Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Karam Nama
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Smart glasses that strip the world bare — and strip us with it
For decades, travellers returning from Europe to the Middle East carried stories that were more fantasy than fact—tales shaped not by reality but by the hunger of societies that knew the world only through hearsay. One of the most persistent myths of the 1940s claimed that Europeans wore special glasses…
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Why does Saudi Arabia tolerate the Houthis as a dagger in its side?
The question sounds deceptively simple, but it cuts straight into the structural weakness of how Riyadh thinks about its national security, the limits of power when it is used without strategy, and the illusion that crises can be “managed” rather than resolved. It is not just a question about Yemen…
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Al-Jawahiri… and a statue that does not recognise him
Because I belong to a generation that never lived through the era of Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri when he was truly Iraqi, I knew him as many others did: from books, from poems, and from the echo of his voice as it traversed decades of controversy and compromise. Yet, I was…
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The Green Zone’s anti‑corruption purge: Justice or a new round of spoils?
For two decades, I have never been optimistic about the political order built in Iraq after 2003. My scepticism was not emotional but structural: the state was engineered in a way that carried its own failure within it. Even Tom Barrack, the US envoy to Iraq, eventually admitted that Washington…
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Massad Boulos: Like a man calling Libyans to prayer from Malta
When Massad Boulos, the US President’s Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs, chooses to meet senior Libyan officials from both East and West Libya in Malta rather than in any Libyan city, he resembles a man calling the faithful to prayer from an island where no one hears the…
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Trump and Iran: The beginning of a war or just microphone noise?
What does it mean for Donald Trump to choose Ankara—politically and geographically the closest major capital to Iran—to declare that the memorandum of understanding with Tehran “is over,” and that he no longer wishes to “deal with sick leaders”? Is this simply another burst of anger from a president known…
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Rouzaina… the true face of Syria
I did not regret missing Rouzaina Lazkani’s television work as much as I regretted discovering—too late—that Syria had been hiding its true face in a place we had not looked closely enough. Rouzaina, chosen by President Ahmad al‑Shar’a as part of the complementary third of the People’s Assembly, is not…
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Zero‑sum exhaustion: The new shape of global conflict
The major geopolitical confrontations of our time have entered a phase that can only be described as zero‑sum exhaustion—a stage in which no actor wins, no actor loses decisively, and no actor possesses the capacity to impose a clear endgame. Modern wars have become long-distance marathons in which the objective…
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The arrogance of the “Guardian”: How Velayati turns falsehoods into foreign policy
Few Iranian officials embody the regime’s contempt for facts as brazenly as Aliakbar Velayati. His rhetoric recalls the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini, when mythmaking and paternalistic posturing were presented as historical destiny. Velayati—longtime adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader—does not merely distort reality; he delivers these distortions with the tone…
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Iraq’s search for a national consolation prize in football
History has not been kind to Iraqis. For more than two decades, they have lived without a single contemporary symbol capable of restoring even a fragment of their shattered national dignity. And so, they turn backwards. They return to a sentimental museum of figures who once embodied a different Iraq:…
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Who, then, will trust Trump
The war launched by President Donald Trump — cheered on with theatrical confidence by Benjamin Netanyahu — was never a war for the Iranian people, nor a strategic effort to reshape the Middle East, nor even a coherent attempt to “deter” Iran. It was a campaign without a defined end-state,…
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The politics of ‘toxic infotainment’: When the destiny of nations becomes a digital plaything
In a world that increasingly consumes its political catastrophes as daily blockbuster thrillers, Financial Times columnist Jemima Kelly recently provided a searing psychological autopsy of what she termed “Trump’s many unhappy returns.” Kelly argues that the Western political landscape has fallen into a state of “psychological stagnation.” Major political shocks…
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When a brave journalist looks away: Iraq and Yvonne Ridley’s half‑seen map
No one familiar with the career of British journalist Yvonne Ridley doubts her courage for a moment. She is a woman who built her reputation in the field, not behind a desk; who crossed burning frontiers, confronted regimes, and paid personal and professional costs to bear witness to the oppressed.…
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The World Cup in the age of Trumpian transaction
No matter how intently we listen to FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s repetitive hymns extolling the “purity of the game” and its pristine detachment from politics, reality strikes back with a naked truth: football is no longer just a sport. It has morphed into a fierce breed of modern politics, serving…
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What awaits Iraq’s militias under Tom Barrack?
It won’t take long to understand what lies ahead for Iraq—and for the Iran‑aligned militias—after President Donald Trump appointed Tom Barrack as his Special Presidential Envoy for Syria and Iraq. All one needs is the paragraph Barrack published just hours after the announcement. He wrote that “the balance of power…
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Trump wants Netanyahu useful, not unrestrained
The story of Benjamin Netanyahu is not merely the story of a man in power. It is the story of a political structure that allowed one individual to grow beyond the institutions meant to contain him, until he became—psychologically and politically—larger than the state itself. The question in Israel today…
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Why does Muqtada al‑Sadr expect us to believe him?
Muqtada al‑Sadr’s latest announcement—that his militia, Saraya al‑Salam, will be “integrated” into the Iraqi security forces—has been received with a mixture of skepticism and déjà vu inside Iraq. For many Iraqis, this is not a reformist gesture but another attempt by a political cleric to reinvent himself at a moment…
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The illusion of a political solution in Ali al-Zaidi and the Green Zone
There is a familiar analytical noise that rises with every new government in Iraq, a noise that feels like replaying an old recording at a higher volume, nothing more. What is happening today with Ali al-Zaidi’s government is no exception; it is a pale repetition of what we saw with…
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The Gulf Cooperation Council is shooting itself in the foot
The most accurate portrayal of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is perhaps the 2017 Kuwait summit, which was held at the height of the Saudi-UAE-Bahraini blockade of Qatar and was attended by none of the quarrelling states’ leaders — except for Qatar’s Emir, Tamim bin Hamad. Kuwait’s late Emir, Sabah…
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The crisis of leadership in the West: From the charisma of ideas to the tyranny of public relations
During his official visit to Beijing, President Donald Trump faced a challenge of a peculiar kind. A White House official later revealed that the President was strictly prohibited from using his personal smartphone due to stringent security protocols imposed by Chinese authorities. For a man who views that small screen…
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Unanswered questions before Prince Turki Al-Faisal
In his recent article in Asharq Al-Awsat, Prince Turki Al-Faisal offers a sober and realistic reading of the balance of power in the Arabian Gulf. With his deep security and diplomatic experience, Prince Turki presents an analysis that commands the attention of observers. Western media often treat his statements as…
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Britons now measure politics by the price of a bottle of milk
In Britain today, no one is truly winning. Even when Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, steps forward to celebrate what some newspapers have called a “political earthquake,” the picture—on closer inspection—looks far less solid than advertised. His “victory” is not a mandate; it is a cry of anger from…
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Ted Turner: The mastermind behind the imperialism of satellite broadcasting
Ted Turner, the man who built what can only be described as the imperialism of satellite broadcasting through CNN, has died. He was the first to turn news into a 24‑hour live stream, transforming television from a medium of entertainment into a global news platform. CNN’s CEO Mark Thompson described…
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Apple… The digital Strait of Hormuz
I return to my favourite writer, John Thornhill, and borrow from him that rare glint of insight. When he replaced the Strait of Hormuz with Apple, the analogy seemed exaggerated at first glance, almost too bold. But the more one contemplates it, the more its precision reveals itself. The Strait…