Background Briefing: May 14, 2025

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Trump Lifts Sanctions on Syria Calling Its New Leader, a Former Islamic State Fighter, “a Young Attractive Guy” 

We begin with Trump’s meeting with Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa alongside MBS and with Turkey’s Erdogan joining by video after which Trump praised the former Islamic State fighter as “a young attractive guy” and promised to lift sanctions on Syria. Joining us to discuss the urgent need to stabilize Syria and provide basic needs before the country spirals into sectarian chaos is Joshua Landis, the Sandra Mackey Chair and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Oklahoma. The past president of the Syria Studies Association, he is a fellow at the Quincy Institute and writes “Syria Comment,” a daily newsletter and blog on Syrian politics.

 

A Judge Orders ICE to Release Another Wrongly-Detained Scholar Held for 8 Weeks in Detention in Texas

Then we look into the good news of the release of one of the victims of Trump’s use of ICE as his private Gestapo-like militia that disappears people on the streets based on flimsy evidence or none whatsoever. Today  a Federal judge in Virginia ruled that Dr. Badar Khan Suri should be released after 8 weeks of detention in Texas and returned to his wife and three children. Joining us is Dr. Khan Suri’s postdoctoral supervisor at Georgetown University who has visited him in detention, Nader Hashemi, the Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. A Non-Resident Fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now, he is the author of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future and Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East.

 

Will Putin Show Up for Peace Talks and Tulsi Gabbard Fires Top Intel Officials for Speaking Truth to Power

Then finally we assess whether Putin will show up for the peace talks in Turkey with Zelensky, which Trump is desperately hoping happens and according to the White House would be “an absolutely incredible meeting.” As well as the alarming news today that the Director of National Intelligence has fired the top officials at the National Intelligence Council for contradicting Trump’s claim that the Venezuelan government is behind a street gang that Trump is using as an excuse to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Joining us is Angela Stent, the senior advisor and former Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Affairs and a Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at Georgetown University. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and from 2004 to 2006 served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council, and, from 1999 to 2001, she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State. She is the author of The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century and, most recently, Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest.