Jacobin Radio

The US-Israeli war against Iran may have been initiated without any coherently stated goals or popular support, but we can already see that it’s a horrific quagmire. It also doesn’t look like Trump and Israel will get the swift Iranian regime change they hoped for.

On the latest episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber is joined by Jason Brownlee, a professor of government at the University of Texas Austin, to discuss the history of regime change wars, the geopolitical interests in the Middle East, and Trump’s further descent into the neoconservative blob.

Read Jason’s most recent Catalyst essay here: https://catalyst-journal.com/2021/03/shadow-wars-and-corporate-welfare

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Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.

Two weeks into the US-Israeli assault on Iran, every prediction of its architects has collapsed. The regime stands. Protests haven't reignited. Iran’s new Supreme Leader — more hardline than his assassinated father — has vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. And the war began just as negotiations in Geneva were apparently close to a deal.

Suzi speaks to UCLA sociologist and Iran expert Kevan Harris on Day 14 of Operation Epic Fury. We examine Iran’s domestic political economy, the corrupt economic empire of the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), and the regime's brutal repression after the January uprising.

On the fantasy of regime change by bombing, Kevan says, “There are zero historical cases of air power bombing a country into revolution from below. Zero." Every US intelligence agency told the White House this. They went ahead anyway. It’s 2003 all over again.

Kevan describes Israel’s war strategy as a widening gyre with no limit and no endpoint — one likely to produce another war on Iran within two years. That's why, Kevan argues, building an anti-war movement the Left’s most urgent task. "We might have a hot summer in the United States."

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Historian Nikhil Pal Singh, author of a recent article for Equator, talks about how the Trump regime weaves foreign and domestic policy into a single domain of impunity, Homeland Empire.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

We’ve now entered the second week of the US-Israeli war on Iran. Donald Trump’s War Secretary Pete Hegseth has boasted about the US military machine bringing “death and destruction” to the country.

Afshin Matin-Asgari joined Long Reads on Monday, March 9, to discuss the war. Afshin is a professor of Middle East history at California State University in Los Angeles. His most recent book is Axis of Empire: A History of Iran–US Relations.

Read Afshin’s coverage of the protests from January: https://jacobin.com/2026/01/iran-protests-khamenei-trump-israel

And an edited transcript of this podcast interview here: https://jacobin.com/2026/03/trump-iran-regime-war-israel

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies with music by Knxwledge.

What are Iranians actually experiencing right now? Suzi speaks with Yassamine Mather, an Iranian socialist who has been in direct contact with relatives, colleagues, and comrades inside Iran throughout the bombing. Yassamine is chair of Hands Off the People of Iran, editor of Critique, and researcher at Oxford's Middle East Centre.

She describes near-hourly strikes, hospitals hit, internet cut, and a propaganda war in which state TV claims nothing happened while satellite channels say nothing is left. She explains why Trump’s promise to 'liberate' Iran has had opposite effects: People who were in January’s anti-regime protests are now joining pro-government demonstrations — not for the regime, but out of rage at foreign attack. She assesses Khamenei's death, the removal of his brake on IRGC adventurism, Netanyahu’s real objective (to destroy Iran as a country, not just its nuclear program), and why this war makes 2003 look well planned. She also addresses dangerous illusions some on the Left hold about Russia or China as potential saviors. She closes with a new initiative: Nur, a project for regional solidarity across Iran, Palestine, and the Arab world, launched with veteran socialist Moshé Machover.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.