The Middle East Forum cordially invites you to this week's podcasts. |
“Syria and the Captagon Trade: What Now?”
with Gregg Roman |
Monday, January 6, 2025
1:00PM Eastern Time |
Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine-style stimulant, has ravaged the Middle East in recent years. The fall of Bashar al-Assad revealed Syria's role as the global epicenter of Captagon production, a $10 billion-a-year drug trade that sustained the Assad regime’s grip on power and fueled its war economy. Production facilities have been uncovered even in air bases. The industrial-level production facilities and smuggling networks disbursed billions of capsules per year. How will criminal networks respond to the disruption? Will the new Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham authorities eradicate this operation or continue it? What policies should the U.S. and allied governments adopt? |
Gregg Roman is director of the Middle East Forum. In 2014, he was named one of the ten most inspiring global Jewish leaders by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He has written for the Hill, the Forward, the Albany Times-Union, and other publications. He attended American University in Washington, D.C., and the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel. |
Israel Insider with Ashley Perry |
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
3:00PM Eastern Time |
What opportunities and challenges face Israel as the Trump Administration prepares to take office? |
Ashley Perry is an advisor to the Middle East Forum’s Israel office. He served as adviser to Israel's minister of foreign affairs and deputy prime minister in 2009-15, and has also worked with Israel's Ministers of Intelligence, Agriculture and Rural Development, Energy, Water and Infrastructure, Defense, Tourism, Internal Security, and Immigrant Absorption and as an advisor to The Negev Forum. Originally from the U.K., he moved to Israel in 2001. He holds a B.A. from University College London and an M.A. from Reichman University (IDC Herzliya). |
The Middle East Forum, an activist think tank, deals with the Middle East, Islamism, U.S. foreign policy, and related topics, urging bold measures to protect Americans and their allies. Pursuing its goals via intellectual and operational means, the Forum recurrently has policy ideas adopted by the U.S. government. |
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