Foreign Podicy

Last week, Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said that talks with the Trump administration appear to be going well. This tells host Cliff May that from an American perspective, the talks are going badly. President Trump has said that America’s goal is the “full dismantlement” of the regime’s nuclear weapons program, including its capacity to produce missiles that could deliver nuclear warheads to targets anywhere in the world. Mr. Araghchi’s goal is to prevent President Trump from achieving his goal. Who are you betting on? Cliff asks Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh, who just wrote a piece together in Politico arguing that sanctions and maximum pressure have never made the clerical regime abandon its nuclear ambitions. Which raises the question: What will?

According to host Cliff May, "Mark Montgomery is an admirable admiral. Another adjective I’d use to describe him: peripatetic. Which is a fancy way of saying he’s on the road more than Willie Nelson—whom he does not otherwise resemble." Most recently the retired flag officer has been in Lithuania, which on the east shares a border with the Russian vassal state of Belarus, and on the southwest has a border with the Russian oblast of Kaliningrad, which was called Königsberg until Russia took it from Germany following World War II. You start a war and lose that war, you may lose territory.  Which is a good segue to Israel, another country Mark has recently visited. Also on the list is Taiwan. And, perhaps most mysteriously, he very recently spent time in an elaborate private wine cellar in California. Which is odd because he’s not much of a drinker. It had something to do with a cyber security conference and... The Godfather? So many mysteries, so little time.

If you were to visit Turkey years ago, it might’ve felt both Middle Eastern and European. It was Muslim and secular. It was, more or less, free and democratic.     Host Cliff May says the food was great, too. Now? Well, he’s told the food is still great.     To explain what has happened and what is happening in Turkey, Cliff is joined by his FDD colleague Sinan Ciddi.   About Sinan Sinan is also an Associate Professor of National Security Studies at the Marine Corps University in Quantico. Earlier, Sinan was Executive Director of the Institute of Turkish Studies, based at Georgetown University. He continues to serve as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. He received his doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He’s the author of Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People’s Party: Secularism and Nationalism.

Filling in for host Cliff May is FDD CEO and host of The Iran Breakdown, Mark Dubowitz, joined by former Israeli national security advisor Jacob Nagel, now a senior fellow at FDD. Following President Trump’s recent overtures to reopen nuclear negotiations with the Islamic Republic, Mark and Jacob revisit the flaws of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the  general complexities of Iran's nuclear program. They discuss Iran's current nuclear capabilities and the implications of the program for regional security—and explain why addressing weaponization and delivery systems in any potential deal is of utmost importance.

Sir Andrew Roberts has written or edited 20 books which have been translated into 28 languages and have redefined our understanding of leaders and leadership, of empires and nations, of the forces that have shaped—and in some cases misshaped—the modern world.   He’s won many awards, including the Bradley Prize for which he was nominated by host Cliff May.   In 2022, he was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Roberts of Belgravia.   His most recent work: Chairing the 7 October Parliamentary Commission report, the first publication aimed at establishing and preserving an accurate record of the barbaric pogrom carried out by Hamas and Hamas-adjacent Gazans against Israelis. He joins Cliff to discuss.

The Indo-Pacific is one of the most consequential regions in the world. It’s home to economies, trade routes, and allies vital to American prosperity and security. It is also a region where the Chinese Communist Party, building on decades of defense sector cooperation with Russia, has expanded its military capabilities at a breathtaking pace. The more capable the Chinese military has become, the more aggressively Beijing has acted to coerce its neighbors and undermine American interests. Someone who grapples daily with this reality is General Ronald Clark, the Commander of U.S. Army Pacific, or USARPAC. For those who are not denizens of the Department of Defense, USARPAC is the Army service component command within U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. In other words, you can think of him as the top American soldier in the Pacific. A combat leader with decades of experience, General Clark has led American soldiers in Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific. He’s a veteran of Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, and Enduring Freedom. But now he focuses full time on the Pacific. He joins guest host Bradley Bowman, Senior Director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power, to discuss why the Indo-Pacific matters to Americans, the role of land power there, and what the Army is doing to deter and defeat adversaries—including forward-positioning forces, conducting rigorous training, and deepening cooperation with key allies such as the Philippines.

The Abraham Accords offer peace and prosperity, an era of repose from some of the constant warfare that plagues the Middle East. The UAE, a signatory of the Accords, houses the Abrahamic Family House—a synagogue side-by-side with a mosque and side-by-side with a church. It’s a beautiful symbol of tolerance and peace between the world’s Christians, Jews, and Muslims. But if Jihad against unbelievers is what Islam demands of the faithful, is it a paradox? On the contrary, say Amjad Taha and Ed Husain. They tell Cliff May that warm relations between Muslims and Jews shouldn’t be considered breaking the norms of Islam, and recall when the Prophet saw a funeral procession go by in Medina and stood up. When his friends asked him, “Why are you standing up for a Jewish funeral?” The Prophet responds, “Is this not a human soul?” “We are friends. We are cousins. We are brothers. We have the same father in Abraham. It’s not that we’re apostates—if anything, we’re family,” Ed says. But given the mosaic of diversity that is the Muslim world—from North Africa and the Middle East to south and Southeast Asia—how widely (or not) are these sentiments actually held?

In this special edition of Foreign Podicy, we are pleased to share an exclusive preview of FDD's new podcast series hosted by Mark Dubowitz: The Iran Breakdown.  For decades, Iran has frequently (notoriously) made global headlines, and it continues to regularly dominate the news to this day. Unfortunately, the issues are often dark, violent, and complicated, from its ruthless human rights violations against the Iranian people to its global export of terror and its very real race to a nuclear bomb. But there are even deeper stories beneath the headlines: a regime losing legitimacy, a restless population hungry for freedom, and an international community with conflicting ideas about how to manage the threat posed by Tehran's authoritarian rulers. The regime is close to having a nuclear bomb. Is it also close to collapsing? Over the course of 10 episodes, Mark will be joined by top Iran experts to silence the noise and bring clarity to the fundamental dynamics that shape the Islamic Republic. The regime in Tehran is behind some of the most critical—and consequential—geopolitical and human rights challenges facing the world today. The Iran Breakdown is here to make it make sense. In this sneak peek, Mark gets a masterclass on the Iran nuclear file from his FDD colleague Rich Goldberg, who previously served as the White House National Security Council's director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction. Rich helped coordinate key elements of President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Tehran, aimed at denying the regime pathways to nuclear weapons. Like Mark, Rich is sanctioned by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Back when host Cliff May was an exchange student at Leningrad State University in 1972, he believed that if the Soviet Union ever collapsed that Russia would become a free country. Well, that’s not how things turned out. Peter Pomerantsev has a book on Russian propaganda: “Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia.” He joins Cliff along with Ivana Stradner, a research fellow with FDD’s Barish Center for Media Integrity, to discuss.

Some might think of veterans issues and national security issues separately, but they are intricately intertwined. There's a moral imperative to care for those who have risked their lives to defend freedom. There's also a national security imperative to do so. This fact raises several questions: How are America’s veterans doing? How well are we taking care of those who have served our country in uniform? How can we do better? To discuss these questions and more, as well as some new research, guest host Bradley Bowman is joined by Marcus Ruzek and retired Navy Captain Dan Goldenberg.