Guest
The US-led order in West Asia is being destabilised as never before as long-standing US allies such as Saudi Arabia are striking out in new directions and stepping up their cooperation with China, in particular. What does this mean for US strategy? How are individual countries affected and responding? What does this mean for key countries, including Israel and Iran? We bring together a panel of experts on the region and on particular countries do discuss these questions. Speakers Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. He is a co-founder of the online publication The Electronic Intifada and a policy adviser with Al-Shabaka. Mohammad Marandi is professor of North American Studies and teaches in the faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran. Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic, political campaigner, and a MintPress video and podcast host. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique, and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network, and The Peace and Justice Project founded by Jeremy Corbyn. Mazda Majidi is a long-time social justice, an anti-war activist with the ANSWER Coalition and a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. He has written extensively on US intervention in the Middle East. Yao Jinxiang is currently an assistant research fellow at China Institute of International Studies (CIIS). He received two Ph. D degrees in 2019 on International Politics: one in School of International Studies, Peking University (China), and the other in GRaduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University (Japan, Double-Degree Program). And he received his MA in International Politics from School of International Studies, Peking University in 2014 and his BA in Diplomacy from the School of International Studies, Renmin Univeristy of China. Tim Anderson has degrees in economics and international politics, and a doctorate on the political economy of economic liberalisation in Australia. He taught at Australian universities for more than 30 years. His most recent books are Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea, The Dirty War on Syria (in 10 languages) and Axis of Resistance: Towards an Independent Middle East. He has been published in a range of academic journals, including: Health and Human Rights, the Pan-American Health Journal, The International Journal of Cuban Studies, the Australian Journal of Human Rights, Latin American Perspectives, the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, the Portuguese Studies Review, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, the Australian Journal of Professional and Applied Ethics, Critical Public Health, the Journal of Australian Political Economy and Pacific Economic Bulletin. A consultant to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on south-south cooperation and development strategy, he has written extensively on Cuban medical cooperation in Timor-Leste and the Southwest Pacific. In 2017, he was awarded the Cuban Friendship Medal granted by the Cuban Council of State on the proposal of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP). Moderator - Radhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies. She is the Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She is the convenor of the International Manifesto Group. Her books include Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy (2023), Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed, 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994), a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month.
