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On June 5, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with the renowned economist and UN advisor Prof. Jeffrey Sachs to assess the impact of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, and the long-running Israeli genocide in Gaza on global governance and the global economy.  In this convo Sachs was forthright in his denunciation of the stupidity of the Trump-Netanyahu decision to launch the war against Iran. He noted that while the war and the naval blockade that Washington set up around Iran's ports was inflicting mounting economic costs on most of the peoples of the world, a few bodies have been making super-profits off the war's continuation, including big U.S. oil companies and military production entities across the U.S. and Israel.  He also shared several crucial observations about the currently poor state of the UN's effectiveness and the degree to which the body is hobbled by the actions of the U.S. president (as well as by Israel.) Listen to the whole of this super-informative conversation! It is the latest episode in Just World Ed's continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all the others in this series at this Online Learning Hub on our website. Support the show

On May 29, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with the strategic analyst Elijah Magnier to assess the impact of the first 13 weeks of the (still somewhat ongoing) U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Early on in this Just World Ed project, Magnier had been both the first and the fourth contributor to this this project, both just before and just after the U.S. and Israel launched their assault on Iran on February 28. In this latest convo, he and Ms. Cobban revisited many of the key judgments he had made on those occasions. Magnier also assessed the likelihood of the "framework agreement" that's currently being discussed between Tehran and Washington leading to a real ceasefire-- as well as the impact this war has had so far at both the West Asian regional level and gobally. This dialogue was also the latest episode in Just World Ed's continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website. Support the show

On May 20, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with Dr. Yingnan ("Chris") Yi, a Research Fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, to discuss the role that China has played and can play in finding a speedy, lasting, and equitable end to the U.S.-Iran war. This conversation came just a few days after the end of Pres. Trump's trip to Beijing where he held a notable series of summit-level meetings with Pres. Xi Jinping.  This conversation took the distinctive form of an interactive dialogue, in which Dr. Yi. and Ms. Cobban each had the chance to pose some questions to the other. It also ranged broadly over a number of key items on the China-U.S. agenda, in addition to matters related more directly to the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and Israel's assaults against Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. The two scholars also assessed the broad changes in power dynamics that the world is seeing today. This dialogue was also the latest episode in Just World Ed's continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website. Support the show

On May 12, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with Mahdi Mohabirad, a tehran-based scholar of international law and the Director of the Organization for defending Victims of Violence. In this convo, Mohebirad and Cobban discussed (among other topics):  The extent of the impact of the United States' long-running sanctions on Iranian people and societyThe ways in which Iran can have recourse to remedies under international lawThe limitations on the effectiveness of existing international institutions, andThe responsibility of citizen organizations to work to reform this situation.This was latest episode in our continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website. Support the show

On May 9, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with John Ross, who's a Senior Fellow with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. That, at a point midway between the May 6 visit of Iranian FM Abbas Araghchi to Beijing and the upcoming visit there by U.S. President Trump, who'll be holding an important summit there with Pres. Xi Jinping on May 13 or 14. In this conversation, Ross emphasized the geopolitical and geo-economic impact of the still-simmering U.S. war on Iran. He assessed that from Beijing's viewpoint, this war is centrally about whether the U.S. can be allowed to continue exerting unilateral control over the entire world economy, given that it is the U.S. military that is currently blockading the Hormuz Strait and preventing a peaceful negotiated end to this war. Listen to John Ross and Helena Cobban discussing this and other issues around China's persistent, though generally quiet, pro-peace diplomacy and the importance of the upcoming summit meeting. This was latest episode in our continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website. Support the show

On May 7, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with Maryam Jamshidi, Assistant Professor of Law in the law school at the University of Colorado, and a Non-resident Fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. In this convo, Jamshidi and Cobban discussed (among other topics):  The many details of what international maritime law has to say about the rights Iran may enjoy over the Strait of HormuzThe depth of the remaining differences between the U.S. and Iranian positions on how to end the warThe sad history of the UN Security Council's engagement in the question of the U.S.-Israel war on IranThe utility of international law in the present, lawless era.This was latest episode in our continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website. Support the show

On May 1, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with the former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who was one of the founders of the antiwar organization Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). During his career in the CIA, McGovern was a very expert analyst of Soviet (and Russian) affairs. In the early 1980s he was responsible for giving the U.S. president his daily intel briefing. In this convo, McGovern and Cobban discussed (among other topics):  the likelihood of any imminent U.S. resumption of major military actions against Iran; the slowly decreasing influence of Israel in the U.S. Congress;the impact of Iranian FM Araghchi's recent visit to Moscow and the potential role that Russia might play in mediating an end to the war; the Israeli navy's recent acts of piracy against the Global Sumoud Flotilla heading to Gaza (in the context of the increasing recourse to acts of piracy by the U.S. navy, as well); andDavid Swanson's recent book War Is Still A Racket.This was latest episode in our continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website. Support the show

In this episode of the Iran Crisis series, Helena Cobban sat down with Professor Richard Falk, international law scholar and JWE board member, for a wide-ranging conversation that spanned nearly five decades of history. Recorded on April 29, the discussion moved from a remarkable personal meeting he had with Ayatollah Khomeini in January 1979 to the crisis of international law and the nuclear non-proliferation debate that are both unfolding right now.  This was latest episode in our continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website. Support the show

In this special presentation for Just World Educational's Iran Crisis series, Helena Cobban, the president of Just World Ed, delivered a pre-recorded talk for the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center conference in Orinda, California, on April 25th. Unable to attend in person and having to record her remarks more than 24 hours before they would be delivered, she chose to take a long historical view of the crisis by tracing the Strait of Hormuz across 5,000 years of human history.  She traced Hormuz's  origins as a key node connecting the formative ancient civilizations in the Indus Valley and Mesopotamian, and as a central artery in the vast Indian Ocean trading zone that once stretched from East Africa to China. She described that pre-European world as a thriving, self-governed commercial network with its own norms and technologies, drawing on the work of historian Janet Abu-Lughod.  She then walked through the entry of five European imperial powers into that world: Portugal, Spain, England, the Netherlands, and France. She described what she called the "White Supremacist International," a succession of empire-building ventures driven by profit, looting, and the rise of finance capitalism. She traced Portugal's violent seizure of Hormuz in 1507 under Afonso de Albuquerque, followed by the London-based East India Company's takeover of the port in 1622, and drew direct parallels between those colonial methods and what Israel is doing in Palestine and Lebanon today.  Cobban closed by urging viewers to work toward curbing Western military power and ending the war. Support the show

On the evening of April 23, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with Dr. Moeed Pirzada,  a prominent Pakistani journalist based in Washington, D.C. and founder-editor of Global Village Space magazine. Together they examined the rapidly shifting situation around the U.S.-Iran conflict, Pakistan's role as a mediator, and the broader geopolitical realignments taking place across West Asia and beyond. This was latest episode in our continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website. Support the show

On the day before the current two-week ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. is due to end, the veteran scholar of Iranian and international affairs Trita Parsi sat down with JWE president Helena Cobban to review the prospects for war or peace in West Asia.  This was latest episode in our continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website. Support the show

In this April 17 conversation, JWE president Helena Cobban and the veteran Palestinian political analyst Mouin Rabbani discussed the implications, for West Asia and the world, of some of Pres. Trump's crucial recent decisions regarding the ongoing crisis over Iran. Rabbani reviewed, in particular, the decision Trump took mid-week to publicly pressure Israel to accede to a ceasefire in Lebanon, which it had previously refused to do. He also explored what that decision, and Israel's speedy compliance with it, tells us about the nature of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Cobban and Rabbani also reviewed (among other topics):  the history of the U.S. relationship since the beginning of the longer crisis sparked by Hamas's Operation Al-Aqsa Flood of October 2023,the prospects for the peace negotiations that were tentatively launched April 10-11 in Islamabad, Pakistan,the implications of the current U.S.-Iran and Israel-Lebanon ceasefires for the Palestinians of Gaza, and the big changes for the situations in West Asia and globally that were spurred by the U.S.-Israeli decision to launch the current War of Choice against Iran.This summer Rabbani will be publishing his first sole-authored book, Gaza Apocalypse: A Gencoide Diary (OR Books.) This conversation was the thirteenth in Just World Educational's ongoing series on the Iran Crisis/War. Find all the records of this project here. Support the show

In this April 12 conversation, JWE president Helena Cobban discussed with Prof. Rami Zurayk the impact on Lebanon of the violence that Israel has unleashed against the country for many months now. (Israel escalated that violence very notably on April 8, the day when it looked as if Washington was finally ready to sit down and negotiate a serious ceasefire with Iran.) Rami Zurayk is a researcher on ecological affairs and a social activist with deep family roots in South Lebanon. In 2011, Just World Books published War Diary: Lebanon 2006,  his short, engaging account of what he experienced during the very destructive invasion of Lebanon that Israel undertook in 2006. This conversation was the twelfth in Just World Educational's ongoing series on the Iran Crisis/War. Find all the records of this project here. Support the show

In a week that started with Pres. Trump's outrageous genocidal threats against Iran, then saw him apparently agree to a ceasefire while Israel unleashed a torrent of violence against Lebanon... JWE president Helena Cobban was happy to be able to assess the broader impact of these events with Sri Lankan analyst Indi Samarajiva.  Indi's main writing platform is indi.ca. This was latest episode in our continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website. Support the show

In this April 1 conversation with JWE president Helena Cobban, Amb. Chas W. Freeman, Jr., discussed the impact and relevance of the 5-point peace initiative for the Iran conflict that China and Pakistan jointly announced on March 31. You can find more background about Amb. Freeman and about this new peace initiative at this post on JWE's Substack. Support the show