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Renad Mansour joins Arab Digest editor William Law as his podcast guest this week. Renad is a Senior Research Fellow and the Project Director of the Iraq Initiative at London's Chatham House. Their conversation looks at the flaws in US and other Western nations' managing of the challenges posed by the Axis of Resistance and notes that even as the region descends further into instability sparked by the Gaza war there are signs in Iraq that progress toward a stable and secure state, albeit limited, is starting to happen.

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Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes back Dania Akkad, Senior Investigative Editor at Middle East Eye. Their conversation focusses on the extraordinarily high death toll of aid workers in Gaza and the claim by the IDF that it does not target aid organisations or their employees, a claim the facts belie. Dania examines the recent attack on World Central Kitchen that killed seven and notes the simple steps the IDF could take were it to be seriously committed to the protection of humanitarian aid workers.

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Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is Caroline Rose, the Director of the Strategic Blind Spots Portfolio at Washington's New Lines Institute. In the midst of the Gaza war America continues to weigh up whether to remove its remaining troops on the ground from Syria and Iraq. A difficult call at any time but with growing uncertainty about the direction the Middle East is headed towards and in an election year that could return Donald Trump to the White House whatever the US decides will have profound implications for the region and beyond.

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Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the human rights campaigner Areej al-Sadhan. Her brother Abdulrahman al-Sadhan languishes somewhere in a Saudi jail. Forcibly disappeared for more than six years, his family have had no word of him save for a one minute phone call. He is but one of thousands of prisoners of conscience detained in the kingdom. Meanwhile the world's democracies embrace a rehabilitated Mohammed bin Salman choosing to ignore the gross human rights violations carried out under his leadership.

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Arab Digest editor William Law's guest is the European Council on Foreign Relation's Cinzia Bianco. After a tumultuous and violent start to his de facto leadership of Saudi Arabia the crown prince has pivoted the kingdom toward a new diplomacy at a challenging and dangerous time in the world's most volatile region.

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Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Iranian historian Arash Azizi whose latest book What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom has just been published. Their conversation focusses on the struggle of ordinary Iranians against a theocratic dictatorship and how it is in the interests of both Arab states and America to rethink strategies in order to defuse the multiple threats the Khamenei regime poses to the region and to the world.

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