Artigos

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa was in Riyadh on Tuesday, where he was received upon arrival by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for talks focused on regional developments and bilateral relations. This was Mr. Sharaa’s third visit to Saudi Arabia, the first country he visited in February 2025 after overthrowing Bashar al-Assad. He returned to the kingdom in April of the same year as part of a tour of the Gulf countries. The aim of that tour, which also included Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Türkiye, Jordan and Egypt, was to reintegrate Syria into its natural Arab environment.

For more than a century, political Islam has been one of the major intellectual and political currents in the Arab and Muslim world. It has taken many forms, encompassing a wide range of organizations, movements and approaches, from those that have opted for elections and peaceful political action to revolutionary movements and, ultimately, extremist jihadist organizations. Despite their profound differences, a central idea has remained common to a significant number of these movements: the belief that the crisis facing Arab and Muslim societies can be overcome by returning to an Islamic political model capable of restoring the nation’s unity, strength and standing.

It is September 25 at the Stade de France, near Paris, where Pope Leo XIV is set to meet with French youth that evening, on the first day of his apostolic journey to France. On a backdrop depicting a boat and a sail, a man and a woman can be seen standing, while, overlaid on a fourth-century Aramaic hymn rising through the stadium, a voice-over reads: “When France did not yet bear its name, Heaven was already preparing its plan. In the year 44 AD, on the shores of the Mediterranean, a frail wooden boat reaches the coast. Two disciples of Jesus Christ set foot for the first time on this land that would become Provence: Lazarus and Mary Magdalene. From the coastal calanques to the cliffs of Sainte-Baume, their passage would carve into stone, into hearts and into the memory of men the very first page of the Christian chapter in the history of France. ‘Here is the cry of my entire life,’ Mary Magdalene, the converted sinner, then proclaims: ‘Christ is calling you by name. No one is too broken to be loved!’”

Following recent advances by pro-Iranian militiamen toward the regions bordering the Red Sea, the Saudi-led coalition launched a large-scale counteroffensive that had already borne fruit by Monday. For several weeks now, amid relative calm on the Iranian-American front—the U.S. forces have not launched direct attacks on Iranian territory since early September—the Yemeni front has seen the most movement. Until now, however, this had favored the pro-Iranian Houthis, who had unexpectedly made considerable advances toward the Red Sea, threatening to disrupt passage through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, after the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to the conflict in Iran. Last weekend, militia fighters had already succeeded in encircling the Yemeni city of Taiz, cutting it off from Aden, where Yemen's official government is based.

A bulldozer does not debate politics. When it enters a village, it does not ask who supported the war and who opposed it. It does not distinguish between the home of a supporter and that of an opponent. It tears down walls, uproots trees, alters the features of the land, then leaves people facing the simplest and harshest question: Do we rebuild only to wait for the next war? This is the question from which any serious discussion about Lebanon’s future should begin. For many years, we discussed neutrality as though it were an academic idea, or the demand of one Lebanese camp against another. Some saw it as a withdrawal from the Arab-Israeli conflict, while others regarded it as an attempt to detach Lebanon from its surroundings. At times, it was treated as though it were a sectarian project impossible to implement.

This series of articles offers a clearer understanding of the current situation on the Lebanese scene in light of the recent past, steering clear of the impassioned, ideological, or romantic narratives that overlook realities and leaving readers to draw the necessary conclusions. The previous eighteen installments revisited the events surrounding Hezbollah’s rise to power, from the Taif Agreement to the beginning of its military intervention in Syria alongside Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Adopted unanimously on June 11, 2012, at a meeting of political leaders held at the Presidential Palace, the Baabda Declaration was intended to preserve Lebanon’s stability and shield it from the spillover of the Syrian civil war onto its territory.