Articles

Republicans in the United States are not the only ones suffering from the war in Iran, nor are people around the world or countries still facing the actions of Iranian proxies. Indeed, the conflict could cost Donald Trump’s party a significant number of Senate seats, even under the most favorable projections. The world, meanwhile, is feeling the effects of inflation fueled by rising energy prices. In Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq, the mullahs’ hydra has lost several of its heads, but it still retains its capacity to wreak havoc. Today, however, Saudi Arabia finds itself on the front line of the conflict launched by the United States and Israel last February. Yemen’s Houthi rebels continue to harass its borders, strike its critical infrastructure and, above all, hamper its oil exports—the lifeblood of its economic power.

The deep crisis in Lebanon’s private education sector has continued to worsen at an exponential rate for several years. It has been further exacerbated by the economic and financial collapse of 2019, which has yet to be overcome. This crisis is severely affecting school owners and teachers alike and, by extension, parents. Catholic schools, however—particularly those run by foreign religious orders—face another major challenge of an entirely different nature: the increasingly acute lack of new vocations within the various orders, not only in Lebanon but especially in Western countries. This is having an alarming impact on schools that have sometimes been operating in Lebanon for more than a century.

The conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthi rebels exposes a persistent strategic weakness in the Arab world. Iran is exploiting this crisis to disrupt maritime traffic in the Red Sea, strengthen its position at the negotiating table with the United States, and retain leverage over the global economy. For their part, the Houthis are doing everything they can to consolidate their power in Yemen and strengthen their position ahead of any future settlement. Meanwhile, Washington is pursuing its broader strategy (1) of focusing more heavily on the Americas while leaving allied regional actors to shoulder greater responsibility for managing crises in the Middle East.

Thursday was a distinctly Lebanese day in Paris, where Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called on participants in the preparatory meeting for the international conference in support of the army to “draw up a roadmap and a precise timetable” for the conference, an initiative launched by President Emmanuel Macron. Its date, however, has yet to be determined. The meeting, held at the Hôtel des Invalides, was part of the Aqaba Process launched in 2015 by Jordan’s King Abdullah II to strengthen security and military cooperation against terrorism. Abdullah II attended the meeting alongside representatives of the United States, including US Ambassador to Beirut Michel Issa and the head of the Lebanon Military Coordination Group, General Joseph Clearfield, as well as senior officials from Arab countries and the European Union.

Every year, when the Beirut Spring Festival organized by the Samir Kassir Foundation begins, I find myself watching the audience before I watch the stage or the screen. Perhaps because, to me, Samir’s name is not simply the name attached to a festival, and because the Samir Kassir Foundation is not simply a cultural institution, I find myself looking for something else in people’s faces: does the Beirut Samir believed in still exist? Are there still people who want culture, debate, art, and freedom? Is the city still capable, amid everything it has endured, of bringing people together around an idea rather than around a leader, a sect, or a fear?

It was a phrase my late mother used to repeat to us from the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War, more than fifty years ago. To her, it was not merely financial advice, but the expression of an early awareness of danger and of the need to prepare for difficult days. She had also known the tragedy of famine through the stories passed down by her father, whose two brothers had emigrated in search of a livelihood and remained out of contact for a long time, while he stayed behind to care for his parents… At the same time, my mother was influenced by Raymond Eddé’s reformist ideas and by his concerns over Israel’s expansionist ambitions. She would particularly recall his warning in 1969 against signing the Cairo Agreement, fearing that it could provide Israel with a pretext to expand its occupation of southern Lebanon, within the broader framework of what he saw as Israel’s long-standing expansionist ambitions.