FDD's Foreign Podicy

Richard Landes is a historian specializing in medieval millennial thinking. His 2022 book, “Can ‘The Whole World’ Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad," documented a pattern in which Western newsrooms adopted the framing of jihadist groups—a pattern that, one year later, coverage of October 7 would exemplify. He joins Foreign Podicy host Cliff May to discuss the Hamas war, th...

Leon Panetta has been there and done that. From joining theArmy in the 1960s, to serving in Congress for more than a decade and a half, to directing the Office of Management and Budget, to serving as the Director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta has served our country with distinction for decades. He also serves on the board of advisors for the Center on Military and Political Power at FDD.

How does Secretary Panett...

Since declaring a blockade against Saudi Arabia on July 20, the Houthis have struck vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, fired missiles and drones at Saudi cities and, over recent weeks, seized Yemen's entire Red Sea coast, along with islands in the Bab al-Mandeb, the southern exit from the Red Sea.
FDD senior fellow Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former British ambassador to Yemen, and FDD research analyst Bridget Toomey tell h...

Xi is in Washington, shaking hands and smiling as the People’s Liberation Army prepares for aggression in the Pacific. Putin continues to try to play the victim while continuing his unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine. The regime in Iran is severely weakened but continues to menace commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. And North Korean leader Kim Jong Unis responding to American concessions and South Korean concil...

Russia is turning captured Orthodox parishes into tools of occupation while holding tens of thousands of abducted Ukrainian children as leverage in any ceasefire deal.  China and Iran continue to feed the Houthi militants in Yemen drone and satellite technology to terrorize Red Sea shipping lanes.

From election interference to drone incursions along the Baltics and Poland, these authoritarian regimes continue to test the will o...

Sept. 11, 2001 began as a beautiful late summer day in New York City and Washington, DC.

Then, out of what was literally a clear blue sky, two hijacked passenger jets slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, another into the Pentagon just outside Washington. A fourth plane, thanks to the courage of the passengers aboard, did not reach its target but insteadcrashed in Pennsylvania.

Lewis &l...

On August 26, an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed 13 American service members and roughly 170 Afghans at Abbey Gate, one of the entrances to Kabul airport.

Four days after that, the last U.S. service member left Afghanistan.

Then, on Sept. 7, 2021, the Taliban declared the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

These anniversaries have not sparked much media interest. One notable exception: A new documentary film from Wall Str...

In late Summer of 2001, the UN hosted what it called the “World Conference on Racism” in Durban, South Africa.
Instead of combating racism, the conference incited it, becoming the worst international manifestation of Jew-hatred since World War II and the Nazi Holocaust.
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro accused Israel of “genocide.” Yes, way back then.
Gerald Steinberg, the founder and president of NGO Mo...

Joby Warrick, a fine storyteller and longtime national security correspondent for the Washington Post, has written a biography of the most infamous terrorist of the second half of the 20th century.

“The Jackal: The Rise and Fall of Carlos, the World’s First Super-Terrorist,” relates the life story of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – the Venezuelan-born Communist who enjoyed tailored suits, fine wine, beautiful wom...

FDD’s RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery is a travelin’ man. He’s just back from Taiwan and Ukraine.

He joins host Cliff May to debrief what he saw and heard abroad—and offer his analyses. They also discuss North Korea’s role in Russia’s war, cyberattacks—almost certainly by Iran’s rulers—on water utilities in Minnesota and Michigan, the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthis and the Bab el-...

A week ago, President Trump seemed to have decided to hit the Islamic Republic of Iran hard – to destroy what’s left of its missile arsenals, its military-industrial base, its command-and-control headquarters and perhaps the commanders themselves.

Then the President heard that Iran’s rulers were finally ready to make a deal. Soon after, Iran’s rulers announced they were not. President Trump called that &ldquo...

The United States faces the most complex geostrategic threat since 1945: an Axis of Aggressors — China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea — increasingly aligned across economic, cyber, technology, and military domains to diminish American power. Their most alarming tactic may be to trigger simultaneous major wars to stretch U.S. resources past the breaking point.

Bradley Bowman, Elaine Dezenski, and RADM (Ret.) Mark Mont...

Two places we need to watch carefully right now: the United Kingdom, which has just installed its seventh prime minister in a decade, and Yemen, where the Houthi rebels have declared anaval blockade of Saudi Arabia and resumed strikes on tankers transiting the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

Edmund Fitton-Brown, FDD senior fellow and former British ambassador to Yemen, joins Cliff May on FDD’s Foreign Podicy to discuss the new governme...

Forget nukes and stealth jets — the next war may just be won with algorithms, drone swarms, and who spends smarter, not bigger.

FDD Research Analyst and Foreign Podicy guest host, Mariam Wahba sits down with Aaron MacLean, host of the School of War podcast, to unpack how AI and rapid decision cycles are rewriting the rules of modern warfare — with Iran and Ukraine as live case studies. From strategic miscalculation and m...

This week, Iran's rulers fired on commercial vessels attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz -- an egregious violation of the Memorandum of Understanding which now appears to be a dead MOU. That doesn't surprise Zineb Riboua who has always been skeptical of attempts to forge "peace deals" with the Islamist revolutionaries in Tehran. Ms. Riboua, research fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Peace and Security in the Middle...

As NATO members head to Ankara, the Alliance is under strain — clashing over defense spending levels, the Russo-Ukrainian and US-Iran wars, and the shrinking U.S. military footprint in Europe. Trump comes to the table with real leverage, but both Europe and America have real grievances, and the outcome may hinge on which one drives his approach.

On this episode of Foreign Podicy, guest host RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, sen...

A century of failed diplomacy, hostage crises, secret arms deals, war and even murder. Dr. Tevi Troy, an American presidential historian and senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute, joins host Cliff May to unpack his WashingtonExaminer article, "The Presidents and Iran: A History." From the Persian shahs to the Islamic Republic, Troy and May trace 100 years of U.S.-Iran conflict and ask the uncomfortable question: why does eac...

A memorandum of understanding with Iran isn't peace – it's a fragile ceasefire with a regime whose ideology traces back to 1,400 years of jihad. While Tehran projects strength and defiance, U.S. negotiators face an impossible choice: lock in a deal that leaves the most dangerous issues unresolved or hold the line and risk escalation.

On this episode of Foreign Podicy, FDD military experts RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery and Bradle...

In this episode of Foreign Podicy, host Cliff May sits down with Congresswoman Elise Stefanik — once the youngest woman ever elected to the House and its highest-ranking female member — to discuss her new book, Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America's Elite Universities. Stefanik gained national attention after her landmark December 2023 congressional hearing, where she pressed the p...