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.
Even as he imposes authoritarianism on the United States, Donald Trump has given a new lease on life to the center left in many other countries. Canada is holding an election at the end of April under the shadow of the American presidents threat to turn it into the 51st state. Until Trump’s inauguration, the Conservative Party of Canada had a commanding lead. But voters are changing their minds fast and it now looks like the Liberal Party under new leader Mark Carney will win the election.
To talk about the quick revolution in Canadian politics I spoke to Luke Savage, a widely published journalist and substracker. We take up not just Canada’s likely rejection of Trumpism but also the question of whether Carney’s technocratic centrism really offers an alternative. If there is to be a new Canadian nationalism, will it have more substance than Carney offers?
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The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows each week.
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