Articles

A grave situation is quietly unfolding in the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity. The region is being emptied of its Christian population. Similar processes were observed in Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion and in the Holy Land. Now, Syria is facing the same reality. “The rupture is existential,” says Vincent Gelot, the representative for Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan of L’Œuvre d’Orient, a non-political organization affiliated with the French Catholic Church, which is currently campaigning to establish an International Day for Christians in the Middle East. Using Syria as an example, Vincent Gelot says, "In fourteen years of war (2011–2025), the country has lost nearly 80 percent of its Christian population." Reliable estimates suggest that between 300,000 and 400,000 Syrian Christians remain in a population of roughly 26 to 27 million, he adds. In Aleppo, only about one-sixth of the Christians who lived there before the 2011 war are still present.

By February 2026, the temperature in the Persian Gulf is approaching a boiling point. The U.S. Fifth Fleet has completed a military buildup rarely seen since the Cold War. Strategic bomber wings rotate through forward bases. Tel Aviv experiences intermittent GPS signal jamming. News feeds oscillate between predictions of “World War III” and dramatic narratives of a “Sino-Russian alliance defending Tehran to the death.” The world is staring at radar screens, waiting for ignition. Yet if we strip away the ideological noise, the confrontation deserves to be analyzed through a far more sober framework: game theory.

Nothing reveals the beginning of the end of the regime in Iran more clearly than the situation in Iraq. In Iraq, the “Islamic Republic” has failed to impose a loyal figure in the position of Prime Minister. It was enough for President Donald Trump to place a veto on Nouri al-Maliki’s return to office for Maliki’s fate to become suspended. It was from Iraq that Iran’s expansionist project found new momentum after the administration of George W. Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein’s Baathist, family-based regime. And it is from Iraq that this same project now appears to be nearing its end. More importantly, Iran’s inability to reinstall Maliki as Prime Minister exposes the deep crisis afflicting the Iraqi system established after 2003.

It was February 4, 2021, on a bleak winter morning. The body of Lokman Slim, the archetype of the committed intellectual, had just been found in his car, riddled with bullets. One more nail in the coffin of a Lebanon rotten and gnawed to the marrow by Hezbollah’s criminal hubris. Lokman’s abduction the previous day and his subsequent assassination followed a pattern long familiar. In Lebanon, for more than half a century, anyone who dares to challenge the prevailing totalitarian order becomes a potential target for elimination. Intellectuals, in particular, have always been expendable. Their disappearance rarely ignites nationalist fervor, communal solidarity, localist reflexes, or clan outrage, because they command no mobs, no militias, no crowds of blind adherents. In that sense, they are easy prey — and therefore preferred prey.

How miserly time is. Lebanon and the East have known few women like Salma Merchak Slim, mother of the thinker-martyr Lokman, who passed away yesterday, longing to be reunited with him, without having seen human justice strike down his assassins. Salma Merchak survived her son by exactly five years, her tears flowing inward, within a vast heart saturated with sorrow, only rarely moistening her cheeks. She remained present, upright, unbroken, alongside her daughter Rasha al-Ameer, Monika Bergmann, and her son’s companions, steadfast in defending the values of dialogue, acceptance of the other, knowledge, culture, and the Enlightenment.

On April 2, 2025, standing in the White House Rose Garden, President Donald Trump declared what he called “Liberation Day.” By signing Executive Order 14257 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the administration imposed sweeping “reciprocal tariffs” on foreign imports. The justification was expansive: the persistent U.S. trade deficit—exceeding $1.2 trillion annually—was declared a national emergency. Blanket tariffs were applied to nearly all trading partners, with rates reaching as high as 50 percent. The objective was explicit: compel bilateral negotiations, extract investment commitments, and accelerate industrial reshoring.