FDD's Foreign Podicy

The two most recent attacks on Israel did not take place in the Middle East. The first was in Turtle Bay at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The second was in The Hague where the International Criminal Court is located — and about 40 miles from Amsterdam where Israeli soccer fans were violently assaulted earlier this month. The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister...

President Trump – now also President-elect Trump – has named the team he wants to advise him on foreign policy and national security. How will they fare in facing challenges like the Islamic Republic of Iran's war on Israel (and America), Russia's war against Ukraine, and the threat from China’s Communist rulers? Host Cliff May is joined by his FDD colleague Richard Goldberg to discuss.

45 years ago this month, followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini seized the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage. Last weekend, regime supporters in Tehran celebrated that blatant violation of the most basic international law by rallying outside what used to be the embassy building.  Over the decades since, the threats posed by the regime that came to power, the misleadingly named...

FDD’s RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery just returned from Ukraine where he was on a mission to support and train the Ukrainian general staff in planning and executing integrated joint operations and, secondarily, to get a prioritized assessment of what the Ukrainians need to retain their independence, to prevent being re-colonized by Russia, to defend their homes and families. He joins host Cliff May t...

On Oct. 8, 2023, one day after Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel and carried out the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon began firing missiles at Israel, and the attacks have continued ever since. Last month, Israelis defended themselves against Hezbollah in new ways, including by exploding thousands of pagers worn on the belts of Hezbollah membe...

Yahya Sinwar is dead. He was the leader of Hamas, the architect of the October 7 attack on Israel — the largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. He has the blood of many Americans on his hands, too, and was designated as a terrorist by the U.S.
 For Israel, this is a significant battle won in a long and multi-front war. What’s next? Host Cliff May discusses with his FDD colleagues Ma...

Gen. H.R. McMaster has written a memoir about his action-packed 13 months serving as national security advisor to the 45th president of the United States.  It’s titled “At War With Ourselves,” and it focuses on the widening divisions among Americans — divisions not just between the major political parties but very much within them. H.R. is an historian as well as a soldier, and his mission, in wri...

America and other free nations are threatened by enemies – an axis of tyrants, of aggressors, of authoritarians, of revanchists – all those terms are apt. But the response of Western leaders continues to be woefully inadequate. The most imminently endangered democratic societies: Ukraine and Israel. Host Cliff May discusses with Bernard Henri-Lévy and Oleksandra Matviichuk .

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and conducted the largest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. The next day, Hezbollah began to rain missiles from southern Lebanon on Israel’s northern communities. Officials at the UN, other transnational organizations, various non-governmental organizations, and media platforms — AKA the “international community” — has responded to this Iran-...

The theocrats in Tehran have surrounded Israel with proxies — a “ring of fire,” as it’s being called. The regime’s nuclear weapons development program has made progress, too. And so has its development of the missiles that could deliver these nuclear weapons to targets anywhere in the world. Plus: the regime has made common cause with Communist China, neo-imperialist Russia, and the dynastic dicta...

Twenty-three years ago, al Qaeda terrorists hijacked passenger jets to use as missiles and crash two into the World Trade Center in New York City and one into the Pentagon. United Airlines Flight 93 – thanks to brave passengers onboard – crashed into an open field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. These attacks came as a shock and a surprise. But they shouldn’t have — particularly to the American...

General Randy A. George is the 41st Army Chief of Staff, making him a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the highest ranking officer in the U.S. Army. He enlisted in the Army decades ago, has commanded at all levels, and deployed to war multiple times. What are America’s adversaries up to, and what lessons can be drawn from the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East? How is the character of...

Before Matt Pottinger was a reporter in China, he served as a U.S. Marine, deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. He then spent four years in senior roles on the White House National Security Council, including as senior director for Asia, and deputy national security advisor. Now, he’s a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and he’s Chairman of FDD’s China Program. And he’s the...

Taiwan is a vibrant democracy in the western Pacific just east of Communist China where Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese ruler since Mao Zedong, is the decider. His intentions toward Taiwan are imperialist and predatory. But it’s not just Taiwan that is in his crosshairs — he also seeks to displace the United States as the preeminent global power. An FDD delegation led by RADM (Ret.) Mark Mon...

Growing up a religious Muslim in Saudi Arabia, Loay Ahmed Alshareef believed that Jews descended from pigs and apes and Israelis lived on stolen land. Later in his twenties, he went to study abroad in France where his homestay family turned out to be… Jewish. Despite initially contacting his school to be moved, he stayed put. Eventually his views evolved and he became a “proud Muslim Zionist.” Loa...

In response to an attack last weekend that killed 12 Israeli children playing soccer in the Golan Heights, a top Hezbollah commander was killed in Beirut. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was also killed this week in Tehran. In response to the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist leaders meeting their demise, Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei threatened “severe punishment,” while Hezbollah leader Hassan Nas...

Daniel N. Hoffman spent decades as an officer in America’s “clandestine services.” He was a station chief in Moscow and Baghdad, and he was chief of the CIA's Near East Division. He also did a tour of duty in South Asia. He’s now a Fox News contributor and a columnist for the Washington Times where host Cliff May writes the weekly “Foreign Desk” column. They discuss some of the many conflicts and...

When we talk about ‘hostage diplomacy’, it’s almost like we’re normalizing and legitimizing hostage-taking and admitting that American policy is not to deter hostage-taking or punish hostage-takers but simply to manage the criminals’ demands for ransom and the release of their terrorists and other rewards – and to do it with respect and civility. Vladimir Putin is among the autocratic world leader...

NATO is 75 years old. It was founded to “deter” the expansion of the Soviet Union, “forbid” the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong American presence on the continent, and “encourage European political integration.” Today, there is a European Union, reasonably integrated politically, nationalist militarism is not a serious European problem, and the Soviet Union lies in the...

As the Israel Defense Forces appear to have almost completed their mission to defeat Hamas terrorists in Rafah, a Gazan city along the Egyptian border, the Islamic Republic of Iran is utilizing Hezbollah, its proxy in Lebanon, to attack – even more aggressively – Israel’s northern territories. Behind Hezbollah, behind Hamas, behind Islamic Jihad, behind the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and multiple Shi...

After attending a conference she was invited to in the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2018, Australian-British academic Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert was arrested by the intelligence arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of espionage which the Australian government rejected as "baseless.” Two years later, she was released in exchange for thre...

South Africa has been in the news lately. Most recently, it had elections. There’s also this: The government of South Africa has filed a lawsuit under the Genocide Convention to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The indictment is not against Hamas whose terrorists invaded Israel and massacred more than a thousand men, women, and children last October, and which vows to repeat such m...

Turkey is a NATO ally, but not a reliable one. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has developed close relations with authoritarian powers like Russia and China. Like his neo-imperialist friends, Erdogan longs for the resurrection of the Ottoman Empire which ruled much of the Middle East for centuries. But is that what the Turkish people want? And despite its regular illicit activity rang...

Filling in for host Cliff May this week is Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of FDD, and he’s joined by Karim Sadjadpour. They cover the full gamut of U.S. foreign policy on Iran, from looking back at President Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic and President Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the JCPOA to looking ahead and arguing for policies of maximum pressure on the regime and maximum...