What the Pentagon’s Top Brain Thinks About Iran
Foreign Affairs What the Pentagon’s Top Brain Thinks About Iran Elbridge Colby gives little comfort to war skeptics. In a podcast released Thursday, Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy and an old friend of The American Conservative, sat down for a tête-à-tête with his old schoolmate, the New York Times’ Ross Douthat. Colby, for the folks keeping track back home, was the mastermind of the first Trump administration’s China-prioritizing defense policy and the author of The Strategy of Denial, a 2021 book further articulating his strategic vision for prioritizing Chinese containment.
- ▪Foreign Affairs What the Pentagon’s Top Brain Thinks About Iran Elbridge Colby gives little comfort to war skeptics.
- ▪In a podcast released Thursday, Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy and an old friend of The American Conservative, sat down for a tête-à-tête with his old schoolmate, the New York Times’ Ross Douthat.
- ▪Colby, for the folks keeping track back home, was the mastermind of the first Trump administration’s China-prioritizing defense policy and the author of The Strategy of Denial, a 2021 book further articulating his strategic vision for prior
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| Original publisher | The American Conservative |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theamericanconservative.com/what-the-pentagons-top-brain-thinks-about-iran/ |
| Publication time | Fri, 24 Jul 2026 04:06:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-24T04:14:19.553Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-24T04:14:19.553Z |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Foreign Affairs What the Pentagon’s Top Brain Thinks About Iran Elbridge Colby gives little comfort to war skeptics. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images <div class="o-image__issue-wrapper"> <img class="o-image__image" srcset="https://tac.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/jude.jpeg?auto=format&crop=faces%2Centropy&fit=crop&ixlib=php-3.3.1&w=32 32w, https://tac.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/jude.jpeg?auto=format&crop=faces%2Centropy&fit=crop&ixlib=php-3.3.1&w=32 32w, https://tac.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/jude.jpeg?auto=format&crop=faces%2Centropy&fit=crop&ixlib=php-3.3.1&w=32 32w, https://tac.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/jude.jpeg?auto=format&crop=faces%2Centropy&fit=crop&ixlib=php-3.3.1&w=56…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The American Conservative.
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