Vali Nasr is everywhere in the news these days. The Iranian American scholar has written scores of books and articles about Iran and the Middle East, and even before the U.S.-Israel-Iran war, he was someone policymakers and journalists regularly turned to for insight into Iran.

On a personal note, I have followed his work for years, and since the outbreak of the war, I have found his commentary and analysis particularly useful.

Back in 2017, Vali came on the show to discuss his life and career. I wanted to understand how he developed his worldview and built a career that also included a stint in the Obama administration, where he worked with Richard Holbrooke on Afghanistan policy.

In this conversation, Vali opens up about the influence of his father, a prominent academic in Iran, and the trauma of being forced into exile after the 1979 revolution. He explains how those experiences shaped his worldview in ways that, at the time of our conversation, he said he was still coming to grips with.

Vali Nasr is helping to shape our collective understanding of Iran at this critical moment. This conversation goes deep into the personal experiences and intellectual influences behind the views he holds today.

This episode comes from deep in the archives. Global Dispatches is now 13 years old, and the first 200 or so episodes followed a different format from the show today. Back then, I focused less on topical and thematic issues in international affairs and more on the life stories of the people who shape our understanding of the world.

For obvious reasons, this felt like a particularly good moment to republish my interview with Vali Nasr, which originally aired in April 2017.

For decades, Cuba has deployed doctors on medical missions around the world, often to places where skilled health workers are badly needed. These missions have a genuine humanitarian component—but they also generate billions of dollars for the Cuban government, making medical services Havana's most lucrative export.

The United States is now pressuring countries to end these agreements, threatening one of Cuba's last major sources of income. The story of Cuba's doctors therefore raises a much larger question: What is the United States actually trying to accomplish in Cuba—and what does its pressure campaign mean for the doctors and the communities they serve?

Journalist Sarah Maslin recently wrote a fascinating piece in The Economist about the precarious situation facing thousands of Cuban doctors amid the U.S. crackdown—and what it could mean for Cuba's future.

The world promised to be better prepared for the next pandemic. But has it followed through?

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who co-chairs the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, joins me for a wide-ranging conversation about the intersection of global cooperation, diplomacy, and pandemic preparedness.

We begin by discussing what the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reveals about the strengths and weaknesses of the global pandemic response system. We then turn to the political and practical significance of a Pandemic Agreement reached at the WHO and an upcoming United Nations High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, taking place in September.

Russia's economy once seemed remarkably resilient in the face of international sanctions. But in recent months, a growing number of indicators suggest that Russia's war economy is coming under strains not seen since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. The budget deficit, which had remained relatively stable, is beginning to balloon. Inflation is accelerating. Labor shortages are widespread. And banks are being compelled to offer preferential loans to military industries, crowding out lending to the civilian economy.

Is Russia's economy finally approaching a breaking point? And what might that mean for Vladimir Putin's grip on power and his ability to sustain the war?

I'm joined today by Charles Lichfield, director of economic foresight and analysis and the C. Boyden Gray Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center. He is the author of a new report showing how recent developments have intensified some of the Russian economy's underlying structural weaknesses. In our conversation, he explains why Russia's economy is beginning to crack after four years of war in Ukraine—and what those cracks could mean for the future of the war.

What can bring about peace in an era of geopolitical rivalry and persistent conflict? In an ambitious new report, the International Crisis Group takes a hard-nosed approach to this question, offering a realistic assessment of what is—and is not—possible when it comes to preventing and ending conflict today.

I caught up with Crisis Group's Comfort Ero, Michael Hanna, and Ginger Jacobs at the Aspen Security Forum in July. They explain why a new approach to conflict resolution is needed—and why the old models are no longer suited to today's world.

With humanitarian needs surging and resources increasingly scarce, how does the World Food Programme decide where to cut assistance?

Our guest today is Carl Skau, acting executive director of the World Food Programme. We begin by discussing how renewed fighting between the United States and Iran—and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz and a key Red Sea transit corridor—is driving up food prices and worsening food insecurity around the world.

Carl Skau also responds to Israeli criticism of a recent food-security report on Gaza, explains the operational challenges facing the WFP in Afghanistan and Sudan, and discusses why, on top of everything else, the organization is bracing for the possible arrival of a powerful El Niño.

Nicholas Burns is a veteran diplomat who served as President Biden's ambassador to China during a crucial period in U.S.-China relations. We caught up at the Aspen Security Forum in July for a wide-ranging conversation about Chinese foreign policy, including Beijing's evolving diplomatic role in the conflict with Iran, what Xi Jinping hopes to gain from upcoming summits with Donald Trump, and whether China is really seeking to supplant the United States in international institutions.

The race to become the next United Nations Secretary-General is heating up, with the Security Council preparing to hold its first straw polls to test the viability of the candidates.

In this Global Dispatches exclusive, I speak with María Fernanda Espinosa, a former foreign minister, defense minister, and UN ambassador for Ecuador who served as president of the UN General Assembly from 2018 to 2019.

Espinosa discusses how her early work with Indigenous communities in Ecuador continues to shape her approach to diplomacy and problem-solving. She also explains her proposal to create a crisis-prevention and early-action hub at the UN and shares her views on the organization's role in conflicts involving Iran and Ukraine.

We also discuss how the next Secretary-General can advance global health and development—and what should replace the Sustainable Development Goals after their 2030 deadline.

It is a wide-ranging conversation with a leading international diplomat seeking to lead the United Nations at a particularly precarious moment in global affairs.

In recent months, Ukraine has clearly seized the initiative against Russia. Its impressive use of drones and autonomous weapons systems has put Russia on the defensive, while strikes on Russian energy infrastructure are causing gasoline shortages for ordinary Russians.

I speak with The Wall Street Journal's Yaroslav Trofimov about how and why Ukraine's fortunes have suddenly turned—and what comes next in the war.

We caught up at the Aspen Security Forum on the same day that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, even though Fedorov had championed many of the tactics that made Ukraine's advances possible. We begin by discussing that dramatic turn of events before broadening the conversation to the current trajectory of the war.

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The civil war in Myanmar recently passed a grim milestone. According to the conflict-monitoring NGO ACLED, an estimated 100,000 people have been killed since the war broke out in 2021. Seventy percent of them were civilians.

This civil war rarely makes headlines in the West. It erupted after Myanmar's democratic transition collapsed and the military seized power in February 2021. The junta then violently suppressed peaceful protests, prompting many demonstrators to take up arms. The front lines have shifted in recent months as neighboring China has intervened more decisively on behalf of the junta.

I'm joined today by Kelley Currie, the new UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. We begin with a brief history of Myanmar's long-running conflicts before turning to an in-depth conversation about the current dynamics of the civil war, the geopolitical implications of China's intervention, and the particularly brutal military strategy that has resulted in so many civilian deaths.