Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

What is happening right now in Vienna with the negotiations over the future of Iran’s nuclear program? What was the significance of Putin’s recent trip to Iran? What is the nature of China’s relationship with Iran, and what can it tell us about Beijing’s grand strategy? And if Iran continues to build its nuclear program, what is Israel’s Plan B? These are some of the questions we explore with Mark Dubowitz, who is the CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, DC. We sat down with while we’re in Israel. Mark has advised the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and testified more than twenty times before the U.S. Congress and foreign legislatures. A former venture capitalist and technology executive, Mark has a master’s degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. According to The New York Times, “Mark Dubowitz’s campaign to draw attention to what he saw as the flaws in the Iran nuclear deal has taken its place among the most consequential ever undertaken by a Washington think tank leader.” According to The Atlantic, “Dubowitz has been helping design and push forward sanctions on Iran…establishing the FDD as D.C.’s ground zero for research and policy recommendations aimed at highlighting and fixing what Dubowitz saw as the flaws in the nuclear agreement.”

Why did Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei get such outsized attention? She’s not the first US Speaker to travel to Taiwan. Why did the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri get so little attention? After all, he was one of the three most important figures in al-Qaeda's leadership for decades. And why the dwindling focus on the Russia-Ukraine war? Where does the war stand right now? Richard Fontaine returns to the conversation. He is the CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a bi-partisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC. Prior to CNAS, he was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked at the State Department, the National Security Council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He currently serves on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board.

Air travel this summer seems broken. On some days, major airlines have been canceling 10 percent of their flights. In normal times, it’s something like one in a hundred that are canceled. How did this happen? Is there an explanation beyond just the obvious – which is the turbocharged rebound from the past two years of pandemic-induced turmoil in the airline industry? Today’s guest thinks there’s something else going on that the post-covid travel summer has simply revealed. It’s a structural problem that predated the pandemic, and he also sees similar forces at work in other industries, including the baby formula crisis. It’s the structural roots of crises of scarcity that we get at today, with Scott Lincicome. Scott is at the CATO Institute, a Washington think tank, where’s he’s the director of General Economics & Trade Policy Studies. He’s also a visiting lecturer at Duke University Law School, and spent two decades as a trade law negotiator, advising some of the largest multinationals. He also writes a Substack called “Capitolism”. And he’s with The Dispatch news & analysis site.

This next week will be among the most consequential in contemporary British politics. Ballots are sent out to Tory party members on August 1st, and they can begin voting right away. Whoever wins becomes Prime Minister in September, without first going through a General Election. So this next week is crucial for the two leading candidates to form final impressions before voting begins. To help us understand the process, the candidates, and what this all means for the UK at home, the UK’s economy, and the UK in the world, we are joined by James Forsyth, the political editor of The Spectator magazine. He is also a weekly columnist for The Times of London. He previously was a journalist for UK publications The Sun and The Mail.

Inflation hit a staggering 9.1% over the last 12 months, rising 1.3% for the month of June. The increases were “broad-based,” as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) put it, touching just about every aspect of our lives…especially food prices and energy prices. In anticipation of these new numbers, we invited Dr Mohamed El-Erian back to the podcast. He is President of Queens' College at Cambridge University. Mohamed serves as part-time Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz and Chair of Gramercy Fund Management. He’s a Professor at The Wharton School, he is a Financial Times contributing editor, Bloomberg Opinion columnist, and the author of two New York Times best sellers. He serves on several non-profit boards, including the NBER, and those of Barclays and Under Armour. From 2007-2014, Mohammed served as CEO/co-CIO of PIMCO, which has over two trillion under management. He worked at PIMCO for a total of fourteen years, and was chair of President Obama's Global Development Council. He also served two years as president and CEO of Harvard Management Company, the entity that manages Harvard’s endowment. He has been chair of the Microsoft Investment Advisory Board since 2007 Mohammed is expert in many domains when it comes to the financial markets and the macro economy, but especially - inflation.

Are there comparable periods in our history that can guide us through the current ‘“woke” debates? Is there precedent for this kind of thing burning out? Will it? How did we get to this point? And how long will it take? That’s what we discuss today with Noah Rothman, whose new book, just released this week, is called “The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives War on Fun.” Noah is an incisive writer and analyst. He writes about policy and politics and foreign affairs. He is an associate editor of Commentary Magazine, his previous book was called “Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America.” He’s also an MSNBC/NBC News contributor. You can order Noah's book here: https://tinyurl.com/2p88cc2k

Dan recently joined the Commentary Magazine podcast to share analysis on the current state of Israeli politics. We are posting that conversation here.

What have we learned so far about this election cycle, and what does it tell us about what’s likely to happen in the midterm elections of 2022, and the Democratic and GOP primaries for president in 2024? Historically, California has often served as a movie trailer on our national political future -- 'coming to a theater near you.' Richard Nixon started there, turning the Cold War threat into an election theme in his early political campaigns; Ronald Reagan transformed what we now think of as movement conservatism during his two terms as governor; and Proposition 187 was a California state ballot issue in 1994, before immigration became a national political issue (it helped get then-Governor Pete Wilson re-elected on the issue of immigration). Celebrity candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected governor there a year before the first season of The Apprentice. The state’s size and diversity make it a political country within a country: a population of 40 million people, the fifth largest economy in the world, and a whopping 22 million registered voters. Long-time GOP campaign strategist Mike Murphy has been on the front lines – and often the mastermind – of some of these California campaigns, as well as plenty of national campaigns too. He's been thinking about what, if anything, President Biden and the Democrats can do to turn around their near-term electoral headwinds. Mike’s view on the political crack-up is sparked by the breakdown in quality of life for his fellow Californians, and Americans almost everywhere. He also has some analytical insights on everything from the impact of inflation to the future of 'Roe vs Wade'. Mike has worked on 26 gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races across the country, including 12 GOP wins in Blue States – something that’s getting harder and harder to do. He was a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Murphy is a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He’s co-host of the Hacks on Tap Podcast, and he also pens a political newsletter (The Hacks On Tap Newsletter). Murphy is co-director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future.

The Biden administration has announced that the President will take his first trip to the Middle East as president. His first stop will be in Israel to meet with Israeli leaders and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, before heading to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The U.S.-Saudi relationship began nearly eight decades ago between FDR and King Ibn Saud. With varying degrees of tumult, the relationship has survived – and sometimes thrived – through 14 U.S. presidencies. Has all that now changed? Has there been a sense in Riyadh – and across the Middle East – that the U.S. (through recent Democratic and Republican administrations) is downgrading its focus in the Middle East. Is there a risk that China gradually replaces the U.S. as the most important geopolitical partner of Saudi Arabia? And will Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords? And, could President Biden engineer it and win the Nobel Peace Prize? Former Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer served as Israel’s chief envoy to the U.S. from 2013 to 2021 – working with three U.S. administrations. He was one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest advisers and played a key role in what led to the U.S. relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem, U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, implementation of the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, and the historic breakthrough that led to the Abraham Accords. He’s a graduate of the Wharton School and completed a degree at Oxford. Ambassador Dermer and I had this conversation a few days ago at the Jewish Leadership Conference (https://www.jewishleadershipconference.org/), which is sponsored by The Tikvah Fund (https://tikvahfund.org/).

After the 100-day mark of the 2022 Russian war against Ukraine. we assess some grim facts of this war, and try to understand how they should inform what to expect in the next hundred days. Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Centar for a New American Security (CNAS), returns to the conversation. Richard is a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board. CNAS is a bi-partisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC. Prior to CNAS, he was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked at the State Department, the National Security Council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.