104: Iran-Saudi Detente & Iran Protests

On September 13th of last year 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was visiting Tehran with her family, having traveled from Irans’ Kurdish region. While in Tehran she was stopped by Iran’s morality police for improperly wearing her hijab, or head covering. Three days after her arrest she was dead. In the days, weeks, and months following her death Iran has seen nationwide protests, and while protests are not a particularly new thing in Iran, what’s unprecedented about these protests are the calls not simply for reforms but for the toppling of Iran’s theocratic regime, a regime that has been in power since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Today’s episode provides an update on the protests.

Last month also saw another seismic event in Iranian, and Middle East politics. After decades of saber rattling, proxy wars, and general hostility, China helped to negotiate the reestablishment of diplomatic ties between The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. What this means for the two regional super powers, for those within their spheres of influence, and for geopolitics will be the focus of the second half of our show.

Dr. Assal Rad received her PhD in Middle Eastern History from the University of California, Irvine in 2018. Her PhD research focused on Modern Iran, with an emphasis on national identity formation, and identity in post-revolutionary Iran. She’s also author of ““The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran”. 

Dr. Pouya Alimagham is a historian of the modern Middle East at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His areas of expertise range from revolutionary movements, Political Islam and post-Islamism, terrorism, US foreign policy, and contemporary politics. He’s also the author of “Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprisings" (Cambridge University Press).

Episode 63: Global Arms Trade

The global arms industry may only account for about one percent of global trade, but it’s important to note what that one percent is buying and the role that arms sales play in influencing other aspects of global trade and political relations. We speak with Frank Slijper in Groningen, The Netherlands, where Frank leads a project on the global arms trade for Pax, a global peace research and advocacy organization.

Here are Frank’s Pax reports on the arms trade in Turkey and the UAE.

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Latitude Adjustment Podcast has no professional or commercial relationship with Pax. We just think they’re a great place to start if you’re looking to take action.

Episode 49: The Gulf's Dirty Secret

The Kafala or “sponsorship” system is used throughout the Gulf countries (as well as Jordan and Lebanon) to monitor and organize migrant laborers, from recruitment abroad to their management upon arrival, and particularly in the construction and domestic work sectors.

Under the Kafala system a migrant worker’s presence in a host country is linked entirely to their employer, with the effect that it’s not only difficult or impossible to switch jobs, but all elements of their daily lives from access to their passports, their freedom of movement, their living conditions, their ability to leave the country, and their basic dignities are all controlled by their employer. And there is often little to no regulation put in place to protect workers against exploitation and abuse. And abuse has been rampant for decades. From sexual harassment and rape of domestic workers to squalid living conditions and work without pay for construction workers and manual laborers.

This dirty secret is often hidden inside of people’s homes or in isolated camps, so access to covering and exposing it is extremely difficult to obtain, which is why the work of our guest Vani Saraswathi and Migrant-Rights.org is so critical.

Episode 36: Sudan- Massacre in Khartoum (Part 2 of 2)

This segment of our two-part interview with Dahlia Al Roubi was recorded on Tuesday, June 4th, the day after the current government crackdown began against protestors in Khartoum. As of this episode roughly 100 people have been killed by government forces, with reports that scores of bodies have been dumped into the Nile. As of June 6th, Sudan’s membership in the African Union has been revoked. Sudan’s military council has suspended talks with protestors and unilaterally called for elections to be held within 9 months.

The forces spearheading this apparent massacre appear to be the RSF or “Rapid Support Forces”, led by Mohamed "Hemeti" Hamdan Dagalo. The RSF are a re-branded iteration of the Janjaweed militias that were charged with carrying out the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region. They’ve since been absorbed into the Sudanese military structure and given the stamp of governmental legitimacy, but they are essentially trained for one purpose and it appears that this purpose has now been turned on the protestors and the people of Khartoum. Incidentally the RSF forces are also being used as mercenaries by the Saudis in their war on Yemen.

Episode 35: Sudan: Women in Revolution (1 of 2)

For this first part of a two-part conversation, we talk to Sudanese activist Dahlia Al Roubi about what it was like growing up under the regime of recently deposed dictator Omar Al Bashir, how the current revolution swept Sudan, starting in December of last year, the challenges of weighing the purity of revolutionary principles against the practical constraints of time and competing interests, and about the role of women who took a leading role in the street protests but who now appear to be left out of the negotiations.

Dahlia and I recorded this first part of our interview on May 21st, before the current wave of violence was unleashed by the transitional military government on protestors and civilians in Khartoum. However we decided to include this conversation to claim some small space in the historical record, a space for what the Sudanese people were aspiring to as recently as Sunday evening. And we’re including it as a reminder that Syria also had this moment, and Egypt as well, and that while violence and a return to despotism might define the moment it’s important to ask ourselves where Western governments positioned themselves during the grassroots efforts to push these countries towards freedom.

Part two of our discussion provides a short update about the violence that has been unleashed by government forces in recent days, in particularly the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) formerly known as the Janjaweed.

Episode 32: On the Ground in Yemen

We hear very little about the war that is taking place in Yemen, now in its fifth year. And we hear even less about the war from Yemenis themselves, and still less from those who remain Yemen. This episode represents a small effort to address this disparity.

Adel Hashem is the director of Human Needs Development in Sana’a, an organization that is working on the ground to deliver food, medical, and education support to the Yemeni people.

Though the war in Syria, and other regional conflicts have managed to grab headlines in recent years, Yemen has remained conspicuously underreported despite the fact that it has seen the largest cholera outbreak in recorded history, starvation, thousands of civilian casualties, widespread food insecurity amongst the majority of its population, and despite the fact that all of these horrors are completely man-made.

This stems in large part from the fact that the majority of the carnage in Yemen has been unleashed by Saudi Arabia and its coalition of supporters in their fight against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia is a US ally and it’s brutal air campaign (and less reported mercenary-supported ground campaign) have enjoyed the support of US and Western weapons deals, as well as intelligence and logistical support. Quite simply, the war would not be possible without the direct and ongoing support of Western governments, and principally the US, UK and France.

But we can change this.

Support Human Needs Development’s Ramadan campaign: