Kim Ghattas joins Jon to discuss her new book, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East. Kim and Jon trace 40 years of competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran, starting with 1979 and ending with today. Then, the Middle East Program’s new senior fellow, Natasha Hall, joins Jon and McKinley for a discussion on the U.S. role in Saudi-Iranian competition.

Jon Alterman, “Covid-19, the Iranians, and Us,” CSIS, July 21, 2020.

Kim Ghattas, “The painful truth for Saudi Arabia: it needs the Iranian regime to survive,” The Guardian, January 29, 2020.

Kim Ghattas, “What Jamal Khashoggi’s Murder Tells Us About the Saudi-Iran Rivalry,” The Atlantic, October 2, 2019.

Episode transcript, “The History of Saudi-Iranian Competition,” CSIS, July 28, 2020.


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