Category: Interviews

interviews

Interview: Is Israel pushing Lebanon toward civil war? And how can the Lebanese thwart this scenario?

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Alghad TV, July 9, 2026 (Zunes begins at 9 mins.): Does the Israeli withdrawal represent a tactical move tied to the battlefield, or does it pave the way for a broader political settlement? An analytical discussion with: Ibrahim Haidar, writer and political analyst; Mohammed Zeidan, researcher specializing in Israeli affairs; and Stephen Zunes, on the dimensions of the withdrawal and its implications for the future of the ceasefire and developments in southern Lebanon. (It’s a bit odd, in that Zunes spoke in English, yet this recording has the Arabic translation translated back into English.)

20 Interviews: May-June 2026, Iran related

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Below are links to various radio, television, and podcast interviews about the U.S., Iran, and related issues during May and June 2026:

    * A 28-minutes with David Swanson’s Talk World Radio
    *  A 20-minutes with Kris Welch on KPFA-FM, starting at 38:40
    * Hour-long interview for the Scholars Circle on the war
on Lebanon with Yeghia Tashjian and Ervand Abrahamian
     *  Two recent segments for an Indian network news show:
     June 18, beginning at 5:20 & June 2, starting at 4:25
     *  On a Singapore television news channel
     *  On a Singapore radio news channel
 * Two short interviews on KPFA-FM News, Pacifica:
June 14, starting at 2 mins. & May 24, starting 2:28    

* For KTVU News (one of the Bay Area network affiliates):
        June 18: https://ktvu.com/video/fmc-sv3bvh10vi4mon19.amp
        June 8:  https://bit.ly/3RVvpr6
        June 7:  https://bit.ly/43n9zze
        June 1:  https://bit.ly/43UizvR
       May 28:  https://bit.ly/4egHjmR
       May 25:  https://bit.ly/3QcXklR
       May 19:  https://youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=J7tH8nNmCJI&ra=m
       May 13: https://bit.ly/43p5U3R
       May 9: https://archive.tveyes.com/18120/531666-150162/dfd53d40-1c93-45d8-9a79-ad2dd615c0c5/KTVU_04-20-2026_16.30.43.mp4

 Also, two much older analyses were depressingly prescient:
     * A 50-minute documentary from 2012 in which I and a dozen other scholars and analysts critique the U.S. threat of War with Iran: https://youtube.com/watch?v=yoITyAobBMI
     * A 2006 interview I did with Foaad Khosmood on U.S. policy towards Iran and the possibility of war: https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-shift-in-iran-policy-by-stephen-zunes/

Quoted: Will US Opposition to UN’s Socio-Economic Goals Play a Decisive Role in the Vote for Next Secretary-General?

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Inter Press Service [UN] June 18, 2026
Zunes is quoted in this analysis on the influence Trump will have on the choosing of the next UN Secretary General. He told IPS under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States has blocked the election of candidates for Secretary General, even when they had the support of the fourteen other members of the Security Council. “Given how Trump has been even more prone to attack the United Nations and bully member states, including ostensible U.S. allies, it is likely that the United States will make it even more difficult this round for the UN to choose its next administrator.”

Quoted in Wyoming Star: Operation Epstein Fury Parts 13 & 14. Iranian Red Lines.

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June 24, 2026: “It is not going to be smooth sailing, but my sense is that the Trump administration recognizes that there is too much at stake for it to fail. The MOU is being attacked as a bad deal, as being worse than the JCPOA, and worse than what they could have gotten Iran to agree to prior to the launch of the war and Iran recognizing the power it had to disrupt the global economy – all of which are true. It is nevertheless likely the most realistic alternative at this point.
Israel will try to sabotage the deal, but Trump, unlike previous US presidents, does not have an ideological commitment to Israel. His approach to foreign policy is purely transactional…”

 June 10, 2026, “Trump has made it clear to the Israelis that a full-scale resumption of the bombing would be unacceptable, but he is apparently willing to support a low-level war indefinitely. Meanwhile, Israel is expanding its occupation of the Gaza Strip to close to 70% of the territory in violation of the ceasefire agreement and with the apparent support of the Trump administration. Occasional air strikes, with additional civilian casualties, continue as well. And, in the West Bank, settler militias, in ways comparable to the rightwing death squads in Central America during the 1980s, continue to terrorize the Palestinian population with the acquiescence of the Israeli government and, extension, the US government.”
“There was some real hope a few weeks ago with news of a memorandum of understanding between US and Iranian negotiators, with the apparent support of the Arab Gulf states, Turkey, and Egypt. Trump rejected it, however, because it would involve unfreezing illegally withheld Iranian assets and would allow Iran to continue reprocessing limited amounts of uranium, similar to the 2015 nuclear deal that Trump has repeatedly condemned. Even the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz would be hard to depict as a victory since it had been fully open prior to the war.”
On Lebanon: “It is hard to imagine Iran agreeing to reopen the Strait without a comprehensive ceasefire and possibly an Israeli withdrawal from occupied parts of the country. Israel’s decision to expand its occupation [was] to increase pressure on the Lebanese government, even though it is essentially powerless to control Hezbollah…. Most political factions in Israel either support Netanyahu’s actions or believe he should escalate.”

Interview: Israel and Hezbollah Agree to US-Brokered Pause in Hostilities

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Channel News Asia (CNA) Singapore, June 2, 2026, 14 min.: Israel and militant group Hezbollah have accepted a US proposal to pause hostilities. US President Donald Trump persuaded Israeli and Hezbollah leaders to de-escalate, after Iran threatened to end indirect peace talks with the US. For more on the latest, Susan Ng and Hairianto Diman speak with Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics, University of San Francisco.

Interview: Washington funds worsening repression and political prisoners in Egypt

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Arab Organisation for Human Rights in UK, May 23, 2026
8 min. clip of Zunes and full seminar, 55 min.
Repression in Egypt is not happening in isolation, but is sustained through Washington’s continuous political and military support. Successive U.S. administrations have shielded the Egyptian government from accountability despite mass arrests, torture allegations, deaths in custody, and the imprisonment of tens of thousands of political prisoners… every waiver, arms deal, and public embrace of Sisi sends a message that repression will carry no consequences.

Interview: Operation Epstein Fury Part 11. A Neither Dead Nor Alive Ceasefire.

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Wyoming Star, April 24, 2026: Zunes offered a bleak long‑view:
“It’s hard to see an end to the conflict any time soon. Hopefully, both sides now recognize they cannot achieve their aims through full-scale war, but the positions of the two sides appear to be as far apart as ever. The fact that Trump is continually contradicting himself makes things even harder to predict. The best-case scenario at this point is that Iran would agree to end its blocking of shipping to the Arab Gulf states in return for the United States ending their blockade of Iran and leaving the other issues for later. The most likely scenario, however, involves a long, drawn-out conflict, with both sides jockeying for control of the Strait of Hormuz while the global economy worsens.
The 2015 nuclear agreement made it impossible for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Despite this, two years later, Trump ended up reneging on sanctions relief, so the Iranians resumed uranium reprocessing to a much higher degree than the treaty allowed. Trump still insists he can do a better deal than Obama. However, the original nuclear agreement was a result of two years of intense, painstaking negotiations using the United States’ most experienced diplomats, mediators, and technical experts. It also included negotiators from Great Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations. For Trump to assume that he can simply send his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his real estate buddy Steve Witkoff, and his inexperienced vice-president J.D. Vance to Pakistan for a day or so and negotiate a new and better agreement is ludicrous, particularly given the Iranians’ understandable lack of trust in the United States.
There are certainly many in Lebanon who would agree with Israel that Hezbollah should be disarmed. However, the corrupt and inept Lebanese government is unlikely to risk a civil war to do so. Israel has proven repeatedly that they can’t destroy Hezbollah either.
It’s ironic Israel is now occupying southern Lebanon on the grounds they must defeat Hezbollah when Hezbollah was formed as a direct result of Israel’s earlier occupation of southern Lebanon in the 1980s.”