On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Trita Parsi on a president who wants to make bold deals.
President Donald J. Trump and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al Thani attend a signing ceremony at the Amiri Diwan, the official workplace of the emir, on May 14, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.(Win McNamee / Getty Images)
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On his latest trip to the Middle East, Donald Trump is making big news. He’s indicating a receptiveness to making a deal with Iran trading normalization for nuclear non-proliferation. He ended the bombing campaign against Yemen and is also pushing for normalization with Syria. Further, the White House has sidestepped Israel in order to have direct talks with Hamas. These moves have angered some hawks in the GOP as well as the Israeli government. But will Trump’s attempt to shift America’s policy in the Middle East pay off, especially given his record of erratic attention to details and sudden shifts in direction? To assess the situation I spoke with Trita Parsi of The Quincy Institute, who recently wrote about these matters for The American Conservative.
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On his latest trip to the Middle East, Donald Trump is making big news. He’s indicating a receptiveness to making a deal with Iran trading normalization for nuclear nonproliferation. He ended the bombing campaign against Yemen and is also pushing for normalization with Syria. Further, the White House has sidestepped Israel in order to have direct talks with Hamas. These moves have angered some hawks in the GOP as well as the Israeli government. But will Trump’s attempt to shift America’s policy in the Middle East pay off, especially given his record of erratic attention to details and sudden shifts in direction? To assess the situation, I spoke with Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute, who recently wrote about these matters for The American Conservative.
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Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
The late Jeffrey Epstein was friends with all sorts of elite figures in the US and many other countries. This extensive network is now sometimes described as “the Epstein class.” The question is, was this class held together merely by the opportunistic trading of favors or did it have a coherent worldview and agenda?
Branko Marcetic has written a series of articles in Jacobin that clarify this issue by looking at relationships Epstein had with the billionaire Peter Thiel and the political operative Steve Bannon.
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Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.