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The question could hardly be simpler. Does Lebanon have one government headed by Nawaf Salam, or several governments, each with its own agenda and controlled by one minister or another? It was only natural for Nawaf Salam to settle the matter and prevent Defense Minister Michel Menassa from speaking during the parliamentary session that saw the passage of the amnesty law, with all its merits and flaws, a law that reflects better than anything else the state of Lebanon, with all its decay and tensions. Nothing illustrates this Lebanese decay more clearly than the alliance between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement, led by Gebran Bassil, the son-in-law of former president Michel Aoun. This alliance opposed the amnesty law and sided with the defense minister, who intended to express before Parliament the Lebanese army’s position on the law. This would have meant undermining the existing system at its very foundations by portraying the army as an entity autonomous from the Council of Ministers. In other words, the army would have a position of its own, alongside that of the Council of Ministers, which represents the executive authority… or so it is supposed to. Had the defense minister spoken before Parliament, Lebanon would effectively have acquired four authorities: the executive, the legislative, the judiciary… and a fourth, the Lebanese army as an authority in its own right, instead of the army being under the authority of the executive branch, represented by the Council of Ministers acting collectively and by the presidency of the Republic. Does the country need yet another authority at a moment that can, at the very least, be described as decisive, since it will determine whether Lebanon remains a viable country or not? The alliance between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement, in other words the Aounist movement, is no coincidence. Michel Aoun’s presidential term, from 2016 to 2022, was essentially a Hezbollah presidency. Together with his son-in-law Gebran Bassil, Aoun placed the Lebanese state under Hezbollah’s orders, which means under Iran’s orders. This came at a time when Hezbollah had always opposed any Lebanese army activity on Lebanese soil. Its first objection was to the very presence of the army in southern Lebanon. Who remembers the helicopter flown by officer Samer Hanna, which was shot down in southern Lebanon by a Hezbollah fighter who was later released? Who remembers Michel Aoun justifying the killing of the pilot by asking: “What was Samer Hanna doing in southern Lebanon?” Michel Aoun said this before becoming president of the Republic. It was the period when he was presenting his credentials to Hezbollah, a phase that lasted ten years, beginning in 2006. It preceded his arrival at Baabda Palace as Hezbollah’s presidential candidate, a candidate who opposed none of Hezbollah’s decisions. The alliance between the Aounists and Hezbollah is opportunism at its most blatant. It also reflects a strategy of undermining Nawaf Salam’s government from within, with one objective: to prevent any progress in the negotiations under way between Lebanon and Israel. The prime minister was therefore right to stop Michel Menassa, who is nothing more than a retired officer with good intentions who does not grasp how much damage can be done when those intentions are misused, particularly when they are exploited by Iran, which exercises total control over Hezbollah. Ultimately, Lebanon faces a far more serious challenge than the amnesty law, with all the flaws it contains. It is confronting a historic test: how to rid itself of the Israeli occupation. It is an occupation that Hezbollah wants to see continue in order to justify retaining its weapons, which are directed first and foremost against other Lebanese. What Nawaf Salam did was a profoundly national act at a time when Lebanon has no option other than direct negotiations with an Israeli monster that is doing everything in its power to alter the character of southern Lebanon by inflicting further destruction and carrying out more explosions in villages and towns across the region. From this perspective, Lebanon cannot afford to lose itself in the labyrinths of the amnesty law and similar issues. The country has no choice, at least for the time being, but to face the reality that Israel is the only party that benefits from Hezbollah keeping its weapons. Anyone who rushes today to Hezbollah’s rescue and seeks to dismantle Nawaf Salam’s government is placing himself at the service of Israel and the occupation. Everything else is mere detail, and all those details ultimately serve the project pursued by the “Islamic Republic,” one of whose objectives is to turn Lebanon into an Iranian hostage in the negotiations being conducted, directly or indirectly, between Washington and Tehran. It is shameful that the Aounists and their satellites should once again place themselves at the service of Hezbollah and Iran. In reality, such behavior is hardly surprising from a camp that has never stopped stabbing the Lebanese army in the back. Did Michel Aoun not flee in October 1990 to the French Embassy compound in Baabda while Lebanese army officers and soldiers were courageously confronting the Syrian army as it advanced toward the presidential palace and the Ministry of Defense in Yarzeh? For someone who brought the Syrian army into Baabda Palace and the Ministry of Defense in 1990, serving the Iranian project in Lebanon in 2026 comes naturally…

The rift between Americans and Israelis over Lebanon is growing ever wider, as statements from Israeli officials increasingly diverge from commitments made during direct talks with the Lebanese — particularly since the framework agreement was signed between the two sides in June. Comments by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, suggesting that the army would not withdraw from the occupied portion of the South, drew a sharp rebuke from the State Department on Thursday, which stated that such declarations were inconsistent with the commitments made under the framework agreement. Meanwhile, on Thursday, Israeli destruction continued unabated in southern Lebanon. According to MTV, Israel is also reportedly preparing to blow up Hezbollah tunnels in the Ali el-Taher hill, where Iran has over the years built an impressive network of underground tunnels stretching hundreds of kilometers, alongside sophisticated military infrastructure designed to pave the way for a Hezbollah assault on Galilee. On the political front, Thursday was marked by a statement from Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who criticized the "illogical stance" of Israel despite the start of the framework agreement's implementation on the ground. He also complained that an initial post expressing that view had been removed from his X account, forcing him to repost it. This unyielding Israeli posture is playing out against the backdrop of the upcoming October elections. And the escalation on the ground is not limited to Lebanon. On Thursday, another killing took place in Gaza despite repeated American calls for a lull. In the Strip, the Israeli army killed two Palestinians, including a police commander, near Khan Younes, describing the victim as a "terrorist" who posed "a threat" to its soldiers. Unrest is also continuing in the West Bank, where Palestinian journalist Mohammad Awad was arrested near Ramallah on the grounds that he works for Hamas. Even the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, condemned the "horrific terror" carried out by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Heated rhetoric and a fragile truce over Iran On the Iranian front, an increasingly bellicose war of words continues to rage over control of the Strait of Hormuz, which has firmly become the focal point of this Iran-U.S. confrontation. While no escalation has yet been observed on the ground between the two sides, the rhetoric flared following comments made the previous day by U.S. President Donald Trump, who claimed that the United States had "total control" of the strait and was maintaining a "tight blockade" on Iranian ports. That was enough to trigger a wave of outraged responses from Iran. The Iranian army on Thursday denounced Trump's "lies." "The false U.S. claims that ships are passing through the Strait of Hormuz normally (...) are nothing but lies and fabrications," said Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesman for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Command, according to AFP. He stated that the strait remains "under the full management and control of the Islamic Republic, and no commercial or oil tanker has had, or will have, the ability to navigate it safely without the authorization and supervision of Iran's powerful armed forces." Another senior Iranian official had also earlier contradicted the U.S. president's statements. "Today, you can see that the Strait of Hormuz is under the management and control of the Islamic Republic, and our country continues on its path in complete security," said Hossein Taeb, commander of the Basij paramilitary forces, which fall under the Revolutionary Guards. For his part, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on Thursday on his X account that the United States had made "miscalculations" stemming from intelligence failures. In another statement and fresh provocation, Iranian MP Behnam Saeedi, a member of the National Security Commission, claimed that Israeli vessels and American military ships would be barred from passing through the strait. For now, there are no signs that the ceasefire is about to collapse, and the conflict increasingly gives the impression of being stuck in a quagmire. The Iranians are not missing any opportunity to demand compensation for passage through the strait, the latest example being the oil spill off the coast of Oman — clearly caused by a strike on a tanker — which has now reached Iranian shores. The country's authorities are now seeking damages in connection with the incident. Although calm on the American-Iranian front appears to be holding, the same cannot be said for Yemen's Houthis, Iranian allies, who claimed a drone strike on a Saudi refinery belonging to the giant Aramco on Thursday evening — again with no notable American response. It is worth noting that, according to Saudi channel Al Arabiya, the Saudi Defense Minister met on Thursday with an Iraqi delegation to discuss military and defense relations. Could this be linked to the defense pact signed last week between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey on collective defense? In any case, this marks the first such meeting following attacks carried out against the kingdom from Iraqi territory.

In April 2026, Wissam Saadé delivered four lectures at the University of Bologna. The first, given at the invitation of Professor Giovanni Giorgini and entitled “The Prophet and the Philosopher: The Hierarchy of Knowledge between Avicenna’s Falsafa and al-Kirmānī’s Ismaʿili Neoplatonism,” is presented here in a revised and expanded version, published as a series of ten articles. This series explores the intellectual landscape of Islamic Neoplatonism through a comparative reading of Avicenna and al-Kirmānī. While both thinkers share a broadly Neoplatonic horizon, shaped by a metaphysics of emanation, a hierarchy of being, and a synthesis of Aristotelian and Platonic thought, they develop distinct philosophical projects: Avicenna within the tradition of Peripatetic falsafa, and al-Kirmānī within the framework of Ismaili theology. Despite these different intellectual contexts, their systems remain engaged in an ongoing dialogue concerning the nature of knowledge, the relationship between reason and revelation, and the ascent of the soul. Their respective projects also embody contrasting conceptions of the political, illuminating different ways of understanding the place of philosophy in relation to authority, law, and the organization of the community. This article constitutes the fourth installment of this ten-part series. IV - No Room for Black Boxes: Avicenna and the Secularization of the Ismaili Project Avicenna grew up listening to Ismaili missionaries ( dā ʿ īs ) who visited his home in Bukhara; both his father and brother were followers of the Ismaili da ʿ wa and frequently discussed its philosophy, specifically the Sijistānian version centered on the duality of Intellect and Soul. While al-Kirmānī sought to transcend this duality by adapting the Farabian Decad to his concept of an utterly transcendent and inscrutable God, Avicenna aimed to overcome both the unknowability of God and the duality of Intellect and Soul altogether. For Avicenna, logic serves as the primary vehicle of salvation. He posits that the perfection of the soul consists in the perfection of the intellect: to fully “intellect” the structure of the universe is to achieve the ultimate goal of human existence. He argued that the potential intellect can reach conjunction ( ittiṣāl ) with the Active Intellect through a combination of formal logic and intellectual intuition ( ḥads ), bypassing the need for a living mediator such as the Imam. Furthermore, while Avicenna maintains that God is simple and unique, he asserts that the First Intellect can and does intellect the Originator. In fact, the entire process of emanation in the Avicennian system is triggered by the First Intellect’s act of knowing its Cause. In this framework, God is rendered “intelligible”, a concept al-Kirmānī would have found dangerously close to shirk , as it threatens the absolute, inscrutable transcendence of the Divine. Avicenna inherited more than a little from the “Ismaili philosophical project”. The notion that existence is not chaos, but rather an ascending ladder of Intellects, is a central pillar of the Ismaili project, specifically in al-Sijistānī and al-Nasafī. Avicenna took this hierarchy and transformed it from “missionary ranks” ( marātib da ʿ wiyya ) or “gnostic symbols” into logical necessities. For him, the system of the Ten Intellects is simultaneously “natural science” and “metaphysics”, much as it is for al-Kirmānī, for whom “nature” is itself “metaphysics”. The Ismaili project centers on the “salvation of the soul” through knowledge, and Avicenna placed this axis at the very heart of his philosophy. His work on the “Soul” is not merely a medical or biological inquiry; it is a study of the “alienation of the soul” and its struggle to return to its celestial realm, as expressed in his famous Ode on the Soul . This “cosmic nostalgia” is a direct echo of the Ismaili spirituality in which he was raised. Ultimately, Avicenna “secularized” the Ismaili project. He took the skeletal structure of Ismaili metaphysics, the Intellects, Souls, Spheres, and hierarchies, and stripped away the secretive, exclusive character tied to the Imam, making it accessible to any human mind possessing intellectual intuition ( ḥads ) and logic. He replaced esoteric interpretation ( ta ʾ wīl ) with Aristotelian demonstration ( burhān ). Yet, in doing so, he was founding a new “philosophical religion” in his own way, one more confident and strategically grounded than even that of al-Fārābī. Al-Fārābī viewed the Prophet primarily through a political lens, identifying him as the “Supreme Ruler” who employs the faculty of imagination to translate abstract philosophical truths into a language accessible to the masses. In contrast, Avicenna argued that the Prophet possesses an extraordinary “intellectual intuition” ( ḥads ), which allows him to connect with the Active Intellect instantaneously, bypassing the need for discursive study. By framing prophecy as a natural, albeit rare, intellectual faculty, Avicenna effectively integrated “religion” into the domain of “science”. Religion was thus refashioned as a specialized branch of psychology, positioning the philosopher as the ultimate judge of its validity. Within this framework, the philosopher no longer requires a politeia , as in al-Fārābī, or an imperial da ʿ wa , as in Ismailism, to achieve salvation. Instead, salvation is transformed into an internal, cognitive event: the “return” of the alienated soul to its source through the autonomous power of the ʿ aql . For Avicenna, if philosophy was to replace the Imam or the da ʿ wa as the source of ultimate truth, it had to be self-sufficient. He wanted to prove God’s existence using logic alone, without relying on “signs”, “revelation”, or even the physical world and its motion. Al-Kirmānī’s God is an “inscrutable mystery” ( ghayb al-ghuyūb ), beyond existence and non-existence. This creates a “gap” that only an Imam or a secret ta ʿ līm can bridge. Avicenna, by contrast, leaves no room for black boxes: his universe is entirely transparent to the intellect. By proving God’s existence as a logical necessity, Avicenna ensured that the human intellect could, in theory, understand the entire chain of being. The Burhān al-Ṣiddīqīn The Burhān al-Ṣiddīqīn (the “Proof of the Truthful”) is one of the most sophisticated and influential demonstrations for the existence of God in the history of Islamic philosophy. Formulated and named by Avicenna in his Ishārāt wa-l-Tanbīhāt , it was explicitly distinguished from earlier theological arguments of the mutakallimūn , which depend on the createdness of the world ( ḥudūth al- ʿ ālam ), as well as from the arguments of the natural philosophers, which rely on motion and physical causality. Avicenna’s ambition was to construct a proof that begins not from the world as effect, but from existence itself as such. The Qur’anic horizon of this argument is often associated with the verse: “We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the Truth” (Q 41:53): سَنُرِيهِمْ آيَاتِنَا فِي الْآفَاقِ وَفِي أَنفُسِهِمْ حَتَّىٰ يَتَبَيَّنَ لَهُمْ أَنَّهُ الْحَقُّ alongside the affirmation that divine witnessing is sufficient as proof. Classical interpretations distinguish between two modes of demonstration: the burhān al-āfāq (argument from the external world), which infers the Creator from created things, and the burhān al-ṣiddīqīn , which proceeds directly from existence itself to the Necessary Existent ( wājib al-wujūd ), without passing through contingent beings or cosmological motion. Necessary and Contingent Existence At the core of Avicenna’s argument lies the ontological distinction between necessary and possible existence. The beings we observe are contingent: they come into being and pass away, which indicates that their existence is not self-sufficient but requires a determinant that tips the balance between being and non-being. If every contingent being required another contingent being ad infinitum , no actual existence would ever be secured. An infinite regress of causes is therefore impossible as an explanatory structure. The chain of contingency must terminate in a being whose existence is necessary in itself, whose essence is identical with existence. This is the Necessary Existent, God. This metaphysical move is reinforced by Avicenna’s famous thesis that existence is an accident (ʿ araḍ ) that supervenes upon essence. In the case of contingent beings, essences are in themselves indifferent to existence or non-existence; existence is therefore something bestowed from outside. This conceptual distinction allows Avicenna to articulate a radical form of ontological dependence: essences “receive” existence from the Necessary Existent, which alone exists through itself. The world is thus composed of quiddities awaiting existence, while God is pure existence without quiddity. In this framework, God is the giver of being ( wāhib al-wujūd ), and existence becomes a metaphysical “overflow” or emanation upon essences otherwise immersed in non-being. However, this doctrine was sharply criticized by Averroes (Ibn Rushd), who rejected the notion that existence is an accident added to essence. For him, such a separation is purely conceptual and has no reality outside the mind. To ask how existence “attaches” to an essence is, in his view, a category mistake: nothing exists prior to existence such that existence could be added to it. Against Avicenna, Averroes insists that the being of a thing is identical with its essence in reality. His critique of Avicenna’s “accidentalization” of existence is thus a defense of ontological unity against what he saw as unnecessary abstraction. Emanation and the Hierarchy of Intellects The debate extends into cosmology through the shared but differently interpreted doctrine of emanation. Avicenna formulates the principle that “from the One only one can proceed”. From the Necessary Existent emerges the First Intellect, which in turn produces a triadic structure through self-intellection: knowledge of the First Principle, knowledge of itself as necessary, and knowledge of itself as contingent. This cascade continues through a hierarchy of ten intellects, culminating in the Active Intellect ( al- ʿ aql al-fa ʿʿ āl ), which governs the sublunary world. This cosmological architecture integrates metaphysics with astronomy: each celestial sphere is associated with an intellect and a soul. The soul of each sphere is responsible for its motion, conceived not mechanically but as a form of desire or aspiration toward perfection. Thus, the entire cosmos becomes an intelligible hierarchy of intellects, souls, and bodies. Averroes, by contrast, reorients this metaphysical system toward a more strictly Aristotelian framework. He rejects the need for multiple intermediary intellects and reasserts the primacy of physical motion as the starting point of demonstration. His proofs for God are grounded in nature itself: the argument from providence ( dalīl al- ʿ ināya ), which observes the ordered suitability of the world for life, and the argument from invention ( dalīl al-ikhtirā ʿ), which points to the structured complexity of living beings that cannot be explained by chance alone. The ultimate cause is the Unmoved Mover, inferred from the reality of eternal motion in the heavens. Avicennian and Ismaili Cosmologies Within this broader intellectual landscape, the doctrine of the ten intellects becomes a shared yet contested structure across Avicennian and Ismaili thought. Both systems assume that divine transcendence requires mediation: God does not govern the world directly but through a hierarchy of immaterial intellects. Both also associate the number ten with a complete cosmological architecture, in which the tenth intellect, the Active Intellect, governs the sublunary realm. In this sense, cosmology is simultaneously metaphysical and epistemological: it explains both the structure of the universe and the conditions of human knowledge. A further convergence appears in the role of the Active Intellect as the mediator between the intelligible and human cognition. It is the source of forms, the principle that actualizes the human intellect, and the condition of philosophical knowledge. In Avicenna, this access remains open to the philosopher through intellectual intuition. In Ismaili thought, particularly in Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī, it becomes structurally linked to the figure of the Imam, who embodies and transmits its meaning within a hierarchical order of knowledge. What emerges from this comparative framework is not merely a disagreement over proofs of God, but a deeper divergence over the structure of reality itself: whether existence is fundamentally analogical or identical, whether mediation is a metaphysical necessity or an interpretive overlay, and whether philosophy culminates in autonomous intellectual intuition or in a hierarchically organized order of revealed meaning.

Anthropologists were hardly pleased to see their discipline portrayed as a hotbed of “bad political groupthink,” or to read that “scientific neutrality” is, at best, an illusion and, at worst, a political dictate. They reacted angrily to the Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences , commissioned by Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis and prepared by a group of ten scholars. Recently released, the report presents anthropology as an example of a discipline experiencing a widespread decline in scientific standards, accompanied by a corrosive intellectual climate in which reasonable disagreement on politically controversial subjects is suppressed and punished. What, then, remains of science when disagreement over methodology itself becomes subject to political, moral, and identity-based pressures? Anthropology is a relatively recent discipline, yet it is among the fields that have acquired an increasingly prominent place in contemporary research, particularly at the intersection of history, politics, society, and culture. Political anthropology, in particular, has expanded its scope from the study of power and institutions to the study of the state, nationalism, identity, citizenship, violence, collective memory, religion, and the everyday practices of power. It has also become increasingly engaged with history, political science, and political philosophy. Contemporary academic institutions and programs thus present anthropology and politics as an interdisciplinary field for understanding cultures, politics, and international affairs in their historical, social, and cultural dimensions, through the collection and interpretation of evidence from different regions of the world. In 2023, the American Anthropological Association and the Canadian Anthropology Society canceled a panel titled Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why Biological Sex Remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology . The two associations justified their decision in the name of the safety and dignity of their members and the “scientific integrity” of the program. They argued that the panel rested on assumptions that presented sex and gender as simplistically binary. But the decision itself drew objections from organizations committed to defending academic freedom, including PEN America and FIRE, which argued that canceling a panel on the grounds of the potential “harm” it might cause raised serious concerns about freedom of debate. Can a scientific institution refuse to allow a scientific question to be asked because it believes that some of the possible answers might be harmful? And can it do so on the basis of judgments that may themselves fail to account for the full physical, biological, and anthropological complexity of the issue? This preoccupation with knowledge that remains largely conjectural reignited intense debate in 2026, as part of a broader crisis concerning politicization, scientific standards, and their reconfiguration in a context marked by significant theoretical breaks with the philosophy of the previous century. These attacks come in particular from political forces advocating a biological reading of the world. Other political discourses likewise mobilize biological and social arguments to portray human differences as natural and immutable facts: billionaires are geniuses who deserve their wealth, while the poor are weak people born to remain poor. Such discourses challenge many of the insights produced by the social sciences concerning race, gender, class, and power. The problem is not whether the social sciences are “left-wing” or “right-wing,” but that the boundaries of what may legitimately be subjected to scientific inquiry are sometimes drawn before the research itself has even begun. Yet anthropology emerged precisely to deconstruct what appears natural and self-evident. Today, however, it risks turning some of its theoretical conclusions into assumptions that may no longer be questioned. In other words, it risks moving from the critique of received truths to the production of new ones. The social sciences unsettle the established order of social relations and distinctions and challenge the discourses of power. Should they therefore be silenced? They can also contribute to social justice. But what happens when social justice itself becomes a criterion for determining which knowledge is acceptable? A report declares a crisis in the humanities and social sciences, and anthropology becomes emblematic of the conflict. The cancellation of the panel on biological sex provides one example. The question, then, is this: are we witnessing the politicization of science, or a legitimate scientific course correction? The task is a difficult one. For a researcher, claiming scientific neutrality can amount to denying one’s own relationship to the world and may even constitute a form of bad faith. Yet objectivity, on the other hand, remains a fundamental principle of science, one that must constantly be strengthened through procedures and principles that make the pursuit of truth possible. In the United States, the attacks initially targeted the social sciences before extending to climate science, microbiology, and even vaccines. In Europe, gender studies have long been under attack in countries such as Hungary. In France, an intervention by Higher Education Minister Frédérique Vidal in 2021 led to a call for an investigation into certain strands of critical scholarship. It therefore seems essential to highlight the protocols and principles governing scientific work, which rests not on the neutrality of the researcher but on the objectivity of the method, as well as the conditions under which science can challenge what appears self-evident, and thus be genuinely critical. Politics should not determine what is scientifically true, just as science should not pretend to exist outside politics and society. Carolyn Rouse, a professor of anthropology at Princeton and president of the American Anthropological Association, notably criticized the report’s authors for using artificial intelligence to analyze large bodies of text, even though this method is becoming increasingly common across many of the social sciences. She also argued that requiring biological anthropologists to teach that there are only two sexes would be “like turning an astronomy department into an astrology department.” This divergence of views comes at a time when academia is facing an unprecedented assault. It needs communications experts capable of explaining the value of higher education to the broader public. Yet many academics continue to do and say things that remain largely unintelligible outside their own circles. The same applies to university presidents who stumble during congressional hearings, public-health experts whose pronouncements contradict one another, and think tanks attempting to rebuild trust and organize the objections being raised against the theoretical foundations of an anthropology that sees itself as constantly evolving. The notion of “neutrality” in research is often associated with Max Weber. The famous concept of “value neutrality,” however, points to a more complex question: the distinction between a relation to values, which is unavoidable in the selection and construction of an object of research, and the value judgments made by the researcher. The French translation of two of Weber’s lectures, brought together under the title Le Savant et le Politique , was published by Plon in 1959, translated by Julien Freund and preceded by an introduction by Raymond Aron. The very translation of Wertfreiheit as neutralité axiologique , or “value neutrality,” has since been debated, with some preferring the notion of the “non-imposition of values.” Another important contribution to the construction of scientific objectivity is Pierre Bourdieu’s (1930–2002) theory of reflexivity, which emphasizes that the social-science researcher is also subject to biases. Anthropology has never been a “neutral” science in the sense that physics or mathematics might be. Researchers enter the field carrying their own culture, language, social position, and prior questions. One of the reasons most frequently cited for declining trust in academia is its perceived “political agenda,” followed closely by the cost of higher education and the perception that degrees no longer adequately prepare graduates for the job market. For years, academics have lent their institutions’ credibility to a variety of political projects. They now find themselves reputationally bankrupt. Unless they repair the damage, many of their institutions may eventually become financially bankrupt as well. Objective science cannot, after all, be separated from a democratic society subject to the same critical demands of objectivity and contextualization. Science is a collective enterprise and, in defining what counts as knowledge, requires a certain form of democracy. One of the criticisms currently leveled at universities is that freedom of expression is under attack. Yet such accusations sometimes seek to challenge an intellectual liberalism that has not resulted in censorship, but rather in the establishment of legally defined boundaries, particularly against anti-democratic, racist, or misogynistic speech that some of these critics would seek to legitimize once again. And yet these are sometimes the same people who, without fearing contradiction, attack academic freedom through policies designed to control or silence scholars, as well as all those who work to defend freedoms and rights in the fields of justice, journalism, or an emancipatory culture, in the service of the public interest and the common good, and toward a world that is livable for the greatest possible number of people. Science does not die when it becomes politicized. It dies when it becomes immune to correction.

There is an idea that is becoming almost axiomatic in Lebanese political life today. Whenever the discussion turns to restoring the state, the future of Hezbollah, or rebuilding the national balance, the debate sooner or later comes back to the same question: how do we build an independent Shiite political dynamic? It is difficult to challenge this question. It seems logical, even self-evident. Any national project naturally needs an independent Shiite presence, and the monopoly of any single force over the representation of an entire community must come to an end. But the most dangerous ideas are not those that appear to be wrong. They are those that seem so self-evident that we stop questioning them. What if the question itself is the problem? What if the path to the state does not run through the construction of an independent Shiite political dynamic, but precisely the other way around? What if such a dynamic, with all the diversity and autonomy it represents, is not the starting point but one of the natural outcomes of a genuinely successful national project? When the priority becomes cultivating Shiite political figures, bringing them together, investing in them, or turning them into the emblem of this new phase, the center of gravity shifts, almost without our noticing, from the state to the community. Politics once again becomes an attempt to rearrange balances within a single community rather than to redefine the relationship between all Lebanese citizens and their state. This is where a paradox worth considering emerges. We say that we want to move beyond the sectarian system, yet we begin our political project from within a community. We say that we want to build a state of citizens, yet we begin by searching for representatives of the various communities. We say that we want to free the Lebanese from the logic of communal identities, yet we ask each community to produce its new representative before the national project has even begun. This contradiction may not be intentional, but it deserves reconsideration. Hezbollah did not become what it is simply because it monopolized the political representation of the Shiite community. Over the course of decades, it built an integrated system of military power, social services, institutions, religious narrative, and regional ties. Such a system cannot be confronted by creating another, more moderate sectarian system. It must be confronted by building a state that becomes the natural point of reference for security, services, the economy, justice, and belonging. The question, therefore, is not whether we need independent Shiite figures. We certainly do. The question is: where do we place them? At the heart of a new Shiite project? Or at the heart of a new Lebanese project? The difference between these two options is not merely formal. In the first, these figures are made responsible for transforming an entire community, a burden no one can bear. In the second, they become partners in building a national space capable of attracting all Lebanese, including Shiites. Perhaps this is where the most common mistake in approaching this new phase lies. Instead of investing in the environment that produces leaders, we invest in the leaders themselves. Instead of building institutions, organizations, local networks, universities, trade unions, and municipalities, we search for faces that might somehow embody all this long and arduous work. But politics does not work that way. Leaders are not the starting point of political projects. They are one of their outcomes. Unless there is an environment that gives them legitimacy and the capacity to endure, these figures will remain without a base commensurate with their stature, without the tools to match their ambitions, and without the ability to deliver the results expected of them. The most pressing question, then, is no longer: how do we build an independent Shiite political dynamic? The more important question is: how do we build a national project that the Shiite citizen, just like the Sunni, Christian, or Druze citizen, can see as their natural political home? Once we succeed in doing that, we will no longer need to manufacture Shiite political figures. They will emerge on their own.

We are a long way from the (falsely) optimistic statements made by senior Pakistani officials and even American leaders, who regularly spoke of “positive contacts” in the Iranian negotiations and, often, of an imminent agreement between the two protagonists in the Iranian conflict. President Donald Trump has, to be sure, put the airstrikes against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) positions, infrastructure and warehouses on “pause.” But the same cannot be said of the mullahs’ regime, which is clearly taking advantage of this lull to catch its breath, reorganize its forces and replenish its offensive arsenal, as far as possible, while shifting the “front” and military operations onto the territory of a third party: Yemen. Against this backdrop, the Houthi militia in Yemen, beholden to Teheran, has continued over the past 24 hours to attack Saudi Arabia and positions or strategic sites held by the Yemeni government, which is backed by Riyadh and recognized by the international community. On the morning and early afternoon of Wednesday, August 12, the Houthis once again shelled the port of Mokha, held by the Yemeni army, as well as other pro-government positions. In retaliation, Yemeni government forces used heavy artillery to bombard Houthi centers and gathering points on the Marib front, while drones targeted military vehicles and fortifications belonging to the pro-Iranian militia in Taiz. A senior Yemeni official said Wednesday afternoon that “dozens of Houthi militiamen were killed or wounded in these operations, across several fronts.” The pan-Arab channel Al-Hadath reported that “84 Houthi militiamen have been killed in six days, including 28 senior officials.” It should be noted that late Tuesday night, the Houthis launched ballistic missiles and drones against Saudi forces in Marib. The pro-Iranian militia also claimed to have attacked Saudi weapons and ammunition depots, as well as Saudi command centers. A Psychological War Concurrently with the shift of military tensions to the Yemeni theater, a kind of psychological war appears to be escalating between the two protagonists of the conflict. President Donald Trump once again described Iran’s leaders as “liars” and “devious” figures, stressing that he did not trust the mullahs’ regime. President Trump also said that “the Revolutionary Guards are running out of steam, they have been decimated and are on the run.” The White House chief added that there was no question of the Islamic Republic being allowed to “play the spoiler in the Middle East.” “Iran is no longer the tyrant of the Middle East,” he said. The Revolutionary Guards, for their part, have been more aggressive and belligerent in their statements. They first said that no talks were underway with the Americans over an extension of the cease-fire, adding that, in reality, “there is no cease-fire for there to be any question of extending it.” The adviser to the commander of the Pasdaran was more explicit about Iran’s intentions on this front. Reflecting, no doubt, the radicalization of the Islamic Republic’s leadership following the recent appointment of six senior officers to key military and security posts, he stated explicitly that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had shifted from a “defensive doctrine to an offensive doctrine and must prepare to conduct operations on foreign soil.” He went on, further clarifying the Pasdaran’s new posture: “One of the paths that could be pursued is to prolong this war until the next presidential term (in the United States), in order to wear them down (…). Economic interests around the world can easily be destroyed.” He further specified that “the number of missiles we produce every day is greater than the number of missiles we launch each day.” EU and 26 States Call for an End to Executions in Iran As this senior Pasdaran official spoke of a new “offensive strategy,” Kuwait’s Interior Ministry said Wednesday afternoon that the State Security Department had foiled “a terrorist plot targeting vital infrastructure in the country.” Meanwhile, in another instance of tensions being shifted onto the territory of a third party, the commander of the “Quds Force” (part of the Pasdaran), Esmail Qaani, who is visiting Baghdad, said Wednesday that the new Iraqi government’s decision to establish a state monopoly over weapons “constitutes a stab in the back of Iran.” The Iranian official reportedly called on Iraqi militias beholden to the Islamic Republic to oppose the weapons monopoly policy being pursued by the authorities in Baghdad. It is also worth noting that the European Union and 26 other states issued a joint statement calling on the mullahs’ regime to immediately halt the executions of young people and Iranian nationals who took part in the latest protests in several parts of the Islamic Republic.