Israel’s Expanding War Against Lebanon
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Trita Parsi on the dangers of a lame-duck president with spiraling crisis.

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On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Trita Parsi on the dangers of a lame duck president with spiraling crisis.
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Lebanese army soldiers stand guard near a hospital in Beirut on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters.
(Anwar Amro / AFP via Getty Images)Joe Biden’s foreign policy team was hoping for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas before his term was over, perhaps as early as the end of September. This always seemed wishful thinking but now is almost impossible as Israel not only continues to fight in Gaza but has expanded its conflict with Palestinian forces to neighboring Lebanon. The expanding conflict once again raises the question of Biden’s bear-hug strategy, which the administration argues would help foster peace and restraint. This failure of this policy is likely to haunt whoever wins the White House in November.
To survey the dire scene and discuss the possibility of American involvement in yet another large Middle Eastern war, I talked to Trita Parsi, executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute.

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Only a few years ago, European elites were patting themselves on the back for fending off the
tide of right-wing anti-system parties (often styled as populists). But recent polls in France,
Germany and the United Kingdom show that that the far right is once again gaining traction,
thanks in no small part centrist governments that have demoralized the population and
legitimized xenophobia. David Broder, author of Mussolini’s Grandchildren and European editor
of Jacobin, wrote a wide-ranging essay on this for The New York Times. I spoke to David about
both the dismal decisions of mainstream parties and also possible alternatives.
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