Arab Digest podcasts

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...

Arab Digest editor William Law invites the North Africa specialist Tarek Megerisi onto this week’s podcast. The starting point for their conversation is Tarek's take on the EU's "Pact for the Mediterranean" and how a fresh approach to North Africa could shape positive outcomes in a region urgently in need of them. They explore the threat that Israel and Trump's America pose regionally as well as g...

Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes back the Levant expert Dr Lina Khatib to discuss the war in Lebanon. Dr Khatib argues that Hezbollah though significantly degraded continues to play a spoiler role and that until a solution is found that ends the Israeli-American war against Iran Lebanon will continue to suffer further collateral damage. She also argues that with the war over Israel will hav...

To discuss the current situation in Syria Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Syrian analyst Malik al-Abdeh. The leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and president of Syria Ahmed al-Sharaa has been embraced by Washington but he has faced multiple challenges, including assassination attempts, as he works to balance pressure from Israel and Türkiye with internal threats and ISIS...

The Gulf states are on the frontline of a war they worked hard to prevent. Once it began they find themselves facing a prime minister who uses permanent war to survive politically, a president who increasingly seems out of touch with reality and a regime that those two, Netanyahu and Trump, said they would replace but which has become only more hardline and more threatening. To help explain the ch...

Arab Digest editor William Law has invited two top energy analysts - the Baker Institute's Jim Krane and Arab Digest's Alastair Newton - onto the podcast to discuss the implications and the impact for energy markets as Donald Trump vows to use force to open the passage. Iran’s Gulf neighbours and the wider region wonder, as does the rest of the world, how the war will end and where markets are hea...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the conservative analyst Jon Hoffman. Amidst conflicting reports that Trump's base is or is not fracturing over the US-Israel war against Iran Jon Hoffman argues that the longer the conflict continues the greater the rift will grow between Trump's hardcore MAGA supporters who back his war and young disillusioned American Firsters who see continue...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest is the Iraqi-American writer Sinan Antoon. The podcast focusses on his latest novel which interweaves the stories of two Iraqis in America , one a retired surgeon slipping into dementia, the other a young torture survivor but their conversation also ranges into the attempt by Israel to obliterate Palestinian culture and the impact of the current Iran war on I...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest on this week's podcast is the Iran expert Sanam Vakil. As the war continues and Donald Trump flounders the Islamic regime is conducting its fight for survival with a tenacity that neither the Israelis or the Americans anticipated. Should the regime survive the majority who want change will lose but if it falls the likeliest outcome is chaos with further suffe...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Turkish analyst and writer Aslı Aydıntaşbaş. President Erdoğan's efforts to adopt a neutral stance while urging de-escalation are challenged by events on the ground and in the neighbourhood as Israel with Trump's backing moves to reshape the map of the Middle East. The Israeli tactic of using maximum kinetic force to achieve regional hegemony...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the defence and security analyst and Gulf specialist Andreas Krieg. The US/Israel war against Iran is upending security in the Gulf states and creating global anxiety and uncertainty. Donald Trump entered the war with no exit strategy. Now he and his administration are wavering. However, Benjamin Netanyahu has an end game: to create chaos in the...

Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes author and analyst Kristian Coates Ulrichsen to the podcast to talk about football in Mohammed bin Salman's Saudi Arabia. The crown prince who was an international pariah just a few years ago has rehabilitated his image using the world's most popular sport as his road back. Kristian's book, just out, is called Kingdom of Football: Saudi Arabia and the Remaki...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Sudanese researcher and policy analyst Hamid Khalafallah. It was nearly three years ago that two generals went to war and plunged the country into what has become the world's worst humanitarian disaster. Outside players such as the UAE which has armed one of the sides have played a significant role in prolonging the war and causing enormous h...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the lawyer Sara Segneri, an expert in sanctions law, war crimes and international financial crime. Israel with the support of the US, the UK and other Western governments acts with impunity as it prosecutes a genocide but as Segneri succinctly argues ignoring national and international law puts foreign investors in illegal settlements and in the...

Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes the security and energy analyst Francis Ghilès onto the podcast. With European states needing to escape their reliance on Russian gas they explore opportunities for the energy rich Maghreb countries of Libya and Algeria to meet Europe's requirements. In doing so a new relationship based on energy links could evolve but big obstacles remain on both sides of t...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Kurdish American journalist Sirwan Kajjo. With the sudden defeat of the SDF the Kurds who had hoped for autonomy are seeing those hopes evaporate. At the same time the abandonment of ISIS prisons and camps in North East Syria and the presence of their supporters in the Syrian army resurrects the spectre of a jihadist war in Syria and Iraq and...

Arab Digest editor William Law invites Sanam Vakil director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at London’s Chatham House onto the podcast to discuss the current situation in Iran. Yet again another uprising has been brutally suppressed but as its Arab neighbours breathe a sigh of relief that a war has been averted the regime itself, assailed from within and without, is severely weakened...