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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America,

a presidential election year. And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one,

because we want to and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

I am delighted to be joined today by Mike Baker, who is here in London.

Welcome to London, Mike. Thank you very much.

You are a former CIA officer.

You are a security expert.

You are the CEO of the Portman Square Group, intelligence group, is it?

It's an intelligence and security firm, yes.

Security. Risk mitigation. Yeah. And you are a host of the very informative and good

podcast, which is called the President's Daily Brief. And I won't ask what nefarious business

you're doing here in London.

Oh, some serious shenanigans.

I'll tell you that. Some dark, dark stuff.

I'll start by talking about Iran, the Biden administration in Iran, because that's obviously the story of the moment.

The White House has said it will respond and has sort of given a fairly clear idea of how it will respond,

and perhaps giving the element of surprise away, to the drone attack last weekend,

which everybody has pinned on Iran.

Dron attacks seem to always be pinned on Iran,

and probably rightly so.

...