Articles

Since the start of the war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran, the Gulf's oil monarchies have been paying a heavy price: unable to strike Tel Aviv or Washington directly, the Islamic Republic has not hesitated to target its Arab neighbors on the pretext that they host American military bases — bases that have largely been evacuated. As a result, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar — despite being considered an Iranian ally — as well as Oman and Jordan have all come under attack. Recently, Tehran activated its proxies in Iraq and Yemen — Iraqi Shia militias and the Yemeni Houthis — who have targeted Saudi oil infrastructure.

The Lebanese crisis, which officially emerged in the autumn of 2019, has been explained almost exclusively through technical factors: the financial engineering of the Banque du Liban, bank profits, the lira-dollar peg, interest rates, capital transfers, and the trade deficit and consumption. These factors do indeed warrant scrutiny, but they are not sufficient on their own to fully explain the collapse. The political, security, and administrative causes — looting of the public sector, chaotic hiring in the state administration, spending without regular budgets, clientelism, the politicization of the judiciary, smuggling, the shadow economy, and involvement in regional conflicts — have been largely overlooked. Hassan Diab's government is not solely responsible for a crisis that had been building for decades. Nevertheless, certain decisions made or endorsed during his tenure accelerated the breaking point.

It is a day of talks par excellence. In Rome, the third and final meeting of the seventh round of direct negotiations between Beirut and Tel Aviv concluded on a more or less positive note, though still without a definitive outcome. In the Gulf, Tehran and Muscat are reportedly on the verge of announcing a provisional agreement on navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. In both cases, a resolution is certainly not imminent, especially since the underlying problem — namely Iran's destabilizing influence in the region, and more specifically that of pro-Iranian militias — persists, as Syrian Foreign Minister Assaad al-Shaibani rightly pointed out during his visit to Ankara on Thursday.

In April 2026, Wissam Saadé delivered four lectures at the University of Bologna. The first lecture, at the invitation of Professor Giovanni Giorgini, entitled “The Prophet and the Philosopher: The Hierarchy of Knowledge between Avicenna’s Falsafa and al-Kirmānī’s Ismaʿili Neoplatonism”, is presented here in its revised and expanded essay form, published as a ten-part series. The series explores the intellectual landscape of Islamic Neoplatonism through a comparative reading of Avicenna and al-Kirmānī. Although both thinkers share a broadly Neoplatonic horizon, shaped by an emanationist metaphysics, 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 Ismaʿili theology. Despite these different intellectual settings, their systems remain in continuous dialogue on the nature of knowledge, the relationship between reason and revelation, and the ascent of the soul. Their respective projects also embody contrasting approaches to the political, illuminating different ways of understanding the place of philosophy in relation to authority, law, and the ordering of the community. This article is the first installment of that ten-part series.

The Iranian mullah regime, and more specifically the radical faction represented by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, continues to seek control over the Strait of Hormuz crisis by dictating its own terms and sidelining the United States from ongoing negotiations—indeed, outright denying Washington any role in the emerging solution. To achieve this goal, Tehran's decision-makers negotiated the proposed settlement exclusively with the Sultanate of Oman, taking care to insist that no dialogue is taking place with the US. Even more strikingly, pushing its arrogance and open contempt for the American president even further, the Iranian regime declared on Wednesday morning that 'the agreement with Oman has been postponed due to threats made by the United States.'

Escalating tensions in the Gulf are heightening global concerns over a new disruption to navigation in the Red Sea. Such a development would impose new constraints on an already costly global maritime trade network while triggering another supply crisis in areas close to the conflict zones surrounding the Strait of Hormuz and the geopolitical risks associated with them in the Middle East, should the conflict drag on. The same scenario has repeated itself so often that it has become almost predictable. President Donald Trump has raised his threats to their highest level. Washington is openly discussing the possibility of a large-scale strike, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks of alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz. Markets have begun pricing in the prospect of a regional war. Oil prices surge, stock markets retreat, and the region slips deeper into uncertainty.