Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Karam Nama
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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…
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War…Netanyahu’s perfect definition of himself. So who will define him by peace?
When speaking about Israel today, it is easy to borrow the irony of British writer and historian Max Hastings, who has witnessed and chronicled many wars. Just as he once mocked America’s appetite for conflict by asking, ‘What if they started a war and nobody came?’, we may now invert…
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A ceasefire without meaning and a strait without horizon: How the war betrayed Iranian hopes
The recent statement by U.S. President Donald Trump about Iran’s financial losses from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is less a policy position and more a late attempt to justify a political, military, and moral failure. Instead of addressing what the world was actually waiting for — the…
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Can Sistani save Iraq from its predicament?
The question posed by the title of this article is more than just a political inquiry. At its core, it is a question about the nature of authority in Iraq, the limits of the state, and the role that a single cleric can play when domestic crises intersect with regional…
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From Beirut to Baghdad and Sana’a… can this moment be generalized?
What the Lebanese President Joseph Aoun is attempting—at least on the level of political discourse—is nothing less than reclaiming the definition of the state from the grip of the “mini‑state.” His speech opens the door to a larger question: could what happened in Beirut be a precursor to what might…
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Celebrating division as a success in Libya
This week, Libya witnessed two events that were celebrated as signs of progress, even though they express nothing more than the normalisation of division within what is supposed to be a single state. This happens in a country that the Greek historian Herodotus once described as “the source of all…
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The illusion of a substitute: Turkey is not the region’s replacement for Iran
Whenever the question of Iranian influence in the Middle East arises, Turkey is often presented as a ready-made alternative. The logic seems straightforward: if Iran’s power diminishes, Ankara will naturally step forward to fill the void. However, this assumption is based on a misleading comparison between two countries whose regional…
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Tell me how this war will end
We need today to revive the question General David Petraeus posed after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, launched under fabricated pretexts: “Tell me how this ends.” But we ask it now in a completely different context, as we speak about Iran and a war that seems to be moving without…
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Why do some Iraqis defend Khamenei’s regime?
To understand why some Iraqis today defend the Islamic Republic of Iran with a fervor that borders on devotion, one must return to the 1980s—specifically to the eight brutal years of the Iran–Iraq War. The answer begins there, in the trenches, before it is distorted by the post‑2003 political order…
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A regional union or a union of isolation between Iraq and Iran?
When politics collapses into a full‑fledged state of isolation, fragile states begin inventing projects that exist only on paper—or in hurried phone calls. This is precisely what Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian did when he proposed to Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid the creation of a “regional union” to promote development…
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Al-Sudani deserves political pity
The statement issued by the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, announcing the summoning of the US chargé d’affaires and handing him a “strongly worded” protest note, as reported by Reuters, appears in the balance of realpolitik closer to a performance of sovereignty in a country that does…
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Moscow will not shed political tears for Tehran
The Nowruz greeting Vladimir Putin sent to Iran’s leadership and people is little more than a seasonal postcard—politically meaningless in a time of war. The Kremlin announced that Putin had extended congratulations to Mojtaba Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian on the occasion of the Iranian New Year. But anyone familiar…
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How can we understand Oman’s middle path toward Iran?
Several years ago, I asked a senior Omani scholar a question that has puzzled many in the Arab world: why does Muscat maintain such deep mutual trust with Tehran, despite decades of Iranian behavior that convinced most Arab states that Iran is not a reliable partner? He answered with quiet…
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Iraq’s sovereignty dilemma between Washington and Tehran
No modern state has suffered as much as Iraq in trying to define the meaning of sovereignty since 2003. Here, “sovereignty” is not a constitutional principle but a definitional trap—one that grows more convoluted as the conflict between the United States and Iran deepens, and as Iraq turns into an…
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Iraq’s militias: From guns for hire to checkbooks of power
Iraq’s militias cannot be understood as mere security actors or as simple extensions of regional power politics. Rather, they represent a fully formed political economy that emerged from the wreckage of the state and evolved into a cross-border network of interests. This network is not governed by ideology or loyalty,…
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Controlling Iran’s skies does not mean the regime will fall to the ground
When Caroline Levitt says that the United States is “steadily moving toward control of Iranian airspace” within four to six weeks, she is talking about a military equation, not a rule equation. We have seen this movie before: the skies can be occupied, but the ground is not governed by…
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The War Being Rewritten… and the Lesson No One Wants to Learn
Opposing a war on Iran is not an emotional stance, nor is it an alignment with Tehran’s theocratic regime—a regime that has been cruel enough to harm its own people first, and to export an ideology of domination to its neighbors second. Iran’s rulers, with all their ideological and security…
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For Trump, war is a game of tug-of-war
Many mistakenly believed — or preferred to believe — that President Donald Trump disliked war, or that he was practising some form of covert coercive diplomacy aimed at extracting limited concessions from Tehran. While Trump may care deeply about a few non-military issues, on most others he is shaped by…