Middle East scholar Assal Rad talks about Iran, Gaza and the way the media manufactures consent for endless wars and genocide. Then ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern talks about NATO, Russia, and Ukraine.

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Dr. Assal Rad is a scholar of Middle East history and nonresident fellow at Arab Center Washington DC. She works on research and writing related to U.S. foreign policy issues, the Middle East, and contemporary Iran. Her writing can be seen in Newsweek, The National Interest, The Independent, Foreign Policy and more, and she has appeared as a commentator on BBC World, Al Jazeera, CNN, and NPR. She completed a PhD in History from the University of California, Irvine in 2018 and is the author of The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Ray McGovern is a former CIA analyst turned activist. He headed the CIA branch analyzing Russian foreign policy in the 70s. From 1981 to 1985, he presented, in person, the early morning briefings of The President’s Daily Brief. Ray was awarded the Intelligence Commendation Medallion at retirement; in an act of conscience in early 2006 Ray returned the Medallion, explaining, “I do not want to be associated, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture.” In January 2003, two months before the U.S. attacked Iraq, he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity to warn the President that the “intelligence” on Iraq was fraudulent. https://raymcgovern.com/

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