Hello from the Heartland. My name is Jenna, and this is Smarter News, news when it matters and why it matters.

Our Smarter series features unique people who help us think and live smarter.

During a typical news cycle, we commonly move between domestic stories and international headlines.

And that hasn't been the case in 2020 as so much of our time is spent on the new coronavirus pandemic in America.

And rightfully so.

But that's not the way the year started.

The year started with a focus on the Middle East and the targeting of a high-profile Iranian

general by the United States.

And in recent weeks, we've started to slowly turn our gaze back towards the Middle East

with the devastating explosion in Lebanon and a quote-unquote peace deal between Israel and the

United Arab Emirates.

So we need some cliff

notes, a challenge for the complexity of these topics in the region, but not insurmountable for our

next guest. Jonathan Shanzer is Senior Vice President for Research at the Foundation for

Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., and someone who has

always been generous with me as a

journalist and smarter news from the beginning, which I appreciate, Jonathan. Thank you.

My pleasure. So in broad strokes, and as I mentioned, this is a challenge. What should we know

about the state of the Middle East in 2020? Well, as always, the Middle East is a hot spot. There's good

news and bad news. And I would say that over the last week, we've seen a healthy dose of both.

On the one hand, you're watching a country begin to implode. And that country is Lebanon, politically,

economically, militarily, it is on a knife's edge.

...