Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power and prejudices.

It is 2025 and Donald Trump is president once again of the United States.

We will, of course, be following the moves of the Donald's

and his second administration very closely.

However, it won't just be politics for us this year.

We'll also talk a lot and cover American culture, life and the arts.

I should also remind you, because my producer, Natasha, will not let me hear the end of it,

that we are on Spectator TV.

So head to our YouTube channel to watch that.

Hello and welcome back to the Americano podcast.

I'm delighted to be joined today by Kelly Vlarhos, who is director and an editor at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

We can see it behind you there, Kelly, on your screen.

Thank you very much for joining us. We are, of course, going to be talking

about Iran because there's responsible statecraft and there's irresponsible statecraft.

And I think, Kelly, as you have written in the last few days and done quite a lot on this,

Trump's Iran policy feels to a lot of people like irresponsible statecraft.

Yeah, and thank you for having me on Freddie, and it's great to see you.

I do feel that we're at a pivotal moment here, particularly in Trump's base.

So I'm going to talk specifically about

Trump's base, where you had a lot of folks who were very supportive of his foreign policy.

His foreign policy, as stated, was of an amount of restraint in America First policy in which

he was not going to engage in regime

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