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The Hashim Sani Centre for Palestine Studies<\/a><\/strong> has published a new video interview on its YouTube channel<\/a><\/strong> featuring JWE President Helena Cobban<\/strong> in conversation with Professor Nazari Ismail<\/a><\/strong>, Director of the Hashim Sani Centre for Palestine Studies at Universiti Malaya. Recorded as events in Michigan\u2019s Democratic primary were unfolding, the wide-ranging discussion covered shifting political currents in the United States, the state of the US-Iran war, Israel\u2019s escalating pressure on Lebanon, and the deteriorating situation in Gaza under the so-called ceasefire. Prof. Nazari opened by asking Cobban to make sense of a fast-moving news cycle, and she offered a detailed, first-hand analysis grounded in decades of reporting on the region.<\/p>\n Much of the conversation focused on an unprecedented shift inside the Democratic Party in the United States. Cobban pointed to Zohran Mamdani\u2019s New York City victory and physician Abdul El-Sayed\u2019s strong showing in Michigan\u2019s Senate primary against an AIPAC-backed opponent as evidence of a new generation of candidates willing to champion Palestinian rights. She noted that Michigan, home to a large Arab-American population, had been \u201cthe center of the movement\u201d inside the party that refused to back Biden and then Harris over their support for the war on Gaza. Cobban described this energy, often associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, as something she had never seen in her decades in the country, while also observing a parallel, if smaller, fracture inside the Republican Party, exemplified by commentator Tucker Carlson\u2019s public break with unconditional support for Israeli actions.<\/p>\n Turning to the US-Iran war, Cobban argued bluntly that Trump and Netanyahu\u2019s strategy had failed. The February 28th attack, she explained, had been premised on the hope that a \u201cdecapitation\u201d strike would trigger the collapse of Iran\u2019s system of governance, a plan she said drew on years of Israeli preparation that ultimately went nowhere. She traced Iran\u2019s resilience back to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps began building deeply buried military infrastructure across the country\u2019s mountainous terrain. According to Cobban, Iran has since combined this resilience with a deliberate strategy of deterrence and \u201ccompellance,\u201d using precision strikes to warn Gulf states against aiding US attacks. She cited reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had told Trump to \u201cjust shut up\u201d and threatened to pull Saudi investment from US treasuries if the war escalated further.<\/p>\n On Lebanon, Cobban was equally direct, describing the internationally brokered talks in Rome between Lebanese and Israeli representatives as \u201ca pantomime\u201d carried out under Saudi and American financial pressure despite lacking any real mandate from Lebanon\u2019s parliament or cabinet. She linked Israel\u2019s campaign of destruction in Lebanon to the same \u201cdahiya doctrine\u201d of mass demolition first developed against Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs in 2006 and later applied throughout Gaza, using the term \u201comnicide\u201d to describe what she called the deliberate destruction of everything in its path. Even so, she suggested Israel\u2019s position in Lebanon was ultimately unsustainable given weakening American backing.<\/p>\n Discussing Gaza itself, Cobban described a ceasefire that has functioned as a \u201cstrangle hold\u201d over the territory\u2019s more than two million remaining residents, with Israel restricting humanitarian access even as Palestinian casualties continue to mount. She detailed Hamas\u2019s renewed offer, led by newly elected political bureau chief Khalil al-Hayya, to hand its heavy weapons to Gaza\u2019s National Council for Administration rather than to Israel, contingent on an Israeli withdrawal to the agreed \u201cyellow line.\u201d Cobban was sharply critical of the UN Security Council\u2019s decision to hand control over Gaza to the US-led Board of Peace, calling it a moment that effectively signed \u201cthe death notice for the United Nations as a whole,\u201d and pointed to the upcoming UN General Assembly session and US midterm elections as key moments that could shift the balance.<\/p>\n Despite the grim realities she described, Cobban closed the interview on a note of cautious optimism, invoking Antonio Gramsci\u2019s observation that the world exists in \u201ca time of monsters\u201d between an old order dying and a new one struggling to be born. She pointed to growing American public fatigue with the cost of the war, a wave of Israeli emigration, and the possibility that the UN\u2019s next secretary-general could be backed by Beijing rather than Washington as signs of a shifting global balance. You can now watch the full interview<\/a><\/strong> on YouTube. Watch, share, and help spread this timely conversation on Palestine, Iran, and the future of US policy in the region.<\/p>\n