Thomas Small

Author, filmmaker, podcaster.

In the last decade, Thomas Small has established himself as one of the West’s leading authorities on Islamism, the Middle East and its endlessly complicated geopolitical quagmires. In 2015, he published his first book - Path Of Blood: The Story Of Al Qaeda’s War on Saudi Arabia, which was later adapted into the critically acclaimed documentary of the same name. Today, he co-hosts the Conflicted podcast with Aimen Dean, and the Life Sentences podcast on his Substack of the same name. He’s appeared on Triggernometry twice before to discuss terrorism in the 21st century and the unfolding story of Syria.

Why did we invite him back?

When the Assad regime collapsed in December of last year, we scrambled to make heads and tails of the events. It wasn’t a story we’d been following closely, and as the collision point of dozens of disparate geopolitical threads, it was a struggle to order our thoughts.

For clarity, we turned to Thomas, inviting him to sit down for an interview. For two hours, without a word in excess or a stray tangent, Thomas guided us through the decades-long story with unbelievable accuracy and resolution. Unquestionably, it’s one of our favourite interviews we’ve ever done.

We’ve been following the Israel-Palestine conflict closely since October 7th, but we still have unanswered questions. And with Trump’s peace deal officially underway, we wanted to know how optimistic we could allow ourselves to be. Will it hold? If not, what then?

We knew Thomas would provide the answers.

What did we learn?

”If we’re going to talk about this most intractible, most polarising conflict, can we agree not to draw moralising conclusions? I don’t know how to do that about this conflict - it’s so incredibly complicated, both sides have reasons to hate the other, and there are egregious injustices going back centuries. I’m not here to celebrate one side winning; frankly, it’s early days - we don’t know if this war is over.””

Thomas is keen to stress that he is not on a team. It’s music to our ears - an unbiased, measured assessment was precisely what we were looking for. Someone can chart the story from the very beginning, to the present, and perhaps even the future. It begs the question: Where to start?

There are dozens of credible start-points, so where does Thomas begin?

”I think it would be good to start on the 9th of September - just over a month ago. That’s when everything changes. Israel launches missiles over Saudi Arabia - so high that they technically don’t violate the latter’s airspace. These strike Doha, and kill several people - none of them top Hamas leadership. The leaders had left their phones on the table in the room that was targeted, and they’d instead gone to pray. This outraged the White House. They didn’t know it was going to happen, and Israel had designed the attack that way.”

So why did they do that? America and Israel are as close allies as it’s feasible to be. To some, their closeness borders on (or indeed crashes into) suspicious. If they’re in such kahoots, why would Israel plot against America and jeopardise their interests?

”Israeli policy in the last 8 months has been increasingly difficult to understand. Everyone knows the allegation that Netanyahu is desperate to stay in office, fearing that the minute he leaves, he will be hauled off to prison and put before a humiliating trial. I used to think that was conspiracy theorising… but I do wonder now.”