The Middle East Rewritten: This Is the Inside Story

Ambassador Tom Nides served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel under President Biden. He had screaming matches with Netanyahu. He sat with families who buried their children. He was in the room when Saudi normalization almost happened.

Now he is speaking freely.

In this episode of The Diplomat, Nides joins Washington Bureau Chief Joe Kawly and MBN Editor-in-Chief Leila Bazzi for a wide-ranging, unfiltered conversation about the new Middle East taking shape after the Iran war, the collapse of the old map, and what American diplomacy actually looks like behind closed doors.

He calls Ben-Gvir "a thug." He says the JCPOA will effectively come back under a different name. He argues that regime change in Iran can only succeed from the bottom up. And he reveals what he was quietly doing for Palestinians while serving as U.S. Ambassador to Israel, something most people never knew.

This is the kind of honesty rarely heard in Washington. And that is exactly why it matters.

What is The Diplomat | ديبلومات?

In the rooms where war, peace, and power are decided, words matter most. The Diplomat brings you raw conversations with ambassadors, envoys, and negotiators who shaped the hardest decisions in U.S. foreign policy and Middle East diplomacy. Hosted by Joe Kawly. Recorded from Washington. Produced by Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN).

Joe Kawly brings extensive experience from conflict zones in the Middle East to the power corridors of Washington. As a journalist, he’s seen how words can escalate a crisis or open the door to peace. A Georgetown graduate and former CNN Journalism Fellow, he’s known for connecting the dots others miss, so people don’t just hear what happened, they understand why it matters. As producer and host of The Diplomat, Joe brings clarity to diplomacy and politics, one conversation at a time.