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The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Daily: The “BLACK WAVE” that engulfed the Middle East

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.61K Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2021

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From the Iranian Revolution to the invasion of Afghanistan, events in 1979 turned the tides on decades of liberalisation across the Middle East. Kim Ghattas, journalist and author of Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East tells Alex Andreou about our misconceptions of the Middle East and her journey as a reporter. Have Iran and Saudi Arabia, and Sunnis and Shias, always been at each others’ throats? Was Bin Laden a “naïve revolutionary”? And what Biden can take from Trump’s policies on Iran…  “I couldn’t believe that no-one had written a book that brings the story of the whole region together before – but no-one had”  “My parents were more concerned about my safety and gun crime in the US than in Lebanon.” “Not every Iranian woman wore a miniskirt, but before 1979, they had the freedom to choose.” “The book’s for a Western audience – but it’s also for us in the region, to understand what happened to us, where we went wrong. And how we can undo some of it.” “Today, we only talk about religion at the extremes. But Iran’s progressive, liberal, pluralistic core were often devout Muslims.”  “Trump’s renewed pressure on Iran has actually been welcomed by many Iranians” Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved

0:05.5

photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.

0:11.8

Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?

0:13.0

I loved going to college.

0:14.0

It's good you can retrain and do something.

0:16.0

Yeah, yeah.

0:17.0

Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.

0:22.0

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0:28.0

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0:30.0

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0:32.0

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0:36.7

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0:55.3

look after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome to another edition of the bunker daily I am your host Alex Andro.

1:13.2

Palestinian-American academic Edward Seid, really the person who invented the subject of

1:19.4

post-colonial studies, once wrote and I paraphrase that the Orient and Islam have a kind of

1:26.3

extra real phenomenological reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert that essentially

1:36.1

for the longest time whole regions have not had the ability to represent themselves in the

1:41.5

debate about what happens to them. That evidence becomes

1:45.2

credible only after it has passed through and been validated by a Westerner. My

1:51.6

guest today is Kim Hatas, part Dutch, part Lebanese, born in Beirut, but

1:57.7

reporting for the BBC and Financial Times from there through two decades of conflict, then moved to Washington and covered the State

2:04.8

Department. Devoutly Cosmopolitan, firmly rooted in multiple worlds, she is part of a generation

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