Will the world have enough fuel to fill the tank and fertilize the crops? The seizure of ships by Iran adding to global jitters as the extension of a ceasefire offers zero visibility on prospects for the planet’s biggest choke point for oil and gas. Nearly two months on, the Paris-based International Energy Agency is calling it the biggest-ever energy disruption in history. We’ll ask about prices at the pump, cancelled flights, and…more broadly, if oil's not flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, where to find it and what’s the alternative?

François Picard is pleased to welcome Jad Shahrour. Communications Manager at Samir Kassir Foundation. Lebanon is at a geopolitical crossroads, where sovereignty, regional rivalries, and international diplomacy collide. Joining us from Beirut amid ongoing uncertainty, he places current negotiations with Israel within a broader struggle to reassert the authority of the Lebanese state. He emphasises the necessity of disentangling Lebanon’s national decision-making from external actors, while acknowledging the deeply rooted historical tensions that complicate any path toward stability. 

François Picard welcomes Ghassan Salamé, Lebanon's culture minister. Salamé portrays Lebanon as a country that has preserved political pluralism and freedom of expression, and persevered despite decades of conflict. Within this context, he frames negotiation with Israel not as a matter of choice, but of necessity: the only viable path toward stability, dignity and the basic conditions for the Lebanese people to live and thrive.

François Picard is pleased to welcome Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary, University of London. According to Professor Bale, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer appears to have unwittingly misled Parliament, as a consequence of not being not being 'apprised' of Peter Mandelson's failed vetting. 

A container ship seized in the Gulf, a ceasefire deadline that's running out fast and plenty of bargaining table brinkmanship between the U-S and Iran. With the price of oil back on the rise, de-escalation would certainly offer relief to Donald Trump's constitutents. So what's the plan of a U.S. president who’s proved impulsive – at times threatening civilizational erasure, at others floating the idea of splitting the profits with Iran on a Strait of Hormuz toll for tankers? How to bargain when your opponent enjoys home field advantage and knows you don’t want to put boots on the ground?

François Picard is pleased to welcome Irfan Nooruddin, the Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor of Indian Politics in the Asian Studies Program in the School of Foreign Service. As a scholar of Indian politics, he approaches institutional reform not as a question of isolated policy change, but as a reconfiguration of incentives within a vast and uneven federal democracy. He examines the interlinked dynamics shaping India’s political future, including the normative promise and practical limits of women’s representation

A new U-S-born Pope on a first-ever visit to Cameroon’s restive English-speaking northwest, and who’s not turning the other cheek: “Blessed are the peacemakers! But woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”, Pope Leo declared on Thursday in Bamenda. The message was the same when he landed Wednesday in Yaoundé and while it may sound like a rebuttal to a critical U-S president who’s an ocean away, it's first a pointed message to the leader in the room hosting Leo… 93-year old Paul Biya, only the second head of state Cameroon’s known since independence from France in 1960.  

François Picard welcomes Dallia Abdelmoniem, Political / Media Analyst and Commentator on African and Middle Eastern affairs. Sudan is a war-torn nation unraveling in real time, warns Abdelmoniem. She says that we are not just witnessing a conflict between rival armed factions; it is a systematic war on civilians, where survival itself has become an act of chance.