Farhana Yamin, Reetta Toivanen & Rana Dajani: Iran, Gaza Reax - Why Never Again Is Now

Hospitals in Iran are preparing to evacuate children. International institutions are issuing statements while bombs fall on petrochemical plants. And five women sit down in Berlin to ask: what radical ideas should actually be common sense?

A leadership podcast about people, power and possibilities.

This episode of If You Were In Charge opens with hosts Sanam Naraghi Anderlini and Kavita Ramdas in conversation about the Iran crisis. Trump’s threats of escalation, the spectre of nuclear disaster, and the devastating parallel with Gaza. They ask the question that frames the whole episode: have the institutions built by generations of careful, caring work, the UN, the IAEA, international law has finally failed us?

Then the episode moves to Berlin, where Sanam and Kavita are joined by three extraordinary guests for a live group conversation recorded at the Robert Bosch Foundation Forum:

Farhana Yamin — World-renowned climate lawyer. Attended COP 1 in Berlin in 1995. Now working on global governance and philanthropy for frontline communities.

Reetta Toivanen — Finnish legal anthropologist and Professor at the University of Helsinki. Researches refugee knowledge and just transition in Europe.

Rana Dajani — Palestinian-Syrian professor of molecular cell biology. Researches the epigenetics of trauma. Founded We Love Reading, now in 78 countries.

Together, they tackle: abolishing national borders, valuing care work, why trauma survivors inherit agency (not victimhood), diaspora economies that outperform foreign aid, AI that can’t tell a scientist from a nun, and what it really means to put feminists—of every gender—in charge.

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