UNAPOLOGETIC with Ashfaaq Carim

Episode 88 - Do Greeks have more in common with Arabs and Turks than Europeans | Sean Mathews | UNAPOLOGETIC

We sat down with Middle East Eye journalist and author Sean Mathews on UNAPOLOGETIC to ask a question that unsettles a lot of assumptions: do Greeks actually have more in common with Arabs and Turks than they do with the rest of Europe? Mathews is the author of The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East, and his answer draws on years of reporting from Istanbul, Cairo and occupied Jerusalem. He argues that Greece's "Western" identity is a relatively recent import, imposed from outside, and that the country's deeper roots, culturally, religiously and geopolitically, lie in the wider Middle East. The episode traces how the Greek revolution, the population exchange with Turkey, and the collapse of cosmopolitan cities like Alexandria all shaped the identity Greece wears today. We also get into the present: Greece's fast-deepening, and increasingly fraught, alliance with Israel, and what that could mean for Turkey, NATO and the wider region. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

Episode 87 - How the US backed Khomeini, then armed Saddam | Scott Horton | UNAPOLOGETIC

The US backed Khomeini's return to power, then a year later greenlit Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran, the same country it had just warned Saddam might attack. In this latest episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, radio host and presenter of The Scott Horton Show, Scott Horton, sat down with MEE's Ashfaaq Carim to discuss the history of the US and its impact in the region. They also touched on Netanyahu's "new Middle East" doctrine and whether real US pressure could actually force him to fall in line. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

Episode 86 - How the US blunder in Iran accelerates its decline and dooms Israel | Andreas Krieg | UNAPOLOGETIC

We sat down with Andreas Krieg for the fourth time on UNAPOLOGETIC, this time in the aftermath of the war on Iran, to ask what it has done to the balance of power across the Middle East. His answer is stark: this is the most fundamental shift in regional order in thirty years, and it has undone the American empire in a way he does not think it can recover from. We get into why the Gulf no longer believes the United States can protect it, why its bases have become magnets for attack rather than deterrents, and why nobody in the region has a plan B for the order that is now crumbling. Andreas lays out the battle between the Israel lobby and the Gulf lobby that he believes will decide Washington's approach for years to come, the split between Marco Rubio and JD Vance, and why Iran has emerged able to impose its will without ever building a bomb. We also talk through Iran as a network state, the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint, Saudi Arabia's strategic drift, Qatar's network power, Egypt reduced to a beggar state, the violation of Iraqi sovereignty, Syria under Sharaa, and why Andreas argues Israel has become a hammer that sees everything as a nail, isolated and digging itself into a hole it may not climb out of. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

Episode 85 - Israel's dream of ruling the region is over, its decline has begun | Mustafa Barghouti |UNAPOLOGETIC

"Now Netanyahu has failed. Iran was not broken. Arab countries now realise that relying on Israel is a death sentence." In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, we sat down in studio with Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian physician, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative and co-founder of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. Barghouti argues that Israel's two strategic goals, imperial domination of the Middle East and normalisation with Arab states, have both collapsed, and that this marks the beginning of its decline. Across the conversation he sets out the scale of the atrocity in Gaza, the slow strangulation of life in the West Bank, and the transformation of Israeli society towards what he describes as fascism. He explains why the regional war with Iran ended in strategic failure for Netanyahu, why Oslo and the 2005 Gaza disengagement were traps rather than concessions, and why he refuses to accept any framing that places oppressor and oppressed on equal footing. Barghouti also turns to the question of survival and resistance, from the 90 midwives employed in the first weeks of the war to the clinics rebuilt multiple times under bombardment, and makes the case that Palestine has become the global measure of commitment to justice. Despite everything, he ends on a note of defiance and hope. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

Episode 84 - Why reaching a ceasefire was essential - Iran, Hormuz and US decline | Laleh Khalili | UNAPOLOGETIC

Laleh Khalili is a professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter and the author of Sinews of War and Trade and Extractive Capitalism. She is also Iranian-American, with family members displaced by the current war, a scholar with both the expertise and the personal stakes to speak to this moment with rare authority. In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, Ashfaaq Carim sits down with Khalili to understand what the US-Israeli war on Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz actually means, not for markets, but for people. They discuss who is winning and who is losing, how Iran has used commercial disruption as a weapon, the deep colonial history that produced this crisis, Israel's periphery strategy and its long alliance with Iran before 1979, and why an empire in decline is always the most dangerous version of itself. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.