Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right. Let's get briefed. First up, and what drives the violence of groups

like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime? Well, today, we're stepping back a bit from the

headlines to look at the ideology behind the militancy, with expert insight from Raymond Ibrahim.

Later in the show, pressure is mounting on Israel to bring the war in Gaza

to an end as multiple Western nations are now saying that they're planning to formally

recognize a Palestinian state in the coming months. We'll be joined by Jonathan Shanzer of the

Foundation for Defense of Democracies for more on that. But first, today's situation reports spotlight.

Here on the PDB, we cover the actions of groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime all the time.

They're not just political actors. They're driven by a specific worldview, rooted, of course, in Islamic ideology.

But what is it about that ideology that fuels such

militancy? What do these groups actually believe? And how does that belief system shape their

strategies, their goals and their violence? Well, this is a bit of a departure from our usual focus

on hard news and day-to-day headlines, but to understand the conflicts that we

cover, right, we thought it's critical to understand the ideas driving them. My next guest

has spent years studying exactly that. Rabind Ibrahim is an expert on Islamic history and ideology

and a former Arabic language specialist at the Library of Congress. He's best known for his 2007 book,

The Al-Qaeda Reader, which offers a revealing translation and analysis of the political and religious

writings of Osama bin Laden and Eam al-Zawahiri. You can also find more of his work on his

YouTube channel at the Holy War channel. Raymond, thanks very much for being here with us on the Situation Report.

We appreciate your time.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Mike, good to be with you.

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