CONFLICTED
An ex-Al Qaeda jihadi turned MI6 spy and a former monk turned filmmaker have been embedded at the heart of conflicts in the Middle East. Together Aimen Dean and Thomas Small unpack the realities of war, fundamentalism and their global implications through first-hand experience.
Episodes
Globalisation Made Global Jihad Possible
In this week’s Conflicted Conversation, UCL associate professor Philip Cunliffe makes a provocative case: far from being polar opposites, global Islamism and American unipolarity were born of the same globalised order. But what happens when that order starts to fall apart? And is today’s rising New Left inadvertently fighting to save the liberal-imperial system it says it wants to destroy?
For de
Saudi Arabia’s Yemen Disaster
Every region-watcher was stunned over past week as the anti-Houthi forces in Yemen suffered an extremely brutal reversal—with global consequences. Aimen lifts up the curtain of inter-Gulf politics to help Thomas understand better what went wrong, and why Saudi Arabia's confused foreign policy may deserve the lion's share of the blame.
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Re-Interrogating 9/11: A 25th Anniversary Debate
To commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Aimen and Thomas take a deeper, wider look at the historical, ideological, and geopolitical context on either side of that momentous world-changing event.
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Aimen and Thomas discuss:
Was 9/11 an ending as well as a begin
The End of the Nation State?
Where did the nation-state come from—and what happens if the conditions that made it powerful are now disappearing?
Thomas discusses these questions and much more in this wide-ranging Conflicted Conversation with award-winning novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta, whose new book After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order sets out to explain where our world order came from and where it
The Battle for Taiwan
In this Conflicted Conversation, journalist Chris Horton talks about his new book Ghost Nation: The Story of Taiwan and Its Struggle for Survival.
Chris explains:
Why China wants Taiwan and why the island is vital to control of the western Pacific.
Taiwan’s strategic position in the First Island Chain between China, Japan and the Philippines.
How a Chinese invasion, blockade or maritime
Trump's Strangulation Strategy
Aimen's prediction on 4 August came true, and in the intervening weeks the United States have ramped up the economic pressure on the Iranian regime. The question is: how with the IRGC react? The war re-escalated over the weekend, and as the Iranian people began to make their feelings felt, all indications are that peace is farther away than ever.
Aimen and Thomas discuss:
Operation Economic O
Simon Sebag Montefiore: How the Modern Middle East Was Made
In this Conflicted Conversation, Simon Sebag Montefiore returns to the show, this time to talk about his new book The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East.
Simon explains:
How Britain and France tried — and often failed — to shape the post-Ottoman Middle East
Why Sykes–Picot is a misleading shorthand for the region’s modern borders
How Atatürk, Nasser and other Middle Eastern
The Rise of the Offshore World
In this Conflicted Conversation, Ian Kumekawa (a fellow of Harvard University and a lecturer at MIT) talks about his book Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Ship.
Ian explains:
The offshore global economy: where loopholes, ships and responsibility slip beyond ordinary jurisdiction
From Little Toot to rusting barges: how industrial capitalism lost its confident postwar wor
The Battle for Yemen Begins Again
Yemeni researcher and political analyst Baraa Shiban (and dear friend of the show) is back not only to give us an update on Yemen now that the civil war (and Saudi Arabia’s role in it) are heating up again, but also to give Thomas a much-deserved dressing down for not going far enough to hold Jeremy Hunt to account for his role in the Stockholm Agreement.
Baraa explains:
The collapse of the 2
Libya: The Return of the Arab Strongman?
Turning their attention away from Iran and toward another Middle Eastern hotspot, Aimen and Thomas explain the course of events in Libya since the Arab Spring. Seismic political events are underway in that sad country, which has been riven by civil war and political division for over fifteen years.
They discuss:
The difference between East and West Libya
First Libyan Civil War: state colla
The Crusades: What Was Really Going On?
In this Conflicted Conversation, Nicholas Morton discusses his new book The Crusader Storm: A Global History of the Wars for the Middle East.
Associate Professor in History at Nottingham Trent University, Nicholas reframes the Crusades as one part of a much larger transformation of the medieval Middle East, driven above all by Seljuk-Turkmen expansion, Byzantine contraction, Fatimid decline and t
Slavery and Islam: The Whole Story
In this Conflicted Conversation, Justin Marozzi discusses his new book Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World.
Justin traces the long, varied history of slavery in the Islamic world, arguing that slavery could sometimes offer remarkable paths to freedom and power, but that these exceptions never erased the violence of capture, ownership and exploit
Will America Cut and Run?
Donald Trump has once again stepped back from a threatened major attack on Iran. So has America lost the Iran War? Or is Trump’s apparent hesitation part of a longer strategy to exhaust the Iranian regime?
Aimen and Thomas discuss:
Whether Iran has outmanoeuvred Trump despite America’s overwhelming military superiority
Aimen’s three possible futures for the war: US withdrawal, prolonged at
U Thant: The Diplomat Who Defined the 1960s
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thant Myint-U talks about his new book Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations and the Untold Story of the 1960s. It tells the story of his grandfather U Thant, the Burmese schoolteacher turned UN Secretary-General who guided the United Nations through some of the most dangerous crises of the 1960s, yet is now woefully forgotten or badly misremembered.
Thant expla
Wassim Nasr: My Inside Account of Macron’s Syria Visit
French war reporter and global jihadism expert Wassim Nasr was part of the presidential press party during Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to Damascus. He shares his first-hand account not only of what happened between Macron and Syrian president Ahmad al-Sharaa during the visit, but also what he discovered afterwards, during a trip to Aleppo and to the northern town of Kobane.
Wassim and Thomas d
Indo-European: The Language Family That Went Global
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas meets Laura Spinney, author of Proto: How One Language Went Global, the story of the Proto-Indo-European language and its descendants, which are spoken today by half of humanity.
Laura explains:
How, where, and among whom Proto-Indo-European emerged
How Indo-European split into English, Hindi, Persian, Russian, Greek, Latin-derived Romance languages,
Iran Will Never Give Up Hormuz
The MoU with Iran has broken down, war has returned to the Middle East, and so Aimen walks us through the events since the war re-ignited on 7th July.
More than anything, the fighting now focuses on the Strait of Hormuz. In Iran’s eyes, it has won control of the Strait as a spoil of war. In the rest of the world’s eyes, freedom of navigation through the Strait remains a cast-iron principle of int
How Netanyahu Failed to Prevent October 7
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, Thomas talks with Yaakov Katz, the former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post and co-author of While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East.
Yaakov explains:
October 7 intelligence failure and Israel’s missed warnings
Hamas’s ‘Jericho Walls’ plan and ignored Unit 8200 alerts
The Israeli conceptzia: why
Ben Hodges: Russia Can Be Defeated
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, Thomas talks with retired US lieutenant general Ben Hodges, former commanding general of US Army Europe. Drawing on his experience at the heart of NATO’s military leadership, Hodges explains:
His proposed path to Ukrainian victory
Ukraine’s deep strikes on Russian oil and gas infrastructure
Ukraine’s campaign to isolate and recover Crimea
Why Ho
Syria Turns Another Corner (Conflicted Revisited)
As Aimen works hard to uncover the truth of what's going on in the region now that the MoU has been torn to shreds — or so it seems — and in recognition of Syria being taken off the State Sponsor of Terrorism list, we are rerunning this episode from last year where Aimen tells the story of his nephew who joined the jihad against the Assad regime.
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Guns, Greed and the Making of Modernity
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas discusses the true foundations of modernity with Clifton Crais, author of The Killing Age: How Violence Made the Modern World.
Clifton explains:
The Mortecene as an alternative to the Anthropocene
Why global violence accelerated after 1750
How firearms destabilised traditional political orders
The role of credit and debt in expanding slavery
Undiscovered: The Battle of Qala-i-Jangi
In this special episode, we bring you an exclusive audio episode of ‘Undiscovered’ the new YouTube-first documentary series from Conflicted’s executive producer and Message Heard founder, Jake Warren.
Jake sits down with the legendary journalist Robert Young Pelton to discuss the infamous battle of Qala-i-Jangi, which he experienced first hand, and how it changed the war on terror forever.
In th
The Bastard Children of Neoliberalism
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas sweats his way through a personally revealing exchange with Quinn Slobodian, Professor of International History at Boston University and the author of Hayek’s Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right.
Quinn explains:
Friedrich Hayek’s “knowledge problem” and his defence of markets over central planning.
Hayek’s later theory of cultural ev
The Middle East’s AI Arms Race
As the Middle East wakes up to an unnerving new normal following the signing of the M.O.U., Aimen and Thomas turn their attention to something truly cutting edge: the AI Arms Race that is rapidly transforming the Gulf into the front lines of a truly global U.S.-China confrontation.
Aimen and Thomas discuss:
Iran’s drone attacks on Gulf data centres.
AI in missile defence and military targe
The Betrayal of the Iranian People
In this Conflicted Conversation, Yeganeh Torbati, the Iran correspondent for the New York Times, discusses her excellent new book Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran.
Yeganeh explains how:
The 1979 revolution promised justice but created clerical authoritarianism.
Islamic law was subordinated to preservation of the supreme leader.
Institutions created to help the poor be
Video Games: The Global Battleground of Modern Politics
In this Conflicted Conversation, George Osborn draws on his excellent new book Power Play: Video Games, Politics and the Battle for Global Influence to reveal the hidden political power of video games.
Once dismissed as a niche hobby, gaming has become one of the largest social environments ever created: a vast digital third space where billions of people form identities, build communities, and i
Memorandum of Misunderstanding
In the wake of the recently published Memorandum of Understanding between the White House and the Iranian regime, Aimen and Thomas explore what the MoU means and reflect on everything they got wrong about the Iran War.
They discuss:
How the MoU is a strategic lifeline for the Islamic Republic
How it legitimises Iran’s proxy network, from Hezbollah to the Houthis
How billions in frozen I
Israel’s Road to Endless War
Elizabeth Tsurkov returns for another Conflicted Conversation. This time, the conversation turns to Israel after October 7th. Elizabeth traces her own political journey from the Israeli right to a hard-won humanism, then explains how Israel’s old security doctrine collapsed — and why the new one may lead not to safety, but to permanent war.
Elizabeth and Thomas discuss:
Israel’s security doct
Has Trump Lost the Middle East?
Aimen returns to bring us up to date on all the latest manoeuvrings in the Middle East.
Aimen and Thomas discuss:
Trump’s chaotic, micromanaged Iran diplomacy and reliance on inexperienced “real estate” advisers.
Pakistan, Qatar, Oman, Turkey, and Egypt as flawed or compromised mediators with “skin in the game.”
Why Aimen thinks Switzerland would be the proper neutral US–Iran mediator.
The West Bank Is Reaching Breaking Point
Hamza Abu Howidy returns for another Conflicted Conversation. Last time he appeared, he told us his personal story of growing up in Hamas-ruled Gaza, how he was imprisoned and tortured by Hamas for speaking out against their oppression, and how he entered into exile in Germany just before the 7 October attacks changed everything.
This time he switches from Gaza to the West Bank, telling Thomas al
My Road to Conflicted (with Jake Warren)
Because Aimen is still away, we’re taking this opportunity to introduce you all to our executive producer Jake Warren. A journalist and programme-maker, Jake not only had the idea for Conflicted, he is also the founder of Message Heard, the company that produces the show.
Jake and Thomas discuss:
Conflicted’s origin story
Jake’s Hungarian-Jewish grandfather who escaped on the Kindertranspo
Jeremy Hunt: Democracy’s Defeat Is Not Inevitable
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, Thomas talks with Tory MP Sir Jeremy Hunt. Over fourteen years of Conservative government, Hunt served as Culture Secretary, Health Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. But in this discussion, Jeremy draws especially on his eventful year running the Foreign Office to argue against Western defeatism and to make the case for liberal d
The Madman Theory from Nixon to Trump
Is Donald Trump mad? Or is he a practitioner of the Madman Theory — and therefore not mad at all?
James D. Boys, author of U.S. Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory: From Nixon to Trump, argues that the Madman Theory is not madness, but the performance of madness: a tactic by which a sane leader feigns irrationality to make an adversary believe there is even a one percent chance of overwhelmi
The UAE’s OPEC Withdrawal & Trump’s Wartime Dilemma
Aimen is back with a huge amount of behind-the-scenes information on what’s been happening in the Middle East in the past three weeks—especially on the real reasons the UAE withdrew from OPEC, and what’s been going on inside Donald Trump’s head as he tries to chart a course to victory in the Iran War.
Aimen and Thomas discuss:
The recent discovery of HUGE shale oil reserves in the UAE
The
Utopia or Dystopia? The Truth About Jewish-Muslim History
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas talks to Marc David Baer, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics, about his new book Children of Abraham: The Story of Jewish-Muslim Relations.
Marc discusses:
The recent stabbing in Golders Green, North London
The myth of utopian co-existence and the counter-myth of total antagonism
The earliest encounters of Jews
Mali’s Crisis is Not What it Seems
As we eagerly await Aimen’s return to Conflicted next week, today Wassim Nasr returns to the show. As only Wassim can, he draws on his expertise of the Sahel to explain the remarkable events in Mali over the past several weeks — events which Aimen forecast on the show back in January.
Wassim explains:
France’s failed counterterrorism strategy in Mali
JNIM’s emergence from AQIM and local in
Sir Vince Cable: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas talks to Sir Vince Cable, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats in the UK, about his new book Eclipsing the West: China, India and the forging of a new world.
Sir Vince discusses:
Postcolonial state-building, development economics, and his formative experiences in Kenya
Globalisation, financialisation, and the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis
Iraq: Anatomy of a Broken State
Aimen's in the thick of it this week so isn't able to appear on the show. Sitting in for him is Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli researcher and analyst, and a doctoral student at Princeton University. During field research in Iraq in 2023, she was kidnapped by Kata'ib Hezbollah and held in captivity for over two years, suffering torture and solitary confinement.
In what we hope will be the fi
The CIA: What is It For?
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to journalist Tim Weiner about his new history of the CIA in the 21st century, The Mission, and about the enduring tension between intelligence gathering and covert action. Drawing on four decades of reporting, Weiner argues that the CIA’s greatest failures arise when it abandons its core purpose of understanding the world in favour of trying to chang
The Problem of President Trump
Thomas expresses his growing conviction that President Trump has utterly mishandled the Iran War, while Aimen describes: how the final, fatal phase of the Islamabad peace talks was a utter humiliation for Trump; what's going on inside the heads of GCC leaders regarding the White House's leadership; and the Islamic Republic's new delay tactics.
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Jack Carr: My Journey Through America’s Long War
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to bestselling novelist and historian Jack Carr. A former Navy SEAL sniper, Carr talks about his phenomenal book Targeted: Beirut: The 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing and the Untold Origin Story of the War on Terror as well as his upcoming novel The Fourth Option.
Jack describes:
His path from childhood fascination with war to becoming a U.S. Navy S
The Power Struggle Inside Iran
Aimen describes the counter-coup which has taken place inside the Islamic Republic against Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, the key to understanding the failure of the Islamabad peace talks.
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The True Origins of Modern Terrorism
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to journalist Jason Burke about his new book The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s.
Jason explains:
Why the origins of modern terrorism lie earlier than the Afghan jihad of the 1980s
The global revolutionary ferment of the 1960s and 70s
Why early terrorist attacks were often designed to attract attention rat
America Blockades Iran
After the peace talks in Islamabad fail as expected, the United States adopts Plan B: a complete blockade of all Iranian maritime trade. Aimen explains this latest move in the Iran War.
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Iran War: Will the Ceasefire Hold?
Aimen does his best to explain the sudden and somewhat unexpected ceasefire between the United States and Iran which was announced early on Tuesday.
Aimen and Thomas discuss:
Pakistan's role: what game are they playing?
Russia's delicate balancing act between Iran and the GCC
How GCC leaders cope with President Trump's erratic shifts in messaging and policy
Did Netanyahu know about
How Money Laundering Took Over the World
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to journalist Oliver Bollough about his illuminating new book Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won.
Oliver and Thomas discuss:
Iranian oil money flowing into London property
Russian oligarch wealth parked in Western banks
Al Capone to Miami: evolution of money laundering
Jeffrey Epstein and elite financial fixers n
Why Freedom Failed in Syria
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to journalist and author Anand Gopal about his wonderful new book Days of Love and Rage, a profoundly moving and intellectually stimulating history of the Syrian revolution told from the perspective of the northern town of Manbij.
Anand and Thomas discuss:
Anand's first-hand witnessing of 9/11
How Anand embedded with the Taliban
Revolution
IRGC Sleeper Cells: The Inside Story
As all sides in the Iran War escalate their attacks, another spectre looms on the horizon: Iran-backed sleeper cell agents across the world launching terrorist attacks against strategic assets — including in the West. Aimen opens the lid on this little-known dimension of the IRGC's activity.
Aimen and Thomas discuss:
How the U.S. will deal with the problem of Bandar Abbas before launching an
Can Lebanon Ever Be Free of Hezbollah?
Aimen's back after a few days away uncovering the secret info and true motivations behind the Iran War.
Today he and Thomas focus on the Lebanon front in the war, telling the story of how the Lebanese state was progressively undermined over several decades, as non-state actors acted like a cancer on the body politic — with the largest tumour being, of course, Hezbollah.
Aimen and Thomas discuss
When Will Iran Play the Houthi Card?
Aimen has been called away for important last-minute insider meetings, so sitting in for him on today's episode is Nadwa Al-Dawsari, veteran researcher, conflict analyst, and policy advisor with 20 years of field experience in Yemen and the broader Middle East.
Nadwa and Thomas discuss:
How Yemeni tribalism really works
The IRGC agents who are in control of Houthi war policy
Houthi esc
Capitalism Is Not What You Think
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to Harvard professor Sven Beckert about his new book Capitalism: A Global History.
Sven explains:
Why the history of capitalism matters for understanding the present
How most histories of capitalism are too Eurocentric
How merchant communities in the medieval Muslim world and other regions laid the foundations of capitalism
How European
The Strait of Hormuz and Kharg Island: How America Intends to Win This War
All eyes are on the Strait of Hormuz and Kharg Island as the United States and its allies struggle to wrest full control of the Arabo-Persian Gulf from the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Aimen and Thomas lay out the whole story of this geostrategically vital region, from ancient times all the way up to this very morning—explaining why this war is happening, and how it is almost certainly to end.
Aim
Iran: The Long Road to War
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks with Ali Ansari, Professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of St Andrews.
Prof. Ansari discusses:
The depth and antiquity of Iranian culture
His childhood experiences inside the Shah's inner circle
The Shah's biggest mistake
How the revolution could have better built upon what it inherited
The huge incompetence and cor
Who is Iran's New Supreme Leader and What Does He Believe?
Iran has chosen its new Supreme Leader: Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the recently assassinated Ayatollah Khamenei. Who is he? What does he believe? And most importantly, is his coming to power the fulfilment of ancient prophecy?
Aimen and Thomas discuss:
Mojtaba's youth and his experience fighting in the Iran-Iraq War as a 17 year old
How he became his father's primary gatekeeper, and how he u
The Iran War: British Uncertainty vs. French Resolve
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to two friends of the show about how Europe is responding to the war with Iran. In the first half, the Rt Hon Tom Tugendhat MP — former chair of the UK Foreign Affairs Select Committee and former UK Security Minister — discusses Britain’s confused response to the conflict, and in the second half, French journalist Wassim Nasr explains France’s positio
The Death of Ayatollah Khamenei & The Future of Iran
With missiles streaking across Middle Eastern skies and the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader sending shockwaves through the region, Aimen joins Thomas from a Dubai under fire to unpack a historic turning point.
They discuss:
Iran’s unprecedented drone and missile strikes across the GCC and Israel
Life under bombardment in Dubai and the regional military response
The assassination
🚨 Emergency Episode: The Iran War Has Begun 🚨
In this very special Emergency Episode, Aimen and Thomas discuss the Iran War, which began this morning with wide-ranging air strikes carried out by Israel and the United States against IRGC and Iranian regime targets, and which almost immediately resulted in Iranian counter-strikes against seven states in the region — including in Dubai, where Aimen lives.
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African Slavery: The Untold Story
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to former BBC journalist Martin Plaut about his new book Unbroken Chains: A 5,000-Year History of African Enslavement, which tells the whole story of African slavery, a story far older and more global than the one that focuses only on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Martin explains:
How Africa’s slavery story begins in the Nile Valley around 2900
Conflicted Revisited: Spying for Saudi
As Saudi Arabia celebrates Founding Day, and as the murky underbelly of GCC geopolitics is on everyone's minds, we're re-releasing this classic Conflicted episode from early 2022.
Thomas & Aimen discuss:
The deep history of Arabia
The first foundations of Saudi Arabia
The transition from British to American dominance in the Middle East
Aimen’s family history within the British imperi
The People Who Became Arabs
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to historian Yossef Rapoport about his new book Becoming Arab, and the revolutionary argument at its heart: that Arab identity in Egypt and the Levant was not the result of mass migration from Arabia, but was forged in the medieval countryside between the 11th and 15th centuries.
Rapoport explains:
What the word ‘Arab’ meant in the early Islamic
Trump, Netanyahu, and the Iran Endgame
With war clouds gathering once again over the Middle East, Aimen takes us behind the scenes of the indirect negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. He narrates the shifting Iranian position, the will-he-or-won’t-he calculus surrounding Donald Trump, and the vital strategic role played by Israel as the White House formulates a way forward. Is this brinkmanship, miscalculation, or the prelude to ful
How the US is Abandoning its Afghan Allies
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to U.S. Navy veteran Shawn VanDiver, founder of AfghanEvac, about the fate of Afghans who worked alongside American forces during the U.S. occupation, and how the Trump administration’s immigration restrictions are increasingly freezing them out.
Shawn explains:
Who America’s Afghan allies were and the risks they took
The complex tragedy of th
The CIA’s Zero Units in Afghanistan
After a tragic shooting in Washington, D.C., Thomas and Aimen trace the story back to Afghanistan and to the CIA-backed Zero Units that carried out some of the coalition’s most clandestine kill-or-capture missions.
They discuss:
The November 2025 D.C. shooting and the alleged link to a former Zero Unit operative
What the Zero Units were designed to do and why they were so controversial
Why China’s Rise Cannot Be Stopped
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to veteran Singaporean diplomat Prof. Kishore Mahbubani about his thesis that the 21st century will be remembered as ‘the Asian Century’, and how the West can prepare peacefully and optimistically for China's return as the fulcrum of world history.
Drawing on his books Living the Asian Century, Has China Won?, and Can Asians Think?, Prof. Mahbubani
Trump vs Iran: The War That Wasn’t
In this semi-emergency episode, Aimen helps Thomas unpack the last eight months of escalating tension and threats between the US and Iran, and explains why it’s now unlikely the American ‘armada’ President Trump sent to the Gulf will be going to war with Iran anytime soon.
Thomas and Aimen discuss:
How the 12-Day War changed Iran
Why Israel’s Doha strike jolted the Gulf and accelerated a
Paul Kenyon: 30 Years Under Fire as a BBC War Reporter
In this episode, Thomas talks to distinguished BBC journalist Paul Kenyon about his new podcast series Two Nottingham Lads. Paul recalls highlights from his remarkable career, which has taken him from Iran to Libya to Ukraine to Stockport —as he watched, in real time, America lose its grip on the international order.
Paul talks about:
How two Nottingham lads ended up on opposite sides of the
Mali: When Jihadists Win
As jihadist violence in Mali escalates, Thomas and Aimen trace the history and present-day power of JNIM (‘Support Group for Islam and Muslims’), an Al Qaeda affiliate that has been laying siege to the capital Bamako. Will Mali’s secular state survive? Or is a jihadist takeover of the whole country now inevitable?
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Thomas a
Syrian Blitzkrieg: How Damascus Crushed the SDF
In this episode, Aaron Zelin returns to Conflicted to unpack the extraordinary collapse of the Syrian Democratic Forces’ position in northeast Syria over the past week — and what the fallout could mean for Syria’s fragile post-Assad order.
Aaron explains:
Why the March 2025 framework agreement ultimately failed
Why Sunni Arab tribes abandoned the SDF — and how Damascus prepared the ground
Trump vs USAID: The Rise and Fall of America’s Aid Empire
On the first anniversary of the dismantling of USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, Thomas and Aimen trace the history of the organisation and ask whether USAID’s collapse represents a failure of liberal internationalism itself, or simply the end of one particular way of organizing American power in the world.
They discuss:
Trump’s 2025 executive order and the effect
How Yemen Broke the Saudi-UAE Alliance
In this episode, Yemeni researcher and political analyst Baraa Shiban (a great friend of the show) tells the thrilling behind-the-scenes story of how different visions for the future of Yemen led long-simmering tensions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia to explode into the open.
For further reference, here’s a helpful map of Yemen showing current areas of control: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/info/inf
Crisis in the Gulf: Saudi vs UAE
A rare public rupture has emerged between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Triggered by a dramatic escalation over Yemen in late December 2025, the dispute has exposed deeper ideological and strategic differences between the two Gulf powers.
In this episode, Thomas and Aimen step back from the battlefield to examine the historical roots of Saudi–Emirati rivalry and why Yemen became the
Re-Thinking Islam’s Global History
Islam is often treated as a civilisation apart — self-contained, resistant to modernity, and fundamentally at odds with the West. In this episode, Thomas speaks to Oxford professor James McDougall about why that framing is misleading, and how Islamic history is inseparable from the making of the modern world itself.
Drawing on his new book Worlds of Islam: A Global History, McDougall explains:
The Crisis in Iran: The History Behind US-Iran Tensions
As mass protests sweep Iran and President Trump declares the U.S. is ‘locked and loaded’, Thomas and Aimen revisit the event that shaped U.S.–Iran relations for the next half-century: the Iran Hostage Crisis. Then, in real time, the conversation veers into a fast-moving geopolitical shock: Venezuela, Iran’s global networks, and what a new era of American ‘muscle’ might actually look like.
They di
Zohran Mamdani and the Ascendancy of Third Worldism
Amid controversy surrounding Zohran Mamdani’s rise to power in New York City, Hussein Mansour tells Thomas all about the history of Third Worldism — where it comes from, what it originally meant, and why the term has resurfaced.
Thomas and Hussein discuss:
Zohran Mamdani as a symbol, not a cause, of a broader elite transformation
The Third Estate, the French Revolution, and the revolutiona
2025 Year in Review
As 2025 draws to a close, Thomas and Aimen take an unconventional tour of the Islamic world — looking beyond the usual headlines to the under-the-radar shifts that happened in 2025, with the potential to shape 2026 and beyond.
They discuss:
Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger forming the Alliance of Sahel States and what a new Sahel bloc might mean
The geopolitical ‘cluster fuck’ of the Sudanese
Inside the Trenches of Ukraine
The war in Ukraine is back in the headlines as a peace agreement appears increasingly probably — though with major concessions to Russia. So as a Christmas present to our listeners, we’ve brought this episode from August out from behind the paywall.
In it, Thomas speaks with his old university friend Jakub — a former Slovak Army officer who volunteered to fight in Ukraine — about the lived realit
2025 Conflicted Christmas Special
What is ‘the Christmas story’ really? And how does it change when you tell it from within a different religious tradition? In Conflicted’s first-ever Christmas Special, Thomas and Aimen retell the Nativity as it appears in the Gospels and in the Qur’an.
They discuss:
Who were the Magi? Zoroastrian priests or Nabataean nomads?
How the Nativity story differs between the Bible and the Qur’an
What Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy Means For The World
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks with global finance and security analyst Giri Rajendran about the Trump Administration’s newly published National Security Strategy — what it signals, what it omits, and what it suggests about America’s role in a multipolar world.
Thomas and Giri discuss:
How this report differs from previous US National Security Strategies
The end of the old
The 2026 Middle East Forecast
What does the future hold for the Middle East — and the world — in 2026?
In this special episode of Conflicted, Thomas instructs Aimen to peer into his crystal ball and offer his forecasts for the year to come.
In this episode, Aimen and Thomas discuss:
How professional geopolitical analysts make forecasts
The impossibility of foreseeing Black Swan events
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