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2 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Eyad Abu Shakra |Abdulrahman al-Rashed |Hazem Saghieh |Sam Menassa
What links the ongoing rift between US President Donald Trump and his “fleeting ally,” billionaire Elon Musk, the visible divergences between US positions and the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and the looming clouds over the approach of the US and Israel to Iran? This question deserves serious reflection if we overcome highly costly illusions. There is no doubt that the Trump-Musk dispute has dangerous implications, regardless of who is right or wrong.
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2 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Abdulrahman al-Rashed |Hazem Saghieh |Sam Menassa |Ghassan Charbel
It’s been about 150 days since Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam took office. On one hand, Lebanon is experiencing its best chapter in two decades. On the other hand, there are concerns about the slow pace of progress – and that another war is on the verge of erupting. Regardless of whether the fighters on both sides of the Litani River are preparing for a decisive battle – which is unlikely or not—the road is long before Lebanon can fully reclaim its sovereignty from both Israel and Hezbollah.
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2 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Hazem Saghieh |Sam Menassa |Ghassan Charbel |Nassif Hitti
When General Joseph Aoun was elected President of the Lebanese Republic and Judge Nawaf Salam was named Prime Minister, both developments seemed engulfed in a revolutionary climate. There was a popular mobility expressing itself in all kinds of ways that reflected a broadly shared desire to break with the “ancien regime” that brought the country misery, with its calamities culminating in a catastrophic war and occupation.
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2 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Sam Menassa |Ghassan Charbel |Nassif Hitti |Hazem Saghieh
The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the rise of Ahmed al-Sharaa to the Syrian presidency is the foundational episode of the regional transformation that is currently underway. It may well be one of the most consequential outcomes of the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation and its aftermath or even the most consequential strategic shift the region has witnessed since the 1967 defeat. We did not merely see a change at the top of the Syrian regime.
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3 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Nadim Koteich |Choe Sang-Hun |Eyad Abu Shakra |Sam Menassa
The recent spike in leaked intelligence assessments warning that the Israeli military could strike Iran’s nuclear facilities should the ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran fall through, is redrawing the red lines around what Israel considers an “existential threat” amid sweeping regional and international shifts. Talk of an “imminent strike” is not limited to speculation in the media any longer, and it is not another round of the war of words between the two sides.
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3 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Choe Sang-Hun |Eyad Abu Shakra |Sam Menassa |Ghassan Charbel
If the front-runner for the presidential election on Tuesday wins, South Korea is likely to enter a major course correction in its diplomacy to improve ties with North Korea and China. South Korea’s relations with North Korea and China became increasingly strained under former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was expelled from office in April following his short-lived imposition of martial law.
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3 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Eyad Abu Shakra |Sam Menassa |Ghassan Charbel |Hassan Yassin
There is hardly a journalist or political analyst, or even an amateur posing as either, in the Arab world who hasn’t, at some point over the past decades, written or spoken at length about the “New Middle East.” And yet, the Middle East we see today is something altogether different from what we were told to expect, both in substance and in the circumstances surrounding it. Our region has become, much like our lives and our socio-political imaginaries, untethered from familiar coordinates.
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3 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Sam Menassa |Ghassan Charbel |Hassan Yassin |Hazem Saghieh
Ceasefires are a lifeline to those languishing under relentless bombardment, suffering displacement, and struggling to find food- with no escape from their vast prison. Yet, the fact that discussions and negotiations for a ceasefire continue suggests that there is, as of yet, no horizon for an end to Gaza’s inferno. All concerned parties seem to be awaiting some shift that allows for a breakthrough.
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3 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Choe Sang-Hun |Eyad Abu Shakra |Sam Menassa |Ghassan Charbel
By general consensus, if the policies of President Trump’s first administration were a compromise between his impulses and the doctrines of the pre-Trump Republican Party, then Trump 2.0 is Trumpism in full. The old order is dissolved, the Bush and Reagan Republicans are exiled or subjugated, and Trump alone sets the agenda for the G.O.P.There are clearly areas where this is true.
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4 weeks ago | 
english.aawsat.com | Hanna Saleh |Tariq Al-Homayed |Nabil Amr |Sam Menassa
In mid-June, the Lebanese authorities will begin receiving weapons handed over by Palestinian factions operating in refugee camps, starting with the camps in Beirut and its southern suburbs. By implementing this decision, Lebanon will end a dangerous chapter of history that began in the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967.
