Articles

For more than seven decades, the US Federal Reserve stood as a fortress at the core of America’s economic success: the steward of the world’s reserve currency and the institution markets trusted to anchor financial stability. It acted as lender of last resort with a dual mandate – controlling inflation on the one hand, supporting economic growth on the other. For most of this period, monetary policy was entrusted to independent professionals, formally insulated from both the executive and legislative branches of government. That independence, however, was never a constitutional given. It was a carefully constructed institutional equilibrium – one that markets gradually came to treat as permanent.

Although Russia and China are among Iran's major strategic partners, their support for the Islamic Republic, weakened by internal protests and under threat from Donald Trump, would remain limited in the event of an American attack. According to several experts, neither Moscow nor Beijing is willing to confront Washington militarily. Iran nevertheless holds a significant place in the geopolitical calculations of the two powers. Tehran contributes to the Russian war effort in Ukraine by supplying the famous 'Shahed' type drones that have greatly served Moscow's troops. Iran also came to Putin's rescue by re-exporting Scud-type ballistic missiles once acquired by the Islamic Republic, which produced a modernized version of them.

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani's game in Iraq was not a mere clever political maneuver or a misjudgment, but a meticulously planned political conspiracy, orchestrated from within a corrupt system, to reproduce power by causing failure and profiting from it. Sudani is not external to the system that destroyed the state, nor above it, but rather at its very heart, benefiting from its mechanisms and mastering its methods. What distinguishes him from others is not integrity, but his ability to manage corruption discreetly and without fuss. Nouri al-Maliki's return to the forefront of power was neither a coincidence nor a forced compromise. It was a carefully calculated maneuver. Maliki, with his heavy legacy, unresolved files, and widespread popular rejection, was the ideal candidate to bear the burden of the imminent collapse. He was not called to succeed, but to perish. He was not recalled to lead, but to serve as a scapegoat, to bear responsibility for the failures, thereby preparing the ground for his downfall and the dismantling of the entire coordination mechanism.

Thus, after the 'brilliant' military performance (!) of the 'support war' for Hamas and Gaza, Sheikh Naim Kassem now promises us a new 'support war,' but this time with the objective of coming to the aid of an even more distant regional actor: Ayatollah Khamenei and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The leader of Hezbollah has therefore decided, or rather has announced (since he is not the one who decides on such matters…), that the Lebanese must show blind self-sacrifice, without any limit, up to the ultimate sacrifice, to 'defend' (?) a foreign force… For all those who still had some doubts in this regard, or who refused to acknowledge the truth, Sheikh Naim Kassem has just brilliantly confirmed what was, for informed observers, a truism: Hezbollah is not a Lebanese party. Its members are indeed Lebanese, but its political decisions, its line of conduct, its political project, are transnational and take no account of local realities or the higher interests of the Land of the Cedars.

The looting of Iraq’s National Museum in 2003 led to the loss of priceless artefacts and triggered a domino effect, manifested in the widespread plundering of archaeological sites across the country. This, in turn, fueled the international trafficking of antiquities and severely hampered scientific research in the field. The episode has since become an emblematic case of the political responsibility borne by occupying forces in wartime, the emergence of an economy built around the illicit antiquities trade serving organized crime and terrorism, and, in parallel, the development of a “recovery diplomacy” involving international cooperation to secure the return of stolen objects.

Lebanon and, more specifically, the Shiite community commemorated a few days ago the 25th anniversary of the death, on January 10, 2001, of the former president of the Supreme Shiite Council (SSC), Imam Mohammed Mehdi Shamseddine. The man who was, for more than two decades, the spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shiite community, succeeding Imam Moussa Sadr – who mysteriously disappeared during a visit to Libya in 1978 – left behind a political 'will' whose existence and true scope are ignored (or concealed...) by many Lebanese and foreigners, particularly in academic and journalistic circles. The historical and truly existential dimension of this legacy is highlighted by the dramatic developments currently unfolding in Lebanon and the region.