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CONFLICTED
Based on Podcast App listening data
CONFLICTED episodes
- Memorandum of Misunderstanding
In the wake of the recently published Memorandum of Understanding between the White House and the Iranian regime, Aimen and Thomas explore what the MoU means and reflect on everything they got wrong about the Iran War.
They discuss:
- How the MoU is a strategic lifeline for the Islamic Republic
- How it legitimises Iran’s proxy network, from Hezbollah to the Houthis
- How billions in frozen Iranian funds have already been released through Qatar — with American approval
- How the proposed $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran has corruption written all over it
- How it enshrines the principle that Iran can charge for access to the Strait of Hormuz
- Whether Netanyahu lured Trump into a war he did not fully understand
- The collapse of the Abraham Accords' vision for a new Middle East
- If Conflicted itself has misread Trump, populism, and the future of American power
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 hr 14 min - Israel’s Road to Endless War
Elizabeth Tsurkov returns for another Conflicted Conversation. This time, the conversation turns to Israel after October 7th. Elizabeth traces her own political journey from the Israeli right to a hard-won humanism, then explains how Israel’s old security doctrine collapsed — and why the new one may lead not to safety, but to permanent war.
Elizabeth and Thomas discuss:
- Israel’s security doctrine after 7 October
- Israel’s shift from deterrence to pre-emption
- Why deterrence without a political endgame failed
- Gaza, Hamas and the limits of military victory
- Hezbollah, Lebanon and Israel’s buffer-zone strategy
- Israel’s new "buffer zone" security perimeter
- Iran’s missile threat and Israel’s war with Tehran
- The Abraham Accords, IMEC and bypassing Palestine
- Why real Israeli fears may be producing the wrong answers
Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/
Elizabeth's personal website: https://elizabeth-tsurkov.net/en/
Find Elizabeth on X: https://x.com/LizHurra
Find Elizabeth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-tsurkov-79491b15/
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 hr 20 min - Has Trump Lost the Middle East?
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
1 hr 7 min - The West Bank Is Reaching Breaking Point
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
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.
This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hr 6 min - My Road to Conflicted (with Jake Warren)
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
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 hr 4 min - Jeremy Hunt: Democracy’s Defeat Is Not Inevitable
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
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.
This episode was produced by Thomas Small and Ross Field and edited by Mariana Ramirez-Zablah.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hr 12 min - The Madman Theory from Nixon to Trump
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
Find us on X: https://twitter.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.
This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hr 14 min - The UAE’s OPEC Withdrawal & Trump’s Wartime Dilemma
Aimen is back with a huge amount of behind-the-scenes information on what’s been happening in the Middle East in the past three weeks—especially on the real reasons the UAE withdrew from OPEC, and what’s been going on inside Donald Trump’s head as he tries to chart a course to victory in the Iran War.
Aimen and Thomas discuss:
- The recent discovery of HUGE shale oil reserves in the UAE
- The Mar-a-Lago deal the UAE struck with Trump
- Why the recent OPEC shake-up had NOTHING to do with Saudi Arabia
- The truth about UAE and Saudi attacks on Iran
- Did the UAE, Saudi, and Qatar really beg Trump not to resume the war?
- How Iran’s military capability remains STRONGER than people think
- The corruption behind Pakistan’s mediation efforts in the Iran War
- The benefits and liability of Trump as a War Leader
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 hr 10 min - Utopia or Dystopia? The Truth About Jewish-Muslim History
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas talks to Marc David Baer, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics, about his new book Children of Abraham: The Story of Jewish-Muslim Relations.
Marc discusses:
- The recent stabbing in Golders Green, North London
- The myth of utopian co-existence and the counter-myth of total antagonism
- The earliest encounters of Jews and Muslims in Arabia
- The Qur'an's mixed messaging about Jews
- The reality of Sharia dhimmitude laws
- Jewish-Muslim relations in the Khazar Kingdom, in Al-Andalus, and in the Ottoman Empire
- Colonialism and the rupture of Jewish-Muslim relations
- Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Jewish-Muslim solidarity today
Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm
Find Marc on X: https://x.com/MarcDavidBaer1
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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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
1 hr 2 min - Mali’s Crisis is Not What it Seems
As we eagerly await Aimen’s return to Conflicted next week, today Wassim Nasr returns to the show. As only Wassim can, he draws on his expertise of the Sahel to explain the remarkable events in Mali over the past several weeks — events which Aimen forecast on the show back in January.
Wassim explains:
- France’s failed counterterrorism strategy in Mali
- JNIM’s emergence from AQIM and local insurgencies
- Iyad Ag Ghaly’s political and jihadist leadership
- The junta’s repression and strategic miscalculations
- The JNIM–FLA alliance in northern Mali
- The 25 April 2026 coordinated attacks
- Negotiating with Islamists after the War on Terror
Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/
Follow Wassim on X: https://x.com/SimNasr
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 hr
About CONFLICTED
From the publisher's feed
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.
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