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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

Samir Taqi The harvest does not own the fields, just as the rifle cannot claim the meaning of revolution. Tools are borrowed; land, crops, blood, and pain belong solely to their rightful owners. The Syrian struggle for freedom, democracy, and civic life began when the heroes of May 6 ascended the Ottoman gallows in Damascus and Beirut; when Syrian men and women joined together to forge a pluralistic national pact in the face of French occupation; and when the Syrian people st

Syrian academic Samir al-Taqi told Al Arabiya/Al Hadath Net that “the goal of this consultative forum is to restore Syrian unity.” The Syrian Consultative Forum convened today, Saturday, in the Belgian capital, Brussels. The two-day event is organized by political, academic, and cultural figures to discuss the “form of the state” and to “evaluate the transitional phase” that Syria entered following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December of last year. Participants i

Neither Syria Nor Gaza Is the Last Site of Genocide in the Region At the heart of this scene rises the question of “Israeli supremacy,” where overwhelming force is used to compensate for structural fragility. Asymmetric wars—including drones, cyberspace, missiles, and weapons of mass destruction—become the language of the coming decade in the region. When chaos settles in, it puts on a helmet and goes to war! The war in Gaza is not an isolated event, but a sign of a new phase

Syria is among the Middle East’s most ethnically and confessionally diverse societies. This pluralism includes Sunni Arabs, Alawites, Kurds, Druze, Christians, Turkmen, Circassians, Syriacs, Assyrians, Yazidis, and others. These groups are unevenly distributed across the national territory and are tied to distinct regional and economic spheres. Diversity, in and of itself, is not an inevitable cause of instability. It becomes a source of chronic conflict, however, when it is

Against the backdrop of the escalating struggle between the United States and China, a fierce battle over money and capital is raging—one in which, instead of blood, billions of dollars are spilled and the global monetary space is transformed into an open arena. On 15 August 1971, President Richard Nixon announced the floating of the dollar and its decoupling from gold, so that its value would be determined on the basis of confidence in the U.S. economy and its dynamism. Huma

The Saudi Initiative on Syria Opens a Project that Embodies a Regional Strategy and Draws New Contours for the Region In recent years, Saudi foreign policy has come to represent a new model for approaching Middle Eastern crises, one that moves beyond the logic of direct interventions and sharp alignments in favor of de-escalation and investment in stability. This orientation reached its peak in what has come to be known as the “Saudi peaceful offensive,” expressed in particul