LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts

In a recent cabinet meeting in Tehran, President Rouhani stated "Trump is dead but the nuclear deal is still alive". From the Iranian perspective, the ball is now in the United States' court to mend relations after former President Trump's policy of maximum pressure, including the withdrawal from the nuclear deal and the reimposition of sanctions on Iran. This webinar discussed what the short-term prospects are for US-Iran relations under the Biden administration. Hassan Ahmadian is an Assistant Professor of Middle East and North Africa studies at the University of Tehran and an Associate of the Project on Shi'ism and Global Affairs at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He is also a Middle East security and politics fellow at the Center for Strategic Research, Tehran. Dr. Ahmadian received his PhD in Area Studies from the University of Tehran and undertook a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Iran Project, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Fluent in Arabic, Persian, and English, his research and teaching is mainly focused on Iran’s foreign policy and international relations, political change, civil-military relations, and Islamist movements in the Middle East. Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Senior Research Fellow at the International Security Studies department at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI, London). She is also a Non-Resident Associate Fellow in the Research Division at the NATO Defence College (NDC, Rome). Her research is concerned with security and geopolitics in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Iraq’s foreign and domestic politics, drivers of radicalisation, and drones proliferation. Ali Vaez is Iran Project Director and Senior Adviser to the President at International Crisis Group. He led Crisis Group’s efforts in helping to bridge the gaps between Iran and the P5+1 that led to the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Previously, he served as a Senior Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and was the Iran Project Director at the Federation of American Scientists. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

This webinar will be the launch of Yezid Sayigh's latest report 'Praetorian Spearhead: The Role of the Military in the Evolution of Egypt’s State Capitalism 3.0' published under the LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series. In this report, Sayigh explores how military involvement in the Egyptian economy is giving rise to a new version of state capitalism. Driven by Arab socialism in the 1960s and reshaped by privatisation in the 1990s, under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi the state has sought to bend the private sector to its capital investment strategy while continuing to profess commitment to free market economics. His administration seeks private sector investment, but exclusively on its own terms. This is demonstrated through the expansion and diversion of military economic activity in five sectors: real estate development, creation of industrial and transport hubs, rentier or extractive activities related to natural resources, relations with the private sector, and the effort to increase the state’s financial efficiency while seeking private investment to help capitalise the public sector. This approach may generate macro-level economic growth and improve the efficiency of public finances, but it also reinforces the grip of the state rather than consolidating free markets. Reflecting this, private sector investment in the economy is lower today than it was in the socialist phase of the 1960s. Yezid Sayigh is Senior Fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where he leads the programme on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States (CMRAS). His work focuses on the comparative political and economic roles of Arab armed forces and non-state actors, the impact of war on states and societies, the politics of post-conflict reconstruction and security sector transformation in Arab transitions, as well as authoritarian resurgence. He is the author most recently of ‘Owners of the Republic: An Anatomy of Egypt’s Military Economy’ (2019).

PLEASE NOTE: We apologise for any Arabic interference you may hear during the recording which was due to technical difficulties. This webinar will be the launch of Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed's latest book The Son King: Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia. In this book, Madawi Al-Rasheed lays bare the world of repression behind Saudi crown prince Muhammed bin Salman's reforms. She dissects the Saudi regime’s propaganda and progressive new image, while also dismissing Orientalist views that despotism is the only pathway to stable governance in the Middle East. Charting old and new challenges to the fragile Saudi nation from the kingdom’s very inception, this blistering book exposes the dangerous contradictions at the heart of the Son King’s Saudi Arabia. If you would like to purchase this book please visit Hurst Publisher's website and use the code SONKING25 at checkout for 25% off. Madawi Al-Rasheed is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics Middle East Centre and a Fellow of the British Academy. Since joining the MEC, Madawi has been conducting research on mutations among Saudi Islamists after the 2011 Arab uprisings. This research focuses on the new reinterpretations of Islamic texts prevalent among a small minority of Saudi reformers and the activism in the pursuit of democratic governance and civil society. The result of this research project, sponsored by the Open Society Foundation Fellowship Programme, appeared in a monograph entitled Muted Modernists (2015, Hurst & OUP). Her latest edited book, Salman’s Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era was also published by Hurst in 2018.

This webinar was organised as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's 10th anniversary programme of online events. For a decade, the LSE Middle East Centre has been committed to rigorous research of the societies, economies, politics and cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. This event, as part of the Centre’s 10th anniversary campaign, will look at some of the main challenges facing the region and its people over the next few years, and how the discipline of Middle East Studies should be adapting to address the areas of ecological and demographic change, healthcare in the region, and decolonising the study of the ‘Middle East’. As researchers become more and more preoccupied with understanding the implications of living in the so-called Anthropocene, there is still limited work on the impact of climatic stresses in MENA countries, including their relationship with demographic shifts, rapid urbanisation, natural resources depletion and growing pollution. Protracted conflicts in the region have undoubtedly led to decimated healthcare systems, and in the absence of a collective regional response to the COVID-19 pandemic, national measures have amplified inequalities between and within countries in terms of access to adequate healthcare. Academia is facing long and overdue calls to recognise and address unexamined legacies of colonial domination, notably around race, gender and sexuality. Students are at the forefront of these demands, which stretch beyond the teaching curriculum to research and university governance. It was an Orientalist gaze that created the ‘Middle East’, and other geographical imaginaries (e.g. ‘Western Asia’) may now be more appropriate. Decolonising Middle East Studies could take up an entire webinar in itself, so we are focusing on one particular element of decolonisation - writing about race in the Middle East.

Across many developing countries, the delivery of basic social services is not universal, and often skewed along politicised identity cleavages. The Middle East and North Africa region is no exception. Under what conditions are some services provided in a more ‘equitable’ fashion, with less apparent favouritism towards particular groups? Drawing on the cases of health care provision in Lebanon and Turkey, this webinar explored this question. Health provision is an area where public delivery is often discretionary, running along partisan, ethnic, or religious identity lines. Featuring work by Melani Cammett, the first part of the webinar explored new empirical evidence on how societal divisions affect the quality of service delivery in Lebanon. In the second part of the webinar, drawing on the case of Turkey under AKP rule, Asli Cansunar discussed how a government, because of its political goals, designed an effective and universal policy which widened health coverage and electorally paid out the incumbent AK Parti.

This webinar was organised with the Society for Algerian Studies. In 1990, a year after the creation of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), the then-King of Morocco, Hassan II, best summed up pan-Maghreb ambitions stating that: “our aim is to turn the Arab Maghreb into one country with one passport... one identity and a single currency”. Thirty years on, very little has been achieved at the leadership-level in integrating these countries, therefore defying the economic forces of gravity. The last meeting of the UMA that brought together all five members was in 1994, with the borders between Algeria and Morocco closed ever since. Tensions over the Western Sahara issue also continue to obstruct relations between the two regional heavyweights. The webinar explored the historical background, political rationale behind, and economic consequences of the stalled Maghreb Union project. Panellists covered various perspectives as well as highlighted opportunities facing the least (economically) integrated region in the world.

Held on 8 December 2020, this Kuwait Programme, LSE Middle East Centre event was a discussion about the 2020 parliamentary elections in Kuwait. After Kuwaitis go to the polls on 5 December amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and increasing anxieties about the country’s fiscal positions, top experts in Kuwaiti elections come together to discuss the results and what they mean for Kuwait under the new amir, Sheikh Nawaf. With the return of much of the cross-ideological opposition after a four-year boycott (2012-2016), the continued political activism of Kuwait’s tribes, and a variety of secular and Islamist blocs contesting the elections, they are an important bellwether of Kuwaiti politics and the likely direction of policymaking. Further, the appointment of a new cabinet after the election will also signal the priorities of the new executive moving forward. Abdullah al-Khonaini completed his MA in Power, Participation, and Social Change from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University. He co-founded 'Raqib50', an online parliament watch that holds Kuwaiti parliamentarians accountable by making their voting records accessible to the public. His research interests include a focus on civil society, dynamics of informal civic groups and participation, postcolonial identity and belonging in the Gulf. Alanoud Al-Sharekh is the Director of Ibtkar Strategic Consultancy, leading political, leadership and diversity training programs in Kuwait and the GCC region. She is chairperson of the Chaillot award winning Abolish 153 campaign to end honour killing legislations, and a cofounder of Mudhawis List, a platform to support women running for political office. She is currently an Associate Fellow at the Chatham House MENA Program and Research Fellow at Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. In 2019 she was named one of the 100 most inspiring and influential women in the world by the BBC. Michael Herb is Professor and Chair of Political Science at Georgia State University. His work focuses on Gulf politics, monarchism and the resource curse. He is the author of The Wages of Oil: Parliaments ‎and Economic Development in Kuwait and the UAE (Cornell University Press, 2014) and All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (SUNY ‎‎1999), in addition to numerous articles. He maintains the Kuwait Politics Database, a comprehensive source of information on Kuwaiti elections. He has twice won Fulbright awards to study in Kuwait. Daniel L. Tavana is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Council on Middle East Studies at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. His research interests include a focus on elections, identity, and comparative political behaviour, as well as the dynamics of political opposition in authoritarian regimes. Previously, Daniel was a Research Associate at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) in Washington, DC. He completed his BA at the University of Pennsylvania, an MPhil in International Relations at the University of Cambridge, and an MPP at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Courtney Freer is an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

This event was the launch of Marwa Daoudy's latest book 'The Origins of the Syrian Conflict: Climate Change and Human Security'. Does climate change cause conflict? Did it cause the Syrian uprising? Some policymakers and academics have made this claim, but is it true? This study presents a new conceptual framework to evaluate this claim. Contributing to scholarship in the fields of critical security, environmental security, human security, and Arab politics, Marwa Daoudy prioritizes non-Western and marginalized perspectives to make sense of Syria's place in this international debate. Designing an innovative multidisciplinary framework and applying it to the Syrian case, Daoudy uses extensive field research and her own personal background as a Syrian scholar to present primary interviews with Syrian government officials and citizens, as well as the research of domestic Syrian experts, to provide a unique insight into Syria's environmental, economic and social vulnerabilities leading up to the 2011 uprising. Marwa Daoudy is Associate Professor and Seif Ghobash Chair in Arab Studies and International Relations at Georgetown University. Prior to this, Daoudy was a lecturer at Oxford University in the department of Politics and International Relations and a fellow of Oxford’s Middle East Center at St Antony’s College. Her research program in the last decade has generally focused on the intersection of security, politics, law and economics to examine the problems of water and the question of conflict, with a focus on the Middle East. Her main scholarly contributions have focused on three more specific research interests. The first is the relationship between transboundary water resources, power, conflict and cooperation. The second is a critical examination of the climate change-conflict nexus that is applied to developing countries in conflict. The third is the intersection of International Relations theory and Middle East politics in explaining inter-state dynamics in the region after the Arab Spring.

This event, as part of the Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was a discussion around Zeynep Kaya's latest book Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism. Since the early twentieth-century, Kurds have challenged the borders and national identities of the states they inhabit. Nowhere is this more evident than in their promotion of the 'Map of Greater Kurdistan', an ideal of a unified Kurdish homeland in an ethnically and geographically complex region. This powerful image is embedded in the consciousness of the Kurdish people, both within the region and, perhaps even more strongly, in the diaspora. Addressing the lack of rigorous research and analysis of Kurdish politics from an international perspective, Kaya focuses on self-determination, territorial identity and international norms to suggest how these imaginations of homelands have been socially, politically and historically constructed (much like the state territories the Kurds inhabit), as opposed to their perception of being natural, perennial or intrinsic. Adopting a non-political approach to notions of nationhood and territoriality, Mapping Kurdistan is a systematic examination of the international processes that have enabled a wide range of actors to imagine and create the cartographic image of greater Kurdistan that is in use today. Zeynep Kaya is Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. Kaya is also an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. She is interested in understanding how communities and political groups perceive, interact with and challenge international processes and dominant norms. Her research looks at the relationship between gender, violence and development in conflict and post-conflict contexts.

This event was a discussion around Marc Owen Jones' latest book Political Repression in Bahrain. Exploring Bahrain's modern history through the lens of repression, this concise and accessible account spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, looking at all forms of political repression from legal, statecraft, police brutality and informational controls. Considering several episodes of contention in Bahrain, from tribal resistance to the British reforms of the 1920s, the rise of the Higher Executive Committee in the 1950s, the leftist agitation of the 1970s, the 1990s Intifada and the 2011 Uprising, Marc Owen Jones offers never before seen insights into the British role in Bahrain, as well as the activities of the Al Khalifa Ruling Family. From the plundering of Bahrain's resources, to new information about the torture and murder of Bahrain civilians, this study reveals new facts about Bahrain's troubled political history. Using freedom of information requests, historical documents, interviews, and data from social media, this is a rich and original interdisciplinary history of Bahrain over one hundred years. Marc Owen Jones is Assistant Professor in Middle East Studies and Digital Humanities at Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha. Prior to this, he was a Lecturer in Gulf History at Exeter University, where he remains an Honorary Research Fellow. Before that, Jones won a Teach at Tuebingen award, and wrote and delivered an MA module in Gulf Politics at Tuebingen University’s Institute for Political Science. He recently completed his PhD (funded by the AHRC/ESRC) in 2016 at Durham University, where he wrote an interdisciplinary thesis on the history of political repression in Bahrain. The thesis won the 2016 dissertation prize from the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies. Driven by issues of social justice and a specific area interest in the Gulf, his research spans a number of topics, from historical revisions, postcolonialism, de-democratization and revolutionary cultural production, to policing, digital authoritarianism and human rights. At the moment, Jones is working a number of topics, including propaganda and Twitter bots, mapping sectarian hate speech, and archival work related to Bahrain and land appropriation.