Advertise on podcast: The MERIP Podcast

Today on the MERIP Podcast we’re sharing an interview with Nafiseh Sharifi about her recent article in Middle East Report, “Soundtrack of Dissent–Protest Music in Iran.” Sharifi is an Iranian anthropologist and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. She has written extensively on gender and sexuality politics in Iran, including her 2018 book, Female Bodies and Sexuality in Iran and the Search for Defiance (Palgrave Macmillan). In “Soundtrack of Dissent” Sharifi provides a fascinating short history of protest music in Iran since the 1979 revolution drawn from her own experiences in student protests, the 2009 Green Movement and the more recent wave of protests that culminated in this January’s “Dey Protests.” In this interview with James Ryan, Sharifi discusses how protest music under the Islamic Republic connects to earlier protest movements under the regime of the Shah and how massive changes in media and technology have altered both the mood and the prevalence of Iranian protest music. Sharifi and Ryan also discussed her recent visit to Iran and how politics and music have been playing out on the streets and in homes there since the recent war began in February 2026. Further Reading: Nafiseh Sharifi, “Soundtrack of Dissent–Protest Music in Iran” Middle East Report Issue 319, August 2026 “Taraneh: A Documentary” Pegah Ahangarani, dir. BBC Persian, December 25, 2025 The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on the MERIP Podcast we’re sharing a recording of a live event featuring Lisa Hajjar and John Ryan discussing their last two decades of reporting, researching and writing from Guantanamo Bay. This event, which took place in Washington, DC, at Busboys and Poets on September 13th, marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the opening of the Guantanamo Bay facility that has housed those captured and imprisoned in the course of the so-called war on terror. Hajjar and Ryan discussed the continued injustice of the indefinite detention of prisoners at this US military compound, the obstacles to accountability put in place by the US Department of Defense and the present and future prospects of the facility and those who remain detained there. Lisa Hajjar is a longtime MERIP contributor and editor, as well as a professor of sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara, and the author of The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight Against Torture, which chronicles her observations of trials at Guantanmo and was published in 2022 by the University of California Press. John Ryan is a co-founder of Lawdragon Inc. and has won numerous accolades as a legal affairs journalist over the past 25 years. Since 2015, John has been one of just two reporters to report regularly on the military tribunals from Guantanamo Bay, earning three New York Press Club Awards for his work. His book, America’s Trial: Torture and the 9/11 Case on Guantanmo Bay was published by Skyhorse in 2025. The event was moderated by Alka Pradhan, an expert on the application of human rights and humanitarian law to counterterrorism situations, and the impact of torture on fair trials. She is currently Human Rights Counsel at the Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions, representing one of the defendants in the capital case of United States v. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (the “9/11 case”). Further Reading: Lisa Hajjar, The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight Against Torture (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2022) John Ryan, America’s Trial: Torture and the 9/11 Case on Guantanmo Bay (New York, Skyhorse, 2025) The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on the MERIP Podcast James Ryan talks with Arran Walshe, a journalist and researcher based in Amman. Walshe is the author of “Alternative Amman–Making Counterculture in the Jordanian Capital,” which appeared in our summer issue of Middle East Report, Art at Work–People, Power and Cultural Production. This issue digs into the forces that shape art making across the region in a time of social and political upheaval. Walshe’s article explains how heavy metal and hip hop musicians, and other performance artists, have grappled with regional and domestic political shifts over the last several decades. Walshe interviewed musicians and participants in Amman’s countercultural scene about the changing pressures they face amid the ebbs and flows of support for the arts. He also investigates how they have struggled with Jordan’s unique place in recent regional catastrophes. In their discussion, Ryan and Walshe get into what “politics” has meant for Jordan’s countercultural music scene and how its artists have positioned themselves vis-a-vis the Jordanian state, geopolitics and the Arab diaspora.  Further reading:  Arran Walshe, “Alternative Amman–Making Counterculture in the Jordanian Capital” in Middle East Report Issue 319 “Art at Work–People, Power and Cultural Production” (Summer 2026) Rolling Stone MENA Ebrazus (Instagram) The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode of the MERIP Podcast features a conversation between MERIP executive director James Ryan and Susanne Dahlgren, a longtime MERIP contributor and analyst focused on Yemen whose recent essay, “Yemen After the Saudi-Emirati Split” appeared in our Current Analysis section on July 8, 2026.  Last December, the Emirati-backed Southern Transitional Council in Yemen briefly expelled Saudi and Saudi-backed militias from the Hadhramaut region, only to retreat in the face of Saudi counteroffensives. The result of this skirmish was the dramatic exit of the UAE from Yemen’s civil war, after over 10 years of involvement.  Since December, Saudi Arabia has been working to consolidate its control and influence over the varied groups vying for power in the territory of the former South Yemen, on the one hand, and holding secret talks with the Houthis, who hold territory that includes the capital Sana’a, on the other. In her piece, Dahlgren reads these maneuvers as an attempt by the Saudis to establish a modus operandi for managing the conflict from Riyadh and protecting its interests in oil production and shipping. Then, on July 13, the Houthis launched a ballistic missile attack on Saudi Arabia, which has been followed by drone attacks on oil facilities and attempts to limit shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait. What appeared to be a cooling conflict has heated up again. James Ryan and Susanne Dahlgren discussed why the Houthis re-opened hostilities, what this turn in the saga has meant to Yemenis who are facing an extraordinary food insecurity crisis and what the future holds for a conflict that has yet to find a political path forward.  Further Reading:  Susanne Dahlgren, “Yemen After the Saudi-Emirati Split” Current Analysis, July 8, 2026 Al Ayyam Newspaper  Yemen Online  Yemen Monitor The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today’s program we have another installment of our MERIP Roundtable, where MERIP’s executive director, James Ryan is joined by past and present members of our editorial committee, along with recent contributors, to discuss current events. This edition focuses on the 2026 World Cup, now in its final stages. Like most iterations of the tournament, this year’s has provided a drama-filled month both on and off the pitch. Thanks to the expanded field of participation, ten nations from the Middle East and North Africa were represented, with Morocco following its exciting 2022 performance in Qatar with another deep run. Our guests discuss what participation has meant for several countries in the region, and what their prospects might be going forward. They also touch on the colonial and diasporic dynamics that have been central to the dominance of the traditional powerhouses–including the final four teams of France, Spain, Argentina and England. And of course, there are the implications of this World Cup being hosted by the United States, along with Mexico and Canada, at a time when the United States and Israel are engaged in a disastrous war on Iran that has entangled its allies in the region as well as Lebanon and Yemen.  Joining James Ryan for this conversation were Sabiha Allouche, a member of MERIP’s editorial committee and a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Exeter’s Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies, Paul Silverstein, the chair of MERIP’s board of directors and professor of anthropology at Reed College, and Nabil al-Tikriti, a former member of MERIP’s editorial committee, long-time contributor and professor of history at the University of Mary Washington. Further Reading:  Middle East Report Issue 304, Football–Politics and Passion, Fall 2022 Clive Chijioke Nwonka and Matthew Harle eds., Black Arsenal: Club, Culture, Identity (London, W&N 2025) John McManus, Welcome to Hell? In Search of the Real Turkish Football (London, W&N 2019) Fatou Diome, In the Belly of the Atlantic (London, Serpent’s Tail 2008) Mickaël Correia, A People’s History of Football (London, Pluto Press 2023) Simon Kuper, World Cup Fever: A Soccer Journey in Nine Tournaments (New York, Simon and Schuster 2026) The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today’s program, we have a special release of the audio from the second installment of our summer event series “Iran in Context,” featuring conversations with scholars in the field about the deeper dynamics behind the political and military convulsions in Iran over the last year. The latest installment, available here, is on the “Politics and Counter Politics in Contemporary Iran” and includes three recent MERIP contributors, Naghmeh Sohrabi, the Charles (Corky) Goodman chair of Middle East History and Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, Mohammad Ali Kadivar, associate professor of sociology and international studies at Boston College and Paniz Musawi Natanzi, a research associate at the University of Bern and affiliate scholar of the South Asia Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The discussion was co-moderated by James Ryan, MERIP’s executive director and Rosanna Tufaro, a Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at La Sapienza University in Rome and a member of the precarity working group at SeSaMO. Their conversation explores the ways Iranian politics have been misunderstood and misrepresented outside of Iran, the major factors that have driven political change in the country over the last few decades and some thoughts on what lies ahead for a country that is clearly being reshaped in important ways. The series, which takes place on zoom, is co-produced by BRISMES (the British Society for Middle East Studies) and SeSaMO (the Italian Society for Middle East Studies).  Further Reading:  Mohammad Ali Kadivar, “Rethinking Political Change in Iran From Protest to War” Current Analysis, MERIP June 3, 2026 Paniz Musawi Natanzi, “Courts of Exclusion–Working Class Masculinity and Anti-Afghan Racism in Iran” Middle East Report Issue 314, June 17, 2025 https://www.merip.org/2025/06/banned-from-the-game-working-class-masculinity-and-anti-afghan-racism-in-iran/ Daniel Tavana, Kevin Harris, Gary Fong and Amir Farmanesh, “Who Overreports? Regime Support and Preference Falsification in Iran” (article preprint) June 15, 2026  Naghmeh Sohrabi, Toby Craig Jones, Kaveh Ehsani and James Ryan, “The MERIP Podcast: The MERIP Roundtable–On the Iran War Part II” Episode 19, March 19, 2026 The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode of the MERIP Podcast is an audio recording from the first event in our Iran in Context series. This series is co-produced by MERIP, BRISMES, the British Society for Middle East Studies, and SeSaMO, the Italian Society for Middle East Studies. Each event features conversations with scholars about the deeper context behind the political and military convulsions in Iran over the last year.  For the first installment, we took up the topic of gender and revolution in conversation with Manijeh Moradian, assistant professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College and author of the book, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States (Duke University Press, 2022), and Nazanin Shahrokni, associate professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University and author of the book, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press, 2020). This conversation was recorded on June 18, 2026. Further Reading:  Manijeh Moradian, This Flame Within Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States (Duke University Press, 2022) Manijeh Moradian, "Feminist Uprising in Iran and the Politics of Solidarity," Meridians (April 2026)  Manijeh Moradian "Decolonial Diasporas: Iranian Feminist Solidarity in Global Context" Iranian Studies. (October 2025)  Manijeh Moradian, "Embodying Revolution: Situating Iran within Transnational Feminist Solidarities," Radical History Review (January 2024)  Feminists for Jina  Nazanin Shahrokni, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press 2020) Nazanin Shahrokni, “Who Speaks for Iran?–and From Where? Geopolitics, Representation and Solidarity,” SPECTRE: A Marxist Journal, March 2, 2026 The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode of the MERIP Podcast features an interview with Ayça Alemdaroğlu about her article, “The Capture of Turkey’s Universities Under the AKP,” in our Spring 2026 issue, “Campus Politics–Palestine and the New University Order.” MERIP executive director James Ryan spoke with Alemdaroğlu about the efforts of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party to co-opt university administrations and contain campus dissent over the last 25 years. While attempting to coerce and repress the strongest and most outspoken voices on prestigious campuses like Boğaziçi or Middle East Technical University the state has also invested heavily in constructing and opening new universities, often in more provincial settings, in order to build its own hegemonic institutions. As Alemdaroğlu explains in her piece, "Although access to institutions of higher education has expanded greatly, academic freedom has been steadily eroded through the combined force of ordinary administrative authority and extraordinary instruments such as emergency decrees, which together reoriented universities toward political compliance." The conversation also covered the abrupt closure and swift re-opening of Istanbul Bilgi University in May, one of Turkey’s leading private universities and an avant-garde institution for liberal and progressive academics.  This conversation was recorded on June 8, 2026 Further reading:  Ayça Alemdaroğlu, “The Capture of Turkey’s Universities Under the AKP”, Middle East Report, Issue 318, Spring 2026 Ayça Alemdaroğlu and Elif Babül, “Boğaziçi Resists Authoritarian Control of the Academy in Turkey” Middle East Report Online, February 23, 2021  Ayça Alemdaroğlu “The University in the Making of Authoritarian Turkey” European Journal of Turkish Studies Issue 34, 2022  Ayça Alemdaroğlu, “Tek İmza Cumhuriyetinde Üniversite: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversite” (“The University in the Single-Signature Republic: Istanbul Bilgi University”), Birikim Dergisi May 26, 2026 “Yellow Letters” (Sarı Zarflar) [Film] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32888226/  MESA Committee on Academic Freedom, Letters on Turkey  The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of the MERIP Podcast features an interview with two contributors to the spring issue of Middle East Report, “Campus Politics—Palestine and the New University Order.” Since the beginning of world-wide campus protests in the wake of October 7, 2023, there has been a tremendous upswell of organizing and support for Palestinian liberation and activism against US militarism. In response, a wave of repression against students, staff and faculty on campus began in 2023 and accelerated after Donald Trump took office. Our latest issue takes stock of these dynamics and the stakes of political action on campus in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.  To discuss campus politics in our present moment, MERIP’s executive director, James Ryan, was joined by Aslı Bâli and Darryl Li. Aslı Bâli is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law at Yale Law School and the former president of the Middle East Studies Association. Her article in this issue, “Fighting the Campus Crackdown–Why the Middle East Studies Association Took the Trump Administration to Court,” is a reflection on MESA’s lawsuit, with the American Association of University Professors and the Knight First Amendment Institute, against Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump Administration over the free speech rights of noncitizens, like Rümeysa Öztürk and others, who spoke up about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Darryl Li is an associate professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, and a contributor, along with Andrew Ross, Lara Deeb, Meera Shah and Lisa Hajjar to “The University is a Site of Struggle—A Roundtable with Faculty Organizers on Repression and Resistance on US Campuses.” Further Reading:  Aslı Bâli, “Fighting the Campus Crackdown—Why the Middle East Studies Association Took the Trump Administration to Court” Middle East Report, no. 318 (Spring 2026).  Lisa Hajjar, Lara Deeb, Darryl Li, Andrew Ross and Meera Shah, “‘The University is a Site of Struggle—A Roundtable with Faculty Organizers on Repression and Resistance on US Campuses”  Middle East Report, no. 318 (Spring 2026). The MESA Academic Freedom Initiative  MESA and AAUP, “Discriminating Against Dissent: The Weaponization of Civil Rights Law to Repress Campus Speech on Palestine,” November 5, 2025. Palestine Legal 2025 Report  The Knight First Amendment Institute  PEN America, “Expanding the Web of Control–America’s Censored Campuses 2025,” January 15, 2025.  The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on the podcast three MERIP contributors discuss Lebanon’s tenuous, one-sided ceasefire with Israel. Even as officials in the Lebanese government have entered into negotiations with Israel, an unprecedented diplomatic move with questionable legal status under Lebanese law, Israel has violated the ceasefire numerous times and has continued its efforts to destroy villages south of its unilaterally declared “yellow line” in preparation for expanded occupation and settlement. Some displaced Lebanese from the south have temporarily returned to assess the damage to their homes and villages, and many Shi’a across Lebanon remain under threat.  Joining MERIP’s executive director James Ryan to discuss this bleak reality and internal Lebanese politics are Susann Kassem, an anthropologist and Marie Skłodowska Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow between Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the Geneva Graduate Institute and author of “‘Our Compass is Broken’—Israel’s Ongoing War in South Lebanon,” published by MERIP on April 2; Lara Deeb, a professor of anthropology and Middle Eastern and North African studies at Scripps College and co-author of MERIP’s “A Primer on Lebanon–History, Palestine and Resistance to Israeli Violence;” and Habib Battah, an independent journalist who teaches global studies at St. Lawrence University in New York and whose most recent article for MERIP was “Beirut and the Birth of the Fortress Embassy.”  This podcast was recorded on April 22, 2026.  Further reading:  Habib Battah, “Beirut and the Birth of the Fortress Embassy” Middle East Report Online, April 10, 2024 Lara Deeb, Maya Mikdashi, Tsolin Nalbantian, Nadya Sbaiti, “A Primer on Lebanon–History, Palestine and Resistance to Israeli Violence” Middle East Report, Issue 313 Winter 2024 Susann Kassem, “‘Our Compass is Broken’--Israel’s Ongoing War in South Lebanon” Middle East Report Online April 2, 2026 Malek Abisaab and Michelle Hartman, What the War Left Behind: Women’s Stories of Resistance and Struggle in Lebanon Syracuse University Press, 2024  Munira Khayyat, A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon University of California Press, 2022 Munira Khayyat, Another Season of War in Lebanon Society for Cultural Anthropology Editor’s Forum, Hotspots April 11, 2025 Amani Rammal, “Crossing the ‘Security Belt:’ A History of the Occupied Lebanese Border Strip” The Public Source, April 16, 2026  “The War in Lebanon is Existential with Hala Jaber” Makdisi Street Podcast, March 14, 2026  Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon, Princeton University Press, 2006  Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, Shi’ite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities Columbia University Press, 2008  Humans of Dahieh (Instagram)  Glenn Diesen–Greater Eurasia Podcast  Hadley Suter and Tania El Khoury, “Tania El Khoury’s Soothing ‘Revenge Art’” Hyperallergic, April 17, 2026  The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode is the third installment of our MERIP Roundtable discussing the war on Iran, instigated by the US and Israeli on February 28, 2026, and its regional reverberations. This episode focuses on Israel’s expanded war on Lebanon. Following the assassination of Ali Khamanei, supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hizballah fired six missiles into Israel, its first offensive move since a ceasefire was signed in the fall of 2024. Israel, meanwhile, has violated the ceasefire on a near daily basis over the past year and a half through missile and drone strikes. In the past weeks, Israel has issued mass evacuation warnings across the entire area south of the Litani river, in Dahiyeh south of Beirut and in the Bekaa valley. Invasions, including a commando raid through Syria into the Bekaa followed, as have the near daily barrage of missile and drone attacks. In a matter of a couple of weeks, over one million people have been displaced—representing a quarter of Lebanon’s population.  The renewed assault has raised the stakes of long running issues in Lebanon around national sovereignty and self-defense, and wider questions about how both Lebanese and Palestinian resistance to Israeli aggression in the region can be constituted in the face of its overwhelming military and technological advantages. To discuss these issues, MERIP’s executive director James Ryan was joined by Rima Majed, an associate professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut, whose work has focused on sectarianism, social movements and conflict in Lebanon. Rima Majed is a member of MERIP’s editorial committee and also the author of a short essay on the war on Lebanon that appeared as part of our collection “War Across Boundaries–Perspectives on Iran and a Region Under Siege,” published on March 19, 2026. Also joining the podcast is Ali Musleh, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California-Davis, whose research focuses on the effects of automated warscapes on everyday life and resistance in Palestine. This conversation was recorded on March 23rd, 2026.  Further Reading: Laleh Khalili (interview) Democracy Now “The End of the Petrodollar? How Iran War Is Reshaping the Global Economy: Author Laleh Khalili” March 19, 2026 Joseph Daher, Hezbollah: The Political Economy of the Party of God (Pluto Press, 2016) Abdaljawad Omar, “Gaza Faces the World” Turbulence Podcast Episode 10, January 20, 2026 Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years War On Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (Macmillan, 2020) The Material Politics of Normalization Middle East Report Summer/Fall 2025, Issue 315-316 Munira Khayyat, “Dispatch from South Lebanon–Life as Resistance at the End of the World” Middle East Report Winter 2024, Issue 313 Lara Deeb, Maya Mikdashi, Tsolin Nalbantian and Nadya Sbaiti, “A Primer on Lebanon–History, Politics and Resistance to Israeli Violence” Middle East Report Winter 2024, Issue 313 The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today’s episode of the MERIP Roundtable our discussion focused on people’s experiences of the war on Iran and throughout the region two and a half weeks in. Much of the discussion of this war in the western media has centered on the strategic calculus of the United States and Israel in deciding to go to war, how long it may endure and what that means for Americans. Despite the fact that Iranians are withstanding a bombardment that is comparable in scale to Israel’s initial assault on Gaza in October 2023, the immense damage being done to the country is less prominent in the discourse. According to official Iranian sources, there have been over 1,400 civilian casualties, 18,000 injuries and 61,000 civilian structures damaged. According to the UN, approximately 3.2 million people have been displaced. Given these facts, MERIP’s executive director James Ryan asked our roundtable how Iranians are dealing with the US and Israeli siege. How are they getting information in and out, and how should those of us outside of Iran contextualize what we’re hearing and seeing? Also, since he was joined by fellow historians, they discussed how we can begin to see this war’s many dimensions in a longer historical trajectory.  This edition of the MERIP Roundtable features Naghmeh Sohrabi, a frequent MERIP contributor, the Charles Corky Goodman Professor of Middle East History at Brandeis University and the director of research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies; Kaveh Ehsani, associate professor of international studies at DePaul University and a member of MERIP’s Board of Directors and Toby Craig Jones, associate professor of history at Rutgers University and a member of MERIP’s editorial committee.  This discussion was recorded on March 18, 2026 Further Reading: Nashraasoo (@nashraasoo on Instagram) Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (New York, Simon and Schuster) Kaveh Ehsani, “Voices from the Middle East: US Sanctions on Iran Devastate the Health Sector” Middle East Report Online March 31, 2020  Costs of War Project (Brown University) Joy Gordon ed., Economic Sanctions from Havana to Baghdad (Cambridge, 2025) Joy Gordon, “The Enduring Lessons of the Iraq Sanctions” Middle East Report Spring 2020  Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, Mark Weisbrot, “Effects of international sanctions on age-specific mortality: a cross-national panel data analysis” The Lancet Global Health, 13, e1358-e1366 Noura Erakat, Luigi Daniele, Shahd Hammouri, Ata Hindi, Maryam Jamshidi and Darryl Li, “Roundtable on the War on Iran and International Law” Jadaliyya, March 13, 2026 Firoozeh Kashani Sabet, “Iranicide: the Genealogy of Hate” The Tempered View, March 14, 2026 The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today’s episode we have an installment of our MERIP Roundtable series, where members of our editorial committee, recent contributors and close comrades discuss current events. In this episode, we centered our discussion on the social dynamics and impacts of the current war on Iran and consider how the regional political order may be shifting as a result.  On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel began a massive air war against Iran, which has now impacted up to 12 countries in the region. Many of Iran’s political leaders, including the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have been killed and replaced, oil infrastructure in Iran and across the Gulf has been severely damaged or production halted and retaliatory Iranian missile and drone strikes have hit both military and civilian targets in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the Emirates and Oman. The closing and apparent mining of the Strait of Hormuz has sent oil prices over $100 a barrel, pushing the global economy to the brink of a recession. All of this is happening under the direction of a US administration whose war aims appear opaque and in cooperation with an Israeli government bent on sowing regional chaos, inflicting misery on ordinary Iranians, accelerating devastating attacks on Lebanon, closing Gaza to all aid and severely restricting movement within the West Bank. Joining Executive Director James Ryan for the roundtable are Ida Nikou, a sociologist and author of a recent MERIP article “Governing Crisis–Sanctions, Austerity and Social Unrest in Iran”; Arang Keshavarzian, professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies at NYU, a long time MERIP contributor and editor and author of Making Space for the Gulf: Histories of Regionalism and the Middle East, published by Stanford University Press in 2024; and Sean Yom, a member of our editorial committee, associate professor of political science at Temple University and author of Jordan: Politics in an Accidental Crucible, published in 2025 by Oxford University Press.  This episode was recorded on March 11, 2026. Further reading:  Ida Nikou and Manijeh Moradian eds., “Iran in Crisis: Seven Essays on the Obstacles to Freedom,” Jadaliyya, February 24, 2026.  Ida Nikou, “Governing Crisis–Sanctions, Austerity and Social Unrest in Iran,” MERIP, January 29, 2026. Adam Hanieh, Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power and the Making of the World Market, (Verso Books, 2024).  Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, “The Iran War is Jeopardizing the Entire Global Economy” Foreign Policy, March 4, 2026.  Andrew J. Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (Penguin, 2017).  Marc Lynch, America’s Middle East: The Ruination of a Region (Hurst Publishers, 2025).  Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, “The Dry and the Wet Burn Together,” London Review of Books, March 3, 2026.  Ervand Abrahamian, “Iran Under Fire,” New Left Review 157, January/February 2026.  Naghmeh Sohrabi, “These are the True Things” (Substack) Reza Akbari, “The Guarded Domains” (Substack)  Toby Craig Jones, “Iran and America’s Long War in the Middle East,” New Global Politics, March 4, 2026.  Arang Keshavarzian, “Iran Transformed,” New York Review of Books, March 8, 2026.  Mira Al Hussein, “The Iran War Has Exposed the Gulf’s Bet on US Protections,” Hidden Cities, March 9, 2026. The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode of the MERIP Podcast features an interview with Niema Alhessen, a Sudanese researcher based in Cairo who is focused on urban conflict and displacement. She is the author of “Burri Under Siege—How War Remade Everyday Life in a Sudanese Neighborhood” in our Winter 2025 issue of Middle East Report, “Reconstruction and Ruin.” Burri, a neighborhood in central Khartoum that houses key political and military institutions, was under siege by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) from the beginning of its war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in April 2023 until the SAF regained control of the city in March 2025. Alhessen spoke with residents of Burri about living in their neighborhood during the siege, how they sustained life through makeshift institutions and mutual aid and negotiated with both the RSF and SAF in order to procure aid. Alhessen’s article also delves into the deeper colonial history of Khartoum’s urban fabric, detailing how the militarization of Khartoum’s streets has its roots in the colonization of Sudan under the Anglo-Egyptian condominium in the late nineteenth century. For this episode, MERIP’s Executive Director James Ryan was joined by co-host Deen Sharp, an LSE Fellow in Human Geography in the department of geography and environment at the London School of Economics, a member of MERIP’s editorial committee and an editor on the issue “Reconstruction and Ruin.”  This interview was recorded on March 4, 2026 Niema Alhessen, “Burri Under Siege–How War Remade Everyday Life in a Sudanese Neighborhood” Middle East Report 317 (Winter 2025). https://www.merip.org/2026/02/burri-under-siege-how-war-remade-everyday-life-in-a-sudanese-neighborhood/  Further reading: Ali Al-Arash, “Bread, Books, and Bombs: Burri’s Spirit of Resistance, Knowledge, and Solidarity,” ATAR Network 28 (May 19, 2025). https://atarnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/ATAR-English-Issue-28-Bread-books-and-bombs-Burri-s-spirit-of-resistance-knowledge-and-solidarity.pdf Marina D’Errico, “The Urban Fabric Between Tradition and Modernity (1885–1956): Omdurman, Khartoum, and the British Master Plan of 1910” in Vezzadini, Seri-Hersch, Revilla, Poussier & Abdul Jalil (Eds.), Ordinary Sudan, 1504–2019: From Social History to Politics from Below (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2023). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110719611-011  Khartoum podcast by Studio Urban. Khalid Mustafa Medani, “The Struggle for Sudan” Middle East Report 310 (Spring 2024). https://www.merip.org/the-struggle-for-sudan/ The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today’s episode Iman Ali talks about her recently published article, “Repair and Ongoing Ruination—Rebuilding the Dahiyeh Once More,” which appeared in our Winter 2025 issue, “Reconstruction and Ruin.” Iman Ali,  a doctoral candidate in anthropology at Cornell University, has been conducting fieldwork in Lebanon to investigate the impacts of Israel’s war in the fall of 2024 and the ongoing,almost daily, Israeli drone and missile attacks since the November 2024  ceasefire agreement. Her article closely examines the immense material and political challenges faced by Lebanon’s Shi’i community in the last year and a half. She also compares the current struggles to rebuild Beirut’s southern district of Dahiyeh with the vastly different political, funding and leadership landscape following the 2006 war between Hizballah and Israel. After that 2006 campaign, Hizballah was successful in rebuilding the neighborhoods of the Dahiyeh with the aid of funding from several regional and global partners, and under the leadership of Hizballah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah. Today, the challenge of rebuilding could not be more different – the financing is not forthcoming, Hizballah’s leadership is decimated and the spectre of continued or renewed Israeli aggression is pervasive.  For this conversation, MERIP’s executive director James Ryan was joined by Najib Hourani, a member of the editorial team for “Reconstruction and Ruin,” as cohost. Hourani is an associate professor of anthropology and global urban studies at Michigan State University and now an emeritus member of MERIP’s editorial committee. We spoke with Iman Ali  about her piece, the longer history of the Dahiyeh and the intense burden that resistance to Israeli aggression has placed on Lebanon’s Shi’i communities.  This episode was recorded on February 25, 2026. Support MERIP by making a donation: www.merip.org/donate  Read Iman Ali’s piece here:  Iman Ali, “Repair and Ongoing Ruination – Rebuilding the Dahiyeh Once More” Middle East Report 317, Reconstruction and Ruin Winter 2025 https://www.merip.org/2026/02/repair-amid-ongoing-ruination-rebuilding-dahiyeh-once-more/  Further Reading: Hiba Bou Akar, “Urban Interventions for the Wars Yet to Come”  https://www.merip.org/2019/07/urban-interventions-for-the-wars-yet-to-come/  Tamara Chalabi, The Shi ‘is of Jabal ‘Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and Nation-State, 1918–1943  Springer, 2006 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781403982940  Lara Deeb, An enchanted modern: Gender and public piety in Shi'i Lebanon Princeton University Press, 2006 https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691124216/an-enchanted-modern?srsltid=AfmBOoqcTpqKMA4-KFqziKFdTLlEygTlQrSB8axSVs0hrFN0MaUORMZi  Mona Fawaz "Hezbollah as urban planner? Questions to and from planning theory" Planning Theory 8.4 (2009): 323-334 https://www.jstor.org/stable/26165922  Mona Harb and Lara Deeb. "Culture as history and landscape: Hizballah’s efforts to shape an Islamic milieu in Lebanon" Arab Studies Journal 19.1 (2011): 12-45 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23265810  Najib B. Hourani "People or profit? Two post-conflict reconstructions in Beirut" Human Organization 74.2 (2015): 174-184 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.17730/0018-7259-74.2.174  Munira Khayyat "Dispatch from South Lebanon—Life as Resistance at the End of the World." Middle East Report 313 (Winter 2024) https://www.merip.org/2025/01/dispatch-from-south-lebanon/  Salim Nasr, “The Roots of the Shi’i Movement” June 24, 1985 https://www.merip.org/1985/06/roots-of-the-shii-movement/ Salim Nasr, “Backdrop to Civil War: The Crisis of Lebanese Capitalism” Middle East Report No. 73 Winter 1978 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3012262 The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.