Show Notes
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.
Oman’s tilt toward Iran amid assumptions of American decline and future Iranian regional weight.
The UAE–Saudi split over Iran: Emirati hawkishness versus Saudi caution and strategic bruising.
Saudi resentment over Yemen, Houthi attacks, Israel’s freer hand, and lack of US security guarantees.
Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon, and Iran: efforts to decouple the Lebanon front from the US–Iran track
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
More from CONFLICTED
We welcome back friend of the show Baraa Shiban, who was recently on the front lines in Yemen. The Houthis have surrounded Taiz once again. Can the city that has defied Yemen's tyrants for generations hold out against another devastating siege?
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, Ruben Andersson, professor of social anthropology at Oxford University's Department of International Development, discusses his new book Age of Security: The Rise of a Global Obsession.
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, journalist Adrian Wooldridge discusses his latest book Centrists of the World Unite: The Lost Genius of Liberalism.
Sudan’s civil war has become a regional proxy struggle, with the UAE, Egypt, Iran, Turkey and other powers backing rival armed camps as the country fragments under the pressure of war. But while the RSF’s foreign support has drawn intense scrutiny, the forces sustaining Sudan’s army — from Islamist networks to drones, money and weapons supplied from abroad — have received far less attention.
The war is widening, diplomacy has stalled, and the Middle East is once again sliding towards escalation as the relationship between Israel and the Gulf states grows closer while pressure on Iran is mounting at sea, in the air, and across its network of regional allies.