Just World Podcasts

In this March 20 talk, Just World Ed president Helena Cobban assessed the current state of the Israeli-US War on Iran at  Day 21, and lessons that antiwar activists-- particularly those in the United States-- should take from what has happened until now. She focused on:

•  the depravity of the rampages Israel has been committing in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon in addition, to those in Iran
• the intense degree to which the U.S. m...

In this March 5 convo with Helena Cobban, longtime Iran specialist Barbara Slavin noted the survival of Iran's central governance structures even after the early assassination by the Israeli and U.S. war machine of the Supreme Leader and numerous other figures in the country's military and political leadership, and surmised that its government is not likely soon either to crumble or to "capitulate."

Slavin, who i...

In this March 4 convo with Helena Cobban, the veteran U.S. diplomatist Amb. Chas W. Freeman, Jr.  assessed Iran's objectives in the defensive war it is now waging in response to the massive Israeli-U.S. aggression of February 28, and its likelihood of achieving them.

He also assessed a range of other topics including the impact that Iran's actions is having on economies around the world; the policies adopted by various Eur...

In this March 3 convo with Helena Cobban, JWE's board member the veteran analyst and thinker Rami G. Khouri discussed the sizeable impact that Iran's response to the U.S.-Israeli war of aggression is already having on Arab Gulf states, the broader region of West Asia-- and the world. 

The two agreed that Iran's resilience and its ability to inflict real pain on the aggressors and  other actors worldwide are both notab...

In this March 2 convo with Helena Cobban, strategic analyst Elijah Magnier assessed the impact that the U.S.-Israeli aggression against Iran has been having within the Gulf region, in the rest of West Asia, and worldwide. His main conclusions were that the survival and the demonstrated, continuing competence of Iran's military and other governing structures already constitute a significant achievement and that the U.S.-Israeli...

In this convo conducted late on February 26, Helena's guest was Ray McGovern, a long-time peace activist, and before that a high-level Soviet-affairs analyst for the CIA. 

McGovern shared the reasons why, for some time now, he has thought Pres. Trump is very unlikely to launch the much-touted (and much-feared) aggression against Iran.  He also shared his analysis of the role Russian Pres. Putin plays in the background of the Ir...

In this February 26 convo, JWE President Helena Cobban and the veteran Middle East (West Asia) specialist Bill Quandt dissected the perils of Pres. Trump's decisionmaking chaos. They surveyed the possibly catastrophic costs of any eruption of war; explored some possible non-military exits from the crisis; and looked at both the in-region dynamics of the crisis and the possible divergence of U.S. and Israeli preferences regardi...

In this February 25 convo, JWE President Helena Cobban and the  strategic analyst Elijah Magnier explored issues raised in Magnier's crucial recent article "The Countdown Between Tehran and Washington: Ultimatum, Escalation, and the Brink of War".

This conversation inaugurated Part 2 of Just World Ed's ongoing "Gaza & the World" project, which is tracking developments in the still-simmering crisis b...

On February 2, 2026 (U.S. Pacific Time), JWE President Helena Cobban conducted this wide-ranging conversation with the European strategic analyst Elijah J. Magnier. They discussed principally the points he'd raised in his Feb. 1 blog post "Why Washington Flaunts Naval Power When the Real War Architecture Lies Elsewhere". Other relevant recent writings of Elijah's are this, from Jan. 30, and this, from Jan. 28.

Su...

Helena Cobban, President of Just World Educational, reads her January 24,  2026 newsletter that examined major political developments affecting Gaza, Iran, and the United Nations. She described Donald Trump’s launch of a new body called the Board of Peace and said it appeared designed to sideline the UN. 

She detailed Jared Kushner’s proposed plan for Gaza, which envisioned population concentration zones, a coastal tourism strip, an...

This episode was the third in our timely 3-part series "Venezuela in Washington’s Crosshairs: Breaking the Information Blockade," which is co-hosted by Just World Ed's Helena Cobban and Roger Harris of Task Force on the Americas. The series is presented by these two organizations and co-sponsored by the U.S. Peace Council, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition.

This episode featured: 

This episode was the second in our timely 3-part series "Venezuela in Washington’s Crosshairs: Breaking the Information Blockade," which is co-hosted by Just World Ed's Helena Cobban and Roger Harris of Task Force on the Americas. The series is presented by these two organizations and co-sponsored by the U.S. Peace Council, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition.

This episode featured: 

This episode inaugurated our timely series "Venezuela in Washington’s Crosshairs: Breaking the Information Blockade," which is co-hosted by Just World Ed's Helena Cobban and Roger Harris of Task Force on the Americas. The series is presented by these two organizations and co-sponsored by the U.S. Peace Council, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition.

This episode featured: Venezuelan-Can...

In this episode of "Gaza & the World" JWE President Helena Cobban's guest was  Prof. John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and the co-author with Stephen Walt of the groundbreaking 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. This conversation took place less than 24 hours after the November 17 passage by the UN Security...

In this episode of our "Gaza & the World" series, Helena Cobban talked with Dr. Ghada Karmi about the intersection of the genocide in Gaza and the shifting global balance of power. Dr. Karmi is a British-Palestinian who had a strong career in London as a physician and a medical historian; then between 2002 and 2023 she published four  thoughtful books that explored not only her own personal experiences as a member of ...

In this episode of our "Gaza & the World" series, Helena Cobban talked with Vijay Prashad about the intersection of the genocide in Gaza and the shifting global balance of power. 

Vijay Prashad is a visionary global justice activist, the executive director of the Tri Continental Institute for Social Research, the editor of Left Word Books, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and a senior non-resident fellow at th...

This is the second episode of "Gaza & the World," a weekly podcast from Just World Educational, hosted by our president, Helena Cobban. This project explores the many interactions between the ongoing, genocidal crisis in Gaza and the world-changing shifts that the global balance of power is currently undergoing.

In this episode, Helena's guest is JWE's valued board member Prof. Richard Falk, a veteran scholar...

This is the first episode of "Gaza & the World," a new weekly podcast from Just World Educational, hosted by our president, Helena Cobban. This series explores the crucial role that the two-year genocide & the horrendous ongoing crisis in Gaza-- and also the resilience and resistance of the Palestinian people of Gaza-- are playing in the deep, world-changing shifts that the global balance of power is seeing in our...

On June 13, 2024, JWE President Helena Cobban gave a talk at the Rossmoor community in Walnut Creek, CA, hosted by Rossmoor Voices for Justice in Palestine. The talk was titled "Palestinian resistance from the PLO to Hamas." In it Helena drew on her 50 years of experience of studying, reporting on, interviewing the leaders of, and analyzing all the main Palestinian resistance movements of the modern era. Look on the JWE b...