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The MERIP Podcast

The MERIP Podcast

By: James Ryan
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 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.

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James Ryan Political Science Politics & Government World
Episodes
  • Episode 20: The MERIP Roundtable, On the Iran War Part III

    Episode 20: The MERIP Roundtable, On the Iran War Part III
    Mar 26 2026
    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, 2026Joseph 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, 2026Rashid 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 315-316Munira Khayyat, “Dispatch from South Lebanon–Life as Resistance at the End of the World” Middle East Report Winter 2024, Issue 313Lara 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 313The 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.
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • Episode 19: The MERIP Roundtable, On the Iran War Part II

    Episode 19: The MERIP Roundtable, On the Iran War Part II
    Mar 19 2026
    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, 2026Further 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-e1366Noura Erakat, Luigi Daniele, Shahd Hammouri, Ata Hindi, Maryam Jamshidi and Darryl Li, “Roundtable on the War on Iran and International Law” Jadaliyya, March 13, 2026Firoozeh Kashani Sabet, “Iranicide: the Genealogy of Hate” The Tempered View, March 14, 2026The 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.
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    1 hr and 18 mins
  • Episode 18: The MERIP Roundtable, On the Iran War Part I

    Episode 18: The MERIP Roundtable, On the Iran War Part I
    Mar 12 2026
    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.
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    1 hr and 20 mins
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