FDD's Foreign Podicy

📺: Watch this episode on YouTube here. Filmmaker Michael Pack joins host Cliff May to tell the extraordinary story of The Last 600 Meters, his gripping documentary on the battles of Fallujah and Najaf. Though the film was finished in 2007, it sat on a shelf for 17 years before PBS finally aired it this Veterans Day. From young Americans fighting al-Qaeda and Iran-backed militias in brutal urban c...

Guest host and Senior Director of FDD’s Iran Program Behnam Ben Taleblu sits down with historian Ali Ansari to explore why the Islamic Republic is rewriting Iran’s past to justify its present, how Iranians are reclaiming their identity from the regime, and what the nation’s search for identity reveals about the Islamic Republic’s fading future.

President Trump just returned from a whirlwind week in Asia closing trade and investment deals and strengthening security alliances. Host Cliff May sits down with FDD’s Craig Singleton to discuss what Trump accomplished, as well as the challenges – and threats – that remain.

Watch this episode on YouTube here. For two years, Israel has been fighting a war on multiple fronts. And although it has delivered blows to Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas on the ground, it’s losing another fight: the information war, a campaign of slander and blood libels fueled by a media empire built by the Muslim Brotherhood.  To expose where — from Al Jazeera’s studios in Doha to Turkish satellit...

Host Cliff May is joined by retired Ukrainian Admiral Ihor Voronchenko, the former inspector general of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and former commander of the Naval Forces of Ukraine; along with retired U.S. Marine Colonel Andy Bain, executive director and co-founder of the Ukrainian Freedom Fund; and FDD's retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery to assess the state of Russia’s war on Ukraine...

Watch this episode on YouTube. LTG (Ret.) H.R. McMaster and Brad Bowman join host Cliff May to explain why diplomacy only works when backed by force. From Gaza to Ukraine, they trace how strength — not illusions — shapes outcomes and frustrates the ambitions of the Axis of Aggressors: Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang.

Watch this episode on YouTube here. From China’s stranglehold on critical minerals to the coming AI power crunch, an energy arms race is underway.  Rich Goldberg, on loan from FDD to the White House, helped establish a new National Energy Dominance Council. He’s now building a program at FDD that will focus on energy as a key component of national security.  Rich, who has served as a Navy Intellig...

Born into a well-educated and well-off Syrian family, Ahmad al-Sharaa – also known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani – joined Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organization, al-Qaeda in Iraq, after the U.S. invasion of that country in 2003. Following the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, he established al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria: Jabhat al-Nusra. In 2016, he severed ties with al-Qaeda, and...

America’s military faces extraordinary threats — and when resources lag, missions can fail. Guest host Bradley Bowman is joined by Krista Auchenbach of CSIS to discuss her forthcoming report, alongside Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, as they unpack how presidents convey orders, how the Pentagon manages risk, and how to avoid a dangerous ends-means mismatch.

On the 24th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Cliff May sits down with Amb. Edmund Fitton-Brown, former British ambassador to Yemen and UN terrorism monitor, now a senior fellow at FDD, to assess what we’ve learned — and failed to learn — about global jihad. From Hamas leaders living lavishly in Qatar, the Houthis’ missile attacks, al Qaeda’s quiet alliance with Tehran’s rulers, and t...

For fifty years, the United Nations has waged a war on Israel—not with rockets or tanks, but with words: resolutions branding Zionism as racism, false charges of apartheid, fabricated famine, and now even cries of genocide. It’s a propaganda war that empowers Hamas and delegitimizes Israel on the world stage. On this episode of Foreign Podicy, host Cliff May is joined by his FDD colleague Rich Gol...

The world’s most endangered democracies—Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, and Ukraine—face relentless threats from the Axis of Aggressors: Beijing, Pyongyang, Tehran, and Moscow. With Ukraine locked in an existential war, host Cliff May welcomes British historian Mark Galeotti, host of In Moscow’s Shadows , for an unflinching look at Russia’s ambitions, Putin’s imperial drive, and what it all means for...

Not every U.S. strategic partner is a democracy, but those receiving American aid should not trample such basic freedoms as religious liberty. Years ago in Egypt, Coptic Patriarch Pope Tawadros II told host Cliff May that discrimination was diminishing under President Sissi. Today, USCIRF reports show the opposite: systemic repression of religious minorities. FDD’s Mariam Wahba, writing recently i...

America’s edge in artificial intelligence may rest on one decision now facing Washington: whether to keep our most advanced chips out of Beijing’s hands. President Trump has moved to lift the export ban on Nvidia’s H20 processors—a move some warn could supercharge China’s AI ambitions and military power—arming the Chinese Communist Party for dominance in the AI age. Cliff May and Matt Pottinger pu...

Adm. Mark Montgomery has been on the road again – along with Craig Singleton and Matt Pottinger. All three FDD scholars just returned from a visit to Japan and Taiwan, two American allies increasingly threatened by Xi Jinping, the very ambitious Chinese Communist ruler.  Mark joins host Cliff May for a debrief.

In 2005, Vladimir Putin said the fall of the Soviet Union was the “greatest political catastrophe of the 20th century.” As Sen. Mitch McConnell pointed out, that should have told us everything we needed to know about this ex-KGB lieutenant colonel. He made the remark at an event in the U.S. Senate discussing a new report on Putin’s war in Ukraine. The report was prepared by a task force of 22 fore...

Once again, there is conflict and carnage in Syria. The media calls it “sectarian strife,” but that phrase may obscure more than it reveals. Islamists have been slaughtering those they deem infidels—with Syria’s Druze and Christian communities hardest hit. The U.N. and the “international community” have been useless as usual. Israel, which has a significant Druze minority of its own, has taken act...

Woke ideology, anti‑Americanism, Islamism and antisemitism have gripped America’s elite campuses. How? Follow the money. Researchers at the Middle East Forum have been doing exactly that, and the result is a new report that's shocking but not surprising. It’s titled: “ Beachhead: Georgetown University: How Foreign and Domestic Radical Actors Captured a U.S. University .” Host Cliff May is joined b...

Just as Putin launched the largest drone assault of the war, President Trump overruled an order from the Pentagon that had halted the delivery of munitions to Ukraine. And despite what pundits say, new polling says his base isn’t mad about it. Cliff May is joined by Carrie Filipetti of the Vandenberg Coalition to break down its polling data that shows most of Trump’s base back peace through streng...

Guest host Bradley Bowman is joined by U.S. Air Force pilots Lt. Col. Brian “Bud” Leitzke and Lt. Col. Kevin “Rowdy” Murphy for an exclusive firsthand account of April 13, 2024, when Iran launched over 300 drones and missiles at Israel. Bud and Rowdy's squadron scrambled into the night sky in one of the largest U.S. air combat missions in years. What followed was a high-stakes, real-time defense o...

NATO summits are usually dry and wonky affairs. This one was different. To unpack what was said, what wasn’t, and what actually matters, host Cliff May is joined by his FDD colleagues RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery and Bradley Bowman to discuss alliance politics, military power projection, strategic signaling, and more.

Israel and Iran are at war. To break down what’s happening and what could come next, host Cliff May is joined by Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery and Behnam Ben Taleblu. They dissect Israel’s targeted strikes on IRGC assets, the strategic pause before a possible U.S. strike on Fordow, and why this war isn’t just Israel vs. Iran. It’s the free world vs. the axis of aggressors. And it’s about finishin...

Host Cliff May is joined by his FDD colleagues H.R. McMaster and Brad Bowman to assess the growing cooperation among adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—also know as the 'axis of aggressors.' From the Kremlin's efforts to manipulate perceptions in the West, particularly regarding NATO, to Iran's nuclear ambitions and the geopolitical implications of its relationship with China an...

Thirty-six years ago this week, the Chinese Communist Party crushed pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square with tanks and bullets. The death toll? Certainly in the hundreds, probably in the thousands, and deliberately hidden by the Communist Party of China. How did that massacre reshape China’s path, and what did it mean for Beijing’s relationship with the U.S. and the West? Host Cliff May sit...

Is Iran on the brink, or is the West getting played again? Filling in for host Cliff May, Behnam Ben Taleblu is joined by Andrea Stricker and Saeed Ghasseminejad to discuss Trump’s renewed demand for full nuclear dismantlement, the regime’s internal weakness, and why half-measures won’t cut it. From stalled negotiations to nationwide strikes and the case for a “strike fund,” they unpack how to con...