Commentaries

Muscat, the capital of Oman, hosted last Friday a new round of “indirect” U.S.–Iran negotiations—an attempt to identify common ground that might pave the way for an agreement capable of defusing a potential war. Such a confrontation could erupt if the United States were to launch a military strike against Iran, a move that would likely compel Tehran to respond…

The American researcher and one of the most prominent scholars in international relations and U.S. foreign policy, Jeffrey Sachs, does not hesitate, in his commentary on the American campaign against Iran, to state that Israel today fully leads America in the Middle East. This is something many now regard as one of the core assumptions in analyzing U.S. foreign policy.…

The European tour of the Jordanian ministerial delegation to promote investment reflects a growing awareness of the centrality of the economy in shaping foreign policy. This visit comes in the wake of the signing of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement between Jordan and the European Union, which includes a package of European assistance and investments worth approximately €3 billion for…

President Lai Ching-te National Day address on October 10, 2025, marked a clear shift in priorities compared to his previous speeches. It reflected a more cautious and pragmatic approach to cross-strait relations, alongside stronger emphasis on domestic national identity, national defense and internal security, and Taiwan’s global standing. This contrasted with the previous year, when his remarks strongly underscored Taiwan’s…

There are entrenched “rules of the game” that Iraqi political forces have consistently sought to institutionalize with every electoral cycle—rules that have ultimately produced a political system some scholars classify as a form of competitive authoritarianism. Iraq’s political arena has thus become confined to a limited set of actors who continuously reproduce the status quo, reducing elections to little more…

The article addresses the limitations of using genocide discourse to describe Israeli crimes in Gaza by analysing how, over recent months, this discourse has been subjected to manipulation that empties it of its content and redirects its purpose from delegitimizing Israel to protecting it. This manipulation has frequently been deployed to contain escalating protests against the existing order at all…

The Kurdish question remains one of the most pressing and consequential issues shaping the political order of the Middle East. Across Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran, Kurdish aspirations for self-determination have repeatedly collided with the territorial integrity of existing nation-states. Despite numerous historical attempts to establish an independent Kurdish state, these efforts have largely failed, giving rise instead to fragmented…

The U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a statement announcing that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) had designated the Egyptian and Jordanian branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entities pursuant to counterterrorism authority under Executive Order 13224. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of State designated al-Gama’a al-Islamiya as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under Section…

The publication by U.S. President Donald Trump of an image associated with Nicolás Maduro was not a fleeting act within the sphere of political communication; rather, it constituted a symbolic move laden with implications that extend beyond the content of the image itself. The analytical value here does not lie in questioning the image’s authenticity or its technical circumstances, but…

It is difficult to understand the recent escalation in Yemen—or to make sense of its sudden intensity in both rhetoric and action—as an isolated event or as a temporary deviation in the Saudi–Emirati partnership. What unfolded, from strikes aimed at disrupting suspected weapons supply routes toward al-Mukalla to the more explicit Emirati push in support of the Southern Transitional Council’s…