Bassam Haddad (host) 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).
The War on Iran: Seven Months On
A Conversation with Sina Toossi
The War on Iran Series
Hosts
Bassam Haddad
Arash Davari
Friday, 2 October 2026
1:00 PM EST | 9:00 PM Tehran
Sina Toossi addresses essential developments and junctures over the last seven months in the war on Iran. He examines some of the contextual topics that have been sidelined or misinterpreted by the media landscape interested almost exclusively with kinetic conflict and gas prices.
Featuring
Sina Toossi is a writer, editor, and researcher on U.S. foreign policy, the Middle East, Iran, and human rights advocacy. He is currently a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy. He also writes a substack newsletter called Dissident Foreign Policy.
Arash Davari (host) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at Whitman College. His research and teaching interests include modern political theory; history and theory; aesthetics and politics; and political economy, state formation and social change in the Middle East. his writings have appeared in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Political Theory, and The International Journal of Middle East Studies. He co-founded B|ta’arof magazine.