Well, ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention?

Greetings to your listeners. This is Jonah Goldberg, host of the Remnant Podcast, brought to you by the Dispatch and Dispatch Media.

Today we're having, it's like fan favorite week on the Remnant. We have today a colleague of mine from the American Enterprise Institute,

who every time he's on, people say he got to get him back on, and he's sort of a weird character for AI, because AI is usually, AI scholars are kind of divided between generalists and popularizers, which I fall into that camp quite decidedly, and then silo mechanics.

And the silo mechanics go way deep on single issue areas, and not to say that they don't have opinions on other things, but that's just sort of the general divide.

Ken Pollack, who's a senior fellow in the Foreign and Defense Policy Shop, and an expert on Iran, who also worked at several agencies that are usually described by three letters a piece, is a silo guy who's also a really good generalist.

And maybe not on the Iowa caucuses. I'm not presuming I'm just saying, you're not the guy I'd normally go to for that, but on foreign policy, history, national security, all that kind of stuff, he's sort of a one stop shop.

So Ken Pollack, thanks for coming back to the Remnant.

Thanks for having me back, Jonah. So where to begin. Alright, so we usually have you back when Iran does bad things.

And because that's one of your main specialties, and this is sort of new for us.

You have this piece in foreign policy about how Iran is doing good things, or at least things using carrots instead of sticks as you put it.

And it may be doing good things for bad reasons, but it's a change of pace for the foreign policy shop to have to deal with how are you going to respond to Iran's carrots.

So why don't you sort of lay out what's going on?

Yeah, sure. I think you're exactly right about that, Jonah. It's just something that I've been noticing over the past six to 12 months.

We've seen this Iranian regime since the 1979 revolution. They tended to be very, very consistent.

They want very much to dominate the Middle East. They want very much to drive the United States out.

They want very much to destroy the state of Israel. And for the most part, during those 44 years, they relied heavily on sticks.

They obviously employed tremendous amounts of terrorism. They will subvert foreign governments.

They'll use overt force whenever it suits them to. They rely heavily on threats generated by those other forms of aggression.

That's really been their MO for the past 43 years. And that's not to say that there aren't moments when they'll try a little soft power or being a little bit nice.

But those have really been the exceptions. And what's really been striking to me over the last six to 12 months is how much they are really trying to be Mr. Nysky.

In the Middle East, how they are trying very hard to make amends with so many of their neighbors, particularly their Arab neighbors, how they're offering positive inducements, economic inducements, diplomatic inducements, even military inducements.

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