U.S. Imperialism in the Middle East After the Midterms

A class presentation by Gilbert Achcar

By: Gilbert Achcar, Mike NoonanNovember 15, 2026

Mike Noonan teaches history and political science at Berkeley City College and Canada College in California. He invited Gilbert Achcar to speak to his online class on Middle East History on November 6, 2026. Achcar grew up in Lebanon and is Professor Emeritus at SOAS, University of London. His most recent books are The New Cold War: The United States, Russia, and China from Kosovo to Ukraine (2023); and Gaza Catastrophe: The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective (2025). The topics covered in his class presentation (with the timestamps shown on the large counter at the lower right of the screen) are

The U.S. war on Iran (10:03:47)
The role of China (10:13:45)
Regional dynamics of the war (10:18:22)
Iran’s internal politics (10:22:33)
The Gaza genocide and the Israeli colonial settler state (10:26:45)
Creeping ethnic cleansing in the West Bank (10:37:35)
US-Israel relations (10:43:10)
Israel’s territorial ambitions (10:48:00)
The Gulf monarchies (10:53:50)

Posted in: Imperialism, War and peace

Places: Iran, Israel/Palestine, Middle East

If you’ve read this far, you were pretty interested, right? Isn’t that worth a few bucks -maybe more? Please donate and subscribe to help provide our informative, timely analysis unswerving in its commitment to struggles for peace, freedom, equality, and justice — what New Politics has called “socialism” for a half-century.

Comments

Donate to Support New Politics

Please donate to New Politics to allow us to continue bringing you independent, sharp, and provocative political analysis.

You can make a tax-deductible contribution by clicking here.

To subscribe, click here. Need help in making your donation or in subscribing—or just want to send us your suggestions? Contact us at newpoliticsjournal@gmail.com.

New Politics actively seeks submission of online articles

We welcome the opportunity to be a site of left discussion and debate, and we are especially interested in running articles that engage important issues on the left that are in keeping with the broad democratic and socialism-from-below approach that is a proud tradition New Politics continues to embrace. See Why We Publish for our general political perspective. Please send submissions to newpoliticsjournal@gmail.com.

Follow

New Politics Updates

New Politics Updates is a free newsletter for readers of New Politics, in whatever venue. It provides an up-to-date list of recent articles at the website, notifications regarding the print edition, announcements of events featuring our authors, and other items of probable interest to readers of our journal.

Rest easy: We won’t flood your inbox (the newsletter will appear two to four times a month) and your contact information will not be shared with anyone.

Please Donate or Subscribe to New Politics!

The New Politics Summer 2026 issue is now in the hands of subscribers, featuring articles on Democracy versus Degeneration in the United States (with contributions by Dan La Botz, Ellen Schrecker on McCarthyism Then and Now interviewed by Elizabeth Rapaport, Ben Silverman on the fascism debate, Samuel Farber on free speech, Samuel Barney on rural prisons, and Raoul Cansino and Bill Kelly on nativism), Imperialism Around the World (with articles by Lisbeth Moya González on Cuba, Husam Mahjoub on Sudan, Siyavash Shahabi and imperialism and the working class, and Matt Benson on the Mapuche in Chile), interviews on labor struggles and Russian political prisoners, a history of the International Socialists, review essays by Frieda Afary on AI, Javier Sethness on Western Marxism, and Peter Drucker on Molly Crabapple, as well as reviews on Ukraine, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, white rage, South Asia, and Afghanistan, plus a letter on women under the Taliban.

You can help us by making your tax-deductible donation here. Or by subscribing (see options here). Or by doing both. If you’ve already done so, you can close this annoying box with the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve helped us to persist in defending and exploring “socialism from below.”