CONFLICTED

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

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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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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 all about the other side of Palestine — a side which goes overlooked, but which is increasingly becoming a zone of almost unbearable conflict.

Hamza and Thomas discuss:

Settler violence as settler terrorism

How Israeli settlements undermine the Oslo process

Settlement expansion as a strategy to prevent a Palestinian state

The shift from a two-state ideal to a one-state reality

The Hardal movement and Smotrich’s political world

The Hilltop Youth: origins, ideology and violence

The dual legal system in the West Bank

The Yehuda Shmuel Sherman incident and the revenge attacks that followed

E1 and the threat to a viable Palestinian state

The West Bank economy after 7 October

Palestinian municipal and national elections

Israeli elections and the lack of hope for political change

Israel’s post-7 October security doctrine

The Board of Peace and the problem of Hamas disarmament

Arab disillusionment with resistance ideology

Find Hamza on X: https://x.com/HowidyHamza

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

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

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Kindertransport

His early work for Vice Media in North Korea, Rwanda, and Lebanon

How he won the trust of notorious Islamist preacher and organiser Anjem Choudary while covering his story

Visiting the family of murdered soldier Lee Rigby

How Jake first came across Aimen’s story

How Thomas and Aimen became friends

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

Find Jake on X: https://x.com/TheJakeWarren

Find us 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/@ConflictedYoutube

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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

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 democracy.

Sir Jeremy discusses:

The view from inside power during Britain’s 2010–2024 crisis years

Britain’s imperial inheritance, post-Brexit identity, and the “Global Britain” problem

Trump’s 2018 NATO shock and Hunt’s case for higher European defence spending

China, Russia and Iran as the new autocratic challenge to liberal democracy

Yemen and the Stockholm Agreement as a tragic test of humanitarian diplomacy

Iran, hostage diplomacy, the JCPOA and the limits of Western coercive power

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.

This episode was produced by Thomas Small and Ross Field and edited by Mariana Ramirez-Zablah.
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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 overwhelming, disproportionate force.

In this new Conflicted Conversation, Boys explains:

What the Madman Theory means

Donald Trump, unpredictability and Trump Derangement Syndrome

Nuclear strategy, Eisenhower, and Cold War brinkmanship

Barry Goldwater, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the politics of nuclear fear

Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the Madman Theory in Vietnam

Trump’s use of Madman tactics against North Korea, Iran, NATO and trade partners

Whether Trump’s second-term grand strategy is chaos, coercion or calculated geopolitical pressure

Follow James on X: ⁠https://x.com/jamesdboys⁠

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

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

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

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices