FDD's Foreign Podicy

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 women, and murdering in support of anti-capitalism, anti-Zionism, and other sundry causes for which he was well-paid.

The seizure of the OPEC ministers in Vienna. Two French intelligence officers shot dead in a Paris apartment. The capture in Khartoum that finally ended his run.
Since 1994, Carlos has been behind bars. In 2003, from his cell, he wrote a manifesto, L'Islam révolutionnaire, praising Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 attack, and urging revolutionaries of every stripe — leftists, atheists, all of them — to accept Islamist leadership.

Today, Carlos sits in Poissy, a prison housed in a former monastery, where Joby interviewed him. In this episode of “Foreign Podicy,” Joby tells host Cliff May that the Jackal is no longer the wild animal he once was.

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-Mandeb, and cognitive warfare.

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 “unbelievably duplicitous.”
 
FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht and Behnam Ben Taleblu join host Cliff May to discuss where the conflict stands and what would be the best way forward.

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 Montgomery — senior leaders at FDD's Centers on AmericanPower — join Cliff May on Foreign Podicy to discuss their new book: "Axis of Aggressors: Countering the Cooperation of China, Russia, Iran & North Korea" — the result of two years of research, examining the threat and laying out a grand strategy to strengthen America, bolster its allies, and weaken this emerging axis.

Learn more about Axis of Aggressors: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/axis-of-aggressors/
Order the book: https://www.amazon.com/Axis-Aggressors-Countering-Cooperation-Russia/dp/1968919554/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0

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 government in Blighty and what’s driving theHouthis on the Arabian Peninsula.