Axing The ‘Axis': Ditching Tired Thinking On Foreign Policy (S01E128)

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Thursday, August 13, 2026, Paris

Foreign policy podcaster and former US Department of Defense official Jasmine El-Gamal joins badlands for a lively discussion on Syria, her area of focus when she was in government, as well as on latest diplomatic and security machinations surrounding the Iran war.

Among the topics of discussion Syria’s death sentence against Bashar al-Assad, the return of refugees to Syria, and its enigmatic, ascendant new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, as well as the convuluted thinking that has gotten the US and the Western countries mired in countless quagmires.

“We tried to do the whole Shia crescen and Sunni thing and it just isn’t a helpful way to look at the region because what happens is that then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in how other countries, particularly Western countries, view the region,” she says. “And then these become the good guys and these become the bad guys.”

Please check out and subscribe to Jasmine’s excellent podcast now!

Also in this edition of badlands, I discuss the Pakistani interior minister’s visit to Tehran and ongoing repression of Palestinians in the West Bank in an inteview with India’s NewsX World.

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