Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org, I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with bombings in Iran that killed over 100 and wounded over 200,

observing the fourth anniversary of the U.S. drone strike that killed the head of Iran's

Kuds Force, General Soleimani.

This following an Israeli drone strike yesterday that killed a top Hamas official in

Beirut. Joining us to assess whether these provocations will spark a wider war in the Middle East

is Abas Malani, Director of Iranian Studies and Professor at the Center on Democracy Development

and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spoggley Institute at Stanford University,

who until 1986 taught at Tehran's University's Faculty of Law and Political Science,

where he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the University's Center for International

Relations. His books include Lost Wisdom,, rethinking modernity in Iran,

the Persian Sphinx, and the Shah. Then with House Speaker Johnson leading a delegation of

Republicans to the southern border today to grandstand as they weaponize immigration

rather than deal with a serious issue which clearly needs reform and resolution.

We will speak with legal aunt, a lawyer at the ACLU's National Office in New York,

and a professor at Columbia Law School.

Widely recognizes one of the country's leading public interest lawyers.

He has argued some of the country's highest profile cases before the Supreme Court

and virtually every federal court of appeals in the country, including a national class

actions challenge to the Trump administration's family separation policies, successful

challenges to the Trump administration's first and second asylum bans, and the first case

...