CC Revisited... Alex Anastasiades: Britain, Saudi and the New Multipolar World

CONFLICTED

Message Heard

History, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we're giving our Conflicted listeners another taste of what they get by joining the Conflicted Community, with an old episode that didn't go out on our normal feed... As Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy seek to find a solution to war in Ukraine, we thought it would be good to throw back to our episode with British diplomat Alex Anastasiades, so you can hear some more about what it is actually like to be in the room when these big diplomatic decisions are made. Enjoy... -- For this week’s Conflicted Community bonus episode Thomas sits down with Alex Anastasiades, a British diplomat working for the Ministry of Defence in Riyadh, about Britain’s place in the Middle East. In a wide ranging interview, we discuss what life is actually like for British diplomats in the region, Britain’s historic place as a colonial power and now ally with countries in the Middle East, and how Britain's position might continue to evolve in the new multi-polar world. Alex is a diplomat with a background in international law and international relations, who has previously worked in Brussels and for NATO, before working for various positions within the British MOD. Now stationed in the Saudi capital of Riyadh at a fascinating and hugely consequential moment in the region’s history, Alex advises the defence secretary and government officials in the Foreign Office on geopolitical matters in Saudi and the wider Middle East.Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, dearest listeners, Thomas Small here, back with you for another episode for our
0:07.0	conflicted community. Thank you as ever for subscribing and supporting the show. We hope you enjoyed
0:13.4	our first episode of Season 5 last week. We'll be putting out calls for questions on the Discord
0:19.6	very soon for a Q&A.
0:21.7	But today, I am joined by another very special guest, someone who works on the ground in the Middle East for the UK government's Ministry of Defense to give us some insight into how Western diplomacy actually works.
0:37.3	Conflicted community, please welcome Alex
0:40.1	Anastasiades. Alex, great to have you on the show. Thank you, Thomas. It's a real honor to be here,
0:46.3	and thank you very much for inviting me. I was pleased to invite you. You know, frankly,
0:51.2	you approached me out of the blue over LinkedIn, I think, I think it was,
0:56.4	saying that you were a dear listener and that you liked the show and you invited me to,
1:02.9	to enter into a conversation with you, and we did, you are a dear listener.
1:06.9	Yes, I am, Thomas.
1:08.0	I just wanted to actually, just from the beginning, just thank you and Aman for the podcast. In the diplomatic community, I think sometimes we don't have the time and the space to think about the issues with as much historical context as you do. So I just wanted to thank you for that. And I know speaking for many colleagues from the UK government and other governments that you have many dear listeners across the world in the diplomatic community. So thank you for that.
1:31.3	Wow. Well, thank you, Alex. That is extremely encouraging. We try our best. We're glad that
1:38.4	people like the podcast. We're doubly glad that it appeals to people who have an active,
1:44.0	professional interest in
1:45.7	the region.
1:46.7	Hopefully we can help just explain things a bit better to people who might not, as you
1:51.5	say, have the headspace to do the deep dives themselves.
1:55.3	There's lots to come, dearest listeners.
1:57.1	We'll be touching on the UK general election, which just took place,
2:01.2	and what it means for international diplomacy,
	...

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