School of War - How the Middle East Got So Screwed Up, with Simon Sebag Montefiore

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

“Let’s whisper it,” said historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. “The Trump blockade is working.” It can be hard to parse the state of play in the Middle East amid escalating rhetoric, but history gives us the necessary perspective to call balls and strikes in the present day. Today, the author of The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East joins School of War to discuss the forces that created the modern Middle East, why he thinks Trump’s strategy in Iran is working, and the growing rivalry between Israel and Turkey. “There is a real danger that Erdoğan will talk himself into a war with Israel,” he warns. 05:22 — The Middle East Is Not Monochrome   09:49 — Four Eras of the Modern Middle East   11:45 — The Problem With Nation-States   18:30 — Why 1979 Changed the Middle East   25:22 — Can Iran’s Revolution Survive Regime Change?   34:28 — Iran, Hormuz, and the Nuclear Question   39:57 — Could Iran’s Regime Reach a Breaking Point?   44:42 — Why Iran’s Regime Is Built for War   50:46 — Trump, Soleimani, and the 12-Day War   52:28 — Can the Iran Blockade Work?   54:23 — Israel’s Post–October 7 Grand Strategy   1:04:56 — Israel, Turkey, and Erdoğan’s Neo-Ottoman Ambitions This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, the builder platform for the American warfighter, fielded across the force and live on the frontline today. Learn more at palantir.com. This episode of School of War is also brought to you by Stratolaunch, a leading pure-play hypersonics company.  Stratolaunch helps the U.S. and its allies move new hypersonic technologies from concept to capability, faster and cheaper.  Learn more about how Stratolaunch is accelerating the future of hypersonics at Stratolaunch.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, the builder platform for the American warfighter, fielded across the force and live on the front line today. Maven Smart System isn't just software you use. It's the platform you build on. Every day, thousands of uniformed service members use AI coding agents to build their own agentic applications across all warfighting functions on top of the DOW's integrated ontology. What once took a contract in a year, now takes a warfighter and an afternoon. Administered by OSWCDAO, powered by the Palantir platform. One platform deployed everywhere at all classifications. Build at the speed of war.

Today's episode is a real treat. We have the great Simon Sebag Montefiore, joining us to talk about his new history of the modern Middle East, called the Cauldron. The Middle East is a region, of course, that seems. to defy interpretation, policy, at times even definition. My own answer to the question, what is the Middle East, is that place which American politicians would like to ignore, but on which they are forever compelled to focus. From the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of modern Saudi Arabia to the 26 grand strategies of Iran, Israel, and Turkey, today's conversation has range. Let's get into it. It is for a war. This is a lot of the invasion of the way.

41, a date which will live when the experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the grave situation. Fight on the landing ground. We'll fight in the fields and in the streets, which will never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Simon Seabag Montefiore, whose most recent book, The Coulter, The Making of the Modern East, is just out now here in the United States. Simon, your biography is really something, so I can only really hit the wave tops here.

I believe you've got books that have been published in 48 languages to name just a few of the more prominent ones, Catherine the Great, Young Stalin, Stalin the Court of the Red Tsar, Jerusalem, the biography, the world of family history of humanity. You're a novelist as well. You have the Moscow trilogy of novels, Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon, and One Night in Winter. You're a Cambridge-trained historian. recent book, which we'll spend most of our time talking about today, is a really magnificent achievement. Thank you so much for coming on School of War.

It's great to be with you. And I've been meaning to speak to you for some time. And I must warn you that these cartons are not my home. I'm in a very, a very respectable New York Hotel, just across town from you, bizarrely. But this is not my exact taste. Yeah, we planned this very poorly, actually. We should have just met here in person as we both happened to be in New York at the moment, but good to connect with you here virtually. Nevertheless, you know, the show used to be audio only,

so your curtains would have been a non-issue. And I wouldn't have had to dress up like I do now. I used to do this in my pajamas much of the time, but alas, no longer possible. Look, I mean, there's so many places we could begin here. I think one of the effects that your book had on me preparing for this episode is it reminded me a bit of the effect that T.E. Lawrence's seven pillars of wisdom had on me as a student. Because I remember as so many Americans my age were

of suddenly having a gripping interest in the Middle East back in 2001. And naturally thinking of it as a place dominated by Islam, dominated by Arabs, and seeing, and, seeing it as it were in a kind of monochrome. And reading the seven pillars of wisdom, he has that marvelous early sequence where he sort of takes you on a tour up really along the route of the Arab Revolt, if memory serves. So you kind of come up out of the Arab Peninsula, Arabian Peninsula, into the Levant. And he's sort of telling you about all of the different ethnicities and histories of the people who populate that region, the various religious and the overall effect you get is of just sort of a striking, stunning, even diversity of the region,

which to a naive person who doesn't know much about the Middle East comes as a bit of a surprise. And your book is this incredible tour de force, you know, successful attempt to narrate more than 100 years of modern Middle Eastern history on a very broad geographical scope, you know, from the Atlantic Ocean to Central Asia. and it has the same effect of this stunning kind of diversity of ethnicity, of religion, of family, of a bunch of other things. So I used to get that wrong about the Middle East, have seen it in these monochrome colors. Is that something that you encounter much? Was that one of the reasons you wrote the book

is to illustrate this kind of diversity? Well, first of all, I have to take any comparison to T. Lawrence's florid prose and beautiful. poetical turn of phrase as a massive compliment. So thank you for that. But yeah, this is, of course, one of the big themes of the book. I mean, we're living in an age of monochromic, leekly reductionist and frankly ignorant sort of social media TikTok analysis of foreign policy. And actually, one of the things I wanted to do in this book is just to celebrate, you know, the richness of the region and the Middle East. And even though we're living in a period in the last sort of 50 years, 100 years have been a period in which, in fact, there's been a sort of a massive sort of anti-diversity, a kind of shrinking of the diversity of the Middle East in many ways.

And, you know, the Christian population of the Middle East, for example, has kind of crashed. but actually it's still an incredibly rich, colorful, diverse, cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian region. And that passage in T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, classic passage, you know, catches that. And this book is in part meant to do that. In many ways, this is a reaction to the sort of a monochrome, very limited view that you see on social media, but also in the news. And it's just a return in some ways to something else as well, which is, I mean, this is, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, also a celebration or a study of the agency of the peoples and leaders of the Middle East. And you mentioned T. Lawrence, he's one of the amazing characters who were in the book, in some detail, as you know, the Arab Revolt.

And his own part in it is fascinating. He himself is a study in the complexity of the region. because he was, as you know, he was an Arabist, but also a British imperialist. He was an Arab nationalist, but also a Zionist. He was a recorder of history and a participant in history, but also a tremendous fabulous and liar. So he was so many interesting things. He's one of the characters. But the emphasis in the book is not so much on.

outsiders on Americans and Brits and French who intervene in the Middle East. And of course, they're all in there, from T.E. Lawrence to Donald Trump. Really, it's a study of how the Middle East made the Middle East and the agency at the people's there. And that's why, you know, most such history books begin the end of World War I with kind of British Prime Ministers

and Balthor, you know, drawing maps of the Middle East. but I don't. I start in 1900 with the Ottoman Empire. And even more than that, I start with a scene where a young Arab prince, Abdulaziz, Al-Saud, I'm in his early 20s, he's 6'4, something like that. And he rides with 30 or 40 friends with camels and horses across the Arabian desert and creeps during the night into the date groves around a small settlement called Riyadh. and he actually hides in the governor of Riyadh's Harim house. And when the sunrises, he creeps out. And when the governor arrives to visit his harrim, they attack him. And there's a fight with swords and Lee Enfield rifles.

And Abdulaziz captures Riyadh, and that is the beginning of Saudi Arabia, the modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia that is right now the center of the Middle East and in a way the world. And that trajectory is the trajectory of the cauldron, the making of the modern Middle East, which is this book. You have this really interesting periodization, the first phase of which includes the event you just pointed to and also the formative moments for many of the states

and movements that are important today. But I just want to list them off because I think it's a really nice work of high-level synthesis in which to organize all of the stories that you tell. in the book. So the first phase, which concludes in 1918, is this period where imperialism, but still largely local imperialism, is the dominant force. It's the Ottomans, and for quite a while Egyptian power and a bit of Iranian power that dominates. This all comes to an end by the 19, by the end of the First World War, supplanted largely by European imperialism in this mandatory

period, which runs through the Second World War. The third period, Of course, which also constitutes a good choke of the Cold War, runs through 1979. It's this period of nationalism, pan-Arabism, and sort of the seeds of the revolutionism, which then kick off in 79 and bring us to the present day. It's a transition from nationalism to a kind of revolutionary Islamism, which runs into the nationalist movements along with the monarchies, which you call the luxury monarchies as well, and brings us to the present moment of ferment. I guess one way to talk about that periodization,

I want to ask you, your first answer, you made reference to the fact that, well, it's a mistake to see the Middle East and monochromatic terms, but the historical fact is it has grown a bit more monochromatic over the period that you're writing about. As much of the world has grown more diverse, the Middle East has grown less diverse,

and it seems to be this nationalism and also these revolutionist religious movements that have contributed to that phenomenon. Why has it happened? have these movements made the Middle East a more leveled and monochromatic place? Well, it's two sort of themes. One is nationalism. You know, the idea of, I mean, we in the West, particularly in Europe, love the idea of the nation state. And we came to believe that the nation state was, you know, among the many bad systems of state formation, that a nation's

state was the best. But nation states have a bit of a problem because nation states have to have a nation. And that idea of a nation is based on language. It's based on history, usually invented, much of it invented, and folklore, and a distinct homeland. And of course, if you apply that, that if you apply that to a country with or a region with more than one ethnicity and more than one nation

then you have to you have to suppress the other nations or expel them and the creation of modern nation states outside Europe has is therefore always

a messy business and, you know, the classic examples, I mean, it started in Europe, the classic examples in Europe where, you know, the Greek revolution in 1920, 24, when, you know, all the Muslim inhabitants of Greece who were known as Turks, though, you know, their actual ethnicity was complicated, had to be expelled. And the Christian inhabitants stayed and called themselves Greeks. So this pattern continued all the way through. But in the 20th century, in the period that I'm writing about, the biggest, there are three massive examples. One is the creation of what is now Turkey, in which millions of people, Greek Christians and Armenians were first of all killed in World War I and then expelled or killed in the Greek-Turkish war. and out of this came a new idea of a new nation, the Turkish nation, formed by Ataturk. And there were huge population swaps of hundreds of thousands of people.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Cities were burned. There were apocalyptic scenes. And that is what happens when you create a new nation state in a multi-ethnic, in a multi-ethnic part of the world. The second big example is 1947 in India, Pakistan, which is just outside the region, though by my reckoning, it's now, one has to regard the whole region as one region now, but we'll maybe discuss that later. And there you had 12 million people having to move, two to three million people killed. And then, of course, the third is the creation of Israel in 47, 48. When, you know, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs lost their homes, left their homes, fled their homes, all were driven out of their homes.

Later, hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from the Middle East and moved that as well. and very small numbers of people were killed in that war, interestingly. Around 10 to 13,000 people, including fighters and soldiers. So it was actually a tiny war, but it's assumed a massive scale. So in different ways, in the creation of all of the states of the Middle East,

Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, you've seen the structure of a sort of European-style nation state imposed on a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian region. And the form of these states, they have all-fashioned names like India or Syria, but actually they're kind of new creations and new states. And the way they handle this diversity has been a challenge. You can have a dictator like Saddam Hussein, who, you know, it actually kills hundreds of thousands of Kurds to keep them in the state. You can have, you know, you can see what happened in Syria. In Lebanon, there's a civil war between, so there's many different definitions. In Israel, there's an occupation that

keeps the Palestinian Arabs under control. And so there are many definitions of this. And one way to solve it is to expel them. You know, and that's what happened in 1956 when NASA, the president of Egypt, expelled all the Egypt-tized peoples from Egypt. So that was the Jews, the Lebanese, the Greeks, the Italians. And in doing so, he destroyed his country. He destroyed the economy of Egypt, which has never recovered. So that was part of it.

That was nationalism. And then the second part of it, in the second part of this period, is Islamism. And that's the other ideology that has destroyed the diverse of the Middle East. And Islamism includes some features of Arab nationalism. But it also embraces non-Arab people, such as the Iranians. And it also includes ideologies from Europe, including bits of Nazism, bits of fascism. and it's all kind of cleaved together and dressed up as a return to ancient Islam

from the early decades, the early centuries of Islam, while in fact it's really a modern political movement ideology and it has attacked, also attacked ethnicities and attack diversity. So the result has been, you know, in 1900, 25% of the Middle East was Christian. And now it's 4%.

And in places like Iraq, you know, in 2000, just before the Iraq war, there were a million Christians in Iraq. And now there are about 100,000. Wow. You make a very bold assertion in the book that the 1979 Islamic Revolution ought to be considered an event as significant or at least in the same category as the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolution of 1917. I don't think anyone sitting here today

would argue that the Islamic Revolution wasn't significant. But that's still a big claim. What's your case for it? Well, I mean, I think I would also, I should probably add in there the 1776 too, just to be tactful. But that was the good one. We're good with it.

At least from where I said, I can't speak for you, Simon. But that was the good. We think it's good too. But no, no, I mean, 1979 is one of those. The more you look back, the more you realize that it is such a significant and of such significance. And it does belong up there. And partly, it's not just the effect, its effect on Shia Islam and Iran, which is, you know, Shia Islam is only 15% of Islam. It's a much wider effect. And the, and the, you know, its effect was to meld together an idea of Islamic, Islamist, um, Islamist, um, Islamic radicalism and resistance and anti-Westernism. And it melded these things together, um, with bits of, um, of nationalisms as well, um, of radical nationalisms. and pieces of almost Marxist-Leninist dialectic in the sense that,

well, one of the creators of the Iranian Revolution called Red Sheism, which is to say that there are parts of Shia Islam that meld, dovetail very nicely with revolutionism because of the history of the creation of the Shia in the early years of Islam. But the point is that this this 179 wasn't just an Iranian revolution. It also immediately affected

and was infected by and was commandeered and fused with Sunni radicalism as well. And it also encompassed, as I said, the radicalism that had started in the 60s, the resistance

radicalism that was sort of had seen the creation of famous terrorist organizations like the Popular Front for liberation liberation of Palestine and and another sort of Marxist Leninist resistance organizations and it was it was part it was partly luck but partly clever politics that that Khmerini and his top people identified Israel and Jerusalem as a uniting banner that could also draw in the Arab world and the Sunni world into their revolutionary vanguard. And that's what happened and it worked brilliantly. It was partly so successful because it just happened that just over 10 years earlier, the NASA, the president of Egypt and the Egyptians, the Jordanians and the Syrians,

had been defeated by Israel, which was a colossal humiliation that had changed the history of Israel and of the region. And this offered a replacement for the stagnation, the stagnation of pan-Arabism, pan-Arab nationalism, which had been represented by NASA. And instead, it offered another, it offered another, another way of looking at the world, which was, you know, formal states around Islam, unite with us to liberate, to liberate Jerusalem and Israel, to, and to resist the traitors among our, among, among, among the house of Islam. In other words, the pro-Western rulers of the Gulf, the Gulf monarchies, Egypt, Jordan, places like that, Morocco. And at the same time, resist all Western influences.

And all of this melded together into this new idea. And it was very successful. And the struggles that it started are still going on today. And we're seeing this very minute, you know, when you turn on the news, that is the ferment that is happening. And so that started in 1979. And you could argue that 1979 itself, was just another stage in the long history of Islam, at the House of Islam,

in which there has always been this tension, this duel between basic, there are many, many sects, of course, in Islam, and it's extremely complicated. But there's always been a tradition that is very open to the West, that is open-minded, where there has been civilian rule

by monarchs usually, who have been in charge of and above the rule of clergy. But there's also been another redemptionist, clerical definition of Islam, which is anti-Western, and where religion is senior to the state. And we've seen examples of other examples of that in our own times. And so that's partly what's happening today,

and that's why 1979 is so important. And you have to add into this, you know, Iotlakeh was kind of very confusing to us in our secular West because we're, you know, his tarbon and his beard. And he looks like a character from what we imagine the Middle Ages would have looked like. But actually, to continue the idea about 1979 in its revolutionary significance, he was just one of the great revolutionary statesmen of the 20th century. And like a Stalin or a Mao, just trying. differently. Of course, the ideology was very different. It was religious-based. But he was just a masterful player of politics and managed to trick and manipulate everybody into creating the unique polity that is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Well, another way of expressing the same thought,

then, is that Mojtaba has some pretty big shoes to fill. Now, what, the third Supreme Leader of Iran. How closely is the fate of, I'll just call it 79ism, how closely is that fate tied to the fate of Iran itself, specifically as a project? If there were to be regime change in Tehran, I'm not suggesting that that's going to happen anytime soon, despite the hopes of many in Israel

and many in the Trump administration, because if anything, in 2026, this thing seems pretty resolute. If there were to be regime change in Tehran, and Iranian liberals or however it shook out, some other dominant force took power in Iran or Iran split apart. What would be the future of 79ism? Well, I mean, 79ism, you know, the sort of percentage of the Iranian electorate who are devoted to 79ism or Khmerianism is somewhere between 20 and 20% out of the 90 million people

who are Iranian. And so, so, you know, we're at a full democracy, which is not impossible, but democracy is not impossible anywhere, though I'd say it's pretty unlikely at the moment anyway. But the point is that the present regime

is extremely unpopular. And so, though we have no idea what would work, it would be, it would mark the end of 79 is a mini, Iran and it and it would it would let's just say hugely weaken 79 Islamism in the rest of the Middle East. I mean, what we're seeing now is a sort of multi-tier conflict in Iran in the Middle East. I mean, you know, in one sense you just see this, there is, as I said, this huge conflict, which which is between, you know, open, good governance, open-minded,

governed, not democracy, because the best governed states in the Middle East are, in fact, absolute monarchies like the UAE or Saudi Arabia, probably, or Morocco. They all have their huge flaws, of course, it's not completely to praise them. And they are absolute monarchies. So, you know, there's that. But, you know, they have a, they have an sort of open, an open view of the world. And, you know, on the other, and they are in opposition to this resistance. radical Islamist radicalism that is anti-Western. It's interesting. One of the interesting things about the present conflict is, you know, the Iranian, the Iranian

Comaniist or whatever you want to call it, hated Israel and America, of course. But their hatred for the local family monarchies in the Gulf even exceeded that. And when you look at what they kind of, a lot of the comments they said, they would, when you look at their discussions and, you know, interviews with them, often on local news media, you know, they often said, like, you know, we're going to, before we even get to Israel, we're going to destroy these family monarchies. But nonetheless, of course, places like UAE and so were surprised about the way that Iran attacked them so brutally once the wall started. even though they knew that there was an essential hatred there, that partly came from history, part three, from religion, but partly from this ideological stance. So the answer is we just don't know what the real opinion is within Iran. We only know those voting figures and those percentages because we know who voted for what candidate in the most recent presidential election.

and the sort of diehard hard line got somewhere between 10 and 20 percent, and therefore that we presume is the figure. Of course, as you know, Aaron, from discussing this many times on your podcast of different people and different places, a regime with a relatively small base, but actually with complete control and loyalty of its huge security organs and forces, can stay in power almost forever. And people power of unarmed people are as knelt if you have hundreds of thousands

of devoted militias and secret police who are willing to shoot, kill any number of young people. And of course, that's what's happened. On the inheritance of Mujahabah and, you know, the second, you know, Obviously, Khmerini, the original ruler, ruled 79 to 89. Then 89, for the next 37 years until February this year,

Ali Khamenei was the supreme leader, was effectively the autocrat. And he was the arbiter of all the factions in that regime. And so he was assassinated by the Israelis and the Americans, as you know, on the 28th of February. And so the period we're in now for Iran is a period, if you're still, step back, rather similar to that of the vanishing of a massive, um, titanic revolutionary leader who's been in power for, for decades. Um, think the death of Stalin. Um, think the death of Mao.

Though Mao's case was different because they had Deng Xiaoping, who was already a, a considerable figure. And Iran doesn't seem to have that figure. And all did Russia. Russia did not, was, you know, was not able to replace Stalin. and with someone of anything alike approaching his stature. And so that could take many years for the regime to really find, to find who's going to make.

It could take months, it could take years. And until it does, it's pretty difficult to see how it's really able to negotiate a proper settlement with the huge issues. So that's one really. reason why, though the region really needs a sort of, you know, a proper reorganization and a proper settlement of all sorts of issues, including the Gulf itself, and even more importantly, the nuclear issue, the fact the matter is very hard to do that without a leader, without a single leader. And, you know, of course people have sort of talked a lot about how,

you know, even before Kamenei was assassinated, that the, the military, the, the, the, the, um, the revolutionary guards were going to become more and more powerful inevitably as they took over more of the economy and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and that, that, that, that happened in an accelerated moment when, when, um, the West assassinated, Kamenei, but the generals who took power, not new people, um, as I explained to show in the book, that, you know, people like, um, Vahidi and Jafari and all the other, they had all been in power, um, Galabah, um, Galabah, they had all been at the top since the 80s. When they rose very fast,

revolutions are great times for young people to rise. And we saw that in the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution. This is the same. So in the 80s, they rose to high rank very quickly. And in the 90s, they were all ministers and commanders of the Quds Force or the guards themselves. And now those people are in their late 60s, and now they're at the top.

But no one knows who's going to come out, who come out as the leader. This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, administered by OSW CDAO, powered by the Palantir platform. Maven isn't an app. It's a builder ecosystem. Right now, across the joint force, thousands of uniform service members are pointing AI coding agents at their hardest problems and building the tools they need themselves, targeting

workflows, intel products, battle management. No ticket, no vendor, no wait. The warfighter closest to the fight is now the one building for it. That's how you fight at the speed of war. And I guess the reason just to draw the logic out why a final settlement or at least a lasting settlement can't be negotiated without a leader of some stature simply because what? It will involve concessions and to make concessions you can't be in a position where you're constantly going to be outmaneuvered to your right as it were, which seems to be a dynamic. that's underway right now, that whenever there's a faction within the regime right now that wants to, every time back in the summer, we seem to be getting close to that, the ROGC would shoot at a boat

in the Strait of Ramos and it would all be off. That's right. I mean, obviously, the nuclear issue is really the important one. But now that the Gulf itself has come into play in the Straits of Hormuz, obviously that cannot be allowed to go to to to fall to into Iranian hands and I argue that is just a that is they don't expect to get that in the end that is a that is a sort of spoiling negotiating tactic and I don't believe that they will stick to that because I don't think any I don't think the world will allow them to keep it you know there were only kind of two really big compromises internationally during during the entire 40th 47, 48 years of the Iranian

revolutionary state. One was when Khomeini made peace with Iraq, shortly before he died in 88, 89, when he said it was like swallowing poison.

And he just had to do it because it was destroying the country. And he had to agree that he was never going to be able to totally defeat Saddam Hussein. And so he made that peace. And the only other example was Obama's nuclear deal in 2016. And one needs to understand that deal.

He made that deal to hold to to kind of delay for 10 years, whether to go for a nuclear weapon or not. But he may also made it so he would not have to compromise internally with the regime. And so he said it was like, like a wrestler who in the middle of a wrestling bout sits down and has a rest and he compared it to that. So obviously a decision to make these compromises now would be a massive decision and there's no one of any of the kind of necessary authority to do so. But, you know, there will ultimately be some sort of deal made because there has to be and the region

the region needs it. But it could take years. But I would say one thing. One thing that I think will mean that the regime will start to negotiate sooner or or the later is that let's whisper it. The Trump blockade is working. And, you know, a lot of the attacks on it from Western media have been examples of just anything that Trump does cannot possibly work.

And that is a sort of strong and an understandable tendency. But the fact is, what they should have done is blockade the Iranians with an own blockade before launching an attack. And they may not have needed to launch that attack because just as the Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz are Iranians. great asset, they can also be Iran's great liability because they can't export. If it's blockaded, they can't export and they can't make anything. And that's what happened, by the way, in 1953 with Mossadegh was that he wouldn't make a deal with the British. So the British wouldn't

deal with him. So the Iranians couldn't export their oil. And therefore, the country was very quickly going to get to become, go bankrupt. And that's the basic what's happening now, which is why you're right, they keep firing on tankers every time, every time there seems to be a large amount of oil getting through, and it's debated how much is getting out. But between the Iranian, the American block A, which has become increasingly effective, and the East-West Saudi pipeline,

and the UAE and other exporters getting oil out, we are actually getting relatively closer to pre-war levels. And that's why, one, they fire on other moderate powers. Two, they've launched the, they've unleashed the Houthis on the Saudis and on the straight of Al-Mandab. So these are all signs that it's working. And the Trump administration seems to be holding its nerve, despite massive, of, you know, dropping popularity figures, the coming midterms, and, you know, an enormous kind of

criticism from within the American establishment. But now this has started, they have to see it through. And by the way, you know, the Arab powers in private are now begging the Americans to finish it off somehow. And, you know, there are fascinating things afoot at the moment. moment, you know, the Israeli Prime Minister just flew to UAE and may have met the Saudis there, too, as possible. Things are happening. Extraordinary things are happening. And there's extraordinary potential in all sorts of directions. Strangely, at this time when it seems so insoluble and desperate and close to failure, actually, the seeds of success may be pushing through. Well, having been so skeptical about the prospects for, if not full regime change, then let's call it regime

alteration in Iran a few minutes ago. Let me gesture towards the other side of the ledger. You know, I have a natural skepticism about it just because for years now, I have had to confront the fact that, and I think it's true for a lot of people roughly my age, the fall of the Soviet Union, so colored our view of what was generally possible in international politics, that I have been overly optimistic time and again over the years. Not just about the prospects of democracy, as a lot of people were overly optimistic about it in the earlier part of this century

because of the example of Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, not to mention the success of a lot of East Asian nations over the second half of the 20th century, but just the fact that the Soviet Union itself fell, and it fell so quickly and it fell so dramatically. And so you look at a state like Iran and it's incredible repressiveness

and the way in which, as you point out, the regime is so unpopular, and you think, well, this just can't go on. But of course, as you alluded to earlier, the Iranian elite that's actually in charge is willing to gun down large numbers of people in the streets. And they have confidence in their own project on some level. And that's what the Soviet Union at the end lacked.

The Soviet leaders lacked confidence in their own project. That said, you do need cash. You do need cash to run. You have to buy the bullets. You have to pay the salaries of the gunmen. And so I do wonder at some point, does the regime itself face a terminal issue, face these fatal questions, as strong as their position may be and as confident as they may be in their own revolution? No, I think that's right.

I think that's right. I think that, you know, that this blockade is cutting down their ability to export oil. For Oriel is their main, overwhelmingly, it's a petro economy. And over time, it will disintegrate. And it is beginning, there are signs it is beginning to disintegrate. And the real crisis will come when the war is over and they lose the binding, uniting banner of war. And actually, you'd have to face the fact that the country is falling apart. The bombing has destroyed a lot of industry.

and bridges and so on, and the fact is there was no cash to pay people. You know, when you're talking about revolutions, one often really needs to go down to the basics and just think like, if you're a civil servant in a provincial town in Iran, or you can name, put any country, and you're still getting your salary, if you're still getting a salary and you've still got your family, you know, living with you in your house, at what point do you risk that, risk death? instant death for you and your children to support a revolution against this regime. And the answer is you don't while you're still getting your salary.

And that's pretty basic. But, you know, that's one way of looking at it. And, you know, even in the January uprising in the demonstrations, you know, there were all the, everyone in the, it was the intelligentsia, it was kids everywhere. It was young, handsome, young, handsome and beautiful young people. and that's why overwhelmingly the 40,000 killed a sort of a young, we're youngish people. But you didn't see many kind of in the streets.

If you look at the pictures, if you look at the dead, you don't see many of kind of middle-aged kind of fathers of four, you know. And that's why that revolution, that's one reason that that revolution didn't happen. The other one was that they killed everybody, everybody. But what one's got to realize is, yes, if the war stops and suddenly, they go back home and it's like everything is mismanaged, that salaries aren't going to be paid. Then it's peace that's going to destroy

and bring a revolution to this country. But if the wall goes on, I think you touched on it here about when you said about their belief in the project is different from the Soviet Union. And as you know, my early part of my career, I was a Russianist and I was there for the fall of the Soviet Union. I was there in all the wars.

And I should say, you know, I was very lucky to see the fall of the Soviet Empire as in all the Caucasus and places in Chechnya and Georgia and places like that. And it's a great training for a historian to see the fall of a great empire. Amazing. But you're right. You know, the elite still believe. And they're also getting huge benefits. They control the top ruling families in the guards and the elite, the Islamist elite, controlled huge stream. of income and slices of the economy.

So they have both God and money on their side. And the reason why they're functioning kind of surprisingly well under massive American attack. And why they didn't fall is because their whole state is designed for this. I mean, you know, the Islamic Republic was created so successfully by Khomeini because Iraq invaded in 1980. and it was that desperate crisis that enabled the regime to kill all its enemies, to create the Revolutionary Guards Corps, and to create the supreme leadership and the whole structure

of the hybrid structure of this constitution with this supreme leader. And war is how it was made. And in each of the wars that they fought, and I include the Iraq War, the insurgency, the way they supported the insurgency against, against America, but also the Iran-Iraq War, the tanker war of the 80s. In all of these, they saw how a smaller, less heavily armed power like Iran could hold at bay a huge conventionally armed, sophisticated, either local power like Iraq or superpower, mega power like America. and they learnt those lessons. And on top of that, you know, they redesigned their leadership command structures, having seen the assassination of Soleimani and so on. And that's the mosaic command structure that you will have discussed in your shows.

And on top of that, you've got two other kind of things. One is that Shiism itself is a theology built around martyrdom. and resistance and revolutionary setbacks. It's a cult of martyrdom. So it's very well suited for this sort of war. It's mindset. And the other part of it is

there are factions within this ruling group who are marists and the return of the 12th Imam descended from the Imam Ali, the early caliphs of Islam, the early Shia imams who vanished and is occulted and he's supposed to return and when he returns

there's supposed to be an apocalyptic end days scenario in which by the way all the Jews and Christians are killed and then there is a moment of the chosen one returns and there's a there will be the rule of justice and kindness and all of that like in all of our religious apocalyptic scenarios in all of our religions

But the thing is that there are people in this regime who are ready for this and who actually don't fear an apocalyptic war with America. They believe it could spark the apocalypse, the modest endgame. And even a kind of semi-moderate figure like Foreign Minister Arachi speaking at the UN this week, if you look at the United, his latest quote, he says, we're not afraid of an apocalyptic war. And this is a reference to those, and I don't know if he's part of that faction. I don't believe he is, but we don't know, frankly. But there are factions of which Muchtabar was one of these factions, but we don't know if he's alive or dead or somewhere in between.

But so my point is that while the wall goes on, even if it's a sort of on and off, on and off hot, hot, cold war, as it were, sporadic war, spasmodic war, even if it is, they can still, they are still extremely well equipped for this militarily, but also psychologically. But the moment the war stops, they're in big trouble. And the Trump administration is right to be surprisingly and discreetly quiet about sticking to this blockade. And that's an unusual discipline for this president and this administration, isn't it? It is, though, you know, I also think back in 2025, there was a lot of questions during the 12-day war about whether or not Trump would intervene on the side of Israel.

And he did, and it was dramatic, and I think quite successful. I also think back to 2019 when the Iranians, there were Iranian frogmen blowing up boats in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Aramco got hit in an Italian. and Trump in the United States did very little for a very long time. And then an American contractor was killed in Iraq and the president ordered the killing of Kassam Soleimani. So there is a kind of, there's a pattern here of reluctance to intervene followed by surprisingly strong intervention. And I think the reason, I think just offer a theory in response to your implicit question is, I think the president would have stepped back if he could have earlier this year,

despite what appears to be a very sincere antipathy towards the Islamic Republic. I actually think it's one of his most enduring and consistent beliefs. But the Strait of Ramuz just makes it impossible. So he can't do what he did with Yemen in 2025, which was to bomb the Houthis for a bit and then walk away. He just can't because he knows. He knows it would be an objective defeat, which no amount of bluster. could cover up and a fundamental weakening of American power globally.

And he can't abide by that. I think that's absolutely right. Your analysis is right. I think, you know, the assassination of Soleimani was a sophisticated, you know, laser-like operation. I think the intervention in the 12-day war, you know, would have delighted von Molka and Klausvitz, you know. Again, you're absolutely right.

It was like out of the character that we usually assign to the president, to this president, he went in with surprise, with incredible focus. And he did, however, you know, you define the extent of the success of that mission. He set back their nuclear project by a long time, a long way, and then got out. and, you know, that was actually the way, that is the way to do international interventions if you want to do them. But of course, you know, he'd been,

then he was incredibly successful in Venezuela, and I think the success of those two incredibly impetuous operations. And by the way, you know, doing Venezuela without losing a single man is just, was luck beyond a miracle. And so I think that there was a moment that happens with rulers when they suddenly think everything is possible. Yeah, literally by inches, Simon, in the sense that that lead helicopter pilot who was shot. Yeah. You could imagine those bullets going a few inches to the left to the right, either killing them or outright or disabling the helicopter at which point, that's a very different night, a very different story.

That's right. So that's kind of, but I think one eye just to move on, it's like, yes, so if he gets the blockade right, if he sticks, to it, this could somehow work and in a surprising way. And you're right, then he has no choice but to stick to it now, because the catastrophe of surrendering the Gulf to the Iranians is impossible. But I think an ironic, I think there are many ironies of all of this. One irony is that, you know, his short, surgical, impetuous wars now turned into a long operation that would have to be conducted by any American president, not just a Trumpian one. But the second thing is, I think there's interesting, is the attacks on moderate Arab powers, the Gulf powers, for example, and on U.S. bases in Jordan and so on, you might think that this has made them less necessary

or revealed how exposed they are. But I believe that actually this has all made America much more essential than ever. And though there's lots of talk about, you know, everyone's hedging in every direction. The Saudis are talking to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, America is ever more essential after what the Iranians have done. And this may be their biggest mistake when we step back and look as historians. Because they hope that they would make America no longer dare to stay or no longer welcome to stay. And I think we'll see that America will be even more present and necessary than it was before. In the time we have left, I want to ask you about both Israel and Turkey.

on Israel, a very big question for you. What will the grand strategy, in the broadest, most conceptual sense, be as we come out of this period of the post-10-7 wars? And I'll put a bit more substance on the table, which I took this grand strategy up to 2023, to be sort of summed up in the phrase, Startup Nation. Netanyahu, Wallahawk in certain respects, in other respects, reluctant to become involved in decisive conflict, certainly with demonstrably with Iran. An opening of the country's economy, the accumulation of wealth in a way that really wasn't a factor in earlier phases of Israeli history.

A leveraging of parts of the economy, of the natural talents of the Israeli population, in a way that was just really a kind of rollicking and sort of globally recognized success. Post-2020-I mean, there was a period there, I think, certainly 2024, where that grand strategy was definitely in question. That is to say, there was a wow, there where it looked like the Iranian axis was sort of winning. In the sense of not that they were going to literally drive Israelis into the sea and end the Zionist project literally, but that Israel would just be a less attractive. active place for the kind of wealthy center-center-left Jews who powered the startup nation

tech economy and that Israel would become over time a more religious, more militaristic, possibly even smaller in terms of its Jewish population state. I think we've pulled out, the state of Israel is pulled out of that dive and Iran is in a much weaker position in 26 than it was in 2024. Nevertheless, do you see going forward Israel having more continuity with that pre-2023 grand strategy? Are there big changes afoot? Had the big changes already occurred and we're still trying to articulate them? How do you see it? I see that before, you know, the first 23 years of the century, you're right, you know, startup nation, but there was also two kind of parallel developments. One was that Israel really was becoming a wealthy country,

with a very wealthy and sophisticated military. And with tech, with enormous tech, you know, on capabilities, iron dome, all this sort of stuff. And in some ways, that enabled Netanyahu, who's now notorious as a sort of, you know, in certain circles as, you know, the monstrous warmonger. actually, for his first over 20 or so years as Premier, he eschewed any military activity at all and was exactly the opposite and was the most cautious Israeli Prime Minister of all. And the reason why he did about was because he felt that the army, the military, the tech was so sophisticated and powerful that no one could threaten Israel. Well, on October 7th, we saw that that was not the case.

But Netanyahu's sort of startup nation period was one in which, you know, with this spectacular airfall, spectacular tech, spectacular Mossad, he felt that it was okay. Providing you prepared in a massive detail in terms of intelligence and counter strikes, it was, you couldn't attack Iran. It was too far away, though you prepared plans to undermine them wherever possible. but you could tolerate the build-up of Hezbollah in Lebanon as the prime threat because you had such overwhelming superiority. And of course, you could tolerate whatever Hamas thought they were doing in Gaza because, well, they were just a few gangsters with Gashnikovs and no one that would took them seriously. And anyway, they were going to open up Gaza slowly because they thought.

felt that they felt that Hamas was the new fata that they could make deals with. And that's why they were delivering, you know, Qatari, got money to them and so on. And this turned out to be a hubristic misconception because at one level, tech can be detect, tech can be detect. Tech can be dismantled. And if no one's watching the tech or no one's listening to the tech, that doesn't work either. And also the new confidence in startup nation that Israel was becoming a rich nation led to all sorts of group think and absurdities, such as, you know, the fact that a lot of the military in the Gaza envelope didn't have access to their own weaponry. You know, it's just, and there are many stories, signs of absolute madness. How could this be? And so I think you have,

to interpret that period, the startup period, is one of great success, international success, but also delusional hubris. And, you know, October 7th could only have been so successful if Israel was asleep. And they themselves didn't expect it to be that successful. But you're absolutely right. There was a minute when if Hezbollah had intervened full scale and Iran intervened with them, you know, the state. would have been in dire straits and would have had to have been rescued by America. And that is a terrifying thought. And everything comes down to leadership, doesn't it?

So then in 2024, you're absolutely right, was a period of desperate crisis and fear and rage. And then Netanyahu, for all his faults, and I'm not an admirer, but for all his faults, he managed to, and the Israelis managed to turn it around, and then you're right to hit Hezbollah, hit Iran, and then we're kind of coming up to the present.

But the strategy for the future is, the moment is, we strike our enemies everywhere, wherever they are, we allow no enemies to gather anywhere. And that, of course, was always the, the Ben-Gurian doctrine was that like you strike early, you strike, you don't allow anyone to build up forces, you strike early, and you always strike on foreign territory. Of course, October 7th, somebody else struck them. It was on your own, their own territory.

And, and, you know, they didn't strike early. They didn't know about it. So they're going back to the old, you know, the old doctrine that worked, the old strategy that worked well in the early days. But now that Israel is a regional power and there are enemies of Israel, you know, surrounding it in many places, but much weakened. They are just sticking to that strategy at the moment and that cannot continue for various reasons. I mean, you cannot just launch war all the time. Israel's military, its air force is spectacular. But in some ways, it's a messy, chaotic civilian, an undisciplined civilian army

with a brilliant air force and a brilliant security, you know, secret service, Mossad. And actually, its army is exhausted now. And it cannot continue to campaign in the rate that it's doing, even if it wanted to. And it shouldn't want to because, it's impossible to hit every enemy all the time. It's the second point. The third point is, if it continues to do that, it's going to lose all its Western support.

And the Trump administration isn't going to last forever. And it does need to regain somehow, some sort of alliance with the European powers, which it's lost now. And so, but the biggest reason is the Middle East itself. there is now a huge opportunity for a grand strategy of Israel to take its place in the Middle East. You know, Iran is doing great work for Israel because every time it taxed, it launches another attack. This week it again attacked Jordan, I think.

Every time the Houthis attacks Saudi Arabia, those leaders are looking at Israel longingly, longing to embrace Israel and get Israel on their side. And, you know, and, and, um, they can't while Iran still exists, all while, um, Gaza is unsettled. And, you know, and Gaza slash a Palestinian negotiation pathway. And, but if those things can somehow be, be achieved, um, you know, it's an, it's an amazing opportunity for Israel and one that can't be embraced by the present government, the present coalition, which is actually contains powerful ministers and factions that are really opposed to Israel, finding its home in the Middle East or an alliance with Western, you know, outside powers, which is suicidal, but, you know, you're dealing with religious people here, religious nationalists. So, you know, there,

There is a positive scenario, but a lot of it depends on the leadership and who wins the election. But even without the election, even with this government, you know, there are conversations going on behind the scenes with Arab powers in Israel all the time now. And the Mecca Defense Agreement, you know, maybe a paper tiger, which brings us to Turkey. Indeed. Well, so last question for you. And one way or the other, unless it collapses completely, which seems unlikely, rising Israeli power is going to collide, it seems. With Turkish power, one here's often, indeed, yourself indicate that there is a neo-Ottoman

quality to Erdogan's rule. Indeed, in some ways, this takes us back to where your book begins, which is, you know, the formative moment for the Saudi state, but also that that formative moment occurs within a period of collapsing or diminishing Ottoman power, an ability to project power out into the hinterlands of their empire. Well, Erdogan seems to want to reestablish some of that. Syria is one obvious place where Israeli and Turkish ambitions could collide. Competition for the hearts and minds, as it were, of these Arab monarchs is another.

Because as much as they're looking to Israel, one imagines that looking to Turkey makes a lot of sense as well. That's the whole point of the Mecca pact between Saudi and Turkey. What is the future of this Erdogan grand strategy? To what extent is it truly Ottoman? To what extent is it truly new? How is this collision course that seems to be set between Israel and Turkey going to be mediated, if at all? Well, I mean, I think there is a real danger if you talk war the whole time

and you keep raising the stakes and it becomes more and more personal and more and more malicious and aggressive. You know, there is a real danger that Erdogan will talk himself into a war with Israel. And though Turkey is the one country in the Middle East that, you know, that could confront Israel and could challenge Israel, it has a colossal military, an extremely experienced military, having fought their own, you know, Kurdish wars and having occupied territories in Iraq and northern Syria and so on and so forth. It has an incredibly sophisticated drone and tech industry.

It has Islamist further up. And in fact, it's kind of religious nationalism is actually a bit like a certain version of Israel's religious nationalism. Now, they're very similar countries in some ways. But if he gets too close to talking up a war, there's always a danger that you'll get one. and that would be a disaster on all fronts and I hope that Erdogan, for all his swaggering,

posturing, doesn't actually want that war. But we saw what happened with Gamal Abdel-Nashir in 67 when you raise the ante, raise the anti, raise the ante, with a very trigger, well, with a very nervous Israel, you can sometimes get the war you didn't think you're really going to get. And that didn't go well for the Arab powers. Then who knows what would happen now.

But I think what one's got to realize about Erdogan is he's the sort of shrewdest Islamic leader, very experienced, very ambitious. And his inheritance is important. I mean, he has the Muslim Brotherhood Islamism on one side. But on the other side, he has the Ottoman inheritance. And that is much nearer to them than we think when we think, we're used to thinking about Israel being all about, you know, 48, World War II, the Balfour Declaration. But we're much, we never think about Turkey. We just presume it's always been there. But actually, its chronology is similar. And except that it, in 1918, it lost a colossal empire. There was an Islamic empire.

and in the war with Greeks and the Armenians and so on in 1921, 22, you know, they carved out, they carved that as much as they could get of the Turkish, Ottoman sort of heartland. They got Istanbul and they got Anatolia. But Ataturk was very frustrated. He wanted Mosul, for example. And Mosul was the area of Iraq that has the oil. and he wanted northern Syria. And so they weren't happy with what they got.

And they had to put up with it. It was as much as they could get in the circumstances. And it was pretty, pretty, they did pretty well to get what they got. And they had to fight a brutal war to do it. But they remember that and they want influence in those places again. I don't know if they, do they want to Sultanate? with the sort of actual formal empire? No.

But do they want a sort of neo-Ottomanist influence in places like, you know, Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, Jerusalem, sure. And if they can use anti-Israelism to get there and to promote that, definitely. So it's real, it's real. What they want is real.

And that is going to bring them into conflict with Israel. Because Israel now has, as we were just talking, you know, a no tolerance of threats policy. And we just talked about how there's a limit to the amount of time and the amount of focus you can apply to that. But Turkey is also not as strong. You know, one thinks of Israel with all its weaknesses. It has, you know, you know, a potential Palestinian insurgency at all times.

It's got Gaza. It's got all sorts of problems with the Haredi. It's got the judicial reforms. It's got all these kind of weaknesses. It's got its tininess. It's tiny population. It's chaotic consecrate army, blah, blah, blah. Well, then you look at Turkey.

It seems all powerful. It's this big country with this huge army. But actually, a lot of it depends on Erdogan himself. And how long is he around for, you know? Secondly, his is now kind of morphing from a kind of autocratic democracy to a kind of pretty brutal dictatorship. that arrests people. And, you know, he would now not win a free election, I believe.

And so that's another part of it. You know, repress, he's having to, he's having to result to repression. His economy is a disaster. He needs Europe and European favor. He might lose that in a war with Israel, especially if it looked like he was extremely aggressive. Then he's a member of NATO. but NATO is also a constraint on what he does, as well as giving him power. And then the last point is, of course, yes, it's natural that he should allie a bit with Egypt,

but the Egyptians are very suspicious of him. The Syrians as well, they're very grateful to his help. But all these places, do they want another Ottoman Empire? No, they have very short memories too, and they remember how the founders of their nations, the nationalists who founded Lebanon and Syria and Iran, Mark, were Ottoman Arabs and members of the elite who freed their countries from Ottoman rule. So Turkey, too, has a lot of weaknesses. Simon Sabag Montefiorei, the book appropriately is called The Cauldron, the making of the modern

Middle East. It really is magnificent. And this has been a great and really interesting conversation. Thank you so much for coming on in School of War. Thanks so much for having me. It's been a total pleasure. This episode of School of War is also presented by Strato Launch, a leading pure play Hypersonics company. Hypersonic weapons systems travel five times faster than the speed of sound, making them difficult to predict, track, and defeat. America's advantage in Hypersonics depends on delivering testing, targets, data, and systems at pace. Stratolunch is built for that mission.

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