Arab Digest podcasts

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Washington-based CEO of Gulf State Analytics, Giorgio Cafiero. When Joe Biden arrived in Tel Aviv on 12 July this year he said "you don't need to be a Jew to be a Zionist." The podcast examines the president's unwavering support for Israel in the face of the IDF's continuing onslaught on the people of Gaza and considers other critical US poli...

While the war in Gaza rages on, little thought is being given to the impact it is having on refugees across the Middle East and North Africa. Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the European Council on Foreign Relations Kelly Petillo. She discusses efforts by extremists in the Netanyahu government to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, examines the impact of the war on refu...

Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the historian Avi Shlaim to talk about his latest book Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew. Professor Shlaim was just five when he and his family left a comfortable middle-class life in Baghdad for the newly emerging state of Israel. It was a country, he argues, that was dominated then, as it is now, by the politics and Zionist ideology of European Jewr...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the North Africa analyst Tarek Megerisi. While the world has been focussed on the Gaza war competing kleptocrats in Libya have gotten on with plundering the country while Europe and the rest of the international community look away and the UN fumbles opportunities to move the country and its people toward security and peace. We begin, however, wi...

Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by regular AD newsletter and podcast contributor Maged Mandour. His book Egypt under El-Sisi: a Nation on the Edge will be published by I.B. Tauris 25 January and is the subject of today's conversation. Maged tracks Sisi's trajectory since orchestrating the 2013 coup that overthrew Mohammed Morsi and he argues that the Egyptian president is a dictator unlik...

Lina Khatib the director of the Middle East Institute at London's SOAS joins Arab Digest editor William Law to discuss how the Gaza war is impacting Lebanon. With its economy in ruins and the government paralysed the last thing Lebanon needs is for the war to spill over. But with Iran-backed Hezbollah the dominant force and Israel continuing its strikes into the country the threat remains high tha...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Turkish analyst and writer Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC. Their conversation focusses on the efforts that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made to position himself as a leading voice in resolving the Gaza war, efforts that have thus far backfired badly for him. Sign up NOW at ArabDig...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest is the analyst and commentator Sami Hamdi, editor in chief of The International Interest (intlinterest.com). As Israel continues to bomb the Gaza Strip, Middle East regimes are scrambling to come up with responses that both accommodate Israel and respond to popular support for Palestinians amidst concerns in some countries that street protests in support of P...

Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by Jon Alterman, a senior vice president at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Jon brings to the table insights into President Biden's handling thus far of the Gaza-Israel war and argues that Israel's military battering of Gaza offers no long-term solutions that will bring about security for Israel and end the suffering of t...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest is the British-Arab writer Layla Maghribi. Like many citizens of Arab descent in the UK and Europe Layla speaks out in defence of Palestinians as the bombardment of Gaza continues and civilian casualties continue to mount. And as she speaks she voices the fear that many Arabs feel that they are no longer safe in their own countries as their leaders give Israe...

Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the defence and security analyst Andreas Krieg, author of Subversion: the strategic weaponization of narratives. Their conversation explores how prevailing narratives in the Gaza - Israel war are driving the region and the world into an evermore dangerously lethal situation even as civilian casualties continue to mount and Israel prepares for a land inva...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Kurdish writer and academic Choman Hardi. A distinguished poet, Choman has just had her debut novel Whispering Walls published by Afsana Press. It is an absorbing and powerful account of an Iraqi Kurdish family grappling, on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with their own history, entangled as it is with the history of the Kurds as a peo...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the energy analyst Alastair Newton. Alastair, a regular contributor to the AD newsletter, takes a long hard look at the way the future of oil is playing out in the Gulf. Peak oil is coming and it may be sooner than Gulf oil producers think. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are the key players and between the two Alastair examines who is better prepared a...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Yemen expert Helen Lackner. In a wide-ranging conversation they look at the situation on the ground, how negotiations between the Saudis and the Huthis are progressing, the role the UAE is playing in the south and the acute humanitarian situation as leaders of various factions inside the country and outside players jostle while the people con...

William Law's guest this week on the AD podcast is the Libyan analyst Anas El Gomati. As the warlord Khalifa Haftar and his sons spin a web of deceit and attempt to shirk responsibility for the massive flood that killed thousands, El Gomati strips away their lies to reveal how the Haftars' greed and incompetence are at the heart of the disaster and how the support of foreign players has enabled th...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is Renad Mansour, a Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme and the Project Director of the Iraq Initiative at London’s Chatham House. Their conversation ranges widely, looking at the current government in place for nearly a year, the continuing role of Iran, what needs to happen to curb the corruption throttling the country a...

Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the Middle East policy analyst Jon Hoffman from the Washington-based Cato Institute. Hoffman argues that Biden and his advisors are poised to make the gravest foreign policy blunder in the region since the Iraq war as the president pushes forward on securing a deal that would see Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords and recognise Israel. Sign up NOW at...

Reinventing the Sheikdom: how MbZ has shaped the UAE Top of our New Top Ten Podcast Countdown is our 1 July, 2022 podcast with Matthew Hedges. Matthew is an academic focusing on authoritarian regimes with an emphasis on the monarchies of the Gulf states. He's the author of Reinventing the Sheikhdom: Clan, Power and Patronage in Mohammed bin Zayed’s UAE published last year by Hurst. Sign up NOW at...

The MbZ and Erdoğan embrace Number 2 in our NEW Top Ten Podcast Countdown is our 18 February 2022 podcast with Sami Hamdi, Editor in Chief of the International Interest and a regular Arab Digest newsletter and podcast contributor. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Today’s New Top Ten entry is our 8 July 2022 podcast with Maged Mandour. Maged is a political analyst and a regular contributor to Arab Digest and to Middle East Eye and Open Democracy. He is also a writer for Sada, the Carnegie Endowment online journal. Maged is the author of an upcoming book, Egypt Under Sisi (I.B.Tauris) which will examine the social and political developments in Egypt since th...

Number 4 in our new Top Ten is our 9 September 2022 podcast with Dr Elisabeth Kendall. Dr Kendall is an expert on Yemen and militant jihadist movements. Prior to her appointment as Mistress  of Girton College, Cambridge University she was a senior research fellow in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Oxford University's Pembroke College. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start...

America and the Kais Saied coup Number 5 in our new Top Ten is our 11 March 2022 podcast with Amy Hawthorne. At the time Amy was the Deputy Director of Research at POMED, the Project on Middle East Democracy in Washington, DC. She is a Middle East expert with many years of experience working on Arab politics and US Middle East policy in the NGO sector and think tanks and in the State Department du...

Iraq in a suddenly changed world Our 25 February podcast was with Renad Mansour, a Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East and North Africa program and project director of the Iraq Initiative at  London’s Chatham House.  It was recorded a little less than a month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newslette...

Macron’s missteps in the Middle East Francis Ghilès is a specialist on security, energy and political trends in North Africa, and the western Mediterranean. He's a Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs and a visiting fellow at King's College London. The podcast was first broadcast 28 January 2022 ahead of the French presidential election in April. Sign...

The UK’s declining status in the Middle East Amidst domestic political uncertainty and a lack of coherent policy formulation in the autumn of 2022 the UK found its presence in the Gulf and the wider Middle East in danger of slipping further into decline. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.