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

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

We'll begin with the region on edge as the Middle East waits for Prime Minister Netanyahu to respond to Iran's missile attack, which could sway the upcoming election if oil prices spike as a result of a pending and possible Israeli strike on Iran's oil infrastructure.

Joining us to discuss how Biden and Harris appear powerless as Netanyahu is in the driver's seat is Dr. Anel Sheeline, a research

fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a fellow at Rice University's Baker

Institute for Public Policy, and an expert on religious and political authority in the Middle East and North Africa.

She has worked as a journalist in Egypt and Yemen and is currently completing a book on the strategic use of religious authority by Arab monarchy since 9-11,

focusing on the cases of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and Oman.

And she served for a year as a foreign affairs officer in the Office of Near Eastern Affairs

in the Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor,

until resigning over U.S. policy on the war in Gaza.

And she just returned from Jordan.

Then, with Bob Woodward's new book revealing Biden's fury as he cussed out Netanyahu,

we look instead into Trump's cozy relationship with Putin.

Woodward reveals, as Trump secretly sent Putin COVID test kits and had seven private conversations with him

since Trump left the White House. Joining us to discuss the covert ties Trump has with his favorite

dictator is Anders Aslan, a senior fellow at the Stockholm Free World Forum, a professor of the

Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European

Studies at Georgia University, and a former senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. A member of the

Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, he worked as a Swedish diplomat in Moscow and served as an

economic advisor to the governments of Russia and Ukraine. His books include Ukraine, What

Went Wrong and How to Fix It,

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