Media Wars

Episode 4

The War on Iran
The War on Lebanon
The War on Palestine

Featuring
Nabih Boulos
Samira Mohyeddin
Adam Johnson
Adel Iskandar
Mouin Rabbani
Bassam Haddad

Wednesday, 6 May 2026
3:00 PM EST | 10:30 PM Tehran

Media Wars examines the truths and absurdities of our era, centering on the US–Israel war on Iran. Fast-paced and eclectic, it blends media roundups with commentary and analysis to expose the folly and brutality of empire and imperial media. The program moves between granular detail and broad historical and geopolitical context, treating weighty, world-altering subjects in a casual, sometimes irreverent voice. Not suitable for children.

Featuring

Nabih Bulos is the Middle East bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, where his work over the last 14 years has focused on wars and their impact on the region and beyond. His coverage has taken him across the Middle East and North Africa, but also to Afghanistan, Ukraine, and the migrant trail across Europe. A Fulbright scholar, Bulos is also a concert violinist.

Adam Johnson is co-host of the Citations Needed podcast and author of How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza.

Samira Mohyeddin is a multi-award winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. She has a Master of Arts in Modern Middle Eastern History from the University of Toronto and a graduate of genocide studies from the Zoryan Institute. For nearly a decade, she was a producer and host at CBC Radio and CBC Podcasts. She resigned from the CBC in November 2023 and founded On The Line Media, where she brings audiences intimate conversations and informed commentary with a focus on critical and contextual journalism. Samira was the 2024 - 2025 inaugural journalism fellow for the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto and is the 2025 PEN Canada Ken Filkow Prize recipient. She is currently in production on a documentary about the Palestine solidarity student encampment at the University of Toronto.

Mouin Rabbani is a researcher, analyst, and commentator specialising in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He has among other positions previously served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Head of Middle East with the Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation, and Senior Middle East Analyst and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. Rabbani is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, where he also hosts the Connections podcast and edits its Quick Thoughts feature, Managing Editor and was Associate Editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, and a Contributing Editor of Middle East Report. He is Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS) and at Democracy for the Arab Wold Now (DAWN). A graduate of Tufts University and Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), Rabbani has published, presented and commented widely on Middle East issues, including for most major print, television and digital media.  

Bassam Haddad is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Executive Producer of Status Podcast Channel and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding The Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).