Middle East Analysis

'Middle East Analysis' started in earnest in 2010-11 when a series of anti-regime uprisings took place across a large swathe of the Middle East North Africa region - what was termed the Arab Spring. Dr Harry Hagopian, an international lawyer, regional analyst - and the voice of these podcasts - helped us to understand the context and long advocated for the voice of the people to be heard rather than supressed. A semi-constant topic in the early 2010s was the turmoil and civil war in Syria and the oppressive, often brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad, himself the successor of his father Hafez al-Assad who ruled with an iron fist from 1971. That dynasty held a stranglehold on the country for over half a century. We spent years discussing government brutality, barrel bombing, international players, the descent into long-term civil war. Then, in 2014, we witnessed the rise of the violent, rampaging terror group IS, or Daesh, under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. IS shocked the world by setting up a caliph