The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg The Tumultuous, Remarkable Middle East | Interview: Simon Sebag Montefiore
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Oct 12, 2026 
Simon Sebag Montefiore, the British historian and author of Jerusalem: The Biography, takes a sweeping tour through the modern Middle East. They explore the 1979 revolution, Iraq’s invasion, Israel, antisemitism, nationalism, colonialism, Islamism, modernization, and the West’s fixation on Jerusalem. History’s shifting importance and the proper pronunciation of Turkey also get their due.
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The Warrior Who Captured Riyadh From A Harem
- Abdulaziz founded modern Saudi Arabia through direct conquest rather than gradual state-building or foreign design.
- He and roughly 30 warriors hid in a governor’s harem, killed him at dawn, and seized Riyadh.
Iraq’s Removal Made Iran’s Revolution Bigger
- Historical importance changes as later events reveal consequences that earlier generations could not see.
- The 2003 Iraq invasion magnified 1979’s significance by removing Iran’s strongest regional counterweight and opening a route through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
Everyone Counts Or No One Counts
- Western attention gives Israeli-Palestinian violence a moral and geopolitical intensity rarely granted to comparable crises elsewhere.
- Montefiore applies one standard to Gaza, Sudan, Algeria, Armenia, Iraq, and the Yazidis: every civilian life counts equally.
