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
October 15, 2026 • 58 mins
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?
For mind-expanding Q&A's with Aimen, join the CONFLICTED COMMUNITY here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/
Baraa and Thomas discuss:
Baraa's eyewitness journey into besieged T...
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October 13, 2026 • 74 mins
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.
For deeper dives and world-class Q&As with Aimen Dean, join the CONFLICTED COMMUNITY here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm
Ruben and Thomas explore:
How security replaced politics
Why failed...
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October 8, 2026 • 83 mins
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, journalist Adrian Wooldridge discusses his latest book Centrists of the World Unite: The Lost Genius of Liberalism.
For deeper dives and world-class Q&As with Aimen Dean, join the CONFLICTED COMMUNITY here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm
Adrian and Thomas explore:
Why liberalism is in crisis — and whether it can reinvent itself
Modernity, permanent change and the bir...
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October 6, 2026 • 53 mins
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.
For mind-...
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October 2, 2026 • 57 mins
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.
For mind-expanding Q&A's with Aimen, join the CONFLICTED COMMUNITY here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/
Aimen and Thomas discuss:
The failure of t...
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September 29, 2026 • 64 mins
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joby Warrick tells Thomas all about his latest book The Jackal: The Rise and Fall of Carlos, the World's First Super-Terrorist.
For deeper dives and world-class Q&As with Aimen Dean, join the CONFLICTED COMMUNITY here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm
Joby explains:
Carlos the Jackal: From Venezuelan Marxist to Global Terror Icon
Wadi Haddad...
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September 24, 2026 • 69 mins
Aimen's away this week. But not to worry! Sitting in his seat is Mohammed al-Basha: a Yemeni-American analyst with over twenty years of experience. Basha is the perfect person to help us understand better the larger forces at work in the Yemen Civil War — with consequences for the entire world.
For world-class Q&A's with Aimen, join the CONFLICTED COMMUNITY here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/
Basha and Thomas d...
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September 22, 2026 • 84 mins
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, historian Anthony Kaldellis of the University of Chicago discusses his new book 1453: The Conquest and Tragedy of Constantinople.
For deeper dives and world-class Q&As with Aimen Dean, join the CONFLICTED COMMUNITY here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm
Anthony explains:
Why the ‘Byzantines’ were really Romans
The Roman state’s extraordinary longevity
Co...
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September 17, 2026 • 60 mins
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-cl...
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September 16, 2026 • 63 mins
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://confli...
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September 11, 2026 • 66 mins
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 mes...
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September 9, 2026 • 94 mins
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 explai...
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September 3, 2026 • 73 mins
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 u...
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September 1, 2026 • 57 mins
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 t...
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August 25, 2026 • 71 mins
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 leaders rem...
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August 20, 2026 • 60 mins
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 world
Sweden’s socialist ship...
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August 18, 2026 • 56 mins
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 2022 Yemen truce and renewed H...
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August 13, 2026 • 79 mins
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 collapse and militia fragmentation
NA...
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August 11, 2026 • 79 mins
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 the fragmentation of political power...
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August 6, 2026 • 66 mins
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 exploitation—or the uneasy entanglem...
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