General Sir Patrick Sanders

speaker

1,311 appearances 12 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 2 Sep

General Sir Patrick Sanders’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 4.

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The General & The Journalist · The new Middle East: The battle to shape a region · 26 Aug 2026 podcast

So we got into this long stretch blue Bentley that he had at uh Government House, the Commandant's house, and uh I got in next to him and he got out two cigars and he let them lit them.

So we're sitting there smoking cigars, driving up very slowly, park,

And I think Theresa May is the Prime Minister, was taking the parade.

And she was forced to wait at the end of Queen's Walk, as Sheikh Hamad, the father Emir, sat there and insisted on smoking a good half of his cigar with me next to him with these clouds of smoke coming out.

So he was, but he was he struck me, he was amazing because rather like uh as you were saying about these nation builders, you know, if you think

think about the great figures in our lifetime, you know, it's Sultan Caboos of Oman creates, forges a state, rescues uh his country, King Hussein, and then I think the Father Amir is is is an amazing figure as well.

I mean this is a fascinating discussion because one of the things you you I took from the book is is that you think that the you know the idea of a nation-state, a homogeneous nation-state, as we in the West think of it, is a pretty poor fit for a region with such an extraordinarily complex ethnic, religious, tribal, and linguistic mosaic.

It's you know, it's a thread that runs through the whole book.

So if if Sykes Pico or Sev or San Remo aren't in totally the original Sin, but have some causes in this.

And if some of these states are entirely artificial, I think in the book you talk about this notion of of zombie states, is the most important story of the next twenty five years going to be the unraveling of the settlement a century and a half ago?

reform?

I mean, really briefly, the two that worry me most are Iraq.

And and Israel, and it'll be fascinating to see how this standoff between the popular mobile mobilization forces, the militias in Iraq and the the central governments uh plays out.

But Israel really worries me because you it feels like you have this this sort of insidious state capture by Jewish ultranationalist supremacists who are who are

Almost like a cancer consuming the Israel that most of us came to admire through the seventies and the eighties and the nineties.

So do do you think Israel can survive in its current political format?

I think it can survive.

Trump would listen to experts.

Well,

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