Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine.

We are privileged to be joined today by Dr. Anel Sheeline. She is a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Previously served in the United States Department of States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Office of Near East Affairs, where she resigned in 2024 in protest over the Biden administration's support for Israel's destruction of

Gaza. Dr. Sheeline is a prolific writer in publications such as the Quincy Institute's

responsible statecraft, as well as foreign affairs, the Washington Post, the nation, foreign policy,

and the new republic where you can read her most recent piece

the unbelievable madness of our war with iran published this week dr nal sheeline thank you so much

for joining us on current affairs today thank you so so much for having me. I thought I might

begin by asking you to comment on some comments that were made by a fellow former Biden

administration official this week. And that would be Samantha Power. She was the head of the United States Agency for International Development, USAID.

She before that was a scholar of genocide, most noted, for advancing the idea that the

United States had tragically failed to stop many genocides that it ought to have intervened in.

She was roundly criticized by many for being a genocide scholar working in an administration

that was funding and arming a genocide. And she was asked this week about why she didn't resign.

In your book, A Problem from Hell, you criticize US's passivity in watching genocide unfold.

You also recognize the power of using the word genocide that you were in recognizing genocide.

Yet as you yourself held a position of power in government, you failed to call out the genocide in Gaza, referring to it more as a humanitarian crisis.

Given the importance of recognizing genocide and acting on genocide, I'm wondering why you did not name the genocide in Gaza.

And when you were in a position of power and if you continue to hold up.

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, Gaza was the most difficult humanitarian crisis. I worked in, certainly,

USAID and probably in my whole career. My job was to get food and medicine to the people who were living in Gaza,

who were not getting access to clean water, to electricity, to adequate medicine. Of course,

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