The Strait of Hormuz has been blocked for a few months now, which has resulted in a global energy crisis. While some hope things will return to the way they were, many geopolitical experts think this is the new normal.

So it's all the more reason for us to understand the conflict between Iran and the West at a deeper level.

In his paper titled The Intimate Enmity: Iran and the West, Yin Shao Loong, who’s the deputy director of research at the Khazanah Research Institute argues that the US-Israeli illegal war on Iran and Iran’s subsequent retaliation cannot be understood simply by looking at the past few months, as it is only the latest chapter in a much longer history of imperial intervention and regional power struggles.

In this episode, Shao Loong joins us to unpack his paper.