Today’s episode is the third installment of our MERIP Roundtable discussing the war on Iran, instigated by the US and Israeli on February 28, 2026, and its regional reverberations. This episode focuses on Israel’s expanded war on Lebanon. Following the assassination of Ali Khamanei, supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hizballah fired six missiles into Israel, its first offensive move since a ceasefire was signed in the fall of 2024. Israel, meanwhile, has violated the ceasefire on a near daily basis over the past year and a half through missile and drone strikes. In the past weeks, Israel has issued mass evacuation warnings across the entire area south of the Litani river, in Dahiyeh south of Beirut and in the Bekaa valley. Invasions, including a commando raid through Syria into the Bekaa followed, as have the near daily barrage of missile and drone attacks. In a matter of a couple of weeks, over one million people have been displaced—representing a quarter of Lebanon’s population. 

The renewed assault has raised the stakes of long running issues in Lebanon around national sovereignty and self-defense, and wider questions about how both Lebanese and Palestinian resistance to Israeli aggression in the region can be constituted in the face of its overwhelming military and technological advantages. To discuss these issues, MERIP’s executive director James Ryan was joined by Rima Majed, an associate professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut, whose work has focused on sectarianism, social movements and conflict in Lebanon. Rima Majed is a member of MERIP’s editorial committee and also the author of a short essay on the war on Lebanon that appeared as part of our collection “War Across Boundaries–Perspectives on Iran and a Region Under Siege,” published on March 19, 2026. Also joining the podcast is Ali Musleh, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California-Davis, whose research focuses on the effects of automated warscapes on everyday life and resistance in Palestine.

This conversation was recorded on March 23rd, 2026. 

Further Reading:

Laleh Khalili (interview) Democracy Now “The End of the Petrodollar? How Iran War Is Reshaping the Global Economy: Author Laleh Khalili” March 19, 2026

Joseph Daher, Hezbollah: The Political Economy of the Party of God (Pluto Press, 2016)

Abdaljawad Omar, “Gaza Faces the World” Turbulence Podcast Episode 10, January 20, 2026

Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years War On Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (Macmillan, 2020)

The Material Politics of Normalization Middle East Report Summer/Fall 2025, Issue 315-316

Munira Khayyat, “Dispatch from South Lebanon–Life as Resistance at the End of the World” Middle East Report Winter 2024, Issue 313

Lara Deeb, Maya Mikdashi, Tsolin Nalbantian and Nadya Sbaiti, “A Primer on Lebanon–History, Politics and Resistance to Israeli Violence” Middle East Report Winter 2024, Issue 313

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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