FDD's Foreign Podicy

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...

The first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state was Egypt. Following the Yom Kippur War of 1973, came the Camp David Accords of 1978 which provided both countries with tangible benefits. While the peace has never been warm, it has held. But since October 7, Egypt’s behavior has been distressing.  What’s more, there’s now evidence that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has...

Hamas called its October 7 terrorist attack “Operation al Aqsa Flood,” suggesting a religious – rather than nationalistic – motive. The al Aqsa compound, the third holiest site in Islam, sits atop the ruins of both the ancient temples of the Jews. The first was built by King Solomon and was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The second was built in the sixth century BCE and stood for nearly...

Americans and our allies confront an extraordinary array of threats from an emerging “axis of aggressors,” consisting of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. That’s the bad news. The good news? Americans have an unmatched network of allies and partners with whom we can work to defend our common interests and counter growing threats. Among our partners in that network are three beleaguered democra...

A war is being waged against Israel by Iran’s rulers and their proxies, and they don’t hide their goal — they boast of it: annihilation. Extermination. Genocide. Now seven months into Israel’s defensive war in Gaza following the heinous terrorist attacks of October 7, Hamas is down but not out. And they are literally down: its leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, are believed to be ensconced in an ela...

In the aftermath of World War II, the establishment of the United Nations seemed like a promising idea: global unity in resolving conflicts peacefully while promoting human rights. Surely everyone in the new international community will support such efforts, right? Wrong. U.N. corruption is obvious to anyone willing to look, but most Americans and Europeans in positions of authority don’t look. An...

Ali Khamenei, Iran’s longtime ruler, saw the possibility of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia as a threat to his hegemonic ambitions. On Oct. 7, Hamas, one of Tehran’s proxies, invaded Israel and committed multiple acts of barbarism. That sparked a war and froze prospects for a new Saudi-Israeli relationship.   However, The Wall Street Journal reports that Washington is pushing for a “...

Last weekend, Iran’s rulers launched a massive missile and drone assault on Israel. Though the attack was thwarted, it should be obvious that the Islamic Republic is willing to pursue its goal of “Death to Israel!” — not just by utilizing Arab proxies and pawns, but now also directly from within its own territory. We must assume that Iran’s rulers are also now adjusting their strategies for the ji...

Six months after Iranian-backed terrorists perpetrated the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, Israel’s ground war against Hamas in Gaza, its conflict with Lebanon-based Hezbollah in Israel’s north, and Tehran’s multi-front shadow war against the Jewish state continue. For a status update, host Cliff May is joined by his FDD colleagues Bradley Bowman, senior director of FDD’s Center on...

The Israeli airstrike next to Iran’s embassy in Damascus on April 1 targeted several high-ranking members of Iran’s Quds Force — an elite division of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, which is designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. Among those killed: top IRGC-QF commander in Syria and Lebanon, Mohammad Reza Zahedi.  The regime in Tehran has vowed revenge, and Israel is...

President Reagan knew a detent with the Soviet Union wouldn’t win the Cold War. If we take off the gloves and force Soviet communism to compete with American democracy, he thought, the U.S. will prevail. In a phrase: “We win, they lose.” He was right. The U.S. won. The Soviet Union collapsed.  But in the decades since as America’s role in the world diminished and the rules-based order decayed, Rus...

After World War II, the United States attempted to construct something new: a liberal, American-led, rules-based international order that would promote human rights, Enlightenment values, and democracy. Today, the dictatorial rulers of China, Russia, and Iran are attempting to establish something different: a world order that is radically illiberal with rules made in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran, a...

In Gaza, Israelis are fighting a ground war – and an underground war – against Hamas, a proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Israelis also are responding to missile attacks from Hezbollah, Tehran’s Lebanon-based foreign legion. These are serious conflicts. But they are not separate conflicts. And they could be something else – something worse. Mark Dubowitz , FDD’s chief executive, worries that...

Next month marks 30 years since the onset of the world’s worst mass slaughter since the Holocaust: the Rwandan genocide. Among the forces that ushered in an end to the conflict was a military officer who would ultimately become Rwanda’s president: Paul Kagame. FDD’s RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery recently met with President Kagame and other senior officials in Kigali. In addition to a debrief on his...

Joining Cliff for this episode is Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, whose first column appeared 30 years ago this week. Jeff’s career as a journalist has included interviews with Elie Wiesel and Mikhail Gorbachev, and on-the-ground reporting from such exotic locales as Cuba, the Korean DMZ, and Gaza. Cliff asks Jeff how he came to his world view; what he saw in Gaza during visits from the 1970s...

Given the mandate of the United Nations, you might think a genocide perpetrated by a terrorist organization against a democracy in the Middle East would be an opportunity for the UN to exercise its moral authority — perhaps even an obligation, considering the U.S. tax dollars that bankroll it. But you’d be wrong. The UN doesn’t recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization. Moreover, when the UN use...

As Israel's defensive war in Gaza enters its fifth month, host Cliff May is joined by FDD experts retired  Major General Amir Eshel  and retired  Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery  to talk about the current state of the war including how many Hamas terrorists are thought to remain active on the battlefield in Gaza; the whereabouts of Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif; and IDF efforts to redu...