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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…

Whenever the concept of democracy is raised, attention instinctively turns to politics—to elections, parliaments, political parties, freedom of expression, and the peaceful transfer of power. Modern political experience has firmly established these as the principal indicators of democratic maturity and institutional stability. Yet another question deserves equal attention, particularly amid today’s profound economic transformations: Can wealth itself become more democratic? This…

The Middle East is not returning to its old order, nor has a new one fully emerged; it is passing through a prolonged transitional phase. Gregory Gause correctly warns against confusing military victories with political transformation, but underestimates the depth of structural regional change. Regional Security Complex Theory offers a more convincing framework for understanding the ongoing reconfiguration of the…

Report: Türkiye does not want Iran to collapse or Israel to become a dominant regional power, as both scenarios threaten its security and strategic interests. Report: Israeli expansion in Syria and Lebanon could become a direct strategic challenge to Türkiye after the war. Report: Ankara seeks to consolidate its role as a balancing power and regional mediator while keeping communication…

Report: The case evolved beyond the resignation of a single minister into a broader debate on conflicts of interest, public service ethics, and the need to separate public office from private and family interests. Report: The analysis recorded more than 153,300 engagements and a potential reach exceeding 575.9 million. Report: The peak of public discussion coincided not with the resignation…

The war that began on 28 February 2026 has outlived its ceasefires. The pattern is now diagrammable:[1] Iran interferes with shipping near the Strait of Hormuz; the United States retaliates; Tehran hits American assets across neighbouring Arab states — including Qatar, even as Doha mediates; mediators urge restraint; talks resume; a temporary understanding is reached; the underlying disputes remain untouched;…

The Jordanian government recently introduced the Local Administration Bill, whose defining feature is the institutional separation between elected political authority and appointed executive authority, vested in the elected municipal council, from the executive and financial authority assigned to an appointed Executive Director. The bill also introduces several significant reforms, including increasing women’s representation to 30 percent, requiring municipalities to adopt…

There is a kind of catastrophe worse than being blindsided: the one you were warned about, in plain language, by the people whose job is to know — and chose to discount. The 2026 war against Iran is of this kind. Its defining feature is not an intelligence failure but a failure of reception. The event the intelligence correctly predicted…

The problem with major wars is not simply that they leave questions unanswered, but that they often invite explanations that appear more complete than the evidence allows. The wider the war becomes and the more complex its trajectories grow, the more likely it is that narratives will emerge promising to explain it through a single cause. With repetition, that cause…

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.…