On this week’s episode of Black Diplomats, host Terrell Starr does what very few American journalists do - talk to Iranians about Iran.

Iran is surrounded by nuclear armed adversaries and American military bases. It is reasonable for them to feel threatened, but that’s a perspective we rarely hear in the U.S. media, because we keep being force fed the same crewcut white boys going on about the mullahs.

Today we have two Iranians and a nuclear policy analyst on to provide some context to the conversation.

Negar Mortazavi is an Iranian-American journalist, columnist for The Independent, and host of the Iran Podcast. Ellie Geranmayeh is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations who advises governments and companies on developments with the Iran nuclear deal. They both have deep personal and family ties to Iran that inform their understanding of these nuanced issues.

Michelle Dover is the host of the Ploughshares Fund podcast and a nuclear non-proliferation expert who has followed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action from its first draft.

They get into the details of the JCPOA, the current status of the deal after Trump pulled the US out, Biden’t plans, and what peace in the Middle East could look like. This is a great episode that fills a lot of gaps left by the standard American reporting.

Thank you for listening!