Tom Newton Dunn

speaker

2,443 appearances 19 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 16 Sep

Tom Newton Dunn’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 19 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 6.

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The General & The Journalist · The new Middle East: Can a ‘NATO of the East’ work? · 2 Sep 2026 podcast

He's also an old friend of both of us.

Lieutenant General Sir Simon Mayall.

Simon is a former UK Deputy Defence Chief of Staff and the UK government's Senior Defence Advisor for the Middle East.

Since retiring, he's also become a historian in his own right, writing two powerful books, Soldier in the Sand and The House of War.

And he still advises governments in the Gulf.

From where he's joining us today, Simon, a huge welcome.

And how about that for an intro?

Yeah, everything is somewhat interconnected, as we learn a lot from CBAC.

Simon, before we dive in, I'm not going to miss this opportunity to ask you about Patrick, because Patrick, for some time, two different jobs, my research tells me, was your subordinate.

I think he was your chief of staff when you were brigade commander and then in a policy role in the MOD.

So what was he like as an underling?

It was dramatic.

And it was all of a sudden, there was no forewarning whatsoever.

This all happened on Friday, August 7th.

And signing the pact in Mecca were the Turkish president, Tayyip Erdogan, Saudi Arabia's crown prince and ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, MBS as he's commonly known as, and Pakistan's Prime Minister, Shabazz Sharif.

It's called the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement because they chose Mecca, as we know, Islam's most holiest city, to sign it.

That was a pointed thing.

And then after the signing, the three of these strong men then marched on down to another royal palace where they had Friday prayers together, Friday being the holy day of the week for Islam as well.

All of it played out in front of the TV cameras.

So it was done really with some impact and some fanfare.

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