Just World Podcasts

On June 5, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with the renowned economist and UN advisor Prof. Jeffrey Sachs to assess the impact of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, and the long-running Israeli genocide in Gaza on global governance and the global economy.  In this convo Sachs was forthright in his denunciation of the stupidity of the Trump-Netanyahu decision to launch the war against Iran. He...

On May 29, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with the strategic analyst Elijah Magnier to assess the impact of the first 13 weeks of the (still somewhat ongoing) U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Early on in this Just World Ed project, Magnier had been both the first and the fourth contributor to this this project, both just before and just after the U.S. and Israel launched their assault on Iran on Fe...

On May 20, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with Dr. Yingnan ("Chris") Yi , a Research Fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, to discuss the role that China has played and can play in finding a speedy, lasting, and equitable end to the U.S.-Iran war. This conversation came just a few days after the end of Pres. Trump's trip to Be...

On May 12, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with Mahdi Mohabirad , a tehran-based scholar of international law and the Director of the Organization for defending Victims of Violence. In this convo, Mohebirad and Cobban discussed (among other topics):  The extent of the impact of the United States' long-running sanctions on Iranian people and society The ways in which Iran can have recours...

On May 9, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with John Ross , who's a Senior Fellow with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. That, at a point midway between the May 6 visit of Iranian FM Abbas Araghchi to Beijing and the upcoming visit there by U.S. President Trump, who'll be holding an important summit there with Pres. Xi Jinping on May 13 or 14....

On May 7, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with Maryam Jamshidi, Assistant Professor of Law in the law school at the University of Colorado, and a Non-resident Fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. In this convo, Jamshidi and Cobban discussed (among other topics):  The many details of what international maritime law has to say about the rights Iran may enjoy over the Strai...

On May 1, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with the former CIA analyst Ray McGovern , who was one of the founders of the antiwar organization Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). During his career in the CIA, McGovern was a very expert analyst of Soviet (and Russian) affairs. In the early 1980s he was responsible for giving the U.S. president his daily intel briefing. In this...

In this episode of the Iran Crisis series, Helena Cobban sat down with Professor Richard Falk , international law scholar and JWE board member, for a wide-ranging conversation that spanned nearly five decades of history. Recorded on April 29, the discussion moved from a remarkable personal meeting he had with Ayatollah Khomeini in January 1979 to the crisis of international law and the nuclear non...

In this special presentation for Just World Educational's Iran Crisis series , Helena Cobban , the president of Just World Ed, delivered a pre-recorded talk for the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center conference in Orinda, California, on April 25th. Unable to attend in person and having to record her remarks more than 24 hours before they would be delivered, she chose to take a long histori...

On the evening of April 23, JWE president Helena Cobban sat down with Dr. Moeed Pirzada,  a prominent Pakistani journalist based in Washington, D.C. and founder-editor of Global Village Space magazine. Together they examined the rapidly shifting situation around the U.S.-Iran conflict, Pakistan's role as a mediator, and the broader geopolitical realignments taking place across West Asia and b...

On the day before the current two-week ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. is due to end, the veteran scholar of Iranian and international affairs Trita Parsi sat down with JWE president Helena Cobban to review the prospects for war or peace in West Asia.  This was latest episode in our continuing series on the Iran Crisis. Find the multimedia records of this episode and all its others at this Onl...

In this April 17 conversation, JWE president Helena Cobban and the veteran Palestinian political analyst Mouin Rabbani discussed the implications, for West Asia and the world, of some of Pres. Trump's crucial recent decisions regarding the ongoing crisis over Iran. Rabbani reviewed, in particular, the decision Trump took mid-week to publicly pressure Israel to accede to a ceasefire in Lebanon...

In this April 12 conversation, JWE president Helena Cobban discussed with Prof. Rami Zurayk the impact on Lebanon of the violence that Israel has unleashed against the country for many months now. (Israel escalated that violence very notably on April 8, the day when it looked as if Washington was finally ready to sit down and negotiate a serious ceasefire with Iran.) Rami Zurayk is a researcher on...

In a week that started with Pres. Trump's outrageous genocidal threats against Iran, then saw him apparently agree to a ceasefire while Israel unleashed a torrent of violence against Lebanon... JWE president Helena Cobban was happy to be able to assess the broader impact of these events with Sri Lankan analyst Indi Samarajiva .  Indi's main writing platform is indi.ca . This was latest e...

In this April 1 conversation with JWE president Helena Cobban, Amb. Chas W. Freeman, Jr. , discussed the impact and relevance of the 5-point peace initiative for the Iran conflict that China and Pakistan jointly announced on March 31. You can find more background about Amb. Freeman and about this new peace initiative at this post on JWE's Substack. Support the show

In this March 24 convo with Helena Cobban, Vijay Prashad , the director Tricontinental, drew on his extensive experience of the affairs of the Global South to assess the extent and roots of Iran's achievements in resisting the attack that the U.S.-Israeli alliance started on February 28.  Prashad and Cobban also discussed the ties between Iran's achievements in their war against the alli...

In this March 20 talk, Just World Ed president Helena Cobban assessed the current state of the Israeli-US War on Iran at  Day 21, and lessons that antiwar activists-- particularly those in the United States-- should take from what has happened until now. She focused on:  the depravity of the rampages Israel has been committing in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon in addition, to those in Iran the i...

In this March 5 convo with Helena Cobban, longtime Iran specialist Barbara Slavin noted the survival of Iran's central governance structures even after the early assassination by the Israeli and U.S. war machine of the Supreme Leader and numerous other figures in the country's military and political leadership, and surmised that its government is not likely soon either to crumble or to &...

In this March 4 convo with Helena Cobban, the veteran U.S. diplomatist Amb. Chas W. Freeman, Jr.   assessed Iran's objectives in the defensive war it is now waging in response to the massive Israeli-U.S. aggression of February 28, and its likelihood of achieving them. He also assessed a range of other topics including the impact that Iran's actions is having on economies around the world...

In this March 3 convo with Helena Cobban, JWE's board member the veteran analyst and thinker Rami G. Khouri discussed the sizeable impact that Iran's response to the U.S.-Israeli war of aggression is already having on Arab Gulf states, the broader region of West Asia-- and the world.  The two agreed that Iran's resilience and its ability to inflict real pain on the aggressors and  o...

In this March 2 convo with Helena Cobban, strategic analyst Elijah Magnier assessed the impact that the U.S.-Israeli aggression against Iran has been having within the Gulf region, in the rest of West Asia, and worldwide. His main conclusions were that the survival and the demonstrated, continuing competence of Iran's military and other governing structures already constitute a significant ac...

In this convo conducted late on February 26, Helena's guest was Ray McGovern , a long-time peace activist, and before that a high-level Soviet-affairs analyst for the CIA.  McGovern shared the reasons why, for some time now, he has thought Pres. Trump is very unlikely to launch the much-touted (and much-feared) aggression against Iran.  He also shared his analysis of the role Russian Pres. Pu...

In this February 26 convo, JWE President Helena Cobban and the veteran Middle East (West Asia) specialist Bill Quandt dissected the perils of Pres. Trump's decisionmaking chaos. They surveyed the possibly catastrophic costs of any eruption of war; explored some possible non-military exits from the crisis; and looked at both the in-region dynamics of the crisis and the possible divergence of U...

In this February 25 convo, JWE President Helena Cobban and the  strategic analyst Elijah Magnier explored issues raised in Magnier's crucial recent article "The Countdown Between Tehran and Washington: Ultimatum, Escalation, and the Brink of War" . This conversation inaugurated Part 2 of Just World Ed's ongoing "Gaza & the World" project, which is tracking develop...

On February 2, 2026 (U.S. Pacific Time), JWE President Helena Cobban conducted this wide-ranging conversation with the European strategic analyst Elijah J. Magnier. They discussed principally the points he'd raised in his Feb. 1 blog post "Why Washington Flaunts Naval Power When the Real War Architecture Lies Elsewhere" . Other relevant recent writings of Elijah's are this , fr...