Articles

When one delves into the evolution of the Iraqi situation since the spring of 2003, the date marking the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist family regime as a result of an American war waged by the United States, one can then understand a specific stance adopted by President Donald Trump. It is a negative stance toward the return of Nouri al-Maliki to the post of prime minister, a position he was forced to relinquish in 2014. The issue is less about an Iraqi politician as such than about, on the one hand, the symbolism embodied by Nouri al-Maliki and, on the other, an American decision to reclaim Iraq from Iran.

Analytical focus on the war in Sudan which, since 2023, has already resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people, with a particularly overwhelming human cost in Darfur, where mass violence, sieges and forced displacement have taken on a dimension that many international actors now qualify as genocidal. Analyzing the Sudanese war according to the parameters of a conflict confined to the national territorial space would be aberrant, as the country's geography is a structuring factor. A Red Sea littoral state, backed by the Horn of Africa and located in immediate proximity to the Arabian Peninsula, Sudan occupies a strategic position that makes it particularly vulnerable to regional power projections.

Lokman Slim was not an opponent in the conventional sense, nor a partisan activist seeking power or position. At the core of his experience, he was an intellectual who chose to pay the full price for his convictions, confronting the system of oppression not from outside, but from within its social environment, through its prevailing narratives and the rhetoric it sought to claim as its own. His assassination thus appeared, from the very first moment, as a symbolic killing before it was a classic crime, a political message before it became a personal liquidation. Lokman Slim was born into a Shia environment from which he never detached himself. Yet he refused to allow it to become an ideological prison or a reductive identity. Early on, he understood that the true danger to a community does not come so much from outside as from the suppression of its right to critique, and the transformation of that community into a closed bloc governed by fear and enforced loyalty. His conflict with Hezbollah, therefore, was not a mere political disagreement, but an existential clash between those who see politics as an open space for debate and accountability, and those who regard it as a closed doctrine, protected by arms.

Fourteen years ago, on February 1, 2012, former MP and minister Nassib Lahoud passed away. In these times when populism is wreaking havoc across the world, and Lebanon seems, once again, to have been a forerunner of the current wave, it feels necessary to evoke the memory of a man who, over the last three decades, carried and defended another vision, another practice of politics. All the more so in Lebanon, where gregarious passions naturally propel either the exalted “historic leader” or the disenchanted utilitarian fox draped in the rags of sectarianism, rather than composed statesmen with modern ideas and a deep, strategic understanding of public affairs.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi sits at the heart of a deliberate strategy to establish the Emirate as an international cultural hub. The museum embodies Abu Dhabi’s ambition to position itself as a bridge between civilizations, aiming to transcend the image of an Emirati society seen as “purely oil-driven” and to assert an identity firmly oriented towards global culture. It is a major art institution, conceived as a universal museum, highlighting the interactions of human creativity across cultures, civilizations, religions, eras, and prejudices. Layout and Scenography At the Louvre Abu Dhabi, artworks are displayed according to a distinctive curatorial approach that emphasizes universal narratives – such as creation, religion, power, and exchange – rather than rigid geographic divisions. This represents an unsual approach for an art museum.

Following the deployment of the impressive American armada near the Iranian coast, several military options are emerging should the White House decide to intervene. For the time being, the standoff with the mullahs' regime remains essentially verbal: communiqués, warnings, and displays of force punctuate the escalation. With each hardening of Donald Trump's tone, Tehran responds with threats of massive retaliation. On the American side, one thing seems certain: no ground intervention is planned. Several observers, however, believe that the American president will first seek a diplomatic solution before resorting to force. On the Iranian side, uncertainty remains total: how long can the regime resist new American demands? At what point might it back down?