Articles

At its core, one question demands an answer: what drove Iran to so flagrantly violate the memorandum of understanding it had reached with the United States through the negotiations held in Switzerland with an American delegation led by Vice President J. D. Vance? There are, no doubt, many reasons that may explain Iran’s strange behavior, bordering on irrationality. It prompted President Donald Trump to go so far as to describe Iranian officials as “sick” and “liars” with whom no meaningful dealings are possible. He went even further, using language that revealed profound disappointment with Iran’s leadership before announcing the end of the memorandum of understanding.

There is a logic that reappears every time the question of Hezbollah’s weapons is raised. It tries to present the party not as an armed authority that has confiscated the decision of a sect and a country, but as the natural extension of Lebanon’s Shiite community — as though objecting to Hezbollah were an objection to Shiites themselves, and as though disarming it meant uprooting an entire community from its history, memory, and means of protection. This logic is not only wrong. It is insulting. It reduces Shiites to their fear. It turns their long history into a prelude to a rifle. It treats an entire community as though it cannot exist except inside the network of an armed party — as though Jabal Amel, Najaf, jurisprudence, reform, scholars, intellectuals, farmers, students, merchants, and all the Lebanese Shiite national experiences were nothing more than a preparation for Wilayat al-Faqih.

This essay offers a journey through the figures of crisis and catastrophe, from ancient cosmologies to the lived experience of the world’s upheaval. By bringing together the Greek, Biblical and Indian traditions with the thought of Jan Patočka, it explores the ways in which civilizations have conceived disorder, collapse, irreversibility, and even the very possibility of action when meaning itself begins to waver. Published here as a series of seven essay-chapters, this text follows a demanding yet essential thread: to understand whether catastrophe is a sudden rupture, a slow disintegration of the world, or the deepest truth of our age. Here follows the sixth part.

Is the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran entering its final days – or even its final hours? The question has taken on renewed urgency since Wednesday morning, as tensions between the two capitals have escalated sharply amid a new military standoff over the Strait of Hormuz. Since the end of the Israeli-American military campaign against its territory, the Islamic Republic has pursued a policy of brinkmanship, pushing its provocation to the limit in an effort to extract as many concessions as possible from President Donald Trump under the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) the two countries signed last June. Tehran appears to be betting that Trump’s preference for a diplomatic resolution to the conlict – driven by economic, financial and U.S. domestic political considerations – in order to push the envelope further without fearing that negotiations, which are expected to resume in the coming weeks, will be called into question.

On July 8, 2026, Ankara became the scene of a strategic turning point for European and transatlantic collective defense. While President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan presiding, the opening of the 48-hour summit at the Beştepe Presidential Complex marked the official launch of what many officials and analysts are already calling “NATO 3.0.” The summit goes beyond diplomatic protocol: it reorients the Alliance’s institutional priorities in response to a range of challenges, including the protracted war in Ukraine, simmering tensions with Iran, the persistent threat of terrorism, and mounting concern over successive waves of migration.

The visit that President Emmanuel Macron began on Monday evening in Damascus, accompanied by a large ministerial delegation and the heads of major French companies, took on particular significance in the current context — one that goes well beyond the conventional scope of routine official visits. However, it was overshadowed by a serious security incident… On the political front, Mr. Macron's talks with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa marked Syria's return to the international community in the post-Assad era. A comeback that is both political and economic in nature. The two heads of state announced the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries, which had been severed following the massacres carried out by the Baathist regime against its own population during the civil war that erupted in 2011.