Episode 11: Iran is imploding - A conversation with Dr. Sharona Mazalian Levi

Episode 11: Iran is imploding - A conversation with Dr. Sharona Mazalian Levi

As the Trump administration tries to strike a deal curtailing Iran's nuclear program, I turned to Dr. Sharona Mazalian Levi, an Iran expert and proud Persian Jew, to try to take us past the headlines and political elites to the conditions and hopes of ordinary Iranians.


Dr. Mazalian paints a dire picture. Desperate shortages of clean water, electricity and gas, a collapsed currency, a third of the population under the poverty line, an oppressive religious police, the highest rate of executions in the world, severe air pollution and environmental degradation -- and a regime more interested in exporting its "revolution" than tackling any of these problems.


Iran, one of the most energy-rich places on Earth, is "a poor nation in a rich country."


Today’s episode is sponsored by the Sapir, the quarterly journal edited by Pulitzer-prize-winning commentator Bret Stephens. If you’re in the US, you can get this excellent journal sent to you absolutely free by going to http://sapirjournal.org/AskHaviv. Please use the link. It helps the podcast if they know we sent you.


Sapir are initiating the Sapir Debates, a series of live debates on issues facing the Jewish people. The first debate will take place at 92NY on May 15 at 7 pm.


Former Obama chief of staff and Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel and former Trump special envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt will debate the topic: “Is Donald Trump good for the Jews?”


To purchase tickets to the inaugural SAPIR debate, go to http://sapirjournal.org/sapirdebate.


Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠


If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠.


A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

Episoder(115)

Episode 7 - Judicial Reform: Is tribalism eating Israeli democracy alive?

Episode 7 - Judicial Reform: Is tribalism eating Israeli democracy alive?

What if everybody is right on judicial reform? Israel's highest court is immensely and unreasonably powerful. But if it is weakened, what other checks stand in the way of the tyranny of the majority, ...

28 Mar 202557min

Episode 6: Why won't Israel fight for the Democrats? With Rep. Ritchie Torres

Episode 6: Why won't Israel fight for the Democrats? With Rep. Ritchie Torres

Abandoning the Democrats is a losing strategy for Israel, says Rep. Ritchie Torres, perhaps the most outspoken supporter of Israel in the US House of Representatives. The fight over Israel inside Amer...

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Extra Episode: Back to war in Gaza

Extra Episode: Back to war in Gaza

Warfighting has resumed in Gaza. Israel's message is clear: Gaza's future depends on Hamas releasing hostages and surrendering its control of the territory.But there is a larger pivot underway, a regi...

19 Mar 202525min

Episode 5: When your family is taken hostage

Episode 5: When your family is taken hostage

This is a podcast about history, but also about this moment in history.Today's episode is a special one. Many of you asked about the hostages, about the activism of their families, about their shatter...

13 Mar 20251h 27min

Episode 4 - Last Jew Standing: The story of Israeli Jews

Episode 4 - Last Jew Standing: The story of Israeli Jews

Israeli Jews are the last surviving remnant of dozens of devastated Jewish communities across three continents. How did this history shape them? What do they understand about the world that few others...

6 Mar 202558min

Episode 3: John Spencer on why Israel hasn't yet won the war in Gaza

Episode 3: John Spencer on why Israel hasn't yet won the war in Gaza

In our first interview episode, Haviv Rettig Gur sits down (virtually) with Prof. John Spencer of West Point, one of the foremost experts in urban warfare who has made a special study of Israeli warfi...

26 Feb 202554min

Comment: We will protect our own

Comment: We will protect our own

Recorded Thursday, February 20thIsraelis watched horrified on Thursday, as Hamas gunmen conducted a ceremony handing over four coffins, two of them with the bodies of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, aged 1 and ...

20 Feb 202520min

Episode 2: The lost history of American Jews

Episode 2: The lost history of American Jews

American Jews constitute the biggest, wealthiest, most influential and safest Jewish diaspora community in Jewish history, and also among the most Jewishly illiterate and profoundly anxious about thei...

18 Feb 202543min

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