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By Samir al-Taqi Source: An-Nahar  The Islamabad negotiations are not merely another round in the ledger of Middle Eastern crises. Their outcomes and repercussions will constitute a defining moment for decades to come—a full-fledged test: of Washington’s and Tehran’s ability to halt the downward spiral, and of the resilience of the American constitutional order. When war begins without political authorization, peace is hastily improvised in the same manner. These talks thus r

Lebanon, already bleeding, is negotiating under bombardment, destruction, and exhaustion, while Israel persists arrogantly, demanding that the Lebanese state comply and implement its obligations. Grave as it is, the issue is not limited to the humanitarian tragedy; it extends to the fate and structure of the state itself. Negotiations conducted under fire consume the very state that is supposed to be the spearhead of sovereignty and the monopoly over the use of force. Under s

How global power shifts, incomplete peace deals, and regional rivalries turn Lebanon into a pressure point rather than a participant in shaping stability. The world is returning to a 19th-century condition, making peace and international law appear outdated. As globalization and the international order collapse, a multipolar world emerges in their place. Thus, the United States is rushing to address its shortcomings and dismantle the globalization it once founded, brandishin

From Easter metaphors to Gulf crises, Trump’s struggle reveals how imperfect victories, soaring stakes, and internal dissent could turn a president’s bravado into his greatest vulnerability. During the Easter lunch at the White House on April 1, Paula White-Cain, Trump’s religious advisor, compared him to Jesus Christ, highlighting the “Savior Lord’s” suffering from “trials,” “betrayal,” and “false accusations.”     In American politics, metaphors rarely remain in the heavens

Samir al-Taqi The images of this war are not confined to a crater in a runway or a cloud of smoke above a facility. Many other images must be added to them: paralyzed tankers, insurance policies, emergency plans at Asian refineries, and the grim silence hanging over central banks. A believer does not fall into the same pit twice. Yet Trump fell, out of fondness for Netanyahu’s deception, twice: first, in the twelve-day war over Iran’s alleged proximity to producing the bomb;

Samir al-Taqi Military history teaches us that nothing is more enduring than the lessons of geography, and nothing is older than the struggle over straits. In the final years of the war between Sparta and Athens, Sparta took control of the straits at Aegospotami (near “Çanakkale,” Turkey) in order to cut off the grain route to Athens. The fragmentation of Athens then accelerated, only for Rome to succeed it decades later. In the First World War, the Allies—led by Britain and

Samir al-Taqi The first strike tempted many with an old illusion: that swift military decisiveness can, on its own, produce a conclusive victory. The logic seemed simple. Strike the leadership, paralyze the missile infrastructure, penetrate defenses, and the Iranian regime would begin to unravel under the shock. In such moments, power appears as though it can compress history into an instant. But wars are not measured by their first day; they are measured by what remains unre

Samir al-Taqi Many see this war as nothing more than a final chapter in the erosion of the rule of the mullahs: an authoritarian, corrupt regime, burdened by contradictions, and besieged both from within and from without.But wars are not read through wishes. Regimes may stagger and yet not fall; they may be struck hard, then recoil and harden. Here lies the Iranian paradox: Tehran may lose a great deal, yet it may not collapse. And Washington may win militarily, only to disco

Samir al-Taqi Europe has long tried to postpone acknowledging a reality that has been clear for two decades: the other side of the Atlantic is no longer a source of strategic and political certainty. The 2026 Munich Security Conference reflected the truth of this European awakening. The shift did not come in the form of a rupture, but rather as a reordering of priorities. Europe has paid a high price to relearn an old—yet newly urgent—wisdom: no one scratches your back like y

The end of New START removed the last legal ceiling limiting strategic nuclear proliferation between the United States and Russia. The treaty limited deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 and deployed delivery systems to 700, linking these numbers to mechanisms for data exchange, notifications, and inspections. With its expiration, the risk of mutual nuclear annihilation becomes more imminent, shrouded in uncertainty and danger. The demise of New START reveals two facts: First

Samir al-Taqi, On the canvas of the Muscat negotiations, the regional drama appears in all its dimensions! Formally, we observe positive signals, yet they implicitly conceal deep disagreements. For Tehran does not know what Trump will accept: a narrow temporary agreement, or whether he is inevitably moving toward “settling the situation in its entirety.”Not to mention the اختلاف over the pattern of the solution and its dimensions, the window of diplomacy between America and I

Samir Taqi In a multipolar world, and according to the National Security Document of the Trump administration, the United States confronts critical and dangerous priorities to face its multiplying competitors.But it is clear that the Middle East is no longer among its priorities! Even though it remains vital for completing its stumbling map. To achieve that, Washington lightens the weight of its physical presence in the region, and adopts the engineering of “remote management

Samir Altaqi Dag Hammarskjöld, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, says—as if it were written for our time: “The United Nations was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.” The function of international institutions is not to beautify the world, but to reduce the cost of its worst elements: wars, misunderstandings, and deals that are struck over the heads of those affected by them. And when institutions become mere décor for deal

The crisis in Tehran is no longer a matter of conflict between “reformists” and “hardliners”; rather, it is the collapse of the politico-economic model of the Iranian Islamic state, the model that kept the regime alive for four decades, and which has now entered a stage of senescence. Like all totalitarian systems created by humans, and despite all the ideological clamor, the Iranian Revolution passed through three phases: the ideological phase; then the phase of political bu

Samir Altaqi It is often attributed to Churchill that he once said: “No one can govern Syria, nor can Syria govern itself.” Thus, before Sykes–Picot and after it, this mentality has continued to dominate approaches to Syria up to the present day. According to many Western references, Orientalists and Western diplomats still read Syria as a space inhabited by people deemed unfit to build their own state—people who have not “civilized” themselves into a nation-state, but rather

Since late December 2025, Iran has been moving at an accelerated pace toward a dangerous trajectory—one that cannot be sufficiently described as merely “livelihood protests.” The current wave of protests appears closer to a serious test of the political system’s future, not only because the streets have filled, but because the rules of the game themselves have undergone a profound transformation. When the expected returns of internal actors—authority, protesters, hesitant eli

A Consensus Constitution and Transitional Justice Redefine Power This return resembles what resulted from the assumption of the collapse of the Assad state and the resilience of “new Syria,” drawing on the experience of Spain after Franco, Lebanon after the Taif Agreement, Germany after the wars, and Iraq after 2003.In addition to others’ lessons, the European Marshall Plan, and the failure of the reconstruction model.Syria today writes its constitution and sets its own equat

In our Middle East, the foam of attacks on international sanctions imposed by the West on some countries in the region is rising, and the idea that sanctions are the root of calamities in the region and that they are only part of colonial dictation policies is being promoted.   After the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's accession to the WTO, the system of globalization sponsored and practically managed by the United States expanded. China has taken advantage of this t

As Syria approaches a decisive moment, I contend that the continued delay of genuine national reconciliation efforts now poses an imminent threat of fragmentation and territorial disintegration. At a time when Benjamin Netanyahu expresses surprise at the speed with which the Syrian side has offered concessions to advance security negotiations, the United States is exerting maximum pressure on Damascus to sign a security agreement with Israel. Israel, in turn, insists on a con

The struggle for influence in post-2024 Syria is no longer reduced to the question of who wins , but rather measured by a far more dangerous one: who decides .In Damascus, the new “High Commissioners” are gathering—negotiating security, airspace and territory, sanctions and borders—producing top-down arrangements that dismantle Syrian national sovereignty, entirely detached from any Syrian mandate. Thus, Syria’s deep, bleeding wounds are driven ever further into the bone. The