Jason Ditz, managing news editor at Antiwar.com, discusses how the Iranian election news is dominated by state-run media, Iran’s high voter turnout that was thought to favor opposition candidates – who had surprisingly poor showings – and Ahmedinejad’s pronouncement in Russia that the U.S. empire is economically unsustainable.

MP3 here. (18:11)

Jason Ditz is the managing news editor at Antiwar.com.

Patrick Doherty, Deputy Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, discusses the Iranian government crackdown that reinforces the perception of electoral fraud, the popular Iranian discontent with autocracy, the dearth of legitimate polling in Iran that increases uncertainty and how Ahmedinejad’s tough negotiating with the U.S. is seen by some as the Persian equivalent of Nixon going to China.

MP3 here. (17:52)

Patrick C. Doherty is Deputy Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The American Strategy Program aims to promote a new American internationalism that combines a tough-minded realism about America’s interests in the world with a pragmatic idealism about the kind of world order best suited to America’s democratic way of life. Mr. Doherty is also Director of the foundation’s U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative, which seeks to take advantage of recent developments to move U.S.-Cuba policy in a more sensible direction to the benefit of both countries. He also serves as a Co-Director of the Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency Initiative.

Before joining New America, Mr. Doherty was Director of Communications at the Center for National Policy, a congressionally focused national security think tank. He was also a senior editor at TomPaine.com, an online journal of politics and policy based in Washington, D.C., where he was responsible for all content related to national security, macroeconomics, energy, and the environment, and wrote a twice-weekly editorial about America’s strategic challenges.

Mr. Doherty previously spent ten years in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans and the Caucuses working on conflict management and post-conflict peacebuilding. He served as European Regional Advisor to Catholic Relief Services and as a consultant to the Organization of African Unity in Ethiopia and to the Israeli and the Palestinian Authority’s education ministries. He also taught African politics at the University of the Witwatersrand. Mr. Doherty holds a master’s degree in security studies from the Fletcher School, Tufts University, where he was a co-founder of the Institute for Human Security, and a bachelor’s degree from the School of International Service at American University.

Daniel Luban, writer for IPS news via Jim Lobe’s blog, discusses the neocon preference for Ahmadinejad over his moderate rivals, the aborted attempt by congressional leaders to fast-track sanctions just prior to Iran’s election, the continuance of “Obama is a secret Muslim” as a staple of right-wing propaganda and how a viable Palestinian state requires the dismantling of Israeli settlements.

MP3 here. (24:33)

Daniel Luban writes on Jim Lobe’s IPS news blog.

Juan Cole, author of Engaging the Muslim World, discusses Hezbollah’s electoral defeat in Lebanon, the influence Obama’s Cairo speech may have had in getting moderates elected, Hezbollah’s popular decline after it put on a domestic show of military force in 2008  and the contrast between Obama’s acknowledgment of Iran’s right to a civilian nuclear power program and Hillary Clinton’s no-nukes bellicosity.

MP3 here. (17:42)

Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He has been a regular guest on PBS’s Lehrer News Hour, and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the Today Show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Democracy Now! and many others. He has also given many radio and press interviews. He has written extensively about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He has commented extensively on the Iraq War, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the increasing conflict with Iran. He has a regular column at Salon.com. He continues to study and write about contemporary Islamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu and reads some Turkish, knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, and continues to travel widely there. A bibliography of his writings may be found here.

William Brand, writer for the Krakow Post, discusses the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the end of the USSR, the 1989 Polish open elections where communist candidates were trounced, Gorbachev’s made-good promise to end military crackdowns and the flood of other Soviet bloc countries that followed Poland’s lead (some not so peacefully).

MP3 here. (21:53)

William Brand is an American expatriate living in Poland.

Rand Paul, son of Rep. Ron Paul and 2010 Senatorial candidate, discusses the war in Afghanistan, reducing corruption by making lobbying and bidding on government contracts mutually exclusive, the excess federal authority derived from the commerce clause, prosecutions of Bush administration officials for war crimes and the need for withdrawal from Iraq.

MP3 here. (27:52)

Rand Paul has launched an exploratory committee for the 2010 U.S. Senate election, in which he would run as a Kentucky Republican.

Mark Almond, Lecturer in Modern History at Oriel College, Oxford, discusses the discontent about elections in Moldova, the devastation wreaked by neoliberal economics, the encroachment of NATO recruitment on former soviet states, political instability in Georgia and Kosovo and the bureaucratic inertia in NATO that seeks continual expansion.

MP3 here: (38:23)

Mark Almond is a Lecurer in Modern History at Oriel College, Oxford and Chairman of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group.

Daniel Levy, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation, discusses the future of Israel with Benjamin Netanyahu as likely next Prime Minister, the multi-party complexity of Knesset coalition negotiations, how an Israeli government that includes moderate factions would provide some protection from international condemnation of future bad behavior and how U.S. initiative combined with Israelis and Palestinians thinking outside the box can produce unusual compromises for a viable two-state solution.

MP3 here. (25:28)

Daniel Levy was a founder of the Israel-Palestinian Peace Coalition and is on the Advisory Board of the recently established J Street organization and of the global campaigning group, Avaaz. His blog is www.prospectsforpeace.com and he posts regularly at TPM Café, the Huffington Post, and the Guardian Unlimited.

Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and proprietor of LewRockwell.com, discusses how voting propagates the myth of a representative participatory democracy, the virtue of not voting, the continuation of election fraud from ballot stuffing to computerized tampering, voting as sacrament to the state religion, why imposing higher thresholds of voting eligibility would be an improvement and how Ron Paul’s prescience about the economy and his widely heard public criticism of the Federal Reserve has more than compensated for the blame free markets, and by extension libertarianism, are getting for the financial crisis.

MP3 here. (37:19)

Lew Rockwell is the founder and President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, Vice President of the Center for Libertarian Studies in Burlingame, California, and publisher of the political Web site LewRockwell.com. He served as Ron Paul’s congressional chief of staff between 1978 and 1982. Check out his new podcast show here.

Robert Dreyfuss, author of The Dreyfuss Report blog for The Nation, discusses the policy of “hot pursuit” across international boundaries against anyone deemed an enemy, an increased military budget that encourages greater use of special forces, the prospect of a renewed UN mandate replacing a failed Iraq SOFA agreement and how it could effect the incoming U.S. administration, Iran’s decision to reduce confrontation with the U.S., how the Israeli election result will impact prospects for peace in the Middle East and the strategy behind al Qaeda’s attacks against America.

MP3 here. (44:43)

Based in Alexandria, Va., Dreyfuss been writing for Rolling Stone for at least a decade, and currently covers national security for Rolling Stone’s National Affairs section. He’s a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. His articles have also appeared in The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, Newsday, Worth, California Lawyer, The Texas Observer, E, In These Times, The Detroit Metro Times, Public Citizen, Extra!, and, in Japan, in Esquire, Foresight and Nikkei Business. His blog, The Dreyfuss Report, is now at The Nation.