CONFLICTED

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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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 BC

Why the trans-Saharan slave routes remain less examined than Atlantic slavery

What Islam did — and didn’t — change about slavery in practice

Indian Ocean slavery

Oman’s slave market in Zanzibar and its caravans that penetrated deep into central Africa

Indigenous African slavery in Ethiopia and the Sokoto Caliphate

The role of racial hierarchies and ‘slave blood’ stigma within societies

Barbary corsairs and European so-called ‘white slavery’

Contemporary chattel slavery in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Sudan, and Libya

Why major institutions still prefer commemorating slavery in the past to confronting it in the present

Follow Martin on X: https://x.com/martinplaut

And his personal website: https://martinplaut.com/

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.
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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 imperial system

The 1920 Iraqi revolt

St John Philby (Abdullah Philby)

The consolidation of Saudi Arabia under Ibn Saud

Oil politics and the American-Saudi partnership

Cold War spy-craft and intelligence networks in Saudi Arabia

Espionage culture in the region

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced and edited by Rowan Bishop.
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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 centuries

Why most medieval villagers in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine did not initially think of themselves as Arabs

Why migration models fail to explain Arabisation in the settled countryside

How Islamisation and Islamic governance reshaped rural society

The role of clan genealogies, taxation, and local leadership in creating Arab village identities

The extraordinary 1245 Fayyum survey and what it reveals about rural Egypt

The rise of popular Arab epics and the imagination of tribal ancestry

Ibn Taymiyyah’s critique of manufactured tribalism in the 14th century

How medieval Arabisation reshapes modern debates about identity, belonging, and land

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm

Find Conflicted on X: https://x.com/MHconflicted

And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted

And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod

And YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sdlF1mY5t4

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.
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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 full-scale war?

They discuss:

Iran’s negotiating position over the past 17–18 days

The domestic factors informing Trump’s thinking

How the IRGC is united around a rejectionist position

How Israel may have helped provide the White House with the narrative it needs to get buy-in from U.S. citizens

What really went on during Netanyahu’s recent visit

The truth beyond Scott Bessent’s claims about causing a dollar crisis in Iran

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

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And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced and edited by Thomas Small.
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