Our Fathom Highlight this week features an interview with Middle Eastern security analyst, Seth Frantzman, author of the recently-published After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East. Seth talks to Fathom about the challenges of covering the battle against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, assesses why winning the war was followed by losing the peace, and examines the role of Iran and Turkey in the region ‘after ISIS’. We also make available from our archives Jonathan Paris’s 2018 talk on Qassem Soleimani who was killed in a US drone strike early on 3 January.

Our Image of the Week shows Israeli singer Ariel Zilber protesting outside a court hearing at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on whether a lawmaker facing criminal indictment can be tapped to form a coalition, 31 December 2019.

Our Voice of the Week is a Brookings Institute panel discussion concerning the domestic repression witnessed in Iran throughout December: how should the international community respond and where does the repression leaves the Iranian regime? Washington Post Columnist David Ignatius led the discussion, which features journalist and filmmaker Maziar Bahari, whose memoir of his own imprisonment in Iran was the basis for the 2014 film “Rosewater.”

‘The fight against ISIS was successful, but not on a strategic level’| An interview with Seth Frantzman, author of After ISIS

by Seth Frantzman