The War on Iran:

Foreign Policy, Political Economy, and Misconceptions

Featuring Ervand Ibrahimian & Laleh Khalili

The War on Iran Series
Organized by Jadaliyya and Security in Context

Hosts
Bassam Haddad
Arash Davari

Friday, 9 October 2026
1:00 PM EST | 9:00 PM Tehran

This episode pairs two distinguished scholars, Laleh Khalili and Ervand Abrahamian, to address popular misconceptions about the ongoing war on Iran. The discussion examines the unintended consequences of the war from the perspectives of foreign policy and political economy.

Featuring 

Ervand Abrahamian is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Baruch College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. He is the author of many field-defining books on modern Iranian history, including Iran Between Two Revolutions (published in 1982), Khomeinism (published in 1993), Tortured Confessions (published in 1999), A History of Modern Iran (published in 2008), and The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern US-Iranian Relations (published in 2013), and Oil Crisis in Iran (published in 2022).

Laleh Khalili is the Al Qassimi Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter, and the author most recently of Sinews of War and Trade in 2020 (with Verso Press), The Corporeal Life of Seafaring in 2023, and Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Capitalism Drive the Global Economy in 2025 (with Profile Books and Verso Books). Much of her work is focused on the workings of transnational movements, from colonial forms of power and resistance to them, which she published three books about, and now in her latest work to the movement of capital and cargo.

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).