China is conducting what a top US military officer called a breathtaking expansion and modernization of its nuclear and conventional forces. An October 2024 Defense Intelligence Agency report estimated that by 2030, “China will have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads, most of which will be fielded on systems capable of ranging the continental United States.”Meanwhile, Russia maintains the largest foreign nuclear stockpile in the world and is actively modernizing its arsenal to be able to circumvent US missile defenses.North Korea and Iran have been busy improving their ballistic missile inventories, as the latter continues inching closer to a nuclear weapons capability.How can the United States deter these growing threats and protect American lives?
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Dealing with Tehran
Last week, Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said that talks with the Trump administration appear to be going well.This tells host Cliff May that from an American perspective, the talks are going badly.President Trump has said that America’s goal is the “full dismantlement” of the regime’s nuclear weapons program, including its capacity to produce missiles that could deliver nuclear warheads to targets anywhere in the world.Mr. Araghchi’s goal is to prevent President Trump from achieving his goal. Who are you betting on?Cliff asks Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh, who just wrote a piece together in Politico arguing that sanctions and maximum pressure have never made the clerical regime abandon its nuclear ambitions.Which raises the question: What will?
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Where in the World is Admiral Mark Montgomery?
According to host Cliff May, "Mark Montgomery is an admirable admiral. Another adjective I’d use to describe him: peripatetic. Which is a fancy way of saying he’s on the road more than Willie Nelson—whom he does not otherwise resemble."Most recently the retired flag officer has been in Lithuania, which on the east shares a border with the Russian vassal state of Belarus, and on the southwest has a border with the Russian oblast of Kaliningrad, which was called Königsberg until Russia took it from Germany following World War II.You start a war and lose that war, you may lose territory. Which is a good segue to Israel, another country Mark has recently visited. Also on the list is Taiwan.And, perhaps most mysteriously, he very recently spent time in an elaborate private wine cellar in California. Which is odd because he’s not much of a drinker. It had something to do with a cyber security conference and... The Godfather?So many mysteries, so little time.
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Erdogan, the Neo-Ottoman: Turkish Without the Delight
If you were to visit Turkey years ago, it might’ve felt both Middle Eastern and European. It was Muslim and secular. It was, more or less, free and democratic. Host Cliff May says the food was great, too. Now? Well, he’s told the food is still great. To explain what has happened and what is happening in Turkey, Cliff is joined by his FDD colleague Sinan Ciddi. About SinanSinan is also an Associate Professor of National Security Studies at the Marine Corps University in Quantico. Earlier, Sinan was Executive Director of the Institute of Turkish Studies, based at Georgetown University. He continues to serve as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. He received his doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He’s the author of Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People’s Party: Secularism and Nationalism.
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Iran's Nuclear Weaponization
Filling in for host Cliff May is FDD CEO and host of The Iran Breakdown, Mark Dubowitz, joined by former Israeli national security advisor Jacob Nagel, now a senior fellow at FDD.Following President Trump’s recent signaling that he's open to nuclear negotiations with the Islamic Republic, Mark and Jacob revisit the flaws of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the general complexities of Iran's nuclear program. They discuss Iran's current nuclear capabilities and the implications of the program for regional security—and explain why addressing weaponization and delivery systems in any potential deal is of utmost importance.
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