Drop Site Livestream

The U.S. remains the most powerful single nation in the world, but it is not the most powerful in every region. While the U.S. remains mired in numerous wars in the Middle East, it is facing a rapid challenge from the People’s Republic of China. In recent history, China has become a major economic, technological, and political power—even taking the place of the U.S. as the dominant economic actor in many parts of the world.

The U.S. and China in recent years have transformed from erstwhile partners into fierce rivals that many fear is rapidly transforming into a new Cold War. As their rivalry grows, some observers warn that the economic decoupling now taking place between Washington and Beijing could be a prelude to a direct military clash over Taiwan in the years to come.

Understanding the history and future of China is more important than ever. The central figure in Chinese politics today is the country’s leader and Communist Party chief Xi Jinping. But to understand Xi’s rise and contemporary Chinese politics, an even more interesting figure may be his father, Xi Zhongxun.

The elder Xi was a leading figure in the Chinese Communist Party during the revolutionary era and a close associate of Mao Zedong. Like many Chinese officials of that generation, he suffered purges and repression, in the midst of a century of suffering that touched nearly the entire Chinese population, including his family and children.

Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Joseph Torigian, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the author of the new book: “The Party's Interests Come First: The Life Of Xi Zhongxun, Father Of Xi Jinping.”

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Israel’s widening military assault on Gaza—the continued bombardment, the prolonged siege, the daily murder of starving people seeking aid, the expansion of ground operations and the carving up of Gaza with military corridors—has brought Gaza to a tipping point. Starving Palestinians have begun to collapse in the streets and die of hunger and thirst. At least thirty-three people have died from hunger and malnutrition over the past two days. Israeli troops gun down desperate people seeking meager food rations on a daily basis, with one of the deadliest aid massacres taking place on Sunday with nearly 70 people killed by the Israeli military as they approached a World Food Program aid convoy.

On Monday, Israeli troops pushed into areas of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the first time since the beginning of the war. Deir al-Baah was the only city in Gaza that has not been subject to a major Israeli ground operation or suffered widespread devastation. Many Palestinians have sought refuge there and it is also the headquarters of several UN agencies and medical NGOs. Israeli forces raided the main staff residence of the World Health Organization in the city on Monday, forcing women and children to evacuate on foot toward the coast while male staff ere handcuffed, stripped, interrogated on the spot and screened at gunpoint.

On this week’s Drop Site News livestream, Sharif Abdel Kouddous speaks to Eyad Amawi of the Gaza Relief Committee in Deir al-Balah about the latest assault on the city and the spreading famine in Gaza; and with Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya and a former UN official who worked as a special adviser on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group about how the US and Europe are allowing Israel to pursue its genocidal campaign with impunity.

On July 17, an Israeli drone strike killed at least one person and injured two others in Lebanon’s Nabatiyeh governorate, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The missile struck a civilian vehicle—part of the Israeli military’s ongoing aerial campaign in southern Lebanon, carried out in defiance of the declared ceasefire. In the past two weeks alone, at least 11 Israeli attacks have targeted towns and villages across the area.

Since a ceasefire with Lebanon was declared last November, Israel has violated it over 3,000 times. As part of that agreement, Israeli forces withdrew from Aita al‑Shaab—a southern border village in Nabatiyeh governorate, just 1,000 meters from multiple Israeli military outposts. But before it did, Israel systematically detonated nearly every home and building in the town. Since the withdrawal, a de facto “no‑rebuild” policy has taken hold: residents attempting to repair roofs or clear rubble are targeted. Drone surveillance, sniper fire, artillery shelling, and air‑to‑ground missile strikes have all been used to enforce this policy. Today, the town is littered with Hezbollah flags and posters of fighters killed while attempting to defend it.

Aita al‑Shaab is one of dozens of villages across the south that have faced near-total destruction at the hands of Israeli forces. Last month, journalist Jeremy Loffredo traveled to Aita al-Shaab for Drop Site News, documenting the ongoing destruction and the atmosphere of terror imposed by Israeli troops who remain stationed on five mountaintop positions inside Lebanese territory, surveilling and targeting civilian communities.

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Negotiations for a Gaza “ceasefire” deal are continuing in Doha, Qatar, as President Donald Trump claims an agreement could be reached as early as this week. Palestinian negotiators, however, have told Drop Site that Israel continues to demand terms that would allow the genocide to continue after a 60-day pause during which 10 Israeli captives would be released from Gaza. Israel has also been threatening to establish a concentration camp in southern Gaza to corral an initial 600,000 Palestinians to prepare them for eventual removal from Gaza entirely.

As this process continues, Israel has further intensified its military assault with daily massacres that disproportionately kill children and women. Since late May, an average of 30 Palestinians have been killed as they tried to receive meager food rations from the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation established by the U.S. and Israel.

On this week’s Drop Site News livestream, Jeremy Scahill speaks to Eyad Amawi of the Gaza Relief Committees about the increasing horrors being unleashed on Palestinians, the latest developments in the ceasefire negotiations, and how ordinary people in Gaza view the prospects for a deal to end the genocide. Jeremy also offers insights from sources involved with the negotiations and gives a comprehensive update on the state of affairs.

Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill, and Murtaza Hussain are joined by Jon Elmer of Electronic Intifada to break down today’s major developments.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The United States carried out airstrikes last month against three sites in Iran tied to its nuclear program. The attacks were the culmination of years of belligerence that began when Trump violated the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and embarked on a strategy of confrontation with Iran, at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While the level of damage done to the sites remains unclear, the Iranian government has responded to the attacks by ceasing cooperation with international monitoring agencies. Iran is also hinting it retains the capacity to develop a nuclear weapon if it chooses.

The standoff with Iran is just one aspect of a larger story of the reemergence of nuclear weapons and possible nuclear warfare as a major risk in the 21st century.

The U.S. and Russia are currently in the process of building up to a new nuclear arms race, while, at present, China has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal of any country . Recently, the India and Pakistan conflict made many nervous that one of the countries would use nuclear weapons.

After years of relative stability, the size of the nuclear club also looks very likely to grow with new nations potentially carrying out nuclear tests in the years ahead. These changes mean that the risk of a nuclear war is growing after the end of the Cold War rather than decreasing.

Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Ankit Panda. Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the author of the new book “The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon.”

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza is entering its 22rd month, with a staggering toll of dead and wounded continuing to rise every day. Throughout the war, the U.S. and many European nations have acted as shields for Israel—defending it against legal scrutiny, providing diplomatic and political support, and continuing to fund and arm its military assault.

Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Anand Gopal, a journalist focused on the region and the author of the forthcoming book on Syria, “Days of Love and Rage.”

Gopal discusses the history of the laws of war and systemic problems in the international legal system. If the laws of war are not able to protect civilians during conflicts, what are they good for? As Gopal explains, the genocide in Gaza exposes the underlying contradictions of the international legal system. Even though there are laws on the books, the international arbiters supposed to enforce them are made up of the belligerent states themselves. Hussain and Gopal discuss the international legal order and how the system itself makes civilian deaths inevitable.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Israel has continued to intensify its attacks across the Gaza Strip as President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he hopes a ceasefire “is going to happen and we're looking for it to happen sometime next week.” His comments come as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed he will travel to the U.S. this weekend and is expected to meet with Trump, his national security team, and U.S. Congressional leaders. Despite Trump’s public campaign for an agreement for a ceasefire in Gaza, Hamas has said there have been no substantive new proposals submitted and that the discussions seem to be exclusively between Israel and the U.S.

Meanwhile, Israel launched a new series of raids in cities and villages across the occupied West Bank Tuesday as part of a continuation of a months-long series of assaults and ground incursions that have resulted in the largest forced displacement operations against Palestinians in the West Bank since 1967.

Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous are joined by two Palestinian analysts for a wide-ranging discussion on all of the latest developments: Jehad Abusalim, co-editor of “Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire” and Executive Director of the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA, and Abdaljawad Omar, an adjunct professor at Birzeit University and a writer based in Ramallah.

Photo: Donald Trump speaks to the press on July 1, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images.

It has been ten days since Israel launched an unprovoked campaign of sustained bombing against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hundreds of Iranian civilians have been killed as Israel assassinated dozens of military and intelligence leaders, including commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as nuclear scientists and other technical experts. In some cases, these assassinations have been conducted in crowded residential buildings.

This weekend, the U.S. overtly joined Israel’s war against Iran, launching a series of bombings targeting several Iranian nuclear sites in Operation Midnight Hammer. President Donald Trump claimed that Iran’s nuclear capability has been totally decimated and praised himself for his decision to bomb Iran despite no evidence that Iran posed any imminent threat to the United States. Iran has suggested these attacks, which included the use of fourteen 30,000 pound bombs, did far less damage than the U.S. and Israel have suggested.

On Monday, in response to the U.S. bombing, Iran fired missiles at U.S. Central Command headquarters at al Udeid air base in Qatar. This weekend, Trump and other U.S. officials threatened even greater use of force against Iran should it retaliate against the unprovoked U.S. bombings this weekend. The U.S. position is that Iran must capitulate to the demands of the U.S. and Israel.

Shortly before Iran launched its missile strikes on U.S. CENTCOM in Qatar, Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill spoke to the Iranian international law scholar Dr. Helyeh Doutaghi to discuss the widening U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. In March, she was suspended and ultimately fired by Yale University after a Zionist-led campaign to portray her as a member of a terror organization. She served as the deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy Project at Yale.She is currently a scholar of international law and geopolitical economy and she is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tehran.

The Israeli government launched an unprovoked attack on Iran last week, killing hundreds of Iranians in a surprise attack on the capital city of Tehran. The two countries have traded missiles in the days since, killing hundreds of civilians.

Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing for the U.S. to become directly involved in the fighting as a means not only to set back the Iranian nuclear program but overthrow the government itself.

In this episode, Drop Site journalist Murtaza Hussain talks to defense analyst Shahryar Pasandideh about how this war started, what each side wants, and the implications of U.S. involvement in another major conflict in the region.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.