The

The Hello and welcome to a norm restoration edition of Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood.

Two guests, two segments, but one topic. The War on Iran and the politics of the wider Middle East.

We'll hear from Laleigh Khalili, Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter,

and frequent behind-the-newsguess Moines-Robani, expert in all things Middle Eastern.

Amazing Times. Two marqueen names of the old war-mongering neocon

school have published some shocking material over the last week. Robert Kagan, one of the leading

architects of George W. Bush's New American Century, who like to say things like Americans are

from Mars and Europeans from Venus, says the U.S. has suffered a world historical defeat, worse than Vietnam,

at the hands of Iran. And Max Boot, a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq, and, like Kagan, an

explicit proponent of American Empire, did an interview with a CIA alum who says China has now

surpassed the U.S. militarily. What's going on? To attempt some answers to that question, we're joined first

by Lala Kalili. Lally has an impressive array of expertise. Unusually for an academic, she's

professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter and England. She's had a wide variety of

experience outside the ivory tower. Her undergraduate degree is in chemical engineering,

and she worked for several

years as a management consultant. She was on the show back in August 2020 to discuss her book

Sinews of War and Trade, a history of the role of shipping in the economic development of the

Arabian Peninsula, which provides an excellent background for understanding the role of oil

tankers in the war in Iran. I apologize for my ignorance

about the history of the Strait of Hormuz. You're of Iranian origin. You weren't born there,

but you spent a lot of time there as a youth. What are your thoughts watching the country under attack

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