Commentaries

The Iraqi government has recently intensified its rhetoric about its intention to “restrict arms to the state” once the withdrawal of the US-led international coalition forces from Iraq is completed by September 30 of this year, alongside Baghdad’s repeated rejection of Iraq being used as a launchpad for attacks on regional states or as an arena for proxy war. These…

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s recent interview on Al Jazeera came at an exceptionally sensitive juncture — coinciding with the completion of the process to form the People’s Assembly, the renewed talk of a possible Syrian military intervention in Lebanon, and pressing domestic files, chief among them the Damascus–Deir ez-Zor road incident, which claimed the lives of 35 people. This unfolded…

Digital sovereignty is one phrase hiding two different things. Few who invoke it say which one they mean. The first kind is declared. A state passes a law, forms a committee, issues a directive, and announces that its digital space is “governed.” This kind of sovereignty is available to everyone. Any state can have it. The second kind is built.…

The latest World Cup was not simply another major sporting event, nor merely an occasion on which Arabs celebrated the qualification of an unprecedented number of their national teams or the remarkable performances some of them delivered. More than that, it revealed a deeper shift in the Arab public mood. The scale of popular engagement in streets, cafés, homes, and…

After several years of political, economic, and administrative modernization initiatives, the most important question today may be less about the laws enacted or institutions established, and more about how ordinary citizens-particularly young people-actually perceive these reforms. The success of any reform project is measured neither by the number of legislative measures adopted nor by the scale of the official discourse…

The newly constituted Syrian People’s Assembly enters public life as one of the defining milestones of the country’s transitional period. It marks a moment in which the new authorities are testing the contours of political representation, while Syria itself is testing its capacity to move from the legacy of the revolution toward the project of state-building. The announcement by the…

Today, Hamas announced the dissolution of the governmental body that has administered the Gaza Strip, represented by the Government Emergency Committee headed by Mohammad al-Farra, in preparation for transferring administrative authority to the Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, chaired by Eng. Ali Shaath. While this decision can be understood within the immediate context of Gaza or Palestinian…

In the winter of 1950, Ankara dispatched a force of approximately 5,000 soldiers to the Korean Peninsula-a war that was not its own-for one reason alone: to convince a newly emerging Western alliance that Türkiye deserved membership. The price was steep. Nearly 700 Turkish soldiers lost their lives in exchange for an admission ticket that would not be granted until…

The funeral of Iran’s former Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, served as an important opportunity for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the conservative establishment to convey a series of carefully calibrated symbolic and political messages. Each participating delegation carried its own significance, while the ceremony also projected messages to both domestic and international audiences. Notably, the event witnessed broad…

The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran was accompanied by political expectations that went far beyond degrading Tehran’s nuclear program or weakening its military capabilities. In Washington and Tel Aviv, many believed the conflict would become a founding moment for a different Iran—either by producing a political order more closely aligned with the West and less committed to its anti-Western ideology, or…