Arab Digest podcasts

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...

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...