Bonnie Glick, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Senior Adviser with the Project on Prosperity and Development at CSIS, and Advisory Board member of the Vandenberg Coalition, joins Flash Focus to discuss the Middle East’s most recent developments—the crash of a helicopter carrying Iran’s President and Foreign Minister on board and the International Criminal Court’s issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. These events have thrown an already unstable region into further turmoil. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, also known as the “Butcher of Tehran,” was considered a top contender to succeed the 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. On the same day his death was confirmed by Iranian media, the International Criminal Court, or ICC, unveiled unprecedented arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant. 

Jump to:

00:02:09 Infamous legacy of former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi

00:03:31 State of domestic Iranian politics 

00:06:10 Iran’s succession plans following Raisi’s death 

00:08:35 Consequences of Biden’s policy in the Middle East

00:11:13 False moral equivalence from the ICC 

00:15:37 Possible American response to the ICC’s warrants 

00:17:12 Implications of the ICC arrest warrants on Israel’s war in Gaza