In today’s episode Iman Ali talks about her recently published article, “Repair and Ongoing Ruination—Rebuilding the Dahiyeh Once More,” which appeared in our Winter 2025 issue, “Reconstruction and Ruin.” Iman Ali,  a doctoral candidate in anthropology at Cornell University, has been conducting fieldwork in Lebanon to investigate the impacts of Israel’s war in the fall of 2024 and the ongoing,almost daily, Israeli drone and missile attacks since the November 2024  ceasefire agreement. Her article closely examines the immense material and political challenges faced by Lebanon’s Shi’i community in the last year and a half. She also compares the current struggles to rebuild Beirut’s southern district of Dahiyeh with the vastly different political, funding and leadership landscape following the 2006 war between Hizballah and Israel. After that 2006 campaign, Hizballah was successful in rebuilding the neighborhoods of the Dahiyeh with the aid of funding from several regional and global partners, and under the leadership of Hizballah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah. Today, the challenge of rebuilding could not be more different – the financing is not forthcoming, Hizballah’s leadership is decimated and the spectre of continued or renewed Israeli aggression is pervasive. 

For this conversation, MERIP’s executive director James Ryan was joined by Najib Hourani, a member of the editorial team for “Reconstruction and Ruin,” as cohost. Hourani is an associate professor of anthropology and global urban studies at Michigan State University and now an emeritus member of MERIP’s editorial committee. We spoke with Iman Ali  about her piece, the longer history of the Dahiyeh and the intense burden that resistance to Israeli aggression has placed on Lebanon’s Shi’i communities. 

This episode was recorded on February 25, 2026.

Support MERIP by making a donation: www.merip.org/donate 

Read Iman Ali’s piece here: 

Iman Ali, “Repair and Ongoing Ruination – Rebuilding the Dahiyeh Once More” Middle East Report 317, Reconstruction and Ruin Winter 2025 https://www.merip.org/2026/02/repair-amid-ongoing-ruination-rebuilding-dahiyeh-once-more/ 

Further Reading:

Hiba Bou Akar, “Urban Interventions for the Wars Yet to Come”  https://www.merip.org/2019/07/urban-interventions-for-the-wars-yet-to-come/ 

Tamara Chalabi, The Shi ‘is of Jabal ‘Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and Nation-State, 1918–1943  Springer, 2006 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781403982940 

Lara Deeb, An enchanted modern: Gender and public piety in Shi'i Lebanon Princeton University Press, 2006 https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691124216/an-enchanted-modern?srsltid=AfmBOoqcTpqKMA4-KFqziKFdTLlEygTlQrSB8axSVs0hrFN0MaUORMZi 

Mona Fawaz "Hezbollah as urban planner? Questions to and from planning theory" Planning Theory 8.4 (2009): 323-334 https://www.jstor.org/stable/26165922 

Mona Harb and Lara Deeb. "Culture as history and landscape: Hizballah’s efforts to shape an Islamic milieu in Lebanon" Arab Studies Journal 19.1 (2011): 12-45 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23265810 

Najib B. Hourani "People or profit? Two post-conflict reconstructions in Beirut" Human Organization 74.2 (2015): 174-184 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.17730/0018-7259-74.2.174 

Munira Khayyat "Dispatch from South Lebanon—Life as Resistance at the End of the World." Middle East Report 313 (Winter 2024) https://www.merip.org/2025/01/dispatch-from-south-lebanon/ 

Salim Nasr, “The Roots of the Shi’i Movement” June 24, 1985 https://www.merip.org/1985/06/roots-of-the-shii-movement/

Salim Nasr, “Backdrop to Civil War: The Crisis of Lebanese Capitalism” Middle East Report No. 73 Winter 1978 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3012262

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.

On this episode of our In the Archive series, MERIP’s Executive Director, James Ryan, speaks with Brahim El Guabli about his essay, “The Sub-Saharan Turn in Moroccan Literature,” which appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of Middle East Report, “Maghreb from the Margins.” El Guabli speaks about how migration from sub-Saharan Africa reshaped Moroccan politics and identity over the course of the last 30 years and how he read those changes through recent Moroccan novels. We discussed how the piece has been received and how its ideas contributed to El Guabli’s development of the concept  “saharanism”—the subject of his newly published book, Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences. 

You can check out our earlier In the Archive segment, with Beshara Doumani here: https://www.merip.org/2025/11/the-merip-podcast-episode-11-in-the-archive-with-beshara-doumani/ 

MERIP is accepting pitches for our summer issue on visual art and cultural production in the Middle East and North Africa until February 23rd for more information click here: https://www.merip.org/2026/02/call-for-pitches-visual-art-cultural-production-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa/  

Brahim El Guabli is an associate professor of comparative thought and literature at Johns Hopkins University. 

Further Reading: 

Abdel Rahman Munif, Cities of Salt ( New York: Vintage, 1989) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/118591/cities-of-salt-by-abdelrahman-munif/ 

Brahim El Guabli, “The Sub-Saharan Turn in Moroccan Literature” Middle East Report Issue 298 Spring 2021 https://www.merip.org/2021/04/the-sub-saharan-african-turn-in-moroccan-literature-2/

Brahim El Guabli, Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2025) https://www.ucpress.edu/books/desert-imaginations/paper 

Brahim El Guabli, “Forgettable Black and Amazigh Bodies: Boujemâa Hebaz and the Moroccan Racial Politics of Amnesia” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 44(2) 2024: 303-316 https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-11233072 

Brahim El Guabli, “The Idea of Tamazgha: Current Articulations and Scholarly Potential” Tamazgha Studies Journal Vol 1. Issue 1. Fall 2023, 7-22 https://www.tamazghastudiesjournal.org/articles-fall2023-issue-01-article02  

Ghislaine Lydon On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth Century Western Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/on-transsaharan-trails/B6AB08C0940DBAF3370045EA702E84D1 

Shamil Jeppie, Writing Timbuktu: The Book in West African History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2026) https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691273853/writing-timbuktu?srsltid=AfmBOorqYdHD-ksEASj0rR-5TBFwqVQPM-Rj-sV-o5pO2dHeMGaTdRaD

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.

In this installment of the MERIP Roundtable podcast, MERIP’s executive director James Ryan is joined by a panel of MERIP comrades to discuss the latest wave of protests in Iran. The protests began on December 28, 2025, as merchants and bazaar workers reacted negatively to new budgetary measures announced by President Masoud Pezeshkian. The protests snowballed in the first week of January, reaching a peak on and shortly after January 8, after which the government instituted an internet blackout. The protests have been intense, widespread and increasingly cross-sectoral. They’ve also been met with harsh repression by the IRGC and its affiliates, with reports of clashes and summary executions resulting in thousands of casualties. The panel discussed the protests, how they compare and contrast with prior waves, and how regional and global politics are influencing both the regime and its opposition. Participants in the panel are Kaveh Ehsani, a member of MERIP’s board of directors and a professor of international studies at DePaul University; Maziyar Ghiabi, a member of MERIP’s editorial committee and an associate professor of Social Sciences and Director of the Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter; and Asma Abdi, an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow, also at Exeter’s Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies. 

This conversation was recorded on January 21, 2026.

Further Reading: 

Setareh Shohadaei, Nazanin Shahrokni, Peyman Jafari, Kaveh Ehsani, Arash Davari and Maziyar Behrooz, “Echoes of a Short War: Critical Reflections on Israel’s Attack on Iran” Jadaliyya roundtable, September 23rd, 2025 https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/46907

Arang Keshavarzian, “An Explosion Long in the Making” Equator January 17, 2026 https://www.equator.org/articles/iran-explosion-long-in-the-making 

Naghmeh Sohrabi, “We Can’t Live Like This Anymore” Equator January 18, 2026 https://www.equator.org/articles/messages-from-iran 

Yassamine Mather, “Seeds of Revolt: Iran’s Economic Collapse and Inflation” Counterpunch January 16, 2026 https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/01/16/economic-collapse-and-inflation/ 

Gal Beckerman, “The Silence of the Left on Iran” The Atlantic January 16, 2026 https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/01/the-iranians-who-feel-betrayed-by-the-left/685644/ 

Asma Abdi, “A feminist international political economy of sanctions: crises and the shifting gendered regimes of labor and survival in Iran” International Feminist Journal of Politics August 15, 2022 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616742.2025.2454462 

Iman Ganji and Bahar Noorizadeh, “Iran’s Three Body Problem” N Plus One January 16, 2026 https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/irans-three-body-problem/?fbclid=PAdGRleAPY0pBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA8xMjQwMjQ1NzQyODc0MTQAAaflBX0em6er1z0KbzOClKd6DOApTeHXqHWUwi43cCt9p_j8yZur4Ipw7RGZSQ_aem_5uz1JbQNzT2KXqezqXAUqw 

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, “Scylla and Charybdis” New Left Review January 20, 2026 https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/scylla-and-charybdis 

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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