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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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

James Ryan Political Science Politics & Government World
Episodes
  • 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
  • Episode 17: Niema Alhessen

    Episode 17: Niema Alhessen
    Mar 9 2026

    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.
    Show More Show Less
    39 mins
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