International affairs

This past week marked the 26th anniversary of the failed rescue attempt of hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days. We talks with journalist Mark Bowden, author of Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam.

Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker discusses on the latest developments between Iran and the United States regarding Iran's nuclear power program. Hersh writes that the Bush administration has clandestine plans for a possible major attack on Iran.

The most frightening thing the United States could do to Iran, short of attacking it, is to leave Iraq, says New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. The second most frightening thing for Iran, he says, would be a U.S. success in Iraq.

Iran's attempts to restart its nuclear program in defiance of the International Atomic Energy Agency is a game of nuclear chicken, says Joseph Cirincione, the director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Rapper Emmanuel Jal was one of the "Lost Boys" — youths caught up in violence in Sudan. He later escaped to Kenya. Now he's making music about peace. His new CD is Ceasefire.

Charles Sennott is the London bureau chief for the Boston Globe. He was in London during the Underground and bus bombings on July 7. He discusses British reaction to the events and compares it to the American reaction to Sept. 11, 2001.

Journalist and historian Martin Meredith has written extensively on Africa and its recent history. His new book is The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair.

Michela Wrong's new book is I Didn't Do It For You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation. She presents a case study of the nation of Eritrea, but the problems she writes about, including colonialism and border wars, are prevalent on the entire continent. Wrong is also the author of the PEN award-winning book, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo. She has been a correspondent for Reuters news agency, the BBC and the Financial Times of London.

Journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser are with The Washington Post. From 2001 to 2004, the pair, who are married, served as the Moscow bureau chiefs for the Post. The two have collaborated on a new book, Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution.

In the early 1990s, NPR journalist Scott Simon reported from war-torn Sarajevo. Those experiences formed the basis for his debut novel, Pretty Birds, the story of a 16-year-old girl who adapts to her violent times.