Arab Digest podcasts

Arab Digest editor William Law invites the Egyptian writer Abdelrahman ElGendy onto the podcast to discuss his just released book Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison and Becoming. He was 17 when he was arrested in 2013 and spent six years in Egypt's brutal prison system. Their conversation ranges over the centrality of words and language in resistance, the imperative of liberating Palestine and t...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is Nick McGeehan director of FairSquare. Their conversation focusses not just on football and Manchester City but on the wider effort by Abu Dhabi's ruling family to destroy political Islam, a campaign that has armed a genocide in Sudan and embraced Nigel Farage's Reform UK as a useful ally. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club an...

Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the Gulf banking and finance analyst Andrew Cunningham. Their conversation focusses on the impact on Gulf financial sectors as the Iran conflict enters its eighth month and Saudi Arabia is forced back into a hot war against Yemen’s Huthis. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Arab Digest editor William Law brings the Syrian pollster and analyst Malik al-Abdeh onto this week’s podcast to talk about the pressure that Syria’s president Ahmed al-Sharaa is facing from growing protests on the economic front to the menacing presence of Israeli troops in southern Syria. Al-Abdeh argues that time is running short for the president to deliver solutions that will move the country...

The Iran expert Trita Parsi joins Arab Digest editor William Law to discuss the direction the Iran war is heading towards. With the Trump administration insisting the Iranians will buckle and capitulate and Iran standing firm will Israel take matters into its own hands, including using nuclear weapons, as Netanyahu seeks an election victory? Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club...

Arab Digest editor William Law’s guest this week is the Digest’s energy analyst Alastair Newton. With the war between the Huthis and Saudi Arabia flaring up and continued uncertainty over what steps Donald Trump will take in the Iran war the outlook remains bleak over the next several months that any relief will come on the price of crude and refined oil with the result that economic hardship will...

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is caught in a vice: US bases there are the target of Iranian missiles and influential Jordanians are calling for the removal of the bases but the US presence is part of the 1994 peace deal with Israel which is now threatening to drive Palestinians out of the West Bank and into the kingdom. Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the journalist Nour Halabi to di...

Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes the Brooking Institution’s Aslı Aydıntaşbaş as his guest this week. Their conversation focusses on the Mecca Pact, the defence deal signed by the Saudis, Pakistan and Türkiye. The pact is designed to provide security against threats from both Iran and Israel in a neighbourhood where increasingly war, rather than diplomacy, is the weapon of choice. Sign up NO...

Arab Digest editor William Law kicks off season 8 of the Arab Digest podcast with the Gulf analyst and author Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. As the war with Iran settles into no war no peace the Gulf states find themselves caught in an insecure landscape facing both Iran and Israel and unsure what President Trump will say or do from one day to the next. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join t...

Coming in at number 1 in our top five is the 6 May 2026 podcast with the North Africa analyst and ECFR visiting fellow Tarek Megerisi. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Coming in at number 2 in our top five is the 14 April 2026 podcast with the Gulf security and defence analyst Andreas Krieg. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Coming in at number 3 in our top five is the 19 May 2026 podcast with the Gulf banking and finance analyst Andrew Cunningham. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Coming in at number 4 in our top five is the 15 May 2026 podcast with Nick McGeehan, the director and co-founder of the non-profit organisation FairSquare which focuses on sport to promote systemic change and stop human rights abuses. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Today we launch our top five podcast countdown. Coming in at number 5 is our 29 April 2026 podcast with the Levant expert Dr Lina Khatib. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes the Gulf security analyst Andreas Krieg back to the podcast to discuss the ongoing escalation of the Iran-US war. Recent events have further underscored the vulnerability of the Gulf states as both sides seek to inflict damage on the other. But as he points out Iran’s pain threshold is much higher than either the Gulf states or the US. With diplomacy taking...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Gulf analyst Giorgio Cafiero. Donald Trump blundered into the Iran war. He wants to bully and bluff his way out but Iran is holding firm. This leaves the Gulf states in an increasingly vulnerable and dangerous predicament caught on the frontlines of a war they were not consulted about and never wanted. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free t...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the writer Amy Abdelnoor. Ever Land, her debut novel, explores the Palestinian resistance against Israel's brutal colonisation through the eyes of two young women. One is a murdered Palestinian, the other a Jewish teenager from North London who with her family emigrates to Israel. The seamless interweaving of their stories creates a stunning and...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Iran expert Dr Sanam Vakil. Their conversation focuses on the challenges facing any sort of a peace deal that emerges from the current talks. There are many pieces to the puzzle and a long and challenging road to finding a solution that works for the parties concerned. And then there is the missing piece to this complex puzzle: Palestine. Wit...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Syrian analyst and pollster Malik al-Abdeh. With reconstruction of a war ravaged country still not effectively under way Syria's president Ahmed al-Sharaa faces multiple challenges both from within the country and from external players including Iran which my guest argues poses an even greater threat than Israel. He also urges the government...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Iraq expert Renad Mansour. With a new prime minister in place Iraq still faces severe challenges both domestically and regionally. A country that had successfully avoided being pulled into Israel's war against Palestine has since the February 28 attack by the US and Israel been dragged into a conflict that remains unresolved and threatens its...

With the Ukraine war and the conflict in the Gulf, Algeria finds itself well placed to benefit economically. So Arab Digest editor William Law asked the North Africa and Western Mediterranean energy and security analyst Francis Ghilès to talk about how Algeria can exploit the opportunities and whether a country facing structural economic challenges can get past those challenges to realise the wind...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Quincy Institute's Annelle Sheline. Their conversation explores the damage that the Iran war is doing to Donald Trump's MAGA base and what the casual and contemptuous manner in which he treats his Gulf allies will mean for present and future relations with the GCC as Netanyahu strives to further exploit the president's guileless acceptance th...

William Law, editor of the Arab Digest newsletter, welcomes the Egyptian political and economic analyst Maged Mandour on to this week's podcast. Their conversation focusses on the trap that Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has built for himself and his country. With America, the UAE and Israel determined to reshape the Arab world to fit their own purposes Sisi is caught in a debt trap with t...

Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes the Gulf banking and finance analyst Andrew Cunningham onto the podcast to talk about the extent to which the Iran war is impacting the economies of the GCC states. They discuss the metrics used to measure economic damage and explore just how quickly Gulf economies can rebound once the war has ended. Given that the regime in Tehran has survived and will cont...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week on the podcast is the analyst and rights expert Nick McGeehan. The subject is football and how the owner of Manchester City FC is the subject of a complaint about his relationship with the Rapid Support Forces conducting a genocidal campaign as the Sudan civil war rages. Their conversation also explores FIFA's response to issues raised by the Palest...