It's the Brian Lairor Show on WNYC.

Good morning again, everyone.

Now we continue our WNYC Centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things.

Today, thing number 41, 100 years of U.S.

involvement in the Middle East. So relevant now, obviously. U.S. involvement with the Middle

East has been one of the most complicated and vexing foreign policy areas for just about a whole

century, and how to change it yet again will be a major question

facing the new Trump administration. Our involvement with the Middle East did a lot to make

Jimmy Carter a one-term president in the 1970s, and that was largely blowback from something

that the Eisenhower administration did in the 50s. George W. Bush goes down in history as largely a failed president

because of his actions in the Middle East and U.S. policy there alienated part of the Democratic

base from the Biden-Harris administration with repercussions just recently in the election.

So why are we here? And how did we get here? How did we wind up in a

rolling 45 years conflict with Iran or become the target of al-Qaeda for one of the defining

events of the century, the 9-11 attacks in 2001? How did we wind up with all the pressure on

Washington from pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups?

And how did the oil economy of the last hundred years lead us to this point in history today?

Such a big topic and still so relevant.

We'll try to focus mainly on three big things for the purposes of this conversation,

Iran, Israel, Palestine, and oil. And we have two

guests, Gideon Rose, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Think Tank,

the former editor of Foreign Affairs Magazine, and author of the book How Wars End, and he was

...