This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Ben-Benthaliblu,

the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, about the Europeans looking at Iran and its

suspect nuclear weapons program and thinking more talk or more management can solve the

intractable Iatola and the IRGC, the predatory IRGC,

Benham answers that hope, that ambition, that vision with details about Europe and Iran

and about the Biden administration in Iran.

There's Ben-Benthala-Lu on the idea that the Iranians can be talked to, given their

threats.

More of this tonight.

I'm not sure they disagree as much, but the tools of statecraft and the fundamental purpose

of statecraft is seeing quite differently.

I would say Europe is still fundamentally in management mode and what they have not woken up to,

despite some of these otherwise more helpful changes in their posture or their rhetoric, particularly since 2022,

both with the advent of the Masa Aminhmani protests in Iran, the Women's Life Freedom

protests, which were the largest ever nationwide protest, the regime faced since the Islamic

revolution in 1979, as well as, of course, the proliferation of drones and later ballistic

missiles by Iran to Russia for use against Ukraine. Those things were a wake-up call. But the Europeans are in management mode.

The problem is they have not realized that the long you try to manage an adversary as determined

and as resolute as the Islamic Republic of Iran, the more you end up getting managed by that

adversary.

And that problem existed here in Washington with the Biden administration at the helm on steroids.