Articles

One can only welcome the visit to Lebanon by Asaad al-Shaibani. For the first time, it was the visit of a Syrian foreign minister to a sovereign, independent state rather than to a mere arena or subordinate territory. At least in the way it was conducted, the visit reflected President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s desire, as the man ultimately in charge in Damascus, to build a different kind of relationship between Lebanon and Syria, one freed from the burdens of the past, particularly those that have weighed on both countries since Hafez al-Assad seized power in Syria in November 1970. Does this signal a lasting shift in Syrian policy, or merely a transitional approach while the new leadership consolidates its rule by building a strong, cohesive state, much as Hafez al-Assad did even before the coup he carried out in the autumn of 1970 under the banner of the “Corrective Movement”?

A researcher in biophysics once wrote: “I do not read power solely through politics; I also read it through matter. In the laboratory, we learn a truth that people recognize from everyday life: pressure does not affect every material in the same way. Apply pressure to glass and it may shatter. Apply it to rubber and it bends. Apply it to living tissue and it may absorb the pressure, adapt to it, and repair itself. The very same force may destroy one structure while strengthening another. The difference lies not only in the pressure itself, but in the internal structure that receives it.” This is precisely where Israel’s and the United States’ reading of Iran, and of the Middle East more broadly, falls short. Like every power that places supreme confidence in its technological superiority, Israel assumes that history can be engineered through pressure: strike harder, kill more, tighten sanctions, deepen isolation, and the adversary will eventually retreat. Yet this is a mechanical reading of human societies. It imagines nations as inert objects that, if subjected to sufficient pressure, will inevitably break.

Thursday’s headlines in Lebanon were dominated by the visit of Syrian Foreign Minister Assaad Chibani to Beirut, where he met with all of Lebanon’s leading political and religious figures, as well as representatives of the country’s main sectarian parties – with the notable exception of Hezbollah. For those who lived through the years of Syrian tutelage over Lebanon – or occupation, as some prefer to describe it – the visit was anything but ordinary, as were the statements that accompanied it. One of the most noteworthy came from President Joseph Aoun, who said he remained “committed to fraternal relations” between the two countries, founded on “coordination, cooperation, and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.”

This essay explores the figures of crisis and catastrophe, tracing them from ancient cosmologies to the lived experience of a world shaken to its foundations. Bringing Greek, Biblical and Indian traditions into dialogue with the philosophy of Jan Patočka, it examines how civilizations have conceived disorder, collapse, irreversibility, and even the possibility of action when meaning itself begins to falter. Published here as a series of seven essays, this study follows a demanding yet essential line of inquiry: Is catastrophe a sudden rupture, a slow disintegration of the world, or the deepest truth of our historical condition? What follows is the third chapter.

The International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF), which brings together 93 states and governments, supports programs in Lebanon and across the Middle East focused on promoting the French language, education, gender equality, and development. In Beirut, these efforts are coordinated by Lévon Amirjanyan, the OIF’s representative for the Middle East, who heads the regional office, which opened in late 2022. The office covers four countries: Lebanon and Egypt, both full members, and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which are associate members, with Lebanon serving as the regional hub for the organization’s activities.

As the contours — and perhaps the unspoken elements — of the framework agreement reached between Washington and the Islamic Republic of Iran gradually and tentatively come into focus, two fundamental parameters that might be described as "peripheral" to the broader political process underway are emerging with increasing clarity: on one hand, internal Iranian divisions within the ruling establishment and the cracks now openly visible in the regime's structure; and on the other, the steady, patient, and meticulous construction by the United States of what appears to be a new politico-military-security order in the region — one designed to clip the mullahs' regime's wings and reduce its extraterritorial influence to an absolute minimum.