In the days and weeks after President Biden's inauguration, experienced foreign policy hands argued about what we could learn from his early statements and appointments.

Much of the Biden campaign appeared to be a conscious effort, as the campaign itself would have us understand it,

to avoid progressive culture war distractions, and instead to reclaim the broad soul of America by restoring decency and honesty to the presidency.

Now, no one really believed that it was so simple and no one was naive enough to think that a democratic president and a democratic

Congress would abstain from pursuing long-held democratic policies. The Biden administration's

early actions have not been very surprising, or if they have, they've been surprising in degree,

but not in kind. But when it comes to the Biden administration's approach to the Middle East

in general,

and to Israel in particular, analysts faced an unresolved question. Would his sympathetic

Clintonian instincts hold sway over the louder and more progressive voices arrayed against

Israel in the Democratic Party? Would the Joe Biden, who, for decades, spoke out in support of Israel

in the Senate? Would that Joe Biden sit in the Oval Office? Or instead, would it be the Joe

Biden who, as President Obama's vice president, served in administration that strengthened

Israel's main adversary, Iran, and relished in the daylight between Washington and Jerusalem.

Analysts, American and Israeli, who were committed to one view or another, each had serious

evidence to justify themselves.

We'll talk about some of that evidence in just a moment.

But today's guest believes that the answer has now revealed itself in the administration's strategic concept.

Israel and America's Sunni allies need to prepare for the final act of America's strategic

realignment in the Middle East. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.

My guest today is Michael Duran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.,

and the co-author, along with Tony Badron, of a defining new essay, The Realignment, published

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