebook post, because she had not received “a single message of solidarity” amid the turbulence in Türkiye. She concluded her post by saying that “expressing solidarity is not shameful” but rather “an ethical and political choice.” …

This headline alludes to works of literature to illustrate political realities, beginning with Ernest Hemingway's “A Farewell to Arms” and up to the Kurdish author Ronak Murad's famous novel about the history of the Kurdish struggle “The Granddaughter of Ishtar.” The two novels' plots tie the…

“Why is Donald Trump doing what he is doing?” This is the question raised by European intelligentsia these days as they try to recover from the shock of the American presidential election which they all believed would be won by the Democrat champion Kamala Harris. France’s currently fashionable TV…

The liberation of Khartoum and expulsion of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was a decisive and game-changing victory for the Sudanese army. It changed the course of the war, as key symbols of sovereignty, the Republican Palace, cabinet headquarters, and the country’s most significant institutions…

During and after the crimes on the Syrian coast, two voices were raised. One was the voice of the people (yes, the people- without quotation marks), and it broke into several sharp sectarian voices, each defaming the other. The second, the voice that concerns us here, was that of the elite, some of…

In a region plagued by turmoil, anxious transformations, and the repercussions of destabilizing projects, Saudi Arabia stands out. It presents a unique model of stability and good governance. Domestically, this is reflected in its investment in citizenship; abroad, we see this in its positive…