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A decisive turn in the meaning of international power By Samir al-Taqi In 1901, the Briton Norman Angell wrote that the dense economic interdependence between London and Berlin had forever ended the logic of war among the great powers. The Great War, thirteen years later, refuted him absolutely. Angell’s error was not his failure to foresee the bullet at Sarajevo, but his blindness to the structural pressures accumulating beneath the surface of the entire international system

By Dr. Samir Altaqi In response to Iranian piracy in the Arabian Gulf, President Trump announced on March 3, 2026, that the United States would provide political insurance and guarantees for maritime commerce, and above all for the energy shipments that move through the Gulf. After the war in Ukraine, and then Iranian piracy, the back of the guarantee system underwriting world trade was broken, nowhere more than in the Gulf. Capitalist civilization, after all, arose and stood

By Samir al-Taqi The framework agreement between Lebanon and Israel is not merely a tool for a ceasefire; it is a refounding of the Lebanese homeland and of the sovereignty in whose name every violation has so long been sanctioned. The true significance of this moment lies in its shifting of the Lebanese question from the logic of conflict—managed by militias—to the logic of state responsibility. The agreement, signed in Washington on June 26, 2026, creates a practical basis

By Samir al-Taqi How much time remains before Iran crosses the nuclear threshold and becomes a nuclear state? Estimates by prominent American experts suggest that if Iran can neutralize the United States and keep the facilities of its nuclear program beyond the reach of American strikes, it would need only a few months to reach the stage of “weapons-grade uranium,” and between one and three years to complete a bomb and acquire the means to deliver it. And yet these precise fi

By Samir al-Taqi It is no longer a secret: the American-Syrian decision to impose a Syrian tutelage over Lebanon. It has already become a practical fact, its features visible in the movements of “undisciplined” fighters in northern Lebanon. The Syrian authorities, it seems, are walking willingly into one quagmire after another. In his recent interview with Al-Mashhad, Ahmad al-Sharaa cast himself as the holder of some superior diagnosis of the Lebanese crisis: “some Lebanese”

By Samir al-Taqi The most dangerous defeats are the ones sold as victories. Once the guns fall silent, wars are not judged by the scale of the destruction they leave behind, but by the rules of conflict they quietly entrench. In the markets, the problem is never the loss alone; it is how the loss gets written into the books. In politics, defeat is graver still, and far more insidious. There is a cruel paradox at the heart of the American-Iranian “framework agreement.” Trump w

By Samir al-Taqi I read the conclusions of the economic conference held recently in Damascus, and I could not stay silent. Money is not the fundamental problem in rebuilding Syria. The states of the region and the wider world hold vast financial surpluses; the international institutions hold the loans, the grants, and the bureaucratic expertise. Syria itself holds the Syrian spirit, an authentic longing, an appetite for calculated risk, deep experience, and a venerable art of

By Samir al-Taqi — Source: An-Nahar There are moments of transformation in which maps speak more eloquently than munitions. A missile announces an immediate danger, but a map announces a strategy. The proof: on May 4, 2026, Iran's Revolutionary Guard issued a new map of the Strait of Hormuz, extending Iran's control over its alleged territorial waters out to a limit of 200 kilometers. According to the map, this zone stretches from Qeshm Island all the way to Umm al-Quwain, an

By Samir Al-Taqi As the two leaders shook hands across the table, warships were testing one another beneath it. That is not rhetorical exaggeration. It is a concise description of a moment that revealed what diplomacy had tried to conceal: the Hormuz crisis is no longer a limited American-Iranian confrontation, nor a regional dispute that can be easily contained. It has become an open test of maritime power in the twenty-first century. Just hours before the Trump-Xi summit in

Samir Taqi Iran’s present crisis is not merely another episode in the long catalogue of storms the Islamic Republic has survived. It marks the beginning of a transformation in the very architecture of power. The regime has endured wars, sanctions, assassinations, protests, economic shocks and international isolation. Yet survival has produced a dangerous illusion: that what has survived once can survive forever. In politics, as in finance, permanent liquidity does not necessa

The fall of Bashar al-Assad did not end Syria’s terrorism problem. It changed its location. For years, Western and regional policymakers treated jihadism in Syria as an insurgent threat: ISIS in the desert, al-Qaeda-linked factions in the north, foreign fighters moving through porous borders. That framework is now insufficient. The more dangerous risk is that jihadist mobilisation may re-emerge, not outside the new Syrian state, but through the armed coalition on which that

When His Holiness the Pope says, “Woe to those who exploit religions and the name of God to serve their military, economic, and political aims, dragging what is sacred into the filthiest and most unjust matters,” he is not referring to a specific leader. Rather, he is affirming a simple truth: what is right alone prevails. Samir al-TaqiSource: An-Nahar Societies do not collapse merely when evil people become numerous; collapse begins when societies turn inward and close thems

Such moments tempt people into rushing to judgment. Some read them as the beginning of a new regional order, while others dismiss them as merely a short pause before another cycle of wars. Both readings reflect excessive rigidity and wishful thinking. Samir al-Taqi Source: An-Nahar This time, peace in Lebanon does not seem like a fleeting illusion—but it is not yet peace at all. The entire regional scene is moving between these two limits: a real opportunity to catch one’s br

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

As talks unfold amid ongoing conflict, analysts warn that Lebanon’s fragile state structure, external pressures, and lessons from past Arab–Israeli negotiations could determine whether diplomacy leads to stability—or deeper fragmentation. Lebanon negotiates under bombardment and devastation, while Israel continues its arrogant approach, demanding that the Lebanese state comply and implement. However dire, it is not only about the human tragedy but extends to the fate of

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