14. Inside Syria: Assad Regime Had 'Human Abattoirs'

This week, David comes live from Jerusalem as Iran, Israel and the US settle into what feels like a precarious ceasefire. Though not for President Trump, when not dropping the F-bomb on live TV, he’s solved the problem of the Middle East, and is currently waiting for the Nobel Peace Prize to be Fed Exed to the Oval Office. Probably.But what if the ceasefire doesn’t hold, and, more importantly, what if the strike that delivered 30,000 lb “bunker buster” bombs to Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan facilities, didn’t work either and Iran is still quietly building nuclear weapons?Where does that leave the Middle East….and indeed the world?In this latest episode, we’ll speak to Michael Oren, Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and Dr Becky Alexis-Martin, a nuclear warfare expert about what might come next.Follow us on Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram @apocalypsenowpod, and you can get in touch via email at [email protected]  Presenter:  David PatrikarakosProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Chelsey MooreProduction Manager: Vittoria CecchiniExecutive Producer: Bella Soames  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, David comes live from Tel Aviv where he was woken up on his first morning by an air raid siren, accompanied by a recorded Hebrew voice telling him to get to a shelter.  This in a week where a former Swedish prime minister said, it “looks like Trump is going to war”, posting flight tracking images that showed large US tanker aircraft being moved from the US to Europe. For his part, Trump said on Truth Social that he had not reached out to Iran for peace talks in any “way, shape, or form”. So, for now, rockets crash into both countries, targeting each other’s oil and gas facilities, increasing the threat of not only more warfare, but environmental disaster. In this latest episode, we’ll speak to Meir Javedanfar, Iranian-Israeli Middle East analyst and co-author of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran and John Spencer, former Major in the US Army and Chair of Urban Warfare Studies.  Follow us on Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram @apocalypsenowpod, and you can get in touch via email at [email protected]  Presenter:  David PatrikarakosProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Alex GrahamProduction Manager: Vittoria CecchiniExecutive Producer: Bella Soames  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

142 days, that’s all it’s taken. 142 days of Trump to help destabilise a country’s infrastructure, undo tenets of the constitution, buckle the economy and fall out spectacularly with a tech-bro big dog and then have a bitch fight about it all on social media.Director Alex Garland’s Civil War movie seemed like a cinematic fever dream when it was released in the spring of 2024, it now looks more like a portent of doom, or a guide map to the future of the land of the not so free.Troops in downtown LA, a turf war between the President and California’s Governor while Trump rubs his band with glee at the prospect of his 79th birthday gift to himself; a military parade through the streets of Washington concluding with parachutists from the army’s Golden Knights presenting Trump with a folded flag. On our latest episode, we’ll speak to Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist, and Jamie Kirchick, NYT op-ed writer and author to try and untangle this latest plot twist on the reality TV show that is the USA.Follow us on Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram @apocalypsenowpod, and you can get in touch via email at [email protected]  Presenter:  David PatrikarakosProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Chelsey MooreProduction Manager: Vittoria CecchiniExecutive Producer: Bella Soames  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘Death from above’ isn’t just something painted on the side of Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore's helicopter in Apocalypse Now anymore. Now you can buy it off the shelf… Over the weekend, Operation Spider Web used over 100 first-person view drones to hit four air bases in Russia. And they’re cheap, you can buy them online (there will surely come a day when Amazon drones will deliver drones), arm them, and then drop them from the sky like a horde of locusts, all very Biblical, all very end of days. Consider this: hoard technology, especially weapons technology, and you centralize power. Disperse it and watch that power dissipate alongside it.  So, what now for this new world of warfare where a $100 drone can sometimes make a $70m fighter jet look obsolete?On the latest episode, we talk to former Ukraine Minister of Defence, Andriy Zagorodnyuk and Tim Ripley, journalist, and Editor at Defence Eye to ask if the way we fight war is really changing and how those things might play out for Ukraine.  Follow us on Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram @apocalypsenowpod, and you can get in touch via email at [email protected]  Presenter:  David PatrikarakosProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Alex GrahamProduction Manager: Vittoria CecchiniExecutive Producer: Bella Soames  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over 800 hundred lawyers have called on the UK government to use "all available means" to stop the fighting in Gaza, including reviewing trade ties with Israel and imposing travel bans on Israeli ministers. This, as Amnesty International issues astatement condemning Hamas for its brutal crackdown on peaceful protests in Gaza.  And yet, the bloody war machine rolls on, with those on the ground in Gaza caught between a rock and a hard place, if the rock is a bombed-out hospital destroyed by Israeli missiles and the hard place is being punished by Hamas for only wanting to eat the aid you were sent. On the latest episode, we talk to Alon Pinkas, former Israeli Ambassador and Consul General in NewYork, Chief of Staff to four Foreign Ministers, columnist for The Independent and Hamza Howidy, Palestinian Peace and Human Rights Advocate, two dissenting voices from either side of the conflict. Follow us on Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram @apocalypsenowpod, and you can get in touch via email at [email protected]  Take our show survey here: https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=18 Presenter:  David PatrikarakosProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Alex GrahamProduction Manager: Vittoria CecchiniExecutive Producer: Bella Soames  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can it really be almost ten years since former PM David Cameron called the referendum to stay in or leave the EU? The summer of 2016 saw a country fall in behind Sunderland and vote to exit the European Union. David Cameron exited too, ushering in an era of new premiership under Theresa May, but Brexit cast too long a shadow for even May to escape and so she too fell on the sword Cameron had so kindly left behind.  Which, ultimately, somehow, has led us here with Sir Keir Starmer heralding a “new era” in relations with Europe, plus the promise of cheaper food and reduced bills. And something about those pesky passport gates. Kemi Badenoch has been calling it a sell-out, while Nigel Farage has deemed this the end of the fishing industry in the UK. But is it? Can it be? Let’s do what we do best and find out with the help of our guests Catherine Barnard, Professor of EU Law at University of Cambridge, and Senior Fellow at The UK in a Changing Europe and Alex Phillips, Broadcaster and former Brexit Party MEP for Southeast England. Follow us on Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram @apocalypsenowpod, and you can get in touch via email at [email protected]  Take our show survey here: https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=18 Presenter:  David PatrikarakosProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Alex GrahamProduction Manager: Vittoria CecchiniExecutive Producer: Bella Soames  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ask most people to point out Qatar on a map and they’d be hard pushed to find a place that has escalated in international news in a matter of weeks. And say what you like about Donald Trump, but who else gets gifted a $400million jet as a replacement for Air Force One because, and we quote, ‘Boeing were very late with the plane’. For those that might have missed it, President Trump is currently on a whistle stop tour of the Middle East, brokering arms and tech deals worth millions of dollars and lifting sanctions on Syria after a meeting in Damascus with President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former al-Qaeda commander. There’s even talk of Syria getting their own Trump tower, so they too can look like a rundown boardwalk in Atlantic City. But this is serious. Business and political protocols overturned; human rights records trodden on. Israel and China looking askance as the US buddies up to the Middle East. In this latest episode we speak to Majed Al-Ansari—Spokesperson for the Qatari Foreign Ministry and Adviser to the Prime Minister to find out what role Qatar is playing as it sits on this axis of power, conflict and wealth and promises to become a point of navigation between East and West?  Follow us on Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram @apocalypsenowpod, and you can get in touch via email at [email protected]  Take our show survey here: https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=18 Presenter:  David PatrikarakosProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Alex GrahamProduction Manager: Vittoria CecchiniExecutive Producer: Bella Soames  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pakistan “won’t take long to settle the score” following India’s attack, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, the Pakistani defence minister, has said. But could this latest attack be the thing that could tip the world into another war? In this latest episode we speak to voices on both sides of the divide - Sarjan Shah, a Security Analyst based in India, and award-winning Pakistani journalist Zia Ur Rehman – to explain how we got here, the decades long antagonism between both nations and the best and worst case scenarios for two powers who between them have some 350 nuclear weapons. Who’ll blink first as we ask, Apocalypse Now? Follow us on Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram @apocalypsenowpod, and you can get in touch via email at [email protected]  Take our show survey here: https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=18 Presenter:  David PatrikarakosProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Alex GrahamProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Former White House Chief Strategist and host of the War Room, Steve Bannon has a lot to say. Not least about President Trump running for an unprecedented third term, but how to control the political narrative and discourse in America, what he really thinks of Elon Musk (it’s not what you’d call an endorsement), his loathing of the Chinese government and why his former boss needs to find way towards peace between Ukraine and Russia if we’re ever to avert WWIII.Plus, why he and those around him truly believes that the 2020 US election was stolen and why it was the driving factor that propelled President Trump back to the White House on November 5 and, if he and Bannon have their way, will keep Donald Trump there for years to come…Follow us on Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram @apocalypsenowpod, and you can get in touch via email at [email protected]  Take our show survey here: https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=18 Presenter:  David PatrikarakosProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Alex GrahamProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Iran says it will brief China this week in advance of a third round of talks with the United States on its nuclear programme.This, as Iranian officials separately accused Israel of seeking to “undermine and disrupt the diplomatic process”. And let’s not forget President Donald Trump’s take on things; threatening to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.It’s been a long time since we imagined a mushroom cloud hovering over some far horizon, but given these latest clashes between agitated nuclear powers could we be staring down the barrel of WWIII?In this episode, we’ll gauge the latest threat level with Ali Ansari, Professor in Modern History with reference to Iran at the University of St Andrews, and then crossing the Atlantic to speak to Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who served on Iran's nuclear diplomacy team - he’s currently a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University to garner their thoughts.Follow us on Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram @apocalypsenowpod, and you can get in touch via email at [email protected] Take our show survey here: https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=18 Presenter:  David PatrikarakosProducer: Philip WildingEditor: Chelsey MooreProduction Manager: Vittoria CecchiniA Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.