Recently, the world's attention has been focused on the increasing tensions between Iran and Israel. Both the U.S. and the EU have strongly condemned Iran for its April 13 attack on Israel, and voiced support for Israel by launching a series of sanctions against Iran’s economy, energy, and military institutions, but no condemnation was ever issued on Israel’s initial strike. Russia was sanctioned for attacking Ukraine while Israel has been immune to any punishment, even after some 34,000 innocent civilians have so far been killed because of Israel’s strike in Gaza. Why does the West maintain such different attitudes towards different nations and peoples? And how will this biased favoritism by the West for Israel impact the situation in the Middle East?

Guests in this edition of Dialogue are Ulrich Brueckner, professor of political science at Stanford University in Berlin; Rick Dunham, visiting scholar at Tsinghua University; and Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi from University of Tehran.