Our star return guest, FDD Senior Fellow, Jonathan Conricus, has just returned to Israel from a three-week speaking tour in Canada. And he has a lot to say. About many things. We focus in this podcast on the continued volatility in the Middle East, with the MoU negotiations between Iran and America in Switzerland overshadowing everything. As President Trump “joked” when assigning VP Vance to the thankless task, if he is successful (however that is measured) then Trump will take credit… and if he fails, well, he’ll get the blame. The MoU parameters seem to have been slapped together in quite a hurry, more in order to push oil prices down and allow a happy celebration of the 250th 4th of July, a truly momentous occasion. But the spectacle of America denigrating its most reliable ally in the the Middle East (and possibly the world) - Israel - while presenting Islamist, terror supporting governments - notably Pakistan and Qatar - as the “reasonable” players, should give everyone pause. Trump even went so far as to speak of Hamas as being “good guys” and the new/not new Iranian regime as being “very reasonable.” Conricus and I discuss the optics and the facts and I don’t want to spoil the ending but neither one of us is overly optimistic regarding the outcome of these negotiations.
He also shares his view of what’s going on in Canada, these days a country with a very pro-Islamist and deeply antisemitic and anti-Israel government, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney. Conricus returned quite disheartened by what he saw and heard while in Canada. Now he understands much more intimately that I’m not exaggerating when I report, with great sadness and reluctance, on the radical transformation of my home and native land. (I’m sure those words - taken from the version of the national anthem I grew up on - have been replaced by some unintelligible DEI version. Too bad.)
We’ve included some really fantastic video segments in this podcast - going back to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Remember those daily broadcasts by the extreme students holding American diplomats hostage? Well, we’ve got that and much more: Hezballah attack tunnels in southern Lebanon; J.D. Vance slamming Israel; and more.
Podcast Notes
Full video of a speech delivered on Monday, June 22 in Jerusalem by U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee
My recent op-ed in the National Post addressing Canadian PM Mark Carney’s failure to address rampant antisemitism.
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Jonathan Conricus is a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington D.C.-based think tank. He served in the IDF for 24 years, four of them as spokesman during the intense 11 days of the Guardian of the Walls Operation between Israel and Hamas. Now a reserve officer with the rank of Lt. Col., he is a sought-after speaker internationally and is frequently seen on major television news shows. Jonathan was born in Jerusalem to a Swedish father and an Israeli mother and spent his formative years in Sweden.
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