Diplomacy is the adjustment of conflicting national interests without the use of force,

but the implication has to be if you can't resolve them in the instance of something as important as this, that force might in the end

have to be applied. While we're all following the minute-to-minute developments in Russia and Ukraine. A new international deal with Iran on its

nuclear program is on the cusp of being finalized. While there are still key details to be

worked out, the broad contours are out there and the implications

are massive. So we wanted to have a conversation with an expert and policy practitioner who could

walk us through the history of how we got here and where it's going.

Ambassador Eric Edelman is at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

He's also on the board of the Vandenberg Coalition, an important foreign policy group.

He served in senior positions at the Departments of Defense, State, as well as the White House.

And his Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the George W Bush

administration where I first got to know him he oversaw the Pentagon's

bilateral defense relations, war plans, special operations forces,

homeland defense, missile defense, nuclear weapons

and arms control policies, counterproliferation,

counter-terrorism, arms sales, and defense trade controls, all areas with direct relevance to the issues

we're dealing with today with Iran.

Previously he served as U.S. Ambassador to Finland in the Clinton administration and the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey

and the Bush administration. And he was Vice President Cheney's National Security

Advisor. He's been stationed as a diplomat in Prague and Moscow. Here's the origin story of the

Iran nuclear negotiations. This is Call Me Back.

And I'm pleased to welcome my old friend Eric Edelman, the former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, to the podcast.

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