Conflicted Community: Q&A – Hassan Nasrallah Assassinated and the Middle East on the Brink
2 October 2024 - 38 mins explicitThomas and Aimen are back with a vital Q&A as the Middle East enters its most dangerous and precarious moment in recent memory. Israel’s 12 day operation, beginning with an extraordinary operation that blew up thousands of Hezbollah pagers across Lebanon, then escalated this week with the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a huge strike on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Southern Lebanon. The head of the Hezbollah snake has been cut off, and the repercussions are already being felt.
This week we answer your questions on what this watershed moment means for Lebanon, the wider Middle East and indeed the world, as Israel continues its operations. Will Iran and its nuclear progra...
Series 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 deeper dives and world-class Q&As with Aimen Dean, join the CONFLICTED COMMUNITY here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm Philip and Thomas discuss: How U.S. unipolarity and globalisation reshaped the world after the Cold War Why Cunliffe thinks ‘global Islam’ is a distinctly modern political phenomenon How early state-seeking Islamism gave way to transnational Islamism and jihadism Why neoliberal globalisation weakened state sovereignty and boosted Islamist networks The strange overlap between liberal humanitarianism and jihadist causes How the CIA, Afghanistan and Syria blurred the line between ally and enemy Why the new American Left could revive the logic of liberal interventionism over Israel What comes after the decline of American empire: sovereign nation-states or rival new blocs? Find Philip on X: https://x.com/thephilippics Find us on X: https://x.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. Produced and edited by Thomas Small . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hour
17 September Finished
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. For mind-expanding Q&A's with Aimen, join the CONFLICTED COMMUNITY here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/ Aimen and Thomas discuss: Did Iran dupe Saudi Arabia? How the Houthis humiliated their rivals Mocha falls: Bab al-Mandab exposed Saudi Arabia’s oil lifeline gets hit Why Yemen’s anti-Houthi coalition imploded The bitter Saudi-UAE divorce Has Qatar reshaped Saudi foreign policy? Why Trump refused MBS’s rescue call Find us on X: https://x.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. Produced and edited by Thomas Small. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hour 3 mins
16 September Finished
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. Join the CONFLICTED COMMUNITY here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/ Aimen and Thomas discuss: Was 9/11 an ending as well as a beginning? The myth of the peaceful 1990s America inherited a geopolitical mess after the USSR's collapse America as a revolutionary power Could preserving Middle Eastern monarchies have prevented later disasters? Al-Qaeda and liberal globalisation Jihadism amid the wreckage of earlier promises Was the War on Terror a rupture or an acceleration? Bin Laden’s selective use of history History without a puppet master Find us on X: https://x.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. Produced and edited by Thomas Small. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hour 6 mins
11 September Finished
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 could be going. Rana explains: The origins of the modern nation-state and the decline of universal sacred empires Louis IX, the Crown of Thorns and the sacralisation of the French state How Enlightenment political theology transformed God, sovereignty and individual rights Industrialisation, mass democracy, welfare states and the political power of workers Liberalism, populism and the changing relationship between elites and mass democracy The origins of international law in empire, property rights and global capitalism Why the postwar rules-based international order is now weakening The East India Company, Silicon Valley and the rise of quasi-sovereign corporate power China as an alternative model of state power and control over private capital Climate change, mass migration and whether the nation-state can survive a new ‘nomad century’ Find Rana on X: x.com/byranadasgupta Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/ Find us on X: https://x.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. Produced and edited by Thomas Small . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hour 34 mins
9 September Finished
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 quarantine of Taiwan could unfold. Why a war over Taiwan could devastate global trade and the world economy. What Taiwan’s fall would mean for US power, Japan and the Philippines. Why Taiwan is an independent democracy but still officially called the Republic of China. Who the Taiwanese are: Indigenous peoples, Hoklo, Hakka and post-1949 mainlanders. How martial law, dictatorship and democratisation created modern Taiwanese identity. Why the Kuomintang, once Communist China’s enemy, is now Taiwan’s most Beijing-friendly major party. Whether Taiwan could eventually choose closer integration with China through democracy rather than war. Find Chris on X: www.x.com/heguisen Visit Chris’s website: www.chrishortonwriter.com Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/ Find us on X: https://x.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. Produced and edited by Thomas Small . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hour 13 mins
3 September Finished
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 Outcast: US sanctions and regional trade restrictions tighten Iran’s economic isolation. Strait of Hormuz: US demining, Gulf oil exports and Iran’s new underwater drone threat reshape the naval war. Iran’s economic crisis: collapsing rial, inflation, shortages and possible unrest increase pressure on the IRGC. UAE-Iran trade: Dubai’s historic commercial role shrinks as Gulf states join Washington’s economic campaign. US strategy in the Gulf: Trump administration cohesion, long-term military deployment and growing concern about China. Iran escalation risks: attacks on Gulf infrastructure, domestic repression and renewed US-Iran fighting. Tactical nuclear weapons: Aimen warns the conflict could cross the nuclear threshold if escalation continues. Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/ Find us on X: https://x.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. Produced and edited by Thomas Small. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
57 mins
1 September Finished
