Order From Ashes

Hezbollah’s Comeback

Shownotes

After the assassination of its leader in September 2024, Hezbollah sank to its weakest point since its founding in 1982. Supporters began to doubt Hezbollah’s capabilities, and detractors—inside Lebanon and abroad—planned to dismantle the group. In March of this year, Lebanon’s government outlawed Hezbollah’s powerful militia. Many of Hezbollah’s competitors and critics declared the end of the group’s military capability and political base.

But Hezbollah’s strength has returned. This spring, as Israel has expanded its occupation of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has fought effectively. It’s all looking very much like a comeback.

Century International fellow Sima Ghaddar has closely tracked Hezbollah’s constituents and power, and shares a granular look at how the group has revived, and how researchers can assess the notoriously opaque organization.

Related reading

• Nathan Brown, “Rubble is Israel’s Doctrine, Not a Case of Improvisation,” Carnegie Endowment, May 21, 2026
• Sam Heller, “Trump’s Lebanon Negotiations Are Breaking the Country,” Foreign Policy, May 15, 2026
• Sima Ghaddar, “Doubting the Party, Revering Its Ideology: Hezbollah’s Battered Constituencies Reckon with a Year of Loss.” 
• US Treasury, “Treasury Targets Hizballah-Aligned Officials Obstructing Peace and Disarmament,” May 21, 2026
• Mohamad Bazzi, “Is This What War Looks Like Now?” Guardian, April 24, 2026

Participants

SIma Ghaddar is a fellow at Century International and a sociologist whose research spans humanitarianism, the politics of international aid, political sociology, and popular mobilization in the Middle East and the Global South. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her dissertation, “Brokers of the Humanitarian Interface: The Politics of Aid in Lebanon’s Urban Peripheries,” examines humanitarian aid, transnational NGO governance, and the intersections of patronage, clientelism, and global aid systems in Lebanon. She is also a policy researcher specializing in Middle East politics. Her policy research focuses on hybrid armed actors, regional Shia politics, and social movements in Lebanon.

Thanassis Cambanis is director of Century International. 

Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2026

Episode: Order from Ashes 114

Iraq’s Weakest Government Yet

Shownotes

After five months of negotiations, Iraq’s power brokers have agreed on a completely unknown compromise candidate for the country’s new prime minister. Ali al-Zaidi, a businessman with no experience in politics or public administration, took over leadership of Iraq on May 14 as the country faces multiple emergencies. Iraq can’t sell its oil because of the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and is running out of money to pay salaries. Iraqi militias, beyond the government’s control, have been attacking Saudi Arabia and targets inside Iraq. And Iraq just found out that its supposed ally, the United States, has been covering up the existence of multiple Israeli bases that were operating in the Iraqi desert.

Zaidi, perhaps the weakest prime minister to take office since the U.S. invasion in 2003, faces a sovereignty crisis of epic proportions from his first day in office.

Sajad Jiyad, Century International’s fellow in Baghdad, analyzes the many challenges for Iraq’s new prime minister.

Participants

Sajad Jiyad is a fellow at Century International. 

Thanassis Cambanis is director of Century International. 

Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Episode: Order from Ashes 113

America Lost. What Are the Rules Now?

Shownotes

The United States has resolved a long debate about its own decline by attacking Iran and failing to achieve any of Washington’s war aims. Winning and losing might not be the most useful paradigm, but for students of global power the war marks a watershed: America can’t simply have its way by force — and pays a price along with the rest of the world for global conflict and economic disruption.

Century International fellow Peter Salisbury has been studying complex global supply chains and financial instruments developed for the express purpose of escaping American scrutiny and sanctions. A growing back end of global power and economic activity serves major states, like China, middle powers like Iran, and a large community of economic actors that operate simultaneously in legal and illegal spaces.

What does the world look like after America’s self-inflicted defeat in the Iran war? How do power and economics function when states (and others) are free to pursue any goals they want and experiment with blunt force?

Participants

Peter Salisbury is a fellow at Century International.

Thanassis Cambanis is director of Century International. 

Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Episode: Order from Ashes 112

Erasing Bint Jbail: What War Looks Like Now

Shownotes

Mohamad Bazzi was born in southern Lebanon in 1975, and spent his first years in the border town of Bint Jbail. In the half century since, his family’s village has been invaded and destroyed multiple times.

Today, Bazzi’s extended family shelters in the far-flung spots where they have sought shelter during the war that began at the end of February, while Bazzi takes stock of what is drearily familiar about the latest round of violence —and what is shockingly new.

This latest Israeli war against Lebanon has transgressed the norms of war to an unprecedented degree, with a staggering level of destruction in southern Lebanon. Israeli leaders have proclaimed their intention to depopulate the border area, where more than half a million Lebanese people live.

The world has gotten used to a steady stream of war, displacement, and avoidable death in the Middle East, but Bazzi argues that Israel’s war on Lebanon, modeled after Gaza, has crossed a line. The United States and its allies could stop Israel’s wars—and they should.

Related reading

• Mohamad Bazzi, “Is This What War Looks Like Now?” Guardian, April 24, 2026

Participants

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University. He is the former Middle East bureau chief at Newsday.

Thanassis Cambanis is director of Century International. 

Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Episode: Order from Ashes 111

Gulf Power Without an American Shield

Shownotes

The Arab monarchies of the Gulf invested colossal wealth to build modern, diversified economic power. But their growing power depended on safety in the Persian Gulf, which in turn depended on an American military umbrella. Now, Trump’s war on Iran has shown just how flimsy that umbrella really is.

Still, these cash-rich and economically powerful monarchies retain tremendous influence as a cornerstone of the global economy and the Middle Eastern order.

Rohan Advani, a sociologist and Century International fellow, offers a tour of the political economy of Arab monarchies of the Gulf during a period of shifting world order that threatens to reduce their influence. 

Gulf wealth can no longer rely on the monarchies’ reputation for absolute peace and security, but will continue to act as a central force. What shifts can we expect in Gulf economic power and security in an era of declining American influence and increasing armed conflict in the Middle East?

Participants

Rohan Advani is a fellow at Century International. He is writing his doctoral dissertation at the University of California-Los Angeles on the financial tools of state power..

Thanassis Cambanis is director of Century International. 

Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Episode: Order from Ashes 110

A US War Economy That Destroys Value

Shownotes

The forever costs of America’s war on Iran could disfigure economic life for generations to come, around the world and in the United States.

In an earlier era, war spending helped pull the United States out of the Great Depression by pulling unemployed farmers into the cities and retraining them for manufacturing. Even through the Cold War, many Americans viewed war spending as a major driver of high-quality manufacturing jobs and consumer well-being.

The war economy since 9/11 has been different. The wars themselves drive antidemocratic currents and undermine well-being even for people, like most Americans, who are far from the battlefields. These wars also undermine economic life in less obvious ways, like incentivizing endless private sector investment in defense rather than more productive industries.

Eamon Kircher-Allen joins Order from Ashes to explain the profound distortions of the modern American war economy.

Inflation and a possible recession are only the most immediate economic costs of the Iran war. As the forever wars after 9/11 proved, runaway war spending disfigures every aspect of the economy. The true long-term costs of this war will be much higher than the price of military operations.

Related article

Commentary: “The Iran War’s Forever Costs Will Far Exceed the Immediate Pain for Consumers,” Century International, by Eamon Kircher-Allen

Reports Referenced

Report: “The Cold War and the U.S. Labor Market,” National Bureau of Economic Research, by Ilyana Kuziemko, Donato A. Onorato & Suresh Naidu

 

Joseph Stiglitz, “Structural Transformation, Deep Downturns, and Government Policy” (referenced in the podcast by a one-time working title, “Sectoral Dislocations and Long-Run Crises”), National Bureau of Economic Research working paper no. 23794, September 2017.

See also: Joseph Stiglitz et al., “Mobility Constraints, Productivity Trends, and Extended Crises,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 83 (2012): 375–93.

Participants

Eamon Kircher-Allen is editor-in-chief at Century International.

Thanassis Cambanis is director of Century International. 

Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2026

Episode: Order from Ashes 109

A Truce That’s Still War in Lebanon and Hormuz

Shownotes

American policy has not kept up with the punishing realities unleashed by the war President Donald Trump started with Iran. 

Iran and the United States announced a truce, even as they’re still fighting to control shipping through the Strait of Hormuz – and more tellingly, Israel accelerated its attacks on Lebanon the day after the truce supposedly took effect.

A similar disconnect is at play in the negotiations between two powers with opaque decision-making processes and an apparent high tolerance for ambiguity and instability.

Associated Press correspondent Kareem Chehayeb joins Order from Ashes from Lebanon, with a bracing report on the staggering harm to Lebanese society. In the second segment of the podcast, Michael Wahid Hanna from Crisis Group takes stock of the tremendous costs to the world and to the US of Trump’s unjustified war of choice, and what we’ve learned about how the US government is making decisions.

Participants

Kareem Chehayeb is a correspondent with the Associated Press in Lebanon.

Michael Wahid Hanna is the U.S. program director at International Crisis Group.

Thanassis Cambanis is director of Century International. 

Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Episode: Order from Ashes 108

Trump Opens Pandora’s Box in Iraq

Shownotes

Iraq’s government has maintained friendly relations simultaneously with Iran and the United States. The war launched by President Donald J. Trump at the end of February upended that equilibrium. 

Now the United States is directly at war with some Iraqi militias, and the Iraqi state is caught in the middle, too weak to control the militias, too dependent to antagonize either Washington or Tehran. 

Century International fellow Sajad Jiyad argues that Iraq will try to revive its precarious middle course once the current phase of the war subsides — but that Iraq’s economy and security will suffer unless it can create a state strong enough to operate independently of Iran and the United States.

Participants

Sajad Jiyad is the Iraq fellow at Century International.

Thanassis Cambanis is director of Century International. 

Date: Monday, March 23, 2026

Episode: Order from Ashes 107

Forever War for Lebanon and Israel?

Shownotes

Is there an off ramp to the war of choice that Israel and the United States initiated at the end of February? The violence has spiraled across the region, directly threatening hundreds of millions of people in the Middle East, and straining the entire global economy.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials have publicly floated plans to invade southern Lebanon once more.

On this episode of the Order from Ashes podcast we hear from two Century International fellows, Sam Heller in Beirut and Dahlia Scheindlin in Tel Aviv, who provide strategic analysis to contextualize the dizzying cascade of events.

With US support, Israel has embraced an approach that it can only achieve security through total war, with no serious consideration of diplomacy and a political resolution with its neighbors, or with Palestinians in occupied territory. That approach won’t produce enduring security for Israel, but will destabilize the entire Middle East and set the region on course for an unresolved cycle of wars.

Participants

Sam Heller is a Century International fellow in Beirut.

Dahlia Scheindlin is a Century International fellow in Tel Aviv.

Thanassis Cambanis is director of Century International. 

Date: Monday, March 16, 2026

Episode: Order from Ashes 106

An Expensive Folly: Costs of the Iran War

Shownotes

Just a week into America’s war of choice on Iran, the costs already are spiraling out of control. The lives lost and broken are the most important cost. But there’s a colossal price tag for waging war, and America’s opening salvo has a number: $5 billion for the first week and a reported $50 billion that the Trump Administration is planning to seek from Congress.

The American defense budget this year is the world’s largest, at $1 trillion. As a point of comparison, it would have cost less than $30 billion to extend health care subsidies to Americans through 2026. 

Analysts have spent decades tallying the costs of America’s forever wars: direct costs in equipment and personal and indirect costs in long term health care. Perhaps the most powerful long-term cost is in opportunities: when the United States pours its resources into warmaking, it starves resources to the spheres that create opportunity and well-being: health care, education, research and development.

William D. Hartung, long-time researcher of the American defense-industrial complex and author of The Trillion-Dollar War Machine joins Order from Ashes this week to survey the staggering costs of the Iran war.

Related reading

Analysis, “The Costs of the War With Iran Will Mount For Decades,” William Hartung, Forbes

Report, “The Trump Administration’s Reckless War in Iran Has Already Cost More Than $5 Billion,” Allison McManus, Center for American Progress

Fact Sheet, “How Much Is the War in Iran Costing American Taxpayers?” Institute for Policy Studies

Roundtable, “War on Iran Was Easy to Start. It Won’t Be Easy to End,” Century International

Open-source tool: The Iran War Cost Ticker

Project: Brown University Costs of War

Participants

William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at The Quincy Institute. Bill is the co-author, with Ben Freeman, of the recently released The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home.

Thanassis Cambanis is director of Century International. 

Date: Monday, March 8, 2026

Episode: Order from Ashes 105