July 9, 2026 Ben Soodavar, King’s
College London (The Conversation) –
Less than a month after a ceasefire was signed between the US and Iran,
conflict has returned to the Middle East. The peace agreement Donald Trump
signed at the palace of Versailles in France on June 18 – which he hailed as
Iran’s “unconditional surrender” – is now, in the US president’s own words,
“over”.
July 9, 2026 We speak with
political analyst Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute
for Responsible Statecraft, about the latest events in the Middle East. The
United States has bombed Iran for multiple days after President Donald Trump
declared the ceasefire between the countries to be “over.” Iran says it has
retaliated by attacking U.S. military bases and other strategic sites in
Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.
July 9, 2026 Prabhat Patnaik There are at least
two important economic aspects of the current structural crisis of capitalism.
The first is the overall stagnation and increased unemployment with which world
capitalism in its neoliberal phase has been confronted. The higher unemployment
in many cases, such as in the United States, is camouflaged by a reduction in
the work participation rate, but its reality is undeniable. The stagnation was
manifest even before the pandemic: the decadal rate of growth of the world
economy over the 2010s decade was lower than in any preceding decade since the
Second World War.