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It is dishonorable to hand over a fugitive to his enemies! In our region, the “duty of asylum,” an unavoidable obligation, dates back to the pre-Islamic Jahiliyyah era. No “noble man” would surrender a person to those pursuing him, for the disgrace would stain his entire lineage. But what, then, should be said of judicial extradition in our contemporary world? Is it acceptable merely because international conventions have laid down its conditions and procedures? Bashar al-Assad and his camarilla, whose members number in the dozens, found refuge as early as December 2024 in the Russian Federation, as well as in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. Is there any chance that all these people will one day stand trial, in Damascus or elsewhere? Has Syria Requested Bashar’s Extradition from Russia? This blunt question has repeatedly been put to Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, and, as a seasoned diplomat, he has always evaded it. Yet his evasive answers did not prevent Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Chareh, from asking Vladimir Putin during his visit to Moscow in October 2025 to hand over “all those who committed war crimes” during the last civil conflict, foremost among them, of course, the deposed head of state and his brother Maher. Nothing came of it, and the Syrian authorities had to renew their request last May, formally asking Moscow for the extradition of the pursued criminals within the framework of the transitional justice proceedings launched in Damascus at the end of April. At least, that is what a judicial source claims. Extradite or Prosecute As a former head of state, a deposed president does not enjoy immunity from prosecution for war crimes or crimes against humanity. One need only recall the fate of Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested in London in October 1998. As for Slobodan Milošević, he was indicted in May 1999 and tried before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Moreover, judicial proceedings have even been initiated by the International Criminal Court against two sitting leaders: Vladimir Putin in March 2023 and Benjamin Netanyahu in November 2024. But what are international arrest warrants worth in certain specific contexts? Nothing more than pathetic gestures. Thus, this is where the Syrian case stands: Moscow refuses to play the game of sound international justice. The Latin maxim “aut dedere aut judicare,” meaning either extradite or prosecute, does not appear to apply to today’s Russia. For the moment, neither Bashar nor Maher al-Assad risk being troubled. With Vladimir Putin at the helm, they will neither be handed over to the justice system of their country nor prosecuted where they are. But let us instead imagine the case in which these two fugitives had found themselves in a European Union country. They would probably have appeared before a court in the host country or before a specially constituted tribunal. But they would never have been extradited. The reason is simple: neither Berlin, nor Rome, nor Paris, nor any other “civilized” capital would have extradited beneficiaries of the right of asylum to countries where they risked the death penalty. For it is understood that the gallows await, in Bilad al-Sham, those who took part in the massacres of the civil war. Bashar in Moscow, enjoying early retirement All things considered, Syria has the right to break with more than fifty years of impunity. On April 26, the “Damascus Trials” opened in the capital of the Umayyads, tasked with judging the horrors of the civil war. Yet the first hearing took place, inevitably, in the absence of Bashar and his brother, the principal actors in the tragedy. The former Syrian president fled, abandoning his accomplices and henchmen to their fate: they will pay for him. Having escaped with the treasury like a common thief, he will spend peaceful days along the banks of the Moskva River. To the blood crimes of which he stands accused will now be added those of greed and cowardice.

In a moment of acute regional sensitivity, where Lebanon’s security dossiers intersect with the trajectory of regional and international negotiations, three closely intertwined themes impose themselves on the domestic landscape: the threats of Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem, the controversy surrounding attempts to reposition the “Lebanese card” in the regional bargaining game, and the dossier of displaced persons and their encampments within the capital, particularly in densely populated neighborhoods such as Bechara al-Khoury. These themes, despite their apparent divergence, point in their depths to one and the same question: to what extent does Lebanon remain a state capable of asserting control over its own decision-making and controlling its security and social boundaries? Naim Qassem’s recent threats were not simply a domestic political discourse; they arose within a tense regional context bound to the negotiations over the future of southern Lebanon, the implementation of Resolution 1701, and the redrawing of rules of engagement in the aftermath of the last war. Within this framework, the discourse can be read as a twofold message: inwardly, a reaffirmation that the arms dossier and the Party’s military role remain outside any unilateral internal settlement; outwardly, a signal that any arrangements concerning Lebanon cannot be dissociated from Iran and its role in the region. This is what revives the idea that Hezbollah intends to return the “Lebanese card” to Iran in its entirety, wresting it from the grip of the Lebanese state. It is therefore striking that a strong direct political response failed to emerge from within Lebanon, while the position of the American Secretary of State stood out as the most unambiguous. This disparity in reactions reflects a subtle reality inherent to the Lebanese system: the state avoids direct internal escalation on sensitive sovereignty dossiers, whereas the United States regards any threat to stability or to the diplomatic process as a direct infringement on its interests and on the role it plays in managing regional balances. Conversely, this political climate cannot be dissociated from the social and security reality within the Lebanese capital. Beirut itself is living under a twofold pressure: the pressure of regional political fracture, and the pressure of social and economic deterioration from within. It is in this context that the dossier of displaced encampments in neighborhoods such as Bechara el-Khoury emerges as one of the manifestations of the state’s fragility in managing the public sphere. The informal settlements along roadsides and in overcrowded neighborhoods cannot be approached solely as a humanitarian issue, nor solely as a security issue. They are the direct consequence of the absence of a clear state policy for managing displacement within cities, and of the lack of municipal and administrative capacity to organize the urban space of the capital. Over time, these encampments are transformed into environments of social pressure: congested arteries, weakened services, daily friction with residents, and the absence of effective regulatory oversight. But the real danger lies not in the existence of these encampments in themselves, but rather in the general environment that surrounds them: a state in crisis, an acute political fracture, economic strangulation, and an open-ended regional tension. In such circumstances, any administrative or social vacuum can convert into a point of fragility liable to be exploited or to explode at the first crisis. It is precisely at this juncture that linking the political level on one hand to the security and social levels on the other becomes necessary. For when political messages from regional and domestic actors intensify around the future of the Lebanese decision, while simultaneously the state’s capacity to control the daily texture of life in the capital diminishes, a single picture takes shape whose central finding is the progressive erosion of the concept of the central state. It would nonetheless be inaccurate to characterize the situation as a collapse or as an inevitable “time bomb.” Lebanon, despite all its crises, still retains a margin of relative stability, itself the fruit of complex internal and regional balances that prevent total explosion. But this stability remains fragile, and any intertwining of political escalation on one side and social deterioration on the other is capable of significantly raising the level of risk. In conclusion, Naim Qassem’s threats reflect the continuing conflict over the definition of who holds the decision-making power in Lebanon, while the displaced encampments in Beirut reveal the limits of the state’s capacity to manage its daily affairs. Between these two levels, Lebanon appears as a state operating within an extremely narrow space, caught between a truncated sovereignty and accumulated internal pressures, rendering any minor dossier capable of becoming the emblem of a larger crisis, should it fail to be addressed within a comprehensive vision oriented toward the state rather than toward axes of alignment.

A widespread view in Lebanon holds that the Lebanese quarrel with Hezbollah stems from its doctrine and its adherence to the wilayat al-faqih as theorised by Khomeini. But the question deserves to be framed differently: does the problem truly lie in the doctrine itself, whether one agrees with it or rejects it, or rather in the imposition of that doctrine and the practices it entails upon society as a whole and upon the State? We have no right whatsoever to object to what others believe, nor to contest their full right to embrace whatever ideas and convictions they choose, whatever these may be. Any individual or community is free to forge its own intellectual and spiritual vision of the world, whether religious or political. This falls within the domain of freedom of conscience, a freedom enshrined in the Lebanese Constitution, one that is not, in its very essence, open to debate, nor should it be. Each individual and each community is free to see the world as it wishes and to build its own intellectual and spiritual framework without any form of tutelage. What becomes, however, a matter of objection, refusal, and indeed profound concern, is the moment when doctrine ceases to be a freely assumed personal or collective choice and becomes instead a force that imposes its law upon others, a project seeking to drag an entire society down paths it has not chosen. The difficulty deepens when doctrine transforms into an authority superior to that of the State, or into an instrument for imposing its choices upon a plural and diverse society, for at that point one is no longer in the realm of “belief” but in that of coercion. The objection, then, bears not on “what you believe” but on “how and why you seek to bind others to those beliefs.” At that stage, we are no longer facing a divergence of opinions or a diversity of convictions, but a perilous shift from the space of freedom to that of authoritarianism and domination. If I hold it as a principle that the beliefs of others are none of my concern, I am, on the other hand, entirely concerned when those beliefs become the pretext for drawing me into a war, for altering my way of life, or for imposing a political reality upon me against my will. This position proceeds from no hostility towards any community or school of thought: it is a defence of pluralism, of the right to differ, and of respect for the limits of all authority. The problem, then, does not lie in “what we believe” but in “how we translate that belief into practice.” For when conviction becomes the justification for imposing fateful decisions upon a plural society, for monopolising arms and wielding them as instruments of threat, and then for determining questions of war and peace outside the framework of the State and its institutions, one has crossed the boundaries of freedom and entered the logic of despotism and domination. This was recently made manifest in the declarations of certain leaders and adherents of Hezbollah, asserting that their arms will remain until the advent of the Mahdi !! At that point, one exceeds the bounds of reason and approaches collective delirium. In a society like Lebanon, founded by its very nature upon pluralism and a delicate balance, any attempt to impose a single model, whether ideological or religious, cannot but engender profound disorder, not because that model would necessarily be wrong in itself, but because it is imposed outside of any consensus and in breach of the rules of coexistence. It becomes therefore necessary to restore things to their proper place: defending freedom of belief does not mean accepting that it be imposed upon others, and pluralism does not imply that any one group may set itself up as guardian of everyone’s choices. What we need today is not a doctrinal debate that would only deepen divisions while missing the essential point, but a clear agreement on the limits of practice: the freedom of the individual or the group ends where the freedom of others begins, and no idea, whatever it may be, can legitimately transform itself into an authority imposed upon society and the State. This problematic cannot, however, be fully grasped if one confines oneself to the level of the behaviours or the visible political decisions of the Hezbollah movement. This is where the full importance of the approach developed by Waddah Sharara becomes apparent, for he did not regard the phenomenon as a mere collection of practices but as a coherent structure producing a particular mode of commitment, discipline, and loyalty. In State of Hezbollah , the Party reveals itself as a space that transcends political organisation to constitute a “society within society,” endowed with its own logic for defining legitimacy, belonging, and duty. From this angle, the engagement of individuals belonging to this movement, or their conformity to its injunctions, ceases to be a simple personal choice and becomes instead part of a collective mind that reshapes their perception of the world and of their place within it. This collective mind rests not only on conviction but on a system of symbols and meaning of considerable depth, articulated around martyrdom, sacrifice, the sacred, and belonging to a cause that transcends national borders. It is precisely here that the difficulty of the debate resides, for one is no longer in the presence of a political decision open to argument and contestation, but face to face with a mental and ethical structure of remarkable cohesion. Even in understanding this structure, however, the fundamental question remains: does this internal cohesion justify converting it into a force imposed upon the outside world? And can a collective mind, however coherent and self-assured, claim to reduce a diverse society to its own categories and impose its trajectory upon it? The true challenge, then, consists neither in deconstructing the belief itself nor in engaging in doctrinal controversy that risks proving sterile, but in drawing the boundary between the domain where this collective mind has every right to live and to express itself freely, and the domain it may not cross when the destiny of an entire society is at stake. In this sense, the more rigorous debate proves to be not a confrontation between beliefs but a struggle over the limits of authority and over who holds the right to determine the common destiny. And here, understanding the phenomenon is no longer enough: it is necessary to reaffirm a simple and decisive principle, namely that no force is legitimate when it claims to rise above the society to which it is supposed to belong, and that no idea may transform itself into a fate imposed upon others.

The entire region finds itself today before great transformations that are redrawing the political and military balances and equations. The war that erupted between America and Israel on one hand, and Iran and Hezbolla on the other, cannot be reduced to a passing confrontation or a limited skirmish, but constitutes a pivotal event whose profound repercussions will be felt across all states, and singularly in Lebanon, which finds itself once again at the heart of the storm. Experience has repeatedly demonstrated that great wars do not stop at the borders of the belligerent states, and that their consequences spread to fragile and torn entities, to states incapable of consolidating their sovereignty and of concentrating their decision-making power within their legitimate institutions. It is for this reason that maintaining Lebanon bound to regional axes and leaving it as an open arena for the conflicts of others places the Lebanese before existential dangers that it would be unwise to underestimate. The world today follows closely the American-Iranian negotiations and the political, security and military reconfigurations they might engender. But the real danger lies in the fact that Lebanon ranks among the countries most exposed to paying the price, due to the persistence of weapons that escape the authority of the State, and the insistence of certain forces on keeping the country within the orbit of a regional project that transcends the interests of the Lebanese, their homeland and their State. The region has truly entered a new phase, one in which the notions of war and peace are being redefined, new frontiers of influence are being traced, and the roles of states and armed groups are being redistributed. In this context, it becomes clear that any ceasefire between America and Iran would not be a passing conjunctural detail, but the prelude to a new political phase whose effects would inevitably reverberate across all the region’s arenas, Lebanon foremost among them. For it falls to America to impose on Iran the dismantling of its armed proxies and the cessation of any transfer of weapons and funds to any faction in the region, and most particularly to Hezbolla. To bet on the perpetuation of the status quo, or on the possibility of Lebanon remaining outside the trajectory of the coming transformations, would be a wager at once mistaken and dangerous. The international community and the Arab states are increasingly convinced that regional stability cannot be achieved in a context where states persist that are incapable of controlling their sovereign decisions, nor as long as the phenomenon of parallel armies and armed organizations operating outside all legality endures. The Lebanese president’s recent address constituted a remarkable moment in his treatment of the question of direct negotiation and of war and peace, when he affirmed clearly that any ceasefire decision is a sovereign decision that belongs to the Lebanese State alone, and to no other party whatsoever. He reaffirmed likewise, in terms that admit of no ambiguity, that no one has the right to speak in the name of Lebanon save the Lebanese State and its constitutional institutions. This position expresses the very essence of the idea of the State and the most elementary principles of national sovereignty. For Lebanon cannot endure as a State if the decision of war and peace remains outside its legitimate institutions, nor if certain forces persist in presenting themselves as the effective authority above the State, above the Constitution and above the will of the Lebanese people. It is regrettable that some continue to treat Lebanon as an open arena in the service of regional projects, while what the country needs today is to restore the principle of one State, one authority and one decision. For Lebanon is not protected by slogans, nor by political outbidding, nor by speeches of accusation and incitement, but by the advent of a real State, capable of protecting its borders, its people and its national interests. It is now evident that any new military adventure would be paid for solely by the Lebanese, and that any tethering of Lebanon’s fate to the Iranian-Israeli confrontation (via Hezbolla) would inexorably lead the country toward yet greater isolation, collapse and destruction. Similarly, any regional and international agreements or arrangements to come will impose new realities on the region, and Lebanon will be incapable of protecting itself or defending its interests so long as it remains unable to build a genuine State, sole holder of the right to use force, of the monopoly of arms and of the decision of war and peace. The Lebanese State finds itself today before a historical test: either it fully recovers its role as the sole reference for all the Lebanese, or Lebanon remains a profaned arena whose people pays the price of others’ conflicts. The coming phase demands the highest degree of national responsibility, for the region is transforming rapidly and the settlements to come will impose new equations. It is for this reason that Lebanon’s salvation begins with a return to the Constitution, to the logic of the State, to respect for Lebanese and international legality, and to the building of a State genuinely capable of protecting its people, its territory and its sovereignty. The Lebanese deserve a State that protects them and not a State whose territory is instrumentalized to settle scores. They deserve a future founded on stability, sovereignty and prosperity, and not on perpetual wars, divisions and dependence on the outside. In this pivotal moment, attachment to the State ceases to be a mere political choice and becomes the very condition for Lebanon’s survival. Lebanon’s protection begins above all with its disengagement from the axes of conflict, with the reaffirmation of its Arab identity, with the consecration of its neutrality with regard to the wars of others, and with the establishment of the exclusive authority of the State over the entirety of Lebanese territory.

The cry of the nonagenarian Stéphane Hessel in his pamphlet Indignez-vous! had awakened millions of young people to a form of liberation, after reading in that slim volume: “You have the right to anger, to refusal, to opposition.” But that cry was certainly not enough. It was at most an impulse that drove them into the streets to confront the social, political and cultural conflicts of their time. Things have genuinely changed since then, and one of the greatest victories of the dominant forces has been the discrediting of the words “activist” or “dissident”, labels sometimes deployed to attack young people who had managed to achieve substantive progress. Today, the idea of renewed youth engagement is celebrated. But when young people do engage, their attempts are discredited or ridiculed in favour of compromises that sidestep the fundamental legitimate motivations. This justifies the growing repression by authorities intent on containing any emergent change, and who repudiate democracy as an inherent necessity of social pluralism and the diversity of ideas. The struggle is no longer a simple affair, and its complexity continues to grow with the profound transformation in the nature of conflicts. Realities shift and mutate without ever consolidating, and face a genuine threat that takes every form of violence, political, economic, social and security-related, extending to the erosion of biodiversity, climate change, epidemics and pollution. This is something essentially different from the form of “traditional oppression” seen in totalitarian regimes. Conversely, populations submit without question to transformations driven by capitalism, technology and industry, contrary to the principles, ideas and philosophies of the Enlightenment that had established great truths. Contemporary oppression resides in these liquid societies that are rapidly collapsing and swallowing everything with them, the bonds, the tragedy, the anxieties. Any questioning of the meaning of order, individual freedom and human rights within the structure of democratic societies is immediately perceived as absurd or pathological. The dissident who challenges the way the world runs is now looked upon as a madman or a fool, accused of inventing a new reality that bears no relation to what is supposed to sustain existence, namely money, likes and power. This triumph of functions serving consumerist, propagandistic or populist ends represents a form of oppression radically different from those of the dictatorships of the past, precisely because there is no longer any direct adversary. The enemy was once identifiable, composed of military men, feudal lords, exterminators of indigenous peoples and racist patriarchs. This is why there was a general wave of liberation, a feminist counter-culture and Guevarist and indigenous liberation movements. The struggle against dictatorship is not simple in itself. But today, complexity becomes crushing in the face of injustice and the destruction of lives, in a world where there is nothing visible or immediate to achieve, and where isolation makes commitment profoundly sorrowful in a confrontation that operates through power relations traversing professional life, the bank account, the mobile phone and the domestic artificial intelligence. Political elites have come to resemble a vast enterprise for the distribution of privileges and benefits, rather than bearers of a coherent vision of the world, and the level of political cadres has slipped towards policies disconnected from reality. As for those who follow their desire to engage in the struggle, they always risk their lives a little. There is something quite Spinozist about this, which gives engagement a profoundly melancholic image, caught as it is between moments of pleasure, love and rest and the threat of a despair that devours societies. This is why it is so difficult to find the desire, the momentum and the necessary energy. The pessimism of young people today is profound, convinced as they are that the worst is inevitable and that institutions have failed to adapt to accelerating change, which calls for a “shock in politics” encompassing the simplification of procedures and the reduction of the State’s role, as well as institutional reforms such as financial transparency and the redistribution of power. And everyone mocks initiatives that attempt to reinvent the world in some form of idealism. This does not preclude setting concrete objectives, without cultivating the temptation of illusory promises aimed at forestalling the disillusionment of failure. This illusion of omnipotence inevitably leads to disillusionment. The State cannot and must not do everything. And the excess of politicisation of society is harmful, sustained by the illusion that individual salvation will come from politics. The situation is appalling. People are poor, hospital subsidies are being cut, migrants and universities are under attack, and demonstrations are being suppressed. All of this results from a failure to prioritise the battles, because everything is interconnected. One cannot separate the rise of extremist thought from political crises, discrimination and inequality (and none of this occurred without the consent of a silent majority). The authorities in power most often dispose of a majority they exploit to destroy everything, especially when anti-democratic leaders gain power through legal channels while inverting the discourse against those who defend democracy. During her campaign, Kamala Harris described Trump as a fascist danger. He countered by calling for his own election as the saviour of democracy. The same thing happened in Brazil: Bolsonaro, who had attempted a coup, sought to place himself among the oppressed, while Viktor Orbán in Hungary attempted to establish a regime under the name of “illiberal democracy”. These figures, and others such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, fit into this populism whose contours have expanded across the world. They invoke the phantasms of the Second World War, attack the mingling and meeting of peoples through openness to ethnic, religious and political minorities, while promoting repression and establishing a gradual hierarchy among human lives, simultaneously destroying opposing forces and ideas in order to rehabilitate the ideologies of the past. Consecrating the death of the heroes of the Enlightenment and the end of the era of pluralist ideas, they attack the press and the judiciary, depriving citizens of the instruments of democratic work. The world has never known hatred as radical as today’s. It was supposed that this alliance between the two ruling classes, the authoritarians and the intellectuals, would lead to a balance of power and the consolidation of a harmonious society. The natural elites could have effectively guided the working class and the youth, offering them both order and meaning, and sharing with them the privileges and benefits. This is what did not happen, according to the anthropologist Georges Dumézil. History is today replaying this flawed division in the competition between elites. On one side, the commercial, nationalist right, which likes to present itself as anti-intellectual, embodied in the United States by Donald Trump and the Republicans. On the other, the educated, liberal, transatlantic left, represented by the Democrats. But Trump’s supporters also rely on hundreds of experts and academics gathered in powerful think tanks. And the ultracapitalist programme they defend, in a fierce defence of social hierarchies through the extreme concentration of power and wealth and taxation favourable to the rich, does not differ greatly from the programme followed by Democratic economists. The truth is that these multiple elites have an interest in exaggerating their differences in order to alternate in power, even if their fundamental choices differ very little (Kevin Brooks). Elites have not always governed the world. In the wake of the social revolutions of the nineteenth century and the rise of universal suffrage in the twentieth, the popular classes and their trade union and political organisations succeeded in imposing a deep social transformation, sometimes through direct access to power (as was the case with the Swedish Social Democrats from 1932 to 1976, the British Labour Party in 1945, the French Socialists and Communists in 1936 and 1945, and the Rooseveltian Democrats in 1932), and more generally, from 1910 to 1990, this driving dialectic made it possible to place the reduction of social inequality at the heart of political conflict. This class order collapsed between 1980–1990 and 2010–2020 in Western democracies, beginning with the complexification of the social structure and the spectacular rise of territorial fractures, which undermined the autonomy of states and, with it, the political choices of social-democratic parties. To emerge from the current crisis and the illusory confrontation between elites, the left must renew its ambition and bring together the popular classes from all regions, while acknowledging that elites are united against them. This is the only way to restore the possibility of genuine alternation in power and to confront the disintegration of democracy.

My experience with memoir literature has generally been unrewarding, and this holds particularly true for the first volume of the memoirs of former Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa, entitled The Missing Narrative (Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2015). From its lyrical, subjective, and impressionistic opening, the book appears to promise the reader a work of personal reflection, only to draw him into a reading of political history written with an unqualified bias toward the Assad regime and the figure of former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad. Assad between Political Mythology and Image-Making In al-Sharaa’s pages, Hafez al-Assad appears as a larger-than-life hero or a “Frankenstein of Damascus”: a man who hangs up on American president Ronald Reagan, forces Secretary of State James Baker to move the peace conference from Amsterdam to Madrid, while al-Sharaa himself is portrayed as the favored confidant, at the expense of former Syrian vice-president Abdel Halim Khaddam. This narrative construction offers no critical reading of power; it merely reproduces the official account. The Great Absences: Pivotal Events Outside the Text Major historical sequences, decisive for both Syrian and Lebanese history, are entirely absent from the memoirs, foremost among them: · the disappearance of Imam Moussa Sadr and his two companions; · the events of Hama in 1982; · the assassination of Lebanese leader Kamal Jumblatt; · the policy of “rural urbanization” through bureaucratic inflation of the public sector, a phenomenon analyzed in detail by academic Ziad Majed in his work Syria: The Orphaned Revolution . These omissions bear little resemblance to oversights; they reflect rather a deliberate choice to pass over the most problematic episodes in silence. The Obedient Minister Rather Than the Man of Experience In these pages, al-Sharaa grants himself no role other than that of the president’s “obedient minister”: a minister who executes Assad’s political transactions, presents himself as accommodating toward Yasser Arafat and as a negotiator facing Saddam Hussein, without ever building an independent personal narrative or submitting his political career to any form of introspection. Political Papers Rather Than Memoirs What al-Sharaa has written is closer to a detailed political dossier than to memoirs in any literary or human sense. One is reminded here of what former Lebanese president Amine Gemayel did when he set out his political positions in a documentary volume, without restoring to the reader the living texture of personal experience. A Comparison with the Traditions of Political Memoir Unlike the memoirs of major world political figures such as Henry Kissinger, which combine documentation with the construction of inner experience, al-Sharaa practices a deliberate policy of leaping over events and narrative circumvention, producing ultimately a subjective political history rather than a living biography of its author. Conclusion: Why Does the “Narrative” Remain Missing? In sum, The Missing Narrative resembles less a memoir than a belated political apologia for an era and a regime. The first volume thus fully merits its title: a narrative genuinely lost, and one that will likely remain so, which provides little incentive to read the second volume as long as the same approach prevails, one that consists in suppressing difficult questions rather than confronting them.

There are certain keywords whose mere utterance is enough to put your interlocutor from the camp of the Momana’a on alert: the moment one pronounces “Palestine,” “resistance,” “America,” or “Israel,” something triggers within him, a kind of mental switch, and he stiffens to the point where any calm, objective discussion becomes impossible. The problem in Lebanon today is no longer that of divergent opinions, but rather the absence of the thinking process itself. Ready-made positions are summoned instantly, discourses repeated unchanged, choices maintained in spite of everything that shifts around them. As though we never questioned ourselves, never re-evaluated anything, never asked: are we still genuinely thinking about what we are doing, or are we merely repeating what we have grown accustomed to, simply because it has become part of our identity? This is precisely where the danger begins, when repetition substitutes itself for thought. What occurs in the mind of the Momana’a partisan is closer to a programmed psychological defence mechanism than to a mere political opinion. When one pronounces any of the following words — “Palestine,” “resistance,” “America,” “Israel” — something happens within him that resembles the activation of a preset programme, in the manner of prêt-à-porter, and this operates on several levels. First: the exclusivity of identity and its reduction. The cause — Palestine — has ceased to be a political question open to debate, where one might weigh which position would serve it best; it has become a component of personal identity. Any debate on the subject is therefore received as an attack on the self, rather than as political analysis. Second: the conditioned response. Modelled on what psychology designates by the term stimulus, at the mention of the word “Israel,” the immediate response is “absolute enemy,” one that would have attacked us before we attacked it — without analysis, without examination of possibilities, without reflection on the best way to confront it, or on the results of that confrontation to date. Third: cognitive dissonance. When facts contradict conviction — for instance, the effects of the axis’s policies on Lebanon — an inner tension takes hold, an ambivalence, whose resolution is the adoption of the most convenient solution: denying reality by reinterpreting it, or attacking directly the one who articulates it. Fourth: collective closure and conformity. Alignment with the group prevails: within an environment such as that of Hezbollah, opinion is not individual but collective, and any deviation from the line is treated as betrayal. Critical thinking becomes a threat to cohesion. What sometimes appears to us as rigidity or refusal to engage in debate cannot therefore be reduced to a merely hardline political stance; it is the result of a coherent discursive and psychological structure, built with care, repeated and reformulated with insistence, until it transforms into an automatic reflex of thought. This structure departs from a decisive point, that of the prior definition of reality. All fundamental terms — “the enemy,” “the resistance” — are not put forward as subjects for debate, but as definitive truths. Within this framework, America and Israel are presented as an absolute enemy, and “the resistance” is accorded absolute legitimacy. The debate no longer concerns choices, but operates within boundaries drawn in advance that may not be crossed. Once this framework is installed comes the second stage: loading language with affect. Words such as “sacrifices,” “steadfastness,” “dignity,” and “aggression” are employed not to describe reality, but to provoke an intense emotional response. When emotion takes the lead, analysis retreats, and objection becomes less a difference of opinion than a form of moral betrayal. Upon these foundations is built a “closed binary” that tolerates no gradation: one is either with the resistance or with the enemy. The grey zone disappears, the natural complexity of any political reality is effaced, and there is no longer any space to think about compromises, provisional arrangements, or even a national interest independent of this sharp divide. For the circle to close, every alternative is discredited in advance. Any differing proposal is immediately labelled a “deviation,” a “conspiracy,” or a “betrayal of history and of the sacrifices.” The idea is not discussed on its own terms, but pre-emptively distorted, so that the mere act of reflecting upon it already carries a moral risk. In parallel, the notion of “community” is invoked as the supreme reference. One speaks in the name of “the people,” of “national constants,” of “the honourable” — as in the discourse of Hezbollah — implying that whoever dissents is not merely diverging in opinion, but placing himself outside the community itself. This is where fear enters: the fear of exclusion, of the accusation of treason, or of the loss of belonging. But what is most dangerous in this structure is the articulation of the inside and the outside. When internal dissent is presented as a graver danger than the external threat — as emerges from the declarations of certain Hezbollah MPs — the internal opponent is transformed into an existential threat, rather than a partner in debate. At this point, internal escalation is pre-emptively justified. At the end of this trajectory, a single choice is presented as the only solution: no alternative to “the resistance” in its current form, whatever the circumstances, the balance of power, or the contradictions with the country’s interests. The circle closes entirely. As this structure repeats itself over time, it comes to resemble a “button” pressed in the mind: a single word is enough to trigger a complete chain of prefabricated judgements. Thought is no longer necessary, because the conclusion is known in advance. The debate then ceases to be a confrontation of ideas and becomes a collision of identities. And it is precisely at this level that the mind stops functioning, not because it is incapable of doing so, but because it was never trained to step outside this closed framework.

On Thursday, May 14, the world's attention was focused on Beijing, where a meeting between the President of the United States, who still sees himself as a major power, and President Xi Jinping, who aspires to be even greater, could have significant consequences for many countries, both in the short and long term. For some—likely many—these consequences could be dramatic. What will become of the state of the world after this? No one could say for certain yet. President Trump likely spoke first about trade. President Xi did as well. The former will quickly tout his victories—a word he cherishes—on his site, as is his custom. The Chinese president will display his enigmatic and fixed smile, hinting at his satisfaction with having obtained what he wanted. It can be presumed that trade agreements were the first to be discussed and secured. Will they be balanced, though? That's doubtful… The President of the United States has an urgent need to satisfy his public opinion and the American people, who are now weary of seeing oil prices skyrocket, inflation and unemployment rise, and who are tired of witnessing shortages of essential materials, including fertilizers blocked in the Persian Gulf region. Not to mention other materials vital to running the American economic machine, which hasn't really achieved the objectives claimed during the presidential campaign and repeatedly promoted under the MAGA slogan ( Make America Great Again ). We will know more on this matter when one side announces its victories without its interlocutor—not its partner—mentioning his own gains. All these discussions and negotiations carry a geopolitical undertone linked to the internal situation in the United States, to China's need to restore its supply levels of oil and materials necessary for its own development and increasingly pressing growth. The two priority issues forming this geopolitical backdrop are certainly Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, closely intertwined, as well as Taiwan. The second point will be important in the long term. Initially, discussions likely focused on halting US support for Taiwan's defense in exchange for China reducing its demonstrations and threats against the island—essentially maintaining the status quo for now. Neither side wants to move toward confrontation. Xi has time…until 2049. Between now and then, other pressures and negotiations will occur, and Xi believes the West's position may be quite different. The West could be preoccupied by other matters than defending Taiwan, which is far from the US, although freedom of navigation through the strait known as Formosa (150 km wide) will always be a sticking point. Trump's Dilemma But things are not so simple for the US President. He must not appear to abandon Taiwan to its fate without compromising his already tarnished position as protector of Arabian Peninsula countries, and without damaging his image of strength and power against Iran's Revolutionary Guards. As a previous Levant Time article pointed out, these countries might quickly conclude that American defense represents a danger, which could lead one or more of them to want the Americans to leave the bases they occupy in the region. Perhaps that's why Israel decided to give the United Arab Emirates an Iron Dome. Did Mr. Trump impose this measure? Who would benefit from this void? And if China, leveraging its ties with Iran, could assure them through its mere presence the security they seek, allowing them to focus on tourism, global events, high technology, luxury, and finance, as before? China would be the big winner in developing and expanding its Silk Road. President Trump, who thought upon arriving at the White House for a second term that he would only need to focus on domestic security—immigration and drug trafficking—and China internationally, as his only real competitor, has realized that being tugged by Benjamin Netanyahu's sleeve was a trap he fell into quite naively. Iran and the Strait of Hormuz The key is therefore to address the first issue properly and handle it well so as not to revisit it or get bogged down in it. Within this shared concern—Iran and the Strait of Hormuz—there are two aspects in which both presidents have a common interest: nuclear matters and freedom of maritime navigation. China opposes nuclear proliferation. It has always made this known. As for free passage through the Strait of Hormuz, China has the greatest interest in seeing it restored as quickly as possible. This won't prevent it from wanting to limit, or even prohibit, free passage through the Taiwan Strait. Geopolitics can be quite cunning! It's too early to speculate further. Let's wait for Mr. Trump's victory declarations, which will inevitably come, and for what Xi says or doesn't say. Regarding maritime navigation and all the consequences of decisions that will be made or adopted by the West concerning the Strait of Hormuz, it seems useful to recall that organizing this traffic is not limited to agreements with merely commercial or geopolitical connotations. This matter falls under the application of international treaties and regulations. Iran signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on December 10, 1982, in Montego Bay, commonly known as the Montego Bay Convention (UNCLOS). However, it has never ratified it. Iran is therefore a signatory but not a State Party to the Convention, which means it is not bound by all of UNCLOS's conventional obligations, unlike States that have ratified the treaty. This situation is comparable to that of the United States: they too have signed certain texts related to UNCLOS but have never ratified the Convention itself. This matter is particularly important for the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has long maintained that it is not fully bound by certain 'transit passage' rules provided by UNCLOS in international straits, precisely because it has not ratified the Convention. For this reason, Iran's Revolutionary Guards claim the right to levy charges for passage through the strait. Nevertheless, many States believe that several essential provisions of UNCLOS—particularly freedom of navigation—are now part of 'customary international law' and are therefore applicable even to non-State Parties. It will be vital for the entire world to observe how this issue is addressed and resolved. Many passages or straits could be affected by this question and navigation could be taxed by riparian States. Before closing—provisionally—this topic, it is important not to give credence to certain commentators who appear on television or radio to discuss straits and who indiscriminately address cases like the Suez or Panama Canals. Canals are not straits. The Dardanelles constitute another special case, as do the Bosphorus, whose passage is regulated by the 1936 Montreux Convention, meticulously applied and respected, particularly regarding the presence of maritime forces not belonging to Black Sea riparian States.

Radical shifts are taking shape across a world that, over the past two decades, has seen the slow disintegration of the global order established after the Second World War, giving way to a new system now beginning to emerge on the horizon. Since the start of his second term, and in line with his National Security Strategy (NSS 2025), President Donald Trump has redefined US priorities. First and foremost are domestic affairs – America First – and the American continent itself. As for the rest of the world, Europe, he argues, should takes responsibility for its own defense and no longer rely on the United States as it has done since 1945. In his view, Russia, despite its bellicose posture, is no longer considered a threat, having proven incapable of defeating Ukraine and incapable of invading Europe. The US president also believes that military rivalry with China over Taiwan and the South China Sea does not preclude economic accommodation with Beijing. American consumers, after all, remain dependent on competitively priced Chinese goods, while Chinese industry urgently needs access to the US market, which represents roughly 25% of global demand. Beijing, in turn, seeks broader access to American technology. As for China’s national strategy, it remains firmly centered on the Chinese Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, who holds absolute authority. Its objective is to establish China as a global power and achieve self-sufficiency in key industrial inputs. While that goal has already been reached in several sectors, China still faces a critical shortfall in the domestic production of advanced semiconductors – particularly those used in artificial intelligence – which only the United States is currently able to supply. At the same time, Xi Jinping is confronting a collapsing real estate sector, industrial overcapacity, and weakening domestic consumption, which is absorbing an ever smaller share of that surplus output, especially in electric vehicle and renewable energy. As a result, Beijing faces a dual imperative: reopening the U.S. market to Chinese industry and securing the continuity of supply chains dependent on the United States, notably in food products, semiconductors, oil and gas, Boeing aircraft, and high-tech goods. The Russian and Iranian Cases As for Vladimir Putin, he is dealing with slowing growth and acute labor shortages. His government has begun selling state assets and historic sites to generate revenue, avoid money printing, and prevent currency devaluation. Higher oil prices have benefited Russia in the context of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, but even at maximum production they have not resolved the underlying economic strain – not least because the financing of the war in Ukraine has become increasingly burdensome. Russian media are now openly reporting these difficulties. At the same time, morale among troops is declining, and the war – now dragging into its fourth year – is becoming increasingly unpopular. Putin is under growing internal and external pressure, particularly from President Trump, to bring the conflict to an end. He therefore needs an exit strategy. Finally, Iran has been strangled by a naval blockade that has lasted for more than a month following the US-Israeli strikes of June 2025 and the February-April 2026 war. For President Trump, the Islamic Republic remains a major nuclear threat, an obstacle to Middle East stabilization, and a barrier to freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran, for its part, remains unwilling to accept a settlement on Washington’s terms. An Entanglement of Interests on Iran Russia and China are blocking a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while continuing to provide Tehran with military assistance in intelligence and technology. Russia supplies ammunition; China does not. Even so, this support remains carefully limited, designed to avoid direct confrontation with Washington. There is no clear Tehran-Moscow-Beijing axis. On the contrary, since April 2026, bilateral contacts have multiplied between the United States and each of these three countries separately. Negotiations between Trump and Putin are intensifying, the Trump-Xi Jinping summit was held in Beijing this week, and indirect talks between Washington and Tehran – mediated through Pakistan – continue despite Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. These channels operate independently of Moscow, while Beijing playing a discreet background role. Negotiations Take Priority It is increasingly clear that Trump, Xi Jinping, Putin and Khamenei all require negotiations, constrained as they are by mounting internal and external pressures. Each faces economic strain, alongside growing domestic criticism and political opposition. In the United States, the central issue is the rising cost of living, driven by higher fuel prices and tariffs that have pushed up the cost of Chinese goods. In Russia and Iran, ongoing wars and sanctions weigh heavily on economies and supply chains. China, meanwhile, is edging toward recession under the pressure of rising oil prices, rising demand for agricultural and high-tech imports, and the need to secure broader access to the American market. Sketch of a Geopolitical Repositioning Between Trump and Putin Trump invited Putin to Alaska in August 2025, offering the lifting of sanctions and the establishment of improved economic and energy relations in exchange for peace in Ukraine. Three months later, he came close to acknowledging Russian sovereignty over Ukrainian territories under occupation in his twenty-point peace plan. It is clear that he no longer fears Russia and is seeking to maintain a strategic balance between Moscow and Europe, with an end to the war in Ukraine seen as a prerequisite for that objective. These economic and territorial incentives from Trump did not appear to sway Putin. However, on April 29, the Russian president unexpectedly called Trump, much to the surprise of the White House, and held a 90-minute conversation with him. The call came fifteen days before the Trump-Xi Jinping summit and points both to the internal difficulties facing Putin and to his concern over a potential Sino-American rapprochement that could leave Russia sidelined. During the conversation, the Russian president primarily raised the revival of economic exchanges and energy cooperation between the two countries, which had been virtually shut down since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, while noting that Trump has already begun reinitiating trade with Russia. Bilateral trade reached $4.4 billion in 2025, after falling to zero following 2022, compared with $37 billion in 2021. Revelations by the Wall Street Journal in late 2025 reported a discreet project between Moscow and Washington involving large-scale American investment in Russia. During the aforementioned phone call, Trump persuaded Putin to agree to a brief ceasefire in Ukraine from May 9 to May 11, accompanied by the exchange of 1,000 prisoners on each side. He had hoped to extend the ceasefire, but hostilities resumed immediately upon its expiration. Despite intense fighting on the ground, Putin has recently shown notable flexibility: on May 9, during the Victory Day commemorations marking the end of the Second World War, he stated that the war in Ukraine was nearing its end and that he wanted to conclude it through negotiations involving the Europeans, signaling an openness to a new relationship with Europe. A possible settlement in Ukraine will depend on the positioning of China and Europe, following the outcomes of the Trump-Xi Jinping summit and European reactions to Putin’s May 9 speech. He fears that a Washington-Beijing rapprochement could further isolate Moscow, which partly explains his recent opening toward Europe.

Influence in the Middle East is no longer measured solely by the ability of states to impose their military or political domination; it is now bound up with their capacity to build attractive cities and craft convincing narratives. In this shift, cities such as Riyadh, Dubai and Doha are emerging as new centres of gravity, while states unable to produce an effective city or a coherent discourse find themselves receding. Between economics and media, a different model of governance is taking shape, one that raises a fundamental question: who actually governs? In this context, the city has ceased to be a mere urban space or administrative hub and has become a fully-fledged political instrument. Its rise cannot be understood through the lens of economic growth alone; it points to something deeper — a redefinition of power itself. Cities are no longer built simply to house populations, but to serve as transborder platforms of influence, capable of attracting investment, drawing in talent and affirming their presence in the global economy. These are cities that compete with states, presenting themselves as models of stability and openness in a region long associated with conflict and uncertainty. In this sense, the city becomes the face of the state, and in certain contexts its substitute, where success is measured by the capacity to attract rather than to dominate, to produce rather than to declaim. Yet urban and economic power are not sufficient on their own. Every city needs a narrative that legitimises its ascent and gives it meaning. The media are no longer mere carriers of reality: they have become its co-producers. Digital platforms, news channels, and even influencers, all contribute to constructing a coherent image — that of modern, stable cities capable of leading the future. These narratives do not speak only to the outside world; they also reshape internal consciousness, becoming a tool for redefining legitimacy. The question is no longer who holds power, but who holds the ability to define reality. And whoever succeeds in imposing their narrative consolidates their position, even if the facts are far more complex than the image suggests. What is striking about this model is that it dissolves the boundary between economics and media. Rising cities do not merely invest in infrastructure; they invest with equal care in the image they project of themselves. Major projects, international events and economic openness are not solely tools of development — they are also narrative instruments. They are deployed to produce a coherent story of success, presented to the world as reality and, internally, as a path that admits no alternative. In this sense, soft power becomes a direct extension of economic power, and narrative an asset no less strategic than material resources. This transformation raises a legitimate question about the nature of this power: are we witnessing genuine power, or power that has been carefully designed? The truth is that the distinction between the two is no longer sustainable. A narrative cannot function without grounding in reality, but it is equally capable of reframing that reality, amplifying it, or even simplifying it in the service of political goals. The narrative no longer merely reflects reality: it reproduces it. What is presented as success may well be a compound of real achievement and skilful management of image. Against this backdrop, Lebanon appears to be outside the equation. Beirut, once a regional centre for media, culture and the economy, has progressively lost its capacity to play that role. The city can no longer attract investment, produce a model worth emulating, or even present itself as a space of relative stability. Yet the deepest loss lies not in this retreat from relevance, but in the absence of narrative. There is no longer a coherent Lebanese discourse capable of explaining what is happening or offering a vision of the future — only contradictory narratives that reflect a deeper fracture in the structure of state and society. At a time when the region is governed through cities and narratives, Lebanon finds itself without an effective city and without a narrative capable of competing. In light of these transformations, the question of who governs the Middle East today no longer yields an easy answer. Does the state remain the central actor, or have cities — sustained by economic power and coherent narratives — become the most influential force? The answer may not yet be settled, but one thing is certain: the balance of power is shifting, and influence is no longer measured only by the traditional instruments at states' disposal, but by their ability to produce models that can convince. In the Middle East today, it is not enough to exist. It is not enough to possess resources or a geographic position. Real power lies in the capacity to produce a city that attracts and a narrative that convinces. Whoever fails at this finds himself outside the game, even if he remains present on the map. In an era of rising cities and competing narratives, influence is no longer simply a matter of control, but a matter of meaning.