Articles

Thanks to multilateral cooperation projects initiated within the global framework of the Union for the Mediterranean, could Lebanon become what it deserves to be, a maritime Lebanon? The question requires deep reflection and an exhaustive vision of the situation in which the country struggles in this regard… « For the French, the sea is what they have at their backs when they look at the beach » (Eric Tabarly). France is a maritime state that it misunderstands. The translation of this specificity into a political and budgetary reality is weak. Replace France with Lebanon. It is a maritime state - its history is there - which has not yet made the necessary political and institutional choice. Unifying maritime projects would sustainably bring together all communities. It has the assets. The « common good » would be « the » beneficiary.

Since the increase in regional tension, the strikes targeting Iran in 2025, and the latest popular uprising in Iranian cities, authorities have multiplied emergency measures around museums. The aim was to protect invaluable heritage from the risks of bombing, sabotage, or even looting. Concretely, this translated into prolonged closures, reduced hours, meticulously supervised visits, and the discreet transfer of some major pieces to secret reserves. This bunkerization reflex is part of a deeper and older climate of tension and crisis, marked for decades by a tightening of the cultural space throughout the country.

Saad Hariri bears something of a cursed hero from a Greek tragedy. Twenty-one years after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, Saad returns to a city that no longer quite resembles the one he left behind. The centers of decision-making have shifted. He knows this well. Saudi Arabia, which once contributed, under the leadership of Fahd and later Abdullah, to anchoring Rafik Hariri on the Lebanese stage, has for nearly a decade multiplied negative signals toward Saad. Saudi media outlets have widely expressed their dissatisfaction at the prospect of his relaunching his political movement after four years of suspension.

With each passing day, it becomes increasingly clear that the Iranian regime, now forty-seven years old, is currently facing only two options, with no third alternative available. Either it surrenders to American conditions, which do not differ significantly from Israeli conditions, or it faces a war with the United States from which Iran would not emerge unscathed. Is the “Islamic Republic” capable of acknowledging that there is no escape from dealing with the new reality in the region, instead of persisting in arrogance in the manner of Saddam Hussein? At the beginning of 1991, Saddam, the ruler of Iraq, believed that he would be able to negotiate with the United States on equal footing, despite the fact that the position of the administration of George H. W. Bush was perfectly clear. He was left with only two choices: withdraw from Kuwait unconditionally, or expose Iraq to a war that would return it to the Stone Age. The late Iraqi ruler did not understand the region, the world, or the meaning of balances of power.

At the heart of one of Lebanon's most densely populated regions, thousands of cubic meters of hydrocarbons are currently stored. From Antelias to Karantina, rows of tanks face a vertical suburb that rises up to 900 meters in altitude, yet remains, as the crow flies, dangerously close. It's an unbearable proximity between a highly flammable industry and overcrowded residential areas. Aerial view from 2017. Aerial view from 2024 showing the project's extension. Proximity of Coral and Unigaz facilities to the city. Two of Coral's five gas tanks, comparable to those of Unigaz, located a little further away.

What would be the point of a strike ordered by Trump? Are we to believe it would put an end to the repression raining down on Iranian protesters? In reality, no one is in a position to halt the reprisals that the Revolutionary Guards are inflicting upon their fellow citizens. And even if an agreement were concluded in Oman to avert an American military operation, nothing suggests that civil peace would immediately take hold. In either case—whether the mullahs reach a cut-rate understanding with the United States or not—the Iranian protest movement will be left to the ferocity of a so-called “pacification” that fires live ammunition at point-blank range at demonstrators and other opponents.