Today on the podcast we have an interview with Ned Leadbeater, a researcher and analyst based in Britain who recently wrote an article for our Summer/Fall double issue on the material politics of normalization titled, “Fiber Optics and the Hidden Politics of Connectivity.” His article explores the politics surrounding undersea fiber optic cables in the Red Sea and plans for possible overland cable routes through the Middle East. Currently, the vast majority of internet traffic between Europe and Asia flows through the Red Sea—as much as 90 percent, making it vulnerable to cargo ship accidents and Egypt’s high installation and transit fees. Before  October 7, 2023, major tech companies like Google and Meta were developing plans to bypass that Red Sea bottleneck by creating new overland and undersea cable routes from the Mediterranean   across Israel and Jordan to the Gulf states that would necessitate new forms of normalization, particularly with Saudi Arabia. James Ryan, MERIP’s executive director, spoke with Ned Leadbeater about the actors involved in fiber optic cable politics, the longer geopolitical history of telecommunications infrastructure in the region and how states and corporations may be rethinking their security strategies in the wake of Israel’s war in Gaza. 

This conversation was recorded on December 16, 2025.

Further Reading: 

Ned Leadbeater, “Fiber Optics and the Hidden Politics of Connectivity” Middle East Report Fall/Summer 2025, https://www.merip.org/2025/10/fiber-optics-and-the-hidden-politics-of-connectivity/  

Paul Cochrane’s reporting at Middle East Eye: https://www.middleeasteye.net/users/paul-cochrane

Submarine Telecoms Forum, https://subtelforum.com/ 

Nicole Starosielski, The Undersea Network Duke University Press, 2015 https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-undersea-network 

Pauline Lewis, “Wired Ottomans: A Sociotechnical History of the Telegraph and the Modern Ottoman Empire, 1855-1911” Ph.D. Dissertation, UCLA, 2018 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/985895xr 

Support MERIP by making a one-time or monthly donation at www.merip.org/donate 

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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On this episode of the MERIP Podcast we're sharing highlights of our live event Honoring Joe Stork, held at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C. on November 22, 2025. The event featured reflections and reminiscences about Joe Stork, our co-founder and longtime editor who passed away October 23, 2024. Featured speakers included Sarah Leah Whitson, Lisa Hajjar, Mouin Rabbani, Joel Beinin, Zachary Lockman, Rick Reinhard, Andy Shallal and Joan Mandel. The event was MC'd by Joost Hiltermann, a MERIP contributor and analyst at the International Crisis Group. All of the speakers shared stories of their experience working with Joe, from the founding of MERIP in the 1970s through his work with Human Rights Watch later in his career.

MERIP is grateful to the staff at Busboys and Poets for hosting us, and Andy Shallal, the owner of Busboys and Poets, for joining the proceedings to share a few words.

To support MERIP's work so that it continues to be paywall-free, please visit www.merip.org/donate today to make a one-time or monthly donation.

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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Today we have a very special episode, part of a new occasional series that will highlight some of the truly great work MERIP has done over the last 50-plus years, all of which is free to read in our archive. In the first of this series, we’re featuring the landmark essay “Abu Farid’s House” written by Beshara Doumani and published in March 1989 as part of Issue 157, “Israel Faces the Uprising.” The essay encapsulates the history of working class struggles in Palestine up to and during the First Intifada through the family of the titular Abu Farid in Salfit, a small village located between Ramallah and Nablus. 

The author, Beshara Doumani, went on to become a leading historian of Palestine in the Ottoman era. He served as the President of Bir Zeit University in the West Bank from 2021–2023 and is now the inaugural Mahmoud Darwish Professor of Palestinian Studies at Brown University. This episode features an interview with Doumani by MERIP Executive Director James Ryan recorded on October 30th from the West Bank, where Doumani is currently on sabbatical conducting research in some of the same villages he visited when he wrote “Abu Farid’s House.” The conversation covers his experience in Salfit and its surroundings before and during the First Intifada, as well as how he understands the changes in Salfit and across the Occupied Territories, from the Oslo Accords through the present genocide in Gaza.

Further Reading: 

Beshara Doumani, “Abu Farid’s House” Middle East Report 157, March-April 1989 https://www.merip.org/1989/03/abu-farids-house/ 

“Israel Faces the Uprising” Middle East Report 157, March-April 1989 https://www.merip.org/issue-157/ 

Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 (Berkeley, University of California Press 1995) https://www.ucpress.edu/books/rediscovering-palestine/paper 

Support MERIP: https://www.merip.org/donate/

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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On this episode of The MERIP Podcast we are featuring an interview with Raouf Farrah, an Algerian activist and researcher based in Tunis, about his article "On the Road to Rafah -- The Sumud Convoy and New Maghrebi Geographies of Resistance" which appears in Middle East Report 315-316 Material Politics of Normalization (Summer/Fall 2025). In the interview, Farrah and MERIP Executive Director James Ryan discuss Farah's experience traveling with the Sumud Convoy across North Africa in June and July 2025, and the efforts to reconfigure their mission in the months after being turned back in Sirte by forces allied with Khalifa Haftar. Farrah reflects on the lessons of the Convoy and the later Global Sumud Flotilla in light of the present ceasefire in Gaza, and how those experiences are informing new ways of thinking about Palestinian solidarity, and political activism.

This conversation was recorded October 14, 2025

Further Reading:

Raouf Farrah "On the Road to Rafah -- The Sumud Convoy and New Maghrebi Geographies of Resistance" in Middle East Report 315-316 Material Politics of Normalization https://www.merip.org/2025/10/on-the-road-to-rafah-the-sumud-convoy-and-new-maghrebi-geographies-of-resistance/

Raouf Farrah and Suraya Dadoo, eds., Rising for Palestine: Africans in Solidarity for Decolonization and Liberation (Pluto Books, forthcoming 2026): https://www.plutobooks.com/product/rising-for-palestine/

The Hague Group: https://thehaguegroup.org/

Middle East Report, The Material Politics of Normalization, Summer/Fall 2025 https://www.merip.org/issue-315-316/

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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On today's episode we are providing another installment of our MERIP Roundtable, where members of our Editorial Committee discuss recent developments in the region. Today's roundtable, "On the Regional War" focuses on the fallout from Israel's September 9th strike on Qatar, a failed assassination attempt targeting the Hamas delegation that is involved in negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release deal. The panel also discusses the Iran-Israel War, which has been frozen since June but is approaching a period where tensions seem to be quietly ratcheting towards more conflict. Joining the panel are Kevin Schwartz, Deputy Director of the Oriental Institute at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Maziyar Ghiabi, Associate Professor of Political Science at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, Shana Marshall, Assistant Research Professor and Associate Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University, and James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director.

This conversation was recorded on September 23, 2025.

The panel provided the following further reading recommendations:

Maziyar Ghiabi -- Trita Parsi's 2008 book Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300143119/treacherous-alliance/

Kevin Schwartz -- "Echoes of a Short War: Critical Reflections on Israel's Attack on Iran" (edited by Nazanin Shahrokhni and Arash Davari) at Jadaliyya https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/46907/Echoes-of-a-Short-War-Critical-Reflections-on-Israel%E2%80%99s-Attack-on-Iran

Shana Marshall -- The American Prestige Podcast (https://americanprestige.supportingcast.fm/listen) and Adam Hanieh's collected works (latest book here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2760-crude-capitalism?srsltid=AfmBOoryMbUuLhOyieEStgex70POT89GPm-pCOv57EOU269THYdNYhbd)

James Ryan -- Arang Keshavarzian's review of Elham Fakhro's The Abraham Accords at MERIP, "The Limits of Protections and Profits, Five Years Into the Abraham Accords"

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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This episode of the MERIP podcast features an interview with longtime MERIP contributor and noted journalist Helen Lackner on the state of Yemen's Houthi movement. The conversation with MERIP Executive Director James Ryan follows up on her essay, "Yemen's Ansar Allah" that was published in our Winter 2024 Issue of Middle East Report on "Resistance: The Axis and Beyond." We discussed the increasingly aggressive posture of the United States and Israel against the Houthis since the Trump administration took office, the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Yemen following the dismantling of USAID, and the status the Houthis now occupy following the fall of Bashar al-Asad and the recent attacks by the US and Israel against Iran.

For more reading, check out:

Helen Lackner, "Yemen's Ansar Allah" Middle East Report Issue 313 Winter 2024: https://merip.org/2025/01/yemens-ansar-allah/

Helen Lackner, Yemen in Crisis (Verso Books): https://www.versobooks.com/products/914-yemen-in-crisis?srsltid=AfmBOoolUV-kV830hOECamRpfgkWhQJBq06JU2YzV9wT8Z5lAGXv28mi

Stacey Philbrick Yadav, "The Houthi's 'Sovereign Solidarity' with Palestine" Middle East Report Issue 309 Winter 2023: https://merip.org/2024/01/the-houthis-sovereign-solidarity-with-palestine-2/

To support MERIP please visit www.merip.org/donate

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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This week in the feed we have the audio from our August 14th, 2025 event "Syria at the Crossroads: Unpacking Sectarianism and the Crisis in Suweida." The conversation features perspectives from Syrian journalists, scholars, and activists Sara Ajlyakin, Sana Mustafa, and Yasser Munif, and was co-moderated by James Ryan (MERIP) and Shireen Akram-Boshar (SPECTRE). This is the third event in our series on Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Asad, and is co-produced with SPECTRE: A Marxist Journal.

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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The MERIP Roundtable is a new format for the MERIP podcast featuring conversation on urgent issues in the Middle East with members of MERIP's Editorial Committee. The theme of this episode's conversation is "Recognition" -- both the widening circle of Israeli, diaspora, and Jewish figures and institutions that are belatedly recognizing the facts of the genocide in Gaza and the recent wave of G7 states who have committed to recognizing the State of Palestine. On the podcast are MERIP Editorial Committee members Lisa Hajjar, Jacob Mundy, and Sean Yom, and the conversation is led by MERIP's Executive Director, James Ryan.

Further reading recommended by the panel:

Jacob Mundy recommends Benjamin Claude Brower's A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France's Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844-1902

Lisa Hajjar recommends Noura Erakat and Shahd Hammouri "The Statehood Trap" on Jadaliyya, Rabea Eghbariah "Toward Nakba as Legal Concept" in the Columbia Law Review, Mouin Rabbani's Substack and Sherene Seikaly's Editor's Note in the latest issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

James Ryan recommends Esmat Elhalaby, "Nakba Denial: On the Politics and History of Genocide" in Parapraxis Magazine

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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This week on the MERIP Podcast Feed we have the audio recording of our June 23rd event "Syria at the Crossroads: Regional Politics and the Movement for Palestine." This conversation was the second in our series jointly produced with SPECTRE: A Marxist Journal. It featured a discussion of the wider regional politics shaping the dynamics of the transitional regime in Syria -- including the early efforts at normalization with Israel, and the long history of solidarity between Syrian and Palestinian popular movements. Joining the conversation were Joseph Daher, Ramah Kudaimi, and Yasmeen Mobayed. The conversation was moderated by Shireen Akram-Boshar (SPECTRE) and James Ryan (MERIP).

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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This week on the feed is the audio recording of our zoom event "Syria at the Crossroads: Popular Revolt, Counterrevolution, and Regional Transformation" featuring Leila Al-Shami, Wafa Mustafa, and Djene Bajalan. Syria at the Crossroads is a special event series co-produced by MERIP and SPECTRE: A Marxist Journal. This event took place May 7, 2025 and was co-moderated by James Ryan (MERIP) and Shireen Akram-Boshar (SPECTRE).

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.