Reading the Middle East: A Conversation with Elizabeth Tsurkov

Elizabeth Tsurkov has spent years doing what most researchers only read about — traveling into conflict zones, sitting with militia commanders, and listening to the people living inside the stories we think we understand.

A doctoral candidate at Princeton and fellow at both the Middle East Policy Council in Washington and the Forum for Regional Thinking in Jerusalem, she is one of the sharpest independent voices on the Arab world today. In 2023, while conducting field research in Iraq, she was abducted by an Iranian-backed militia and held for 903 days before being released in 2025.

In this conversation, she reflects on that heartbreaking experience — and on what Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the wider Middle East actually look like up close, beyond the headlines and the misconceptions that keep getting in the way.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

01:45 Surviving 903 Days in Captivity

03:43 The Dissertation That Kept Her Going

12:04 Inside Iraq's Corruption Machine

15:49 What Iraq Is Really Like

30:29 Was It Worth Going to Iraq?

34:26 How Captivity Changed Elizabeth Tsurkov

40:00 What's Really Happening in Syria?

51:03 Is Syria's New Leader Still a Jihadist?

56:08 Is Peace Between Israel and Syria Possible?

🌐 Learn more about ROPES: www.ropes.org

📩 Don’t forget to subscribe to the ROPESCAST for more stories of peace, dialogue, and impact across the Middle East.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(52)

Getting Iran Right with Danny Citrinowicz

Weeks before the war broke out, Danny Citrinowicz was already warning that Israel's read on Iran was heading somewhere dangerous. In this episode of ROPESCAST, he walks through what he saw coming — an...

24 Jul 40min

Securing the Gulf: Iran, Regional Order, and the US Partnership

In this episode of ROPESCAST, Ksenia Svetlova sits down with Dr. Sanam Vakil, Director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, who offers an interesting perspective on the shifti...

15 Mai 45min

No Illusions: Bahrain, Iran, and the Future of Regional Cooperation

In a special 50th episode of ROPESCAST, Ksenia Svetlova sits down with Ahmed Khuzaie, a strategic analyst from Bahrain who doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the reality of Gulf security.We rec...

12 Mai 39min

Strategic Paradox: Why the Campaign Against Iran Left the Regime Intact

Our new ROPESCAST episode features a high-stakes dialogue between host Ksenia Svetlova and Elliott Abrams, a veteran U.S. diplomat and foundational figure in American foreign policy who served as Depu...

30 Apr 49min

Tehran 1979, Hormuz 2026: A Diplomat's Journey Through the Iranian Quagmire

What happens when the "ghosts" of history dictate the wars of the future? In this episode of ROPESCAST, Ksenia Svetlova sits down with a man who has lived through the heart of the Iranian fire: Ambass...

29 Mar 58min

Iranian Dissident Dreams of a Democratic Iran

In this deeply personal and high-stakes conversation, Iranian activist and former political dissident Dr. Daniel Dana joins the ROPESCAST to discuss what he believes is the imminent collapse of the Is...

25 Mar 33min

Settler Violence or State Policy? What Happens in the West Bank

In this urgent and deeply personal episode of the ROPESCAST, we sit down with Nivine Sandouka of ALLMEP and Aviv Tatarsky of Ir Amim and Engaged Dharma to confront the accelerating reality of settler ...

20 Mar 37min