Rania Khalek Dispatches

All eyes are on Afghanistan as the Taliban has rapidly taken over the entire country. Most coverage is focused on what this means for the US. But in reality, the West is removed and distant, Iran, on the other hand, is Afghanistan's neighbor and hosts about 2 million official or unofficial Afghan refugees and will likely absorb even more. Iran had a bad relationship with the Taliban in the 90...

Rania Khalek was joined by Daniel Bessner, associate professor of international studies at the University of Washington and co-host of the podcast American Prestige, to talk about US foreign policy under Biden. What’s changed? What hasn’t changed? Is the US empire collapsing? And what should a progressive foreign policy look like?

Rania Khalek was joined by Jordan Chariton, journalist and co-founder of Status Coup, to discuss the massive cover-up of the toxic water scandal in Flint, the ongoing eviction crisis in spite of the moratorium, corporate Democrats tanking Nina Turner’s campaign, and the crisis in left media, where censorship and underhanded algorithms suppress content that challenges the corporate media line as th...

It's been one year since the Beirut port exploded, killing over 200 people and wounding thousands. And it's been almost two years since Lebanon's Ponzi scheme economy started crashing. The West often blames the devastation that has befallen Lebanon on government mismanagement, sectarianism, bureaucratic incompetence, internal corruption, and their favorite boogeyman, Hezbollah. But...

The situation in Ethiopia has continued to escalate, with accusations of genocide, warnings of famine, and threats of sanctions. What began as a war between the TPLF in Tigray and the Ethiopian government is spilling into neighboring areas as the TPLF appears to launch more offensives in the Afar and Amhara regions. The growing violence threatens to destabilize Ethiopia, Africa's second most...

Tunisia is where the Arab uprisings erupted in December 2010, spreading east and ushering in 10 years of change, chaos, and wars. It’s also the only “Arab Spring” country that could claim some success in transitioning to democracy. That’s why many were shocked to see Tunisia’s President Kais Saied oust the government and freeze parliament, using the army. Some Tunisians are celebrating what has be...

July 9th marked the 10th anniversary of the creation of South Sudan. The US State Department lamented that the young country has “seen much suffering” and “the promise of peace and prosperity that independence represented remains unfulfilled.” To help us understand why the optimism of the West and South Sudanese in 2011 remains unfulfilled, Rania Khalek was joined by Joshua Craze, an anthropologis...

Ethiopia has been in the headlines in recent months as the TPLF, a Tigrayan rebel group that ruled the country for three decades, violently seized the northern Ethiopian state of Tigray from the government. As of this recording, the Ethiopian government had declared a ceasefire. However, the TPLF has continued fighting to expand its control over Tigray's border areas and threatening to push t...

After seemingly forgetting Afghanistan for years, Western media has rediscovered it in time to provide panicked and hand-wringing coverage of the US-led coalition's withdrawal, as well as the apparent rapid gains made by the Taliban.  Is the country on the verge of collapse? What will happen and what do Afghanistan’s people want?  To help make sense of this, Rania Khalek is joined by Obaidull...

US officials and their corporate media mouthpieces were elated at the sight of protests in Cuba in recent days against deteriorating living conditions that are a direct result of the US blockade, which Trump increased and Biden has maintained during the pandemic to deliberately heighten suffering at a time when Cuba was sending doctors around the world to fight the disease. As is often the case wh...

Assal Rad, a Senior Research Fellow at NIAC (the National Iranian American Council) joins Rania Khalek Dispatches to discuss the ongoing suffering of Iranians from US sanctions, the return to the Iran nuclear deal, and how little has actually changed under Biden as his team seems to escalate.

Fred M’membe, leader of the Socialist Party of Zambia, is running for president in the upcoming August election. Can he win? He joins Rania Khalek Dispatches to discuss the failure of capitalist policies on the African continent and how his party's platform can fix it

Rania Khalek is joined by Ali Abunimah, director of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice In Palestine, to discuss developments in Palestine and regionally following the formation of a new Israeli government and Israel’s war on Gaza.  From Israel’s ethnic cleansing through forced demolitions in Silwan to the Palestinian Authority acting as puppet to the occupier, Israel’s wa...

The Green New Deal has become a popular slogan among progressive Democrats in recent years. But we need to be wary of the capitalist class co-opting the energy around climate change to maintain the imperialist global order they benefit from.  To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek is joined by Max Ajl, a post doc at Wageningen University and a researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sove...

German support for Israel appears to be unshakable no matter what the Israelis do to Palestinians. The irony of course is that much of this support for Israel is justified as necessary to make up for the German Holocaust against European Jews. It seems Palestinians are paying for Europe’s crimes.  To discuss this phenomenon Rania Khalek is joined by Denijal Jegic, German author and post doctoral r...

Breakthrough’s Rania Khalek was joined by Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran Mohammad Marandi on her program Dispatches to discuss the results of the Iranian presidential election and some of the simplistic and misleading media portrayals of Iran that have come with that coverage.

In December outgoing president Donald trump pulled one more shocking foreign policy decision when he recognized Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara in exchange for Morocco normalizing relations with Israel.  Western Sahara has been disputed since the Spanish withdrew in 1975 and the conflict between Morocco and the Polisario front, an armed liberation movement, continued until the 1991 ceasefire.  L...

As Iran prepares for presidential elections, Rania Khalek is joined by Iranian scholar at Columbia University Navid Zarrinnal on her program Dispatches to discuss developments in Iran, from the coming elections to the tumultuous Trump years, relations with the Biden administration, Iran’s role in the region and more.

What is imperialism? Is it a stage of capitalism, as Lenin described it, or was it always essential to capitalism? Can capitalism exist without imperialism? Prahbat Patnaik, professor emeritus at JNU, joins Rania Khalek on her program Dispatches to discuss the argument he lays out in his book A Theory of Imperialism, which argues that capitalism was always a function of imperialism. But today’s im...

PBS Frontline released a long anticipated documentary featuring Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, formerly the head of Jabhat Al Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, which is now called Hayat Tahrir al Sham, or HTS. Jolani is attempting to rebrand himself and his organization in an effort to be removed from the US terrorism list so he can be legitimized as the leader of Idlib in northern Syria.  Has Jola...

Human rights lawyer Steven Donziger has been thrust into an epic battle with one of the biggest oil companies in the world. He helped win a multi billion dollar lawsuit against the Oil Giant Chevron for polluting the Amazon in Ecuador and poisoning the indigenous community who lives there.  Ever since then Chevron has waged a relentless and global campaign to avoid accountability and to punish Doz...

While it’s not often in the news, the Horn of Africa is volatile and often the scene of violence and its countries are victims of international interventions and interference that has played a destabilizing role, from Djibouti and Eritrea to Somalia and Ethiopia. As western imperialism continues to prop up dictators while blocking any moves towards independence, the western-backed Gulf States are...

Joseph Massad, Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, joins Dispatches with Rania Khalek to help break down everything from Israel’s value as an outpost of US imperialism and why the Arab uprisings failed to the recent victory of Palestinian resistance forces and why it’s crucial to incorporate anti-imperialism in our understanding of the Zionist project...

Lowkey joins Rania Khalek to talk Palestine and global resistance to Zionist apartheid.

As the violence continues across Israel-Palestine, to help make sense of how we got here and what happens next, Rania Khalek is joined by Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist at Haaretz who is based in Ramallah and has spent years reporting from Gaza and the West Bank.  Hass provides an in-depth analysis on the radicalization of Israeli Jewish society, which is becoming increasingly right-wing as the...