Podcast appearances and mentions of Nicholas A Heras

In this edition of The New Lines Institute Middle East Center's Post-Assad Podcast series, Middle East Center co-director Nicholas A. Heras sits down with Voice of America (VOA) reporter Sirwan Kajjo to assess how the emerging regime in Damascus will engage with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in Northeast Syria. Sirwan, a well-known Syrian-American intellectual and journalist, works for the Extremism Watch Desk at VOA where he focuses on Islamic militancy, extremism, and conflict in the Middle East and beyond that region. Heras and Kajjo also discuss how the emerging government in Damascus will lead the process of creating a post-Assad order and whether that order can successfully incorporate all the country's different communities.

In this edition of The New Lines Institute Middle East Center's Post-Assad Podcast series, Middle East Center co-director Nicholas A. Heras sits down with Sasha Ghosh-Siminoff to analyze how humanitarian and economic rehabilitation efforts can support peacebuilding in Syria. Sasha is a Nonresident Fellow with the Middle East Center at The New Lines Institute who has a granular and nuanced perspective on Syria that comes from his oversight over targeted civil society capacity building and humanitarian assistance programs throughout Syria. He is also currently the Middle East and North Africa Program Director for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and a Security Fellow at the Truman National Security Project. Heras and Ghosh-Siminoff also assess what should be the priorities for international organizations looking to support the rehabilitation of Syria.

The Middle East Center at The New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy is proud to initiate a special new podcast series “Bridging the Gap: Conversations on Israel and Palestine.” This series is led by Rachel Nelson, the Analyst in the Middle East Center, and will provide nuanced, detailed, and on-the-ground perspectives on the situation in Israel and Palestine. In this inaugural episode, Middle East Center co-director Nicholas A. Heras sits down with Rachel Nelson to learn more about her extensive experience in the West Bank and to gain her analysis on the metastasizing conflict there. Heras and Nelson also explore why the tensions between the expanding Israeli settler community and the local Palestinian population in the West Bank could devolve into a larger war that would end the prospects for the Two State Solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

In this edition of The New Lines Institute Middle East Center's Post-Assad Podcast series, Middle East Center co-director Nicholas A. Heras sits down with Dr. Sultan Alamer to assess how the new governing authorities in Damascus can reimagine Syrian nationalism after Assad and build an inclusive state for all Syrians. Dr. Alamer is a Resident Senior Fellow with the Middle East Center at The New Lines Institute, and a senior member of the editorial committee of Alpheratz, an Arabic language magazine. He is also a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University's Center of Middle East Studies, an executive committee member of the Arab Political Science Network, and a Bucerius Fellow at the Zeit-Stiftung Ebling und Gerd Bucerius. Heras and Dr. Alamer analyze the potential scenarios where the successful Syrian revolution could result in new mass movements for political reform, or even revolution, in other states in the wider Middle East.

In this edition of The New Lines Institute Middle East Center's Post-Assad Podcast series, Middle East Center co-director Nicholas A. Heras sits down with Dr. Kamran Bokhari to develop a strategic forecast for Syria in the upcoming year. Dr. Bokhari is a Senior Director at the Institute who is a specialist on Eurasian politics with a particular focus on the Middle East with over three decades experience in the intelligence analysis community providing strategic assessments on global events. A distinguished professor at the Institute's M.A. in Strategy and Policy program, Dr. Bokhari also teaches a course on Central Asia at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program. Heras and Dr. Bokhari investigate the key dynamics that will shape post-Assad Syria in 2025, and present especially important context on events in Syria that are not being widely discussed that will be essential to understanding the trajectory of the country.

In this edition of The New Lines Institute Middle East Center's Post-Assad Podcast series, Middle East Center co-director Nicholas A. Heras sits down with Nidal Betare to assess the potential for a Syrian-led, inclusive process of democracy-building in post-Assad Syria. Betare is a Palestinian-American who was born and raised in Syria, and a well-known expert on civil society and the Syrian political opposition. They engage on a wide-ranging discussion on how Syrian civil society can lead its country to engage in a process of reconciliation across Syria's diverse communities after a decade and a half of war, and a half-century of the rule of a brutal authoritarian regime. Betare and Heras also tackle the subject of what the vibrant and active Syrian-American community can do to help rebuild the country and make it more prosperous than ever before.

In this inaugural edition of The New Lines Institute Middle East Center's Post-Assad Podcast series, Middle East Center co-director Nicholas A. Heras sits down with the Center's Resident Senior Fellow Murad Batal Al Shishani and the Institute's Priority Sustainable Counterterrorism Portfolio head and Senior Analyst Tammy Palacios to discuss the prospects for stability in post-Assad Syria. These two institutional experts on global Salafist-Jihadist movements and the Syrian conflict assess the likelihood that former Al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir Al Sham will be able to turn its shocking military victory over the former Assad regime into a sustainable and inclusive governance system in Syria.

In this episode of the Roamings and Reflections podcast series, guest host Nicholas A. Heras chats with Eugene Chausovsky about the underappreciated geopolitical dynamics that impact Taiwan, especially its energy supply chain security, its advanced semiconductor industry, and its effort to build a global network of commercial partners that can help it maneuver against China.

In this two-part Contours podcast, Newlines Institute’s Nicholas A. Heras explores the Palestinian-Israeli crisis with colleague Caroline Rose. They are first joined by Omar Rahman, an expert on the post-Oslo Accords era of this conflict. This episode examines the root causes of Palestinian grievances and explores the limited options available to residents of the West Bank and Gaza. Our second episode features Newlines Institute Fellow Elizabeth Tsurkov and the Shalom-Hartman Institute’s Yossi Klein. They engage in a spirited discussion about how perceptions of the crisis within Israel differ from perspectives globally, and how the U.S. must balance its relationship with Israel while still defending human rights. We hope that you will listen to both conversations and come away with a greater understanding of how this conflict is being perceived within and outside of the region. The unfolding civil crisis between Israel and Palestinian factions in Gaza is already having significant effects in both the Middle East and the international community. The eruption of violence between Israel and the Palestinian Territories has disrupted a series of Arab-Israeli normalization deals, initiated with the 2020 Abraham Accords, and the Biden administration’s planned pivot away from the Middle East as the U.S. focuses on great power competition. Newlines Institute for Policy and Strategy’s Senior Analyst and Head of the State Fragility and Resiliency Program Nicholas Heras sat down with Elizabeth Tsurkov, a non-resident fellow at the Newlines Institute and a research fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking; Yossi Klein Halevi, a best-selling author and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute; and Caroline Rose, a senior analyst and head of the Power Vacuums program at the Newlines Institute. The four took a deep dive into ongoing tensions within Israel that gave way to a crisis in Gaza, the impact on regional geopolitics, and what this means for the U.S.-Israel relationship.

In this two-part Contours podcast, Newlines Institute’s Nicholas A. Heras explores the Palestinian-Israeli crisis with colleague Caroline Rose. They are first joined by Omar Rahman, an expert on the post-Oslo Accords era of this conflict. This episode examines the root causes of Palestinian grievances and explores the limited options available to residents of the West Bank and Gaza. Our second episode features Newlines Institute Fellow Elizabeth Tsurkov and the Shalom-Hartman Institute’s Yossi Klein. They engage in a spirited discussion about how perceptions of the crisis within Israel differ from perspectives globally, and how the U.S. must balance its relationship with Israel while still defending human rights. We hope that you will listen to both conversations and come away with a greater understanding of how this conflict is being perceived within and outside of the region. The unfolding civil crisis between Israel and Palestinian factions in Gaza is already having significant regional effects in both the Middle East and the international community. The eruption of violence between Israel and the Palestinian Territories has disrupted a series of Arab-Israeli normalization deals, initiated with the 2020 Abraham Accords, and the Biden administration’s planned pivot away from the Middle East as the United States focuses on great power competition. Newlines Institute for Policy and Strategy’s Senior Analyst and Head of the State Fragility and Resiliency Program Nicholas Heras sat down with Omar Rahman, a respected analyst and expert on post-Oslo era Palestinian politics at the Brookings Doha Center, and the Head of Newlines’ Power Vacuums program Senior Analyst Caroline Rose. The three took a deep dive into ongoing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian Territories, what this means for Palestinian political consensus, and the impact on regional geopolitics.

On April 14, 2020, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) hosted a virtual, on-the-record event on the Middle East Security team's report entitled "Countering Iran in the Gray Zone: What the United States Should Learn from Israel's Operations in Syria." The event featured remarks from: Ilan Goldenberg, Senior Fellow and Director of the CNAS Middle East Security Program; Nicholas A. Heras, Middle East Portfolio Manager, Institute for the Study of War; and Kaleigh Thomas, Research Associate, CNAS Middle East Security Program.

Nicholas A. Heras asks three notable experts on U.S. national security decision making—Frances Z. Brown, Melissa Dalton, and Loren DeJonge Schulman—whether the United States should remain committed to maintaining a presence in Syria, and if President Trump is right that all that remains for the U.S. in Syria is "sand and death."

Nicholas A. Heras asks three notable experts on Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah in the Syrian conflict—Anna Borshchevskaya, Hanin Ghaddar, and Brian Katz—how the United States can engage with Russia to manage the situation with Israel and the Assad regime to prevent Iran and its Hezbollah network from launching a war against Israel from Syria that could have region-shattering consequences for the Middle East.

Nicholas A. Heras asks three notable experts on Salafist-jihadist organizations and the Syrian conflict — Jennifer Cafarella, Hassan Hassan, and Sasha Ghosh Siminoff — about how Syria became the largest recruiting ground for Salafist-jihadist groups in modern history and how the United States should approach its counter-terrorism policy in Syria to meet this challenge.