The Making of the Modern Middle East
The Cipher Brief
17,232 views
In this episode of The Cipher Brief’s State Secrets podcast, host Suzanne Kelly sits down with award-winning historian and bestselling author Simon Sebag Montefiore to discuss his new book, The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East — a sweeping history of roughly 125 years that traces how the region became what it is today.
Drawing on a lifetime of research, writing and travel throughout the Middle East, Montefiore explains why he wanted to write a book that brought the region’s complicated history together in one story — from the final years of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of modern Saudi Arabia to the creation of Israel, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, America’s growing role in the region and the power struggles shaping the Middle East today.
Kelly and Montefiore explore some of the central arguments in The Cauldron, including why he believes the familiar story that Western powers simply drew arbitrary borders after World War I and created the modern Middle East is incomplete. Instead, he puts greater emphasis on the agency of the region’s own leaders, peoples and empires and tells much of that history through the larger-than-life personalities who shaped it.
The conversation moves from Ibn Saud, Atatürk, Reza Shah and David Ben-Gurion to Gamal Abdel Nasser and Ayatollah Khomeini, while also examining the historical forces behind Iran’s role in the region, Russia’s centuries-old interests in the Middle East and the challenges outside powers have repeatedly faced when trying to shape events there.
At its core, The Cauldron is an effort to answer a deceptively simple question: How did we get here? Montefiore explains why understanding that history may not allow us to predict what happens next — but can give us critical context for understanding the people, decisions and forces driving the Middle East today.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – Introduction: Simon Sebag Montefiore and The Cauldron
03:44 – Why writing the book became a lifetime project
05:00 – The missing history of how the modern Middle East was created
08:50 – From war correspondent to historian: Montefiore’s connection to the region
11:44 – Why the conventional story of Western powers “creating” the Middle East is incomplete
13:59 – Ibn Saud and the rise of modern Saudi Arabia
16:05 – Why Montefiore tells history through the people who shaped it
19:32 – Why the 1979 Iranian Revolution remains a defining turning point
22:56 – What Iran’s current leaders learned from war, militias and confrontation with the West
25:34 – How America’s role in the Middle East differed from Britain and France
28:50 – Does history really repeat itself in the Middle East?
32:59 – Russia’s centuries-old strategic interests in the Middle East
36:49 – The wider struggle between competing powers and political systems
38:14 – The nation builders Montefiore would most want to meet
40:40 – Turkey, Erdoğan and the changing balance of power in the region
42:03 – Closing thoughts on The Cauldron and understanding today’s Middle East
ABOUT THE CIPHER BRIEF
The Cipher Brief is the leading digital platform for national security news, analysis and expert-level insights, bringing together deeply experienced leaders from the intelligence, defense, diplomatic and private-sector communities.
BECOME A SUBSCRIBER+
Get closer to the people, analysis and insights shaping the national security conversation.
Become a Subscriber+ member of The Cipher Brief for exclusive expert analysis, special reports, briefings and insights from leaders with experience at the highest levels of intelligence, defense and diplomacy.
Visit The Cipher Brief and join Subscriber+ today.
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/subscr
FOLLOW THE CIPHER BRIEF
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/
Stay connected for expert-driven national security news, analysis, interviews and breaking insights across The Cipher Brief’s digital and social platforms.
#SimonSebagMontefiore #TheCauldron #TheCipherBrief #StateSecrets #MiddleEast #MiddleEastHistory #Iran #SaudiArabia #Israel #Turkey #Russia #OttomanEmpire #Geopolitics #NationalSecurity #History
14 Comments
Meanwhile, Lenin’s chemically preserved body still lies in Red Square, the Orthodox Church carries the purported relics of Dmitry Donskoy towards the front, and Putin wanders freely between the Pechenegs, the Polovtsians, medieval Rus’, the Romanovs and the Soviet Union whenever history proves politically useful.
Quite an ideological cocktail.
Perhaps the real continuity is much simpler: the costumes change, while the machinery of power remains remarkably adaptable.
So the more interesting question is not which ideology Putin represents, but which fragment of history he needs today — and what exactly he intends to legitimise with it.
Pi is an infinite string of digits and contains an infinite number of finite strings of digits. In fact, it probably includes every possible string of finite digits. Does pi contain itself?
This current war has a historical parallel, in the North American "Indian Wars" with OUTSIDERS arriving in a settler colonial project (since the arrival of the first colonists) and this North American war only ended around the year 1900.
One day, historians will analyze all these North African and West Asian wars, starting with the crumbling Ottoman Empire (ex-Eastern Roman Empire) as continuous series of "Arab Wars", and initiated by individual European imperialist goals, as perpetual aim evtlually uniting (post-WW2 as USA/NATO/EU policy), and originally initiated by such actions as Napoleon invading Egypt (1798), or the British invading Egypt (1882), or Italy invading Libya (1912). All of these wars had one overriding intention: AVOID the independence and unity of Arab and other tribes, to grab some-or-other concession.
Divide-and-rule/conquer.
Imperialism means to RULE, CONTROL, and DOMINATE, by division.
The Making of the Modern Middle East
The Cipher Brief
17,232 views
In this episode of The Cipher Brief’s State Secrets podcast, host Suzanne Kelly sits down with award-winning historian and bestselling author Simon Sebag Montefiore to discuss his new book, The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East — a sweeping history of roughly 125 years that traces how the region became what it is today.
Drawing on a lifetime of research, writing and travel throughout the Middle East, Montefiore explains why he wanted to write a book that brought the region’s complicated history together in one story — from the final years of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of modern Saudi Arabia to the creation of Israel, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, America’s growing role in the region and the power struggles shaping the Middle East today.
Kelly and Montefiore explore some of the central arguments in The Cauldron, including why he believes the familiar story that Western powers simply drew arbitrary borders after World War I and created the modern Middle East is incomplete. Instead, he puts greater emphasis on the agency of the region’s own leaders, peoples and empires and tells much of that history through the larger-than-life personalities who shaped it.
The conversation moves from Ibn Saud, Atatürk, Reza Shah and David Ben-Gurion to Gamal Abdel Nasser and Ayatollah Khomeini, while also examining the historical forces behind Iran’s role in the region, Russia’s centuries-old interests in the Middle East and the challenges outside powers have repeatedly faced when trying to shape events there.
At its core, The Cauldron is an effort to answer a deceptively simple question: How did we get here? Montefiore explains why understanding that history may not allow us to predict what happens next — but can give us critical context for understanding the people, decisions and forces driving the Middle East today.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – Introduction: Simon Sebag Montefiore and The Cauldron
03:44 – Why writing the book became a lifetime project
05:00 – The missing history of how the modern Middle East was created
08:50 – From war correspondent to historian: Montefiore’s connection to the region
11:44 – Why the conventional story of Western powers “creating” the Middle East is incomplete
13:59 – Ibn Saud and the rise of modern Saudi Arabia
16:05 – Why Montefiore tells history through the people who shaped it
19:32 – Why the 1979 Iranian Revolution remains a defining turning point
22:56 – What Iran’s current leaders learned from war, militias and confrontation with the West
25:34 – How America’s role in the Middle East differed from Britain and France
28:50 – Does history really repeat itself in the Middle East?
32:59 – Russia’s centuries-old strategic interests in the Middle East
36:49 – The wider struggle between competing powers and political systems
38:14 – The nation builders Montefiore would most want to meet
40:40 – Turkey, Erdoğan and the changing balance of power in the region
42:03 – Closing thoughts on The Cauldron and understanding today’s Middle East
ABOUT THE CIPHER BRIEF
The Cipher Brief is the leading digital platform for national security news, analysis and expert-level insights, bringing together deeply experienced leaders from the intelligence, defense, diplomatic and private-sector communities.
BECOME A SUBSCRIBER+
Get closer to the people, analysis and insights shaping the national security conversation.
Become a Subscriber+ member of The Cipher Brief for exclusive expert analysis, special reports, briefings and insights from leaders with experience at the highest levels of intelligence, defense and diplomacy.
Visit The Cipher Brief and join Subscriber+ today.
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/subscr
FOLLOW THE CIPHER BRIEF
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/
Stay connected for expert-driven national security news, analysis, interviews and breaking insights across The Cipher Brief’s digital and social platforms.
#SimonSebagMontefiore #TheCauldron #TheCipherBrief #StateSecrets #MiddleEast #MiddleEastHistory #Iran #SaudiArabia #Israel #Turkey #Russia #OttomanEmpire #Geopolitics #NationalSecurity #History
‘Stalin had 15 scenic seaside villas, some of them czarist palaces, on the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia. In 2002, I visited and photographed these extraordinarily well-preserved Stalinist time capsules. At one point, I asked an old caretaker if any other Westerners had visited them. ''No,'' she replied, ''but there was an Arab gentleman in 1970's who insisted on visiting every one!'' His name? ''Saddam Hussein.''’