In our first episode, Jon Alterman sits down with Ambassador Bill Burns about the role of the United States in the Middle East. Amb. Burns is the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the former deputy secretary of state, and the author of The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for its Renewal. Jon, Will, and Amb ... Show More
May 22
Babel Special: Jon Alterman's Next Chapter
This week on a special edition of Babel, Will Todman speaks with Jon Alterman, the creator of Babel and the show’s host since it began in 2019. They discuss Jon’s reflections on 22 years directing the CSIS Middle East Program, his analysis of how the Middle East policy ecosystem ... Show More
34m 59s
May 15
Mohanad Hage Ali: Hezbollah and the Captagon Trade
This week on Babel, Jon Alterman speaks with Dr. Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. Mohanad's latest paper for Carnegie investigates the rise of a new form of drug smuggling in Lebanon. Together, they discuss Hezbollah’s i ... Show More
50m 16s
May 8
Analysis: Will Trump’s Houthi Deal Stick?
On Tuesday, May 6, President Trump declared that the United States would immediately halt its bombing of Houthi targets, bringing an end to months of intensified U.S. strikes across Yemen. The president linked the policy reversal to what he described as the Iran-backed Houthis’ c ... Show More
6m 13s
Oct 2020
American entanglement in the Middle East
Philip Gordon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a long-time Washington insider who worked on Middle East policy for the Obama administration and is now an informal adviser to the Biden campaign. In this episode, Gideon Rachman talks to him about the US pres ... Show More
24m 51s
Dec 2023
A Different Path Israel Could Have Taken — and Maybe Still Can
Before Oct. 7, Israel appeared to many to be sliding into a “one-state reality,” where it had functional control over Gaza and the West Bank, but the Palestinians who lived there were denied full rights. In 2021, a group of hundreds of former senior defense and diplomatic officia ... Show More
59m 26s
Oct 2023
Israel, Hamas and the unravelling of the West | Audio Long Read
What might be the long term impact of the Israel-Hamas war on global alliances? In this week’s audio long read, the New Statesman’s contributing writer John Gray reflects on three weeks of bloodshed, beginning with the massacres of 7 October, and their wider consequences. An esca ... Show More
16m 11s
Apr 2024
Iran’s attack on Israel and the potential for further escalation in the Middle East; Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on her recent trip to Beijing; Ambassador Rahm Emanuel on US-Japan cooperation in t
Today on the show, CNN’s chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward joins from Tel Aviv to break down the calculations taking place within Netanyahu’s government about how and if to respond. Then, Fareed speaks with The New York Times’ David Sanger and Vali Nasr, former seni ... Show More
41m 1s