Middle East

Iran, 1997-2022: Reform, Reaction, and Crisis

18 Nov 2022
Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran. This is the fifth and final episode in what is now a FIVE-part series. We begin this episode in 1997, with reformist cleric...

Iran, 1979-1997: Islamic Republic, War, and Thermidor

15 Nov 2022
Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran. This is the fourth episode in what is now a FIVE-part series. We pick up in the wake of the Islamic Revolution as...

Iran, 1953-1979: From the Shah to Islamic Revolution

07 Nov 2022
Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran. This is the third episode in our four-part series. We pick up in the wake of the US-British 1953 coup against Mossadegh, assess...

Iran, 1941-1953: Tudeh, Mosaddegh, Oil, and the CIA-MI6 Coup

01 Nov 2022
Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran. This is the second episode in our four-part series. We begin in 1941 with the British-Soviet occupation of Iran, the ouster of Reza...

Big Ship Capitalism with Laleh Khalili

30 Apr 2021
Dan interviews Laleh Khalili on Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. The Suez Canal, the colonial roots of contemporary maritime trade, Aden dock worker radicals, why Dubai is not...

Empire and the War in Yemen

17 Apr 2019
The US has played a major role in fomenting violence across Yemen, backing the Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led forces attacking the country while also conducting a direct war against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula...

A Theory of ISIS with Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

13 Mar 2019
Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou explains: it’s not just that the War on Terror has warped American and European politics and society; it’s that the War on Terror and Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS have become mutually-critical...

Palestine Politics with Linda Sarsour

06 Feb 2019
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Madawi al-Rasheed on Saudi Royal Brutality

30 Oct 2018
The brutality of the Saudi royal family had been hiding in plain sight. It was an open secret convenient to the political, media and business elites for whom the Kingdom means big business and an...

Aslı Bâli on Syria, Part II

17 Aug 2018
Part two of a two-part interview with Aslı Bâli on the Syrian civil war and the larger geopolitical conflicts that shape the Middle East—with an emphasis on the role played the United States. During part...

Aslı Bâli on Syria, Part I

15 Aug 2018
Aslı Ü. Bâli joins Daniel for part one of a two-part interview on the Syrian Civil War and the murderously instrumentalized geopolitics that fuel it. Syrians continue to suffer and to die while various actors...

Free Palestine with Noura Erakat

18 May 2018
Israel is massacring Palestinians daring to approach a fence that occupation forces have built to shore up an ethno-state founded on the principle of apartheid. Nothing could be more clear. But you wouldn’t no that...

Petro-Imperialism with Timothy Mitchell Part II

13 Apr 2018
Historian and political theorist Timothy Mitchell joins Dan for the second of a two-part interview on his book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, published in 2011 by Verso. In part 1,...

Petro-Capitalism with Timothy Mitchell Part I

10 Apr 2018
Historian and political theorist Timothy Mitchell joins Dan for the first of a two-part interview on his book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, published in 2011 by Verso. In this first episode,...

Andrew Bacevich: This Is the War That Never Ends

22 Aug 2017
This is the war that never ends. The War on Terror’s permanence should be remarkable. It should be an outrage. But it is precisely because the war has become permanent that it has long since...