Richard Goldberg on How Iran Is Already Testing the Biden Administration

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Biden has been in office for just over one month, but when it comes to his administration’s relationship with Iran, the honeymoon is already long over. Just in the past few weeks, Iran has launched rockets at American assets in Iraq, refused to allow in-person inspections by International Atomic Energy Agency officials of its nuclear facilities, and extorted sanctions relief from South Korea by taking an oil tanker hostage. Through all these actions, Tehran is trying to determine the Biden administration’s objectives, probe its limits, and assess its political will.

Now it’s up to the new American team to lead a response, and to declare—in its words and actions—to the world, and especially to the Iranians, what the United States wants to do, what it can abide, and what it will not accept. On this week’s podcast, the national-security expert Richard Goldberg joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to explain the Biden administration’s early moments of decision on Iran and to project what the short and long term consequences of those decisions might be.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

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0:00.0	By the time that this discussion is broadcast, President Biden will have been in office for just over one month.
0:14.6	But when it comes to Iran, the honeymoon is already over.
0:18.3	From Iran's financing, planning, and carrying out terrorist and insurgent actions across the Middle East, to its refusal, to allow in-person international atomic energy agency inspectors, to the recent soil samples that suggest ongoing enrichment of the kind necessary to develop nuclear weapons, to its piracy and extortion, Tehran is trying to figure out the Biden administration's limits, the new American team's objectives, and its will.
0:45.3	And it's up to the Biden administration to now lead a response and declare, in its words and actions to the Europeans, the Chinese, Russia, Turkey, the Sunni states of the Gulf,
0:57.4	Israel, and of course to the Iranians themselves, what the United States wants to do, what it can
1:03.7	abide, and what it simply will not accept. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host,
1:08.6	Jonathan Silver. To help us understand the Biden administration's
1:11.6	early moments of decision and their consequence, I'm joined today by Richard Goldberg, formerly of
1:16.9	President Trump's National Security Council, and currently at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
1:22.1	in Washington, D.C. Rich is also the co-host of a new weekly podcast for readers of Jewish Insider Limited Liability
1:29.7	Podcast. If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on Apple Podcasts,
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1:41.3	community of ideas. I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes at podcast at
1:47.3	tikfafunds.org.
1:49.0	And of course, if you want to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website,
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1:57.1	Here now is my conversation with Richard Goldberg.
2:00.3	Rich Goldberg, welcome back to the Tikva podcast.
2:03.0	So great to be back, as always. Thanks, John. So what I'd like to do in our discussion about Iran today
2:07.7	is to try to understand the picture of the region in President Biden's head and how the administration
2:15.3	is thinking about it. To do that, I think it makes sense to understand
2:18.8	the new administration's actions. I think it makes sense to back up and understand the region
	...

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