Hosted by Faisal Al Yafai
Featuring Arwa Damon
Produced by Finbar Anderson
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In all the noise surrounding the ongoing Iran war and its seismic political, economic and geopolitical implications, “we have really lost the human story when it comes to what’s happening inside Iran,” Arwa Damon tells Faisal Al Yafai on The Lede.
“ We’re forgetting that every single threat that is made on the global stage, and every single bomb that is dropped, no matter where it ends up being dropped, when it kills someone, it is devastating,” Damon says on a special episode closing The Lede’s ninth season, filmed at the Rich Mix performance stage in London.
“Even if you’re just going to document something for history’s sake, that’s worth it.”
Damon is quick to assert that the geopolitical shifts occurring in the Middle East are indeed enormous. “You look at what has happened over the last three years since October 7, and you really do get the sense that things are shifting in the region in as significant a way as they did post-World War II.”
The issue, Damon says, has become wider than just politics. Instead, she argues, our societies have been affected at a much deeper level. “Do you know what else has gone away? Our ability to pause and question,” she says. “Our barometer for what is OK and acceptable is so low right now that we do see a country like the United States carry out this war without any of the normal steps the United States would have gone through. … And that’s what scares me, because the more we are willing to accept, even though we fundamentally know that things are wrong, the scarier the world becomes.”
Conflict, Damon says, is fundamentally tied to emotion. “Warring and belligerent parties know how to play on our emotions. The longer these wars drag on, the less people pay attention, and the more you see countries that are meant to be negotiating peace, or even the parties themselves, just wanting to get it over with,” she says. “So if you can stick it out long enough, you are going to eventually get what you want. That is what warring, belligerent parties want you to believe — you’re allowing yourselves to be weaponized by them.”
The United States, Damon thinks, may be about to go through a similar reckoning to those in countries she previously saw in the Middle East. “When I went to Iraq in 2003 for the first time, I walked into Saddam Hussein’s palace, and my first thought was, ‘Oh, this is America.’” While Saddam’s palaces had a reputation for glamor, most of it, Damon says, was artificial. “It was gold paint, and the chandelier bits I found in the rubble were plastic. It’s that whole concept of — from the outside it’s something, and then when you go in you realize it’s not the image that it was. And I do believe that America has to go through a moment like that, and I think it is.”
Despite the often-thankless nature of her work as a journalist and humanitarian, Damon finds herself returning again and again to conflict zones. “Why am I quite literally risking my life to do a story that no one’s necessarily going to care about? My thinking had already shifted to: I’m doing it because I don’t believe the victors should be the only ones able to tell history. Even if you’re just going to document something for history’s sake, that’s worth it,” she says.