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, 2026

Further 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-e1366

Noura Erakat, Luigi Daniele, Shahd Hammouri, Ata Hindi, Maryam Jamshidi and Darryl Li, “Roundtable on the War on Iran and International Law” Jadaliyya, March 13, 2026

Firoozeh Kashani Sabet, “Iranicide: the Genealogy of Hate” The Tempered View, March 14, 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.

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