William Durupul

But she brought up in Beirut, begins to see the spread of Wahhabi missionaries, these very puritanical, hardline Salafist and Wahhabi preachers.

And, for example, in Pakistan, you suddenly find a King Faisal Mosque, an enormous mosque being built in Islamabad.

Mosques, madrassas, Islamic media organizations right across Africa and Asia spreading this very hardline form of Islam.

And this is going to change the entire spirit of the Islamic world into the 80s and the 90s.

It does.

Doesn't it?

This is obviously why we're doing this series now.

Not only do we have the consequences of imperial Israel, if you like, Israel no longer the frightened newbie in the region surrounded by hostile states, but having moved out beyond Gaza and the West Bank, and as we'll see, moving into Lebanon in the 1980s.

And again, you kind of feel that if only this American administration were listening to Empire Pod a bit more closely.

Yeah.

I don't know whether you've been watching Trump's interviews over the last fortnight, but he's been saying no one could have expected that the oil would have stopped.

And that is obviously bollocks.

Anyone with any knowledge of the region knows that the oil is the key.

I like to keep this gravitas for special moments.

A goodbye from me, William Durrenpool.