The Iranian regime’s network of terror in the Middle East has been greatly reduced to rubble over the past year. With US President Donald Trump back in office the frenzied Ayatollah is adapting to the new reality and Tehran leaping for a nuclear bomb appears to be among the cards. In this episode we talk all that and more.

Note: After this episode was recorded, Trump reinstated the Maximum Pressure campaign from his first term on the Islamic Republic. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reacted by saying that talks with the United States were “not smart, wise, or honorable.”

HTS, an Islamist group with al-Qaeda roots, is now the strongest force in Syria. The fallen Assad regime, while brutal, was formally socialist and secular, allowing a degree of religious freedom. Syria is now in danger of losing this relative freedom.

Flavius Mihaies is an investigative journalist with extensive field experience in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Eastern Europe, and Africa. His journalism primarily focuses on conflict, the experiences of minorities at war, and the effects of economic sanctions. Before his journalistic career, Flavius worked with the US Congress, think tanks, international organizations, and private sector entities in development and foreign policy. HuffPost, the Atlantic Council, and Al Jazeera have featured his work. Flavius frequently travels to the Middle East, where he has firsthand experience working in a Syrian refugee camp, touring towns in the Kurdish region, and visiting local Christian communities. He has also completed a book on Syria.

Antoine van Agtmael, a sage of our times who coined the term “emerging markets” in 1981, discusses Donald Trump’s victory, its reasons, its significance and its consequences in this episode of FO° Podcasts. He says it is the end of an era, but the world is still much better off than a hundred years ago, and there is reason for hope.