A note from Haviv to our viewers: Please excuse the video troubles. Elizabeth’s connectivity was limited for the first half hour or so of the conversation. But the audio came through perfectly and we didn’t want to scrap a deeply informative conversation because of those connection issues.
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Episode 158: What actually holds Iran’s regional axis together, and why can't military force alone break it? Israeli analyst Elizabeth Tsurkov, now working on her doctorate at Princeton on these and other questions, has spent two decades studying the Arab nations most influenced by Iran’s regime. She also knows firsthand how Iran’s “proxies” in the region operate, having survived 903 days of captivity in Iraq at the hands of the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah.
She joins me to talk about the impending round of war with Iran, the lessons that she hopes were learned from the failure of the 39-day war to topple the regime in the last round, and how Iraq’s militias have evolved from ideological holy warriors into a massive state-looting racket that now bankrolls Tehran.
We also debate whether Israel’s post-October 7 buffer-zone strategy is backfiring in Syria, and whether Jerusalem is blowing a historic opportunity to strike a peace deal with Damascus.
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This episode was sponsored by Barbara and Peter Tuckel in memory of their parents, Eva and Max Tuckel and Rose and Harry Kaplan, with thanks to Haviv for encouraging more learning about Jewish and Middle Eastern history, inviting experts to bring greater clarity to controversial issues that affect us daily, and constantly instilling the core idea that Jews are an “am” -- a people.
Thank you to the Tuckel’s for that dedication. It’s wind in our sails.
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Producer and editor: Rachel Gur
Presenter and editor: Haviv Gur
Operations: Nadav Singerman
Musical intro: Adam Ben Amitai
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If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also “Buy Me a Coffee” at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.