Mark Owen is pleased to welcome Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran Program Senior Director and Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He presents the escalating confrontation between Iran and the United States as a dangerous and evolving contest of “high risk, high reward.” He argues that Tehran is actively probing Washington’s tolerance for escalation: “the Islamic Republic is looking at the play to the edge here to see how risk averse versus how risk tolerant the Trump administratio