Lebanon | Astute News

The US Plan for Weakening Hezbollah: a Civil War and the Exodus of the Christians

November 14, 2020

The Christian political and religious leaders of Lebanon are theologically distant from Twelver Shia; they have political and ideological objectives that fundamentally differ from those of Hezbollah. …

Lebanon Crisis: The Long Arm of French Neocolonialism Is Back

October 6, 2020

Opinion

Lebanese politicians are scrambling at home and security chiefs are conferring abroad to form a new government in line with French-set deadlines. The new government is expected to embody a new politic…

The Comparisons Between Lebanon’s Civil War and America’s Situation Now Are a Step Too Far

October 6, 2020

Opinion

Time was in the 1990s, even after 2000, that any country in danger of political chaos or “implosion” – a word I still instinctively loath, along with “epicentre” – was in danger of being “Lebanised”. …

President Macron’s Bad Play in Lebanon

October 4, 2020

Opinion

Reacting to the explosion of the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, the Lebanese people and the international press saw it as an accident due to the corruption of the port authorities. For our part, af…

The Lebanese Knot

September 30, 2020

Opinion

A month and a half after detonating several tons of ammonium nitrate into the port of Beirut, which caused crushing economic and human losses for the country, the situation in Lebanon is only getting …

How the Arab League Helped Dissolve the Palestinian Question

September 19, 2020

Opinion

As one Gulf state after another embraces formal ties with Israel, some have looked to the Arab League to condemn normalisation. Yet to understand why the league will do nothing of the sort, one has to…

Lebanon: Colonial Thieves & Conflicting Networks of Patronage

September 15, 2020

Opinion

I am trying to think how best to write about Lebanon, about the BIGGER picture and the complicated political situation and structure there. It goes beyond the Beirut port bombing or the source of the …

A New Message Resounds in the Arab World: Get Ankara

September 14, 2020

Opinion

Months before the announcement that the UAE was going to recognise Israel, breaking the status quo that normalisation would come only after Palestinians achieved statehood, analysts puzzled over US Pr…