Arab Digest podcasts

This week's podcast looks at recent events in Yemen that have severely damaged the reputation of the UAE as a wily and pragmatic regional powerhouse. Joining Arab Digest editor William Law is the Yemen expert and author Helen Lackner. They explore the quick and humiliating defeat of the UAE-backed southern Yemen STC forces as Saudi Arabia delivered a powerful military punch that routed the secessi...

Aslı Aydıntaşbaş from Washington's Brookings Institute joins Arab Digest editor William Law for the first podcast of 2026. Barely a week in and with Donald Trump's seizure of the Venezuelan president and his wife it is already a year that has upended the old world order. Where that leaves the volatile and violent Middle East is a question their conversation grapples with. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest...

The editor's choice for 2025 is our 26 February podcast 'A small town in Lebanon' with George Kanaan. His book Beyond Lebanon's Peaks: An Odyssey is a fascinating memoir of a businessman and banker who though he has travelled the world in a storied career has never left behind Suq el-Gharb and his Levantine roots. In a wide ranging conversation he reflects on the book and on the current situation...

Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes Tarek Megerisi and Annelle Sheline to this week's podcast. Their conversation reflects on the big stories of the year just passed - those that made the headlines and those that didn't - and looks ahead at what 2026 will bring to a region beset by terrible wars and facing great uncertainty in a world turned upside down by the antics and actions of Donald Trum...

William Law's guest this week on the Arab Digest podcast is the European Council on Foreign Relations' Kelly Petillo. Their conversation focusses on three countries - Syria, Sudan and Palestine - and the challenges and obstacles they face both external and internal in managing the millions who have been displaced by years of wars. Petillo argues that Europe must step up and provide humane solution...

On 8 December last year the Syrian capital Damascus fell to rebel forces. Arab Digest editor William Law has invited Syrian analyst and writer Malik al-Abdeh on to this week's podcast to discuss how the country is faring under the leadership of its president Ahmed al-Sharaa and how outside forces remain significant players in shaping the direction Syria will take in 2026. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is Jon Hoffman from the Washington libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. Their conversation focuses on the growing rift in American right wing circles about ongoing US support for Israel. Jon Hoffman also reflects on his recent visit to Israel and the Occupied West Bank and he delivers a simple message: America walk away. Sign up NOW at ArabDig...

In 1986 Soraya Antonius published a devastatingly powerful novel about the brutality of the British Mandate in Palestine. The book quickly slipped into obscurity. But now 8 years after Antonius' death it has been rescued from oblivion and republished. William Law's guest this week is the writer Selma Dabbagh who authored the introduction to a new edition of The Lord. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org...

William Law's guest this week is Caroline Rose, an expert in tracking the production and distribution of Captagon. The fall of the Assad regime and its Captagon empire has opened up new hubs for the drug. One of those is Sudan. In a country trapped in a vicious civil war there is growing evidence that one side in the conflict, the UAE-backed RSF, is exploiting the Assad overthrow and a Captagon hu...

The arrest of the journalist and Arab Digest contributor Sami Hamdi in San Francisco is an attempt to silence criticism of Israel's genocidal war against Palestine and the Palestinians. William Law's guest this week is Hussam Ayloush the head of CAIR-LA. CAIR is the organisation that had invited our contributor to the US to speak for the Palestinian cause. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Sudanese analyst Kholood Khair. With the RSF conducting a massacre in the city of El Fasher in Darfur questions need to be asked and answered about the role the United Arab Emirates is playing in supplying weapons to the RSF. And Western governments including the UK need to bring pressure on both warring sides - the RSF and the SAF- to secure...

William Law's guest this week is Alastair Newton. In a wide ranging conversation Arab Digest's energy analyst reflects on the likelihood of a huge glut of oil on the world market, how Gulf energy producers will play their hand in the coming months, Chinese dominance in critical minerals and how that will impact on oil, the Trump factor as he announces sanctions on Russia's Rosneft and Lukoil and A...

Yemen expert Helen Lackner joins William Law in this week’s Arab Digest podcast. A country caught in a frozen war faces further threats from Israel and Emirati efforts to stymy Riyadh’s attempts to secure a peace deal that would extricate the Saudis from the quagmire in which they have been stuck for more than ten years. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving o...

Libya expert Tarek Megerisi joins William Law to discuss the plundering of the country's energy wealth by external players and foreign commercial entities aided and abetted by Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and Khalifa Haftar. As these two corrupt leaders chase wealth and strive for dominance in a fractured Libya, countries like Türkiye, Russia and the UAE seize the opportunity to entrench themselves and fur...

William Law's guest this week on the Arab Digest podcast is the Gulf analyst and author Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. As talks continue in Cairo on President Trump's 20 point plan to end the Gaza war much rides on the pressure Washington will bring to bear on the participants. Meanwhile the Gulf states watch and wonder whether Benjamin Netanyahu has replaced Iran as the gravest threat to regional sec...

William Law's guest this week is Renad Mansour director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House. With the annual Iraq Initiative conference getting underway under his leadership Renad discusses the many challenges as well as the opportunities the country faces as it strives to move forward in an uncertain and unstable neighbourhood. Details on the two day conference are found here - https://www.ch...

The Yemeni political analyst Maysaa Shuja al-Deen joins William Law as they discuss the smouldering war between the Huthis and Israel. Abdul-Malik al-Huthi has used Gaza to strengthen his iron control and to enhance his reputation as the man who stands up to Netanyahu. But with the Israelis acting with impunity the stakes grow ever higher with the Yemeni people caught between two reckless, arrogan...

The Gulf defence and security analyst Andreas Krieg joins Arab Digest's William Law as they assess implications for the Gulf States and the wider Middle East of Israel's missile strike on Doha. With Donald Trump functioning as a loyal sidekick rather than as the president of the mightiest military nation in the world Benjamin Netanyahu continues to wreak regional havoc crossing red line after red...

Arab Digest's William Law launches a new podcast season with the Sudanese political analyst Dallia Abdelmoneim. It's been more than two years since a vicious civil war between two generals erupted, one that has been aided and armed by different international players on both sides. Today Sudan is the world's worst humanitarian disaster and the world has chosen to look away. Sign up NOW at ArabDiges...

The Saudi crown prince continued to polish his image while staking his claim to leadership of the Arab and Muslim world but the issue of Palestine remains a significant challenge and a potential stumbling block to the ambitions of Mohammed bin Salman. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Both Israel and Türkiye see Syria as a prize to be grasped; for President Erdoğan as a zone of influence and economic opportunity; for the far right extremists in the Netanyahu government as an opportunity to seize territory in pursuing their vision of Greater Israel. First podcast 8 January 2025. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & we...

With the ability to attack maritime shipping in the Red Sea the Huthis threaten not just regional but international security while the Gaza war has given them a huge propaganda victory, one that would be decisively undercut should Palestinian statehood be enabled. No. 3 in our Top Ten with Elisabeth Kendall was first broadcast on 29 January 2025. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the...

In a landscape of genocide and ethnic cleansing a leading Middle East writer and analyst peels away the empty rhetoric to unflinchingly show the catastrophe that Israel has chosen to inflict upon the Palestinian people over decades while finding hope in the generation of young Arabs who have discovered their identity in the ongoing tragedy of Palestine. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to jo...

A brilliant anthology of images, essays and slang locates and embraces Arab queerness and defines the urgency of resistance to oppression, arbitrary force and to the Gaza genocide. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Just after Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate in June of last year and just before the annual NATO Summit Arab Digest invited a leading Washington-based Middle East and Türkiye analyst onto the podcast to discuss amongst other matters what a Trump presidency would mean for Türkiye and the wider Middle East region. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving...