An ex-Al Qaeda jihadi turned MI6 spy and a former monk turned filmmaker, have been embedded at the heart of conflicts in the Middle East. Together Aimen Dean and Thomas Small unpack the realities of war, fundamentalism and their global implications through first-hand experience.
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In this Conflicted Conversation, Simon Sebag Montefiore returns to the show, this time to talk about his new book The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East. Simon explains: How Britain and France tried — and often failed — to shape the post-Ottoman Middle East Why Sykes–Picot is a misleading shorthand for the region’s modern borders How Atatürk, Nasser and other Middle Eastern leaders…
In this Conflicted Conversation, Ian Kumekawa (a fellow of Harvard University and a lecturer at MIT) talks about his book Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Ship. Ian explains: The offshore global economy: where loopholes, ships and responsibility slip beyond ordinary jurisdiction From Little Toot to rusting barges: how industrial capitalism lost its confident postwar world…
Yemeni researcher and political analyst Baraa Shiban (and dear friend of the show) is back not only to give us an update on Yemen now that the civil war (and Saudi Arabia’s role in it) are heating up again, but also to give Thomas a much-deserved dressing down for not going far enough to hold Jeremy Hunt to account for his role in the Stockholm Agreement. Baraa explains: The collapse of the 2022…
Turning their attention away from Iran and toward another Middle Eastern hotspot, Aimen and Thomas explain the course of events in Libya since the Arab Spring. Seismic political events are underway in that sad country, which has been riven by civil war and political division for over fifteen years. They discuss: The difference between East and West Libya First Libyan Civil War: state collapse and…
In this Conflicted Conversation, Nicholas Morton discusses his new book The Crusader Storm: A Global History of the Wars for the Middle East. Associate Professor in History at Nottingham Trent University, Nicholas reframes the Crusades as one part of a much larger transformation of the medieval Middle East, driven above all by Seljuk-Turkmen expansion, Byzantine contraction, Fatimid decline and…
In this Conflicted Conversation, Justin Marozzi discusses his new book Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World. Justin traces the long, varied history of slavery in the Islamic world, arguing that slavery could sometimes offer remarkable paths to freedom and power, but that these exceptions never erased the violence of capture, ownership and…
Donald Trump has once again stepped back from a threatened major attack on Iran. So has America lost the Iran War? Or is Trump’s apparent hesitation part of a longer strategy to exhaust the Iranian regime? Aimen and Thomas discuss: Whether Iran has outmanoeuvred Trump despite America’s overwhelming military superiority Aimen’s three possible futures for the war: US withdrawal, prolonged attrition…
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thant Myint-U talks about his new book Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations and the Untold Story of the 1960s. It tells the story of his grandfather U Thant, the Burmese schoolteacher turned UN Secretary-General who guided the United Nations through some of the most dangerous crises of the 1960s, yet is now woefully forgotten or badly misremembered. Thant…
French war reporter and global jihadism expert Wassim Nasr was part of the presidential press party during Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to Damascus. He shares his first-hand account not only of what happened between Macron and Syrian president Ahmad al-Sharaa during the visit, but also what he discovered afterwards, during a trip to Aleppo and to the northern town of Kobane. Wassim and Thomas…
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas meets Laura Spinney, author of Proto: How One Language Went Global, the story of the Proto-Indo-European language and its descendants, which are spoken today by half of humanity. Laura explains: How, where, and among whom Proto-Indo-European emerged How Indo-European split into English, Hindi, Persian, Russian, Greek, Latin-derived Romance languages, Celtic,…
The MoU with Iran has broken down, war has returned to the Middle East, and so Aimen walks us through the events since the war re-ignited on 7th July. More than anything, the fighting now focuses on the Strait of Hormuz. In Iran’s eyes, it has won control of the Strait as a spoil of war. In the rest of the world’s eyes, freedom of navigation through the Strait remains a cast-iron principle of…
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, Thomas talks with Yaakov Katz, the former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post and co-author of While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East. Yaakov explains: October 7 intelligence failure and Israel’s missed warnings Hamas’s ‘Jericho Walls’ plan and ignored Unit 8200 alerts The Israeli conceptzia: why leaders…