I'm Sarah Kensier, the author of the best-selling books, the view from flyover country, and hiding in plain sight.

I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones.

And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world.

And today I'm very excited to bring our guest, Iad al-Baghdadi.

He is a Palestinian activist and writer. Since 2011,

he has been a prominent online voice and an internationally recognized intellectual.

For his Arab Spring activism, he was summarily jailed and expelled from the United Arab Emirates in 2014.

He was subsequently granted political asylum in Norway. In 2019, the CIA alerted Norwegian authorities that he was a target of the

Saudi regime, and he has been under protection by Norwegian authorities ever since.

Al-Baghdadi is the founder of the Kawakabi Center, a fellow of the Norwegian

think tank Civita, and a board member of the Munathara Initiative. His new book, The Middle East

Crisis Factory, is out this month and covers the entrenchment of tyranny, terrorism, and foreign

intervention, showing how these systems of oppression

simultaneously feed off and battle each other. Welcome to Gaslit Nation, Iad. Thank you so much

for having me. So that is quite a biography that I just read, and it barely skims the surface

of your experience. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself,

where your family is originally from, where you grew up, and how you ended up under Norwegian

state protection? Yeah, you know, whenever someone introduces me and, you know, you have to

kind of summarize the past decade of my life or so in a few words.

I kind of, part of me goes like, what the hell did you do with your life?

Like, how badly did you screw up your life that you're now, you know, several nation states

want you dead?

...