Missile defense, Iran, Israel-Palestinian talks and Sept. 11th

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After months and months of talking about holding talks with Iran, the Obama administration will actually begin doing so on October 1. Iran says it’s not interested in discussing its nuclear program. Too bad, is the response from Hillary Clinton.

Clinton’s speech Friday at the Brookings Institution was a whirlwind tour of the huge foreign policy challenges facing the Obama administration right now.  Iran is just one of them.

This episode of the podcast opens with some excerpts from Clinton’s speech on missile defense, Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Clinton spoke at length about the president’s decision to reconfigure US missile defense capabilities around the world. And she aimed not only at critics of the administration, but at US allies whose feathers might be ruffled over the move.  Robert Kaplan has a great piece on missile defense that describes the change in policy as “a remarkably shrewd bit of politics and statesmanship.”

Friday was also “Quds Day” in Tehran. The Iranian president led a rally to denounce Israel (and deny the Holocaust, yet again), but those plans were disrupted by the emergence of opposition protesters. The BBC’s Jim Muir writes:

It made the country look unstable, and the president’s authority challenged from within, as he was preparing to travel to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly next week.

It’s interesting that Sec. Clinton never really got into the administration’s efforts to re-start peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. But when she got a question on the subject, Clinton gave the most forceful response of her whole presentation.

The podcast wraps up with two interviews I did on the anniversary of September 11, 2001. As a candidate, Barack Obama promised to reverse course on some of the signature policies of the Bush administration forged in response to September 11th. So, has President Obama succeeded in transforming US foreign policy? That’s the broad question I put to Marc Lynch – Middle East expert at Georgetown; and Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Please send ideas, tips, criticism to theworldpolitics at gmail.com. And thanks for listening!