On the day before the current two-week ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. is due to end, the veteran scholar of Iranian and international affairs Trita Parsi sat down with JWE president Helena Cobban to review the prospects for war or peace in West Asia. 

This was latest episode in our continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website.

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In this April 17 conversation, JWE president Helena Cobban and the veteran Palestinian political analyst Mouin Rabbani discussed the implications, for West Asia and the world, of some of Pres. Trump's crucial recent decisions regarding the ongoing crisis over Iran. Rabbani reviewed, in particular, the decision Trump took mid-week to publicly pressure Israel to accede to a ceasefire in Lebanon, which it had previously refused to do. He also explored what that decision, and Israel's speedy compliance with it, tells us about the nature of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

Cobban and Rabbani also reviewed (among other topics):

•  the history of the U.S. relationship since the beginning of the longer crisis sparked by Hamas's Operation Al-Aqsa Flood of October 2023,
• the prospects for the peace negotiations that were tentatively launched April 10-11 in Islamabad, Pakistan,
• the implications of the current U.S.-Iran and Israel-Lebanon ceasefires for the Palestinians of Gaza, and
•  the big changes for the situations in West Asia and globally that were spurred by the U.S.-Israeli decision to launch the current War of Choice against Iran.

This summer Rabbani will be publishing his first sole-authored book, Gaza Apocalypse: A Gencoide Diary (OR Books.)

This conversation was the thirteenth in Just World Educational's ongoing series on the Iran Crisis/War. Find all the records of this project here.

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In this April 12 conversation, JWE president Helena Cobban discussed with Prof. Rami Zurayk the impact on Lebanon of the violence that Israel has unleashed against the country for many months now. (Israel escalated that violence very notably on April 8, the day when it looked as if Washington was finally ready to sit down and negotiate a serious ceasefire with Iran.)

Rami Zurayk is a researcher on ecological affairs and a social activist with deep family roots in South Lebanon. In 2011, Just World Books published War Diary: Lebanon 2006,  his short, engaging account of what he experienced during the very destructive invasion of Lebanon that Israel undertook in 2006.

This conversation was the twelfth in Just World Educational's ongoing series on the Iran Crisis/War. Find all the records of this project here.

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In a week that started with Pres. Trump's outrageous genocidal threats against Iran, then saw him apparently agree to a ceasefire while Israel unleashed a torrent of violence against Lebanon... JWE president Helena Cobban was happy to be able to assess the broader impact of these events with Sri Lankan analyst Indi Samarajiva. 

Indi's main writing platform is indi.ca.

This was latest episode in our continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Online Learning Hub on our website.

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In this April 1 conversation with JWE president Helena Cobban, Amb. Chas W. Freeman, Jr., discussed the impact and relevance of the 5-point peace initiative for the Iran conflict that China and Pakistan jointly announced on March 31.

You can find more background about Amb. Freeman and about this new peace initiative at this post on JWE's Substack.

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In this March 24 convo with Helena Cobban, Vijay Prashad, the director Tricontinental, drew on his extensive experience of the affairs of the Global South to assess the extent and roots of Iran's achievements in resisting the attack that the U.S.-Israeli alliance started on February 28. 

Prashad and Cobban also discussed the ties between Iran's achievements in their war against the alliance and the prospects for the movements in Gaza, the rest of Palestine, and Lebanon that are also facing fierce onslaughts from the alliance, and the impacts of this war on the global balance more generally. 

This conversation is the ninth in JWE's ongoing "Iran Crisis" series, which is a follow-on to the "Gaza, and the World" project that we launched in Fall 2025. The multimedia records of all the conversations in this series can be found at this portal page on our website.

Check back at our website www.justworldeducational.org, or with our Substack justworlded.substack.org for other news of this series.

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In this March 20 talk, Just World Ed president Helena Cobban assessed the current state of the Israeli-US War on Iran at  Day 21, and lessons that antiwar activists-- particularly those in the United States-- should take from what has happened until now. She focused on:

•  the depravity of the rampages Israel has been committing in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon in addition, to those in Iran
• the intense degree to which the U.S. military and government are actively complicit in all of Israel's rampages, including those regarding which Pres. Trump has expressed some mild (or even joking) reservations
• the impotence of the United Nations regarding Palestine, Lebanon, and the globe-wide economic crisis sparked by the war
• the responsibility of U.S. citizens to take concrete actions to end the war and to build a sustainable peace-- including by pulling all U.S. military bases out of the Gulf.

This conversation is the eighth in JWE's ongoing "Iran Crisis" series, which is a follow-on to the "Gaza, and the World" project that we launched in Fall 2025. The multimedia records of all the conversations in this series can be found at this portal page on our website.

Check back at our website www.justworldeducational.org or our Substack justworlded.substack.com for news of our further programming in this series.

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In this March 5 convo with Helena Cobban, longtime Iran specialist Barbara Slavin noted the survival of Iran's central governance structures even after the early assassination by the Israeli and U.S. war machine of the Supreme Leader and numerous other figures in the country's military and political leadership, and surmised that its government is not likely soon either to crumble or to "capitulate."

Slavin, who is a Distinguished Fellow at Washington DC's Stimson Institute, mocked many of the assertions by Pres. Trump and cabinet members like Secretary of War Pete Hegseth that Tehran was about to cave. She and Cobban also surveyed the still-spreading consequences of the war for the West Asia region, the global economy, and also  the U.S. political system.

This conversation is the seventh in JWE's ongoing "Iran Crisis" series, which is a follow-on to the "Gaza, and the World" project that we launched in Fall 2025. The multimedia records of all the conversations in this series can be found at this portal page on our website.

Check back at our website www.justworldeducational.org for news of our further programming in this series.

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In this March 4 convo with Helena Cobban, the veteran U.S. diplomatist Amb. Chas W. Freeman, Jr.  assessed Iran's objectives in the defensive war it is now waging in response to the massive Israeli-U.S. aggression of February 28, and its likelihood of achieving them.

He also assessed a range of other topics including the impact that Iran's actions is having on economies around the world; the policies adopted by various European government; the possible and likely impact of the war on U.S. domestic politics; and the effects the Israeli-U.S. aggression is having on global institutions.

This conversation is the sixth in JWE's ongoing "Iran Crisis" series, which is a follow-on to the "Gaza, and the World" project that we launched in Fall 2025. Tomorrow (March 5) we will round out this week's offerings with a convo with the Iranian-affairs expert Barbara Slavin.

Check back at our website www.justworldeducational.org for updates  on other upcoming episodes.

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In this March 3 convo with Helena Cobban, JWE's board member the veteran analyst and thinker Rami G. Khouri discussed the sizeable impact that Iran's response to the U.S.-Israeli war of aggression is already having on Arab Gulf states, the broader region of West Asia-- and the world. 

The two agreed that Iran's resilience and its ability to inflict real pain on the aggressors and  other actors worldwide are both notable, and started to place these factors in their deep historical context

This conversation is the fifth in JWE's ongoing "Iran Crisis" series, which is follow-on to the "Gaza, and the World" project that we launched in Fall 2025. New episodes are being released at Noon ET on each week-day in both video and audio format. Here is the schedule of guests who are already confirmed for the rest of this week:

• March 4 ~ Amb. Chas Freeman
• March 5 ~ Barbara Slavin

Check back at our website www.justworldeducational.org for updates  on other upcoming episodes.

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