Articles

The 60-day truce between the United States and Iran will expire in three days, with no official indication from either side about their intentions. Communication channels between Tehran and Washington remain severed, but mediators — notably Pakistan — appear to be working actively to secure an extension of the ceasefire established under the US-Iranian memorandum of understanding signed in mid-June. Both belligerents appear willing to extend the truce, though any such extension would not, at this stage, come with specific conditions attached, according to several corroborating media sources. The regional status quo is therefore set to continue, with no way of determining — given the hardening rhetoric on both sides — what might bring them back to the negotiating table.

The Middle East is no longer merely undergoing a realignment of alliances. It appears to be entering a period in which the very concept of regional security is being redefined. After decades in which the Arab system functioned, however tenuously, within common frameworks such as the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council, new security and economic arrangements are now beginning to emerge. They transcend the boundaries of the Arab world, bringing Arab and Muslim states together with regional and international powers on the basis of strategic interests rather than identity alone. It is in this context that what has become known as the “Mecca Agreement,” signed by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan on August 7, 2026, has emerged. It is based on the principle that an attack on any one of the three states is considered an attack on all of them. In its wording, this principle echoes the collective-defense principle enshrined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, although it is still far too early to describe it as a fully fledged “Islamic NATO.”

The question could hardly be simpler. Does Lebanon have one government headed by Nawaf Salam, or several governments, each with its own agenda and controlled by one minister or another? It was only natural for Nawaf Salam to settle the matter and prevent Defense Minister Michel Menassa from speaking during the parliamentary session that saw the passage of the amnesty law, with all its merits and flaws, a law that reflects better than anything else the state of Lebanon, with all its decay and tensions. Nothing illustrates this Lebanese decay more clearly than the alliance between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement, led by Gebran Bassil, the son-in-law of former president Michel Aoun. This alliance opposed the amnesty law and sided with the defense minister, who intended to express before Parliament the Lebanese army’s position on the law. This would have meant undermining the existing system at its very foundations by portraying the army as an entity autonomous from the Council of Ministers. In other words, the army would have a position of its own, alongside that of the Council of Ministers, which represents the executive authority… or so it is supposed to.

The rift between Americans and Israelis over Lebanon is growing ever wider, as statements from Israeli officials increasingly diverge from commitments made during direct talks with the Lebanese — particularly since the framework agreement was signed between the two sides in June. Comments by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, suggesting that the army would not withdraw from the occupied portion of the South, drew a sharp rebuke from the State Department on Thursday, which stated that such declarations were inconsistent with the commitments made under the framework agreement. Meanwhile, on Thursday, Israeli destruction continued unabated in southern Lebanon. According to MTV, Israel is also reportedly preparing to blow up Hezbollah tunnels in the Ali el-Taher hill, where Iran has over the years built an impressive network of underground tunnels stretching hundreds of kilometers, alongside sophisticated military infrastructure designed to pave the way for a Hezbollah assault on Galilee.

In April 2026, Wissam Saadé delivered four lectures at the University of Bologna. The first, given at the invitation of Professor Giovanni Giorgini and entitled “The Prophet and the Philosopher: The Hierarchy of Knowledge between Avicenna’s Falsafa and al-Kirmānī’s Ismaʿili Neoplatonism,” is presented here in a revised and expanded version, published as a series of ten articles. This series explores the intellectual landscape of Islamic Neoplatonism through a comparative reading of Avicenna and al-Kirmānī. While both thinkers share a broadly Neoplatonic horizon, shaped by a metaphysics of emanation, a hierarchy of being, and a synthesis of Aristotelian and Platonic thought, they develop distinct philosophical projects: Avicenna within the tradition of Peripatetic falsafa, and al-Kirmānī within the framework of Ismaili theology. Despite these different intellectual contexts, their systems remain engaged in an ongoing dialogue concerning the nature of knowledge, the relationship between reason and revelation, and the ascent of the soul. Their respective projects also embody contrasting conceptions of the political, illuminating different ways of understanding the place of philosophy in relation to authority, law, and the organization of the community. This article constitutes the fourth installment of this ten-part series.

Anthropologists were hardly pleased to see their discipline portrayed as a hotbed of “bad political groupthink,” or to read that “scientific neutrality” is, at best, an illusion and, at worst, a political dictate. They reacted angrily to the Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences , commissioned by Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis and prepared by a group of ten scholars. Recently released, the report presents anthropology as an example of a discipline experiencing a widespread decline in scientific standards, accompanied by a corrosive intellectual climate in which reasonable disagreement on politically controversial subjects is suppressed and punished.