Opinion

A quiet but consequential escalation unfolded today as the U.S. Treasury moved against one of the Iranian regime’s most vital financial lifelines: its shadow fleet. While streets inside Iran have filled with protestors and the regime has once again cut internet access to hide repression from the outside world, Washington has chosen to strike where Tehran is most vulnerable—its … [Read more...] about OFAC Tightens the Net: Inside the U.S. Sanctions on Iran’s Shadow Fleet

The United States is backing the wrong outcome in Syria not because it lacks leverage, but because it lacks courage to define what kind of regional order it actually wants. For years, Washington has relied on Kurdish forces as the most reliable, secular, and pro-Western partner on the ground, especially against ISIS, and then quietly stepped back the moment the shooting … [Read more...] about Stop Treating the Kurds as a Temporary Tool: The West’s Strategic Blind Spot in Syria

Trump’s grotesque gestures, his theatrical aggression, the half-formed policies and sudden reversals, all feel like noise at first glance, but they are actually signals. Ugly ones, yes, but signals nonetheless. They point less to his own strength and more to the hollowness that has been allowed to grow inside other Western democracies. The EU, Canada, and Australia like to see … [Read more...] about Stale Democracies and the Rise of the Grotesque

The idea of an alternative United Nations is already floating in the same strange space where Greenland, Ukrainian rare earths, and Chinese soybeans once lived: big enough to sound historic, vague enough to avoid definition, and emotionally satisfying to a specific audience that doesn’t require follow-up. It’s the perfect next bubble. By invoking a parallel UN, Trump gets to … [Read more...] about The Next Bubble: Trump’s “Alternative UN” and the Politics of Imaginary Institutions

What the U.S. Treasury released on January 21, 2026, reads less like a routine sanctions notice and more like an autopsy report on a long-running deception. For years, Hamas has hidden behind the language of humanitarianism, wrapping its military machine in the moral insulation of clinics, aid groups, and diaspora organizations, and this announcement pulls that cover away with … [Read more...] about Treasury Exposes Hamas’s Charity Fronts, and the Mask Finally Slips