Paul Wood was a BBC foreign correspondent for 25 years, in Belgrade, Athens, Cairo, Jerusalem, Kabul and Washington DC. He has won numerous awards, including two US Emmys for his coverage of the Syrian civil war
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Iran has fallen into the trap set by Israel. It has taken the bait after months of failing to respond to a series of devastating – and humiliating – attacks, which decapitated its Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, and killed the leader of Hamas in Tehran. But the regime may have self-immolated by firing missiles at Israel
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34 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Rachel Johnson reads her diary for the week (1:19); James Heale analyses the true value of Labour peer Lord Alli (6:58); Paul Wood questions if Israel is trying to drag America into a war with Iran (11:59); Rowan Pelling reviews Want: Sexual Fantasies, collated by Gillian Anderson (19:47); and Graeme
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The American general David Petraeus famously asked of the invasion of Iraq: ‘Tell me how this ends.’ That’s the question as Israeli bombs and missiles fall on Lebanon and the few missiles Hezbollah has sent in response are intercepted. Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ seems paralysed with indecision. Does Benjamin Netanyahu take this as a win,
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33 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: as Lebanon reels from the exploding pagers, Paul Wood wonders what’s next for Israel and Hezbollah (1:24); Ross Clark examines Ireland’s low-tax project, following the news that they’re set to receive €13 billion… that they didn’t want (8:40); Reviewing Ben Macintyre’s new book, Andrew Lycett looks at the 1980 Iranian
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Israel’s security cabinet met in a bunker in the ministry of defence in Tel Aviv on Monday night. The main item on the agenda was Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia whose missiles and rockets have forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the north. The meeting lasted into the early hours of Tuesday.
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Any journalist who has covered a war will recognise Ryan Routh’s type immediately – the war zone nutter. Routh is currently all over America’s front pages, accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump. The photograph used by most news outlets shows a grizzled-looking character with a flak vest, a stars-and-stripes neckerchief, and a troubled stare. Back
Was it worth the price paid?
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35 min listen
This week: Gus Carter reports from Rotherham (01:10), Paul Wood asks whether anything can stop full-scale conflict in the Middle East (05:55), Jonathan Aitken takes us inside Nixon’s resignation melodrama (16:55), Laura Gascoigne reviews Revealing Nature: The Art of Cedric Morris and Lett-Haines (26:08), and Flora Watkins reads her notes on ragwort (31:24). Produced and
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The fact that the Middle East stands on the brink of a catastrophic war can be explained by a scene from The Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie’s preposterous but entertaining series on Netflix about aristocrats and sarf London drug-dealers. The dim eldest son of a duke is in trouble with a vicious gangster, who makes him dress
The killer robots are coming
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The first time I heard the name ‘Michael Cohen’ was in 2015, from a Republican political operative who told me: ‘It’s his job to clean up Trump’s messes with women.’ He went on to explain how Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, would pay a large amount in cash to whichever actress-model-stripper-pornstar was claiming to
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As Jordanian fighter jets shot down Iranian drones heading for Israel on Saturday night, there were joyful cries of Allahu Akbar on the ground as some people lent out of their windows to cheer the drones they thought were getting through. King Abdullah II was depicted on social media wearing an Israeli military uniform complete
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The village we moved to in central Italy is lovely – old stone houses and olive trees on a hillside – but it is eerily deserted most of the time. A neighbour in his forties says that when he grew up here, it was full of children playing in the cobbled streets. There were about 350 people
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The US and Britain really didn’t think they had a choice about bombing Yemen in retaliation for Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea – one of the world’s busiest waterways, carrying almost a sixth of global shipping. But the airstrikes overnight are unlikely to stop the attacks and in the short term will
The traditional way to see a war is to fight in one. This can be a problem if your country is not actually at war
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42 min listen
On the podcast: Anshel Pfeffer writes The Spectator’s cover story this week. He voices concern that support from Israel’s allies might begin to waver if they don’t develop a viable plan after the war finishes. Paul Wood – former BBC foreign correspondent – and Dennis Ross – former Middle East coordinator under President Clinton and advisor to
Israel is killing large numbers of unarmed men, women and children as it tries to destroy Hamas
Israel will, ‘as a last resort, likely act preventively or reactively with all weapons at its disposal’
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Israel has made the first, rather tentative, moves of its ground operation against Hamas – but there’s nothing tentative about its aerial bombing. Here’s a report of one incident: at 4.30 p.m. on 10 October, an explosion collapsed a six-storey building in Sheikh Radwan, a district of Gaza City, killing, it was said, at least 40
Paul Wood reports from Lampedusa, Africa’s gateway to Italy
