Arab Digest podcasts

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...

Summary: on 8 December last year the regime of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was routed in a lightning offensive that had burst out of the previously besieged rebel enclave of Idlib. The offensive was spearheaded by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa known then by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start rec...

On 27 September 2024 the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in Beirut in an Israeli airstrike. Four days later Arab Digest invited the security and defence specialist Dr Andreas Krieg onto the podcast to discuss the assassination and the broader picture within the context of his study on the weaponisation of narratives. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and st...

With the appointment of a new president and the arrival of a new prime minister in early 2025 optimism among the Lebanese has grown despite a shaky ceasefire and the ever present threat of Israel Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Through July and August we are featuring our all new top ten podcasts countdown. We begin with Sanam Vakil’s Understanding Iran first podcast 8 October 2024 a week after Iran had hit Israel with ballistic missiles. The attack was in retaliation for the Israeli assassinations of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, the IRGC general Abbas Nilforoushan and the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Sign up...

Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes the defence and security analyst Andreas Krieg to the podcast to discuss the latest moves in a dangerous game that Israel and Iran are playing out while Donald Trump dances on his social media stage and Western nations join him in throwing out the rules-based order that with all its flaws provided a modicum of certainty and security for the Middle East and t...

As the limits of Donald Trump's transactional approach to foreign policy becomes all too dangerously clear Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes the Iraq expert Renad Mansour on to the podcast. With the old world order evaporating almost overnight state and non-state actors have rushed to fill the vacuum. This week's conversation reveals how in this new and emerging multi-aligned world the Middl...

With rapid change sweeping a region still in the throes of wars the Kurdish people spread across four nations see an opportunity to secure if not their dream of a nation then autonomy within national federal structures that would secure their rights and culture as a people. Arab Digest editor William Law invites the Kurdish-American journalist Sirwan Kajjo onto the podcast to discuss the possibili...

The Iran expert Sanam Vakil joins Arab Digest editor William Law to discuss the likelihood of Washington and Tehran striking a new nuclear accord. What sort of a pact will the Ayatollah and the self-proclaimed ‘dealmaker in chief’ arrive at and what will America's Gulf friends, to say nothing of the Israelis make of it? The White House has said it has put a proposal on the table. What it looks and...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the energy analyst and Digest regular contributor Alastair Newton. Their conversation focusses on how Saudi Arabia is seeking to shape oil prices and the market to meet their financial requirements as Saudi Aramco profits dip and the costs for Mohammed bin Salman's multiple giga-projects continue to be a significant drag on the kingdom's purse. S...