UNAPOLOGETIC with Ashfaaq Carim

We sat down with Andreas Krieg for the fourth time on UNAPOLOGETIC, this time in the aftermath of the war on Iran, to ask what it has done to the balance of power across the Middle East. His answer is stark: this is the most fundamental shift in regional order in thirty years, and it has undone the American empire in a way he does not think it can recover from. We get into why the Gulf no longer b...

"Now Netanyahu has failed. Iran was not broken. Arab countries now realise that relying on Israel is a death sentence." In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, we sat down in studio with Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian physician, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative and co-founder of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. Barghouti argues that Israel's two strategic goals, imperial domination of...

Laleh Khalili is a professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter and the author of Sinews of War and Trade and Extractive Capitalism. She is also Iranian-American, with family members displaced by the current war, a scholar with both the expertise and the personal stakes to speak to this moment with rare authority. In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, Ashfaaq Carim sits down with Khalili to un...

Cenk Uygur, founder of The Young Turks, was banned from entering the UK hours before this conversation - blocked by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood for criticising Israel. We speak to him live about what his ban indicates about the West's accelerating collapse, how governments are criminalising dissent on behalf of a foreign state, and whether the freedoms the West claims to stand for are already s...

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, we sit down with Daniel Trilling - journalist and author of If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable. We discuss who is actually responsible for the rise of the far right and how dangerous the global far right rise could be for freedoms across the globe. From Trump's assault on democratic institutions to Orban gutting Hungar...

UNAPOLOGETIC spoke to Errol Musk, father of Elon Musk, and the result is a conversation is an interesting foray into where ideology is formed and where it is inherited. Errol traces his journey from post-war poverty to building a life of considerable wealth and takes credit for funding the very first company Elon and Kimball started in 1995. But it is his views on race, politics and identity that...

"Palestinians are just the canvas upon which the Jewish psychodrama takes place." Simone Zimmerman, co-founder of IfNotNow and subject of the documentary Israelism, joins UNAPOLOGETIC to examine how Israel's genocide in Gaza has reshaped Jewish identity and politics. Simone traces her own journey from committed Zionist to anti-Zionist activist, describing the personal and communal ruptures that fo...

In this episode of Unapologetic, Hassan Ahmadian, political scientist at the University of Tehran, argues that US-Israeli aggression may inadvertently bring Iran, Turkey and the Arab world closer together. Ahmadian explains why Iran views every negotiation with Washington through the lens of betrayal, and why Tehran sees caving to Trump and Netanyahu as a worse outcome than war itself. He also exp...

"If you go to China, you'll never ever see the world in the same way again. Never." In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, Martin Jacques, author of the million-copy bestseller When China Rules the World, makes the case that China has already eclipsed the United States as the world's leading power, and that the West still fundamentally doesn't understand why. This episode explores China's identity as a...

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, we speak to Mohsen Kadivar - Iranian scholar, Shia mujtahid, dissident cleric, and former political prisoner - about the Islamic Republic, its origins, and its contradictions. Kadivar offers a rare insider critique of Iran: opposing US imperialism and Israeli aggression, while also challenging the authoritarianism of the Islamic Republic from within Shia theology i...

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, Norman Finkelstein unpacks the aftermath of the US–Iran war, beginning with the ceasefire and what it actually reveals about both sides. He argues there was no clear victory, before tracing the deeper roots of US strategy toward Iran over decades. The conversation explores Donald Trump’s highly personalised decision-making, the role Israel played in tipping the bal...

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, historian Abdallah Marouf connects the dots between the closure of Al-Aqsa, Israel’s ultra-right, Pete Hegseth, the dangerously expanding war in Iran, and the belief in a coming Messiah. He explains how a once-marginal religious Zionist movement now holds real political power in Israel, and how its vision of rebuilding the Temple and hastening the Messiah is shapin...

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, Mamoun Fandy, former professor of politics at Georgetown University and current head of the Global Strategy Institute in London, breaks down the escalating conflict involving Israel, the United States, and Iran. He argues this is not one war, but three overlapping wars, each with its own logic: regime change, regional dominance, and economic pressure. Together, the...

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, Rabbi Elhanan Beck delivers one of the most striking critiques of Zionism and the current Israeli-US wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, you'll hear. He argues that, according to the Torah, the state of Israel has no right to exist, and goes further—describing Benjamin Netanyahu as “Amalek,” a force that pulls people away from God. The Rabbi also claims that if necess...

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC , Dr. Roy Casagranda unpacks 125 years of Iranian history - from the 1901 oil concession and the fall of the Qajar dynasty, to the rise of the Pahlavis, the 1953 CIA-backed coup, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Iran–Iraq War, and the emergence of the IRGC, the reform movement in Iran and the JCPOA. He then connects this history to the present moment - where a US-Is...

Neil Quilliam, who is a political analyst at Chatham House, joined the UNAPOLOGETIC podcast to discuss how Israel is plunging the USA, the GCC and Iran into an all-out war. By continuing to kill credible leaders and hit key economic infrastructure in Iran, it is diminishing the opportunity for this war to end via a settled compromise, and antagonising Iran to lash out with retaliatory strikes agai...

David Hearst, editor in chief of Middle East Eye, appeared on the UNAPOLOGETIC podcast to discuss how Donald Trump may be losing control of the war he started against Iran. When will the war end? Will Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump achieve their goals? What will happen to the Iranian government? What is the future of relations between the GCC and Iran? Could the conflict escalate into a regional war...

Foad Izadi is a professor of communication at Tehran University. He has been making the rounds across broadcasters recently where he generally conveys the Iranian government’s position. He spoke to UNAPOLOGETIC to discuss the rationale behind Iran’s defence strategy, how he sees Iranian society rallying behind the Iranian state under this attack, the legacy of US-Iranian relations, Iran’s own exer...

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, we speak to foreign policy analyst Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute about how long the US-Israel war on Iran will likely last and what its consequences will likely be. The conversation examines Iran’s incentives to keep fighting, Trump’s political calculations, pressure from Gulf states, Netanyahu's opportunism, and how powers like China and Russia may respond i...

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, we speak to writer and activist Hoda Katebi about the war involving Iran, the United States and Israel, and the complex political forces shaping Iran’s future. Katebi argues that the Iranian government is deeply repressive, but also warns that foreign intervention by the US and Israel risks strengthening that repression rather than weakening it. She explains why ma...

Gulf security expert Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at King’s College London, joined the UNAPOLOGETIC podcast to discuss Iran’s response to the US-Israel war against it and the potential ramifications of it.

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, we speak to writer, historian, and lifelong anti-imperialist Tariq Ali about the state of the US empire in an increasingly unstable world. From Trump’s erratic posture on Iran to the long arc of American imperial power, Ali places today’s crises in a deep historical context—stretching from Iran in 1953 to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Gaza. The conversation examine...

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, retired UK major general Charlie Herbert reflects on 34 years of military service, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and explains how those experiences shaped his views on Israel, Western power, and why he now calls Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide. Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:30 Military Silence Explained 11:30 Gaza And Genocide 22:00 Strategic Failure Israel 33:00 Ira...

Andreas Krieg - a leading Gulf security expert - joined the UNAPOLOGETIC episode once again. This time, Andreas tried to unpack for us just how impactful the Saudi-UAE cold war is, why it is occurring and what and where are the fault lines of their differences. And what this cold war means for the USA, Israel, Iran and other actors in the region. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim Chapters 00...

Brazilian activist and one of the organisers of the Global Sumud Flotilla Thiago Avila joins UNAPOLOGETIC. He recounts his detention by Israeli forces after being aboard one of the flotilla boats intercepted by Israel in international waters while en route to break the siege of Gaza. Avila describes the moments leading up to the interception at sea and his arrest, and details the conditions he and...