The shockwaves of the ongoing war in Iran are being felt far and wide. The continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sparked a global energy crisis, one that could be accentuated by a U.S. naval blockade. Countries as disparate as Chile, South Korea, and Zambia have been forced to take extraordinary measures to deal with shortages and surging prices. But the war’s effects are not just material. Washington’s decision to attack Iran is accelerating a process already underway: the receding of both the inspiration and the reality of American power.

That, at least, is the view of our two guests in this episode. Matias Spektor is a professor of Politics and International Relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas in São Paulo. Kishore Mahbubani is a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore and a veteran Singaporean diplomat, who served as his country’s ambassador to the United Nations for over a decade.

In their essays for Foreign Affairs, both Spektor and Mahbubani have sought to alert readers to changes in geopolitics that may be hard to see from Western capitals. The war on Iran, in their view, is misguided in its motivations and its execution. And its consequences could be hugely damaging for the United States, offering further proof that the world may be slipping out of the United States’ grasp.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

On Tuesday night, as the world held its collective breath, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a temporary cease-fire with Iran, just hours after warning that “a whole civilization will die” if the Iranian regime did not completely open the Strait of Hormuz. In exchange for a cessation of American and Israeli strikes, Iran has agreed to allow oil and other commodities to pass through the strait for two weeks and to stop its own attacks on its neighbors, giving both sides time to negotiate a more comprehensive peace deal. But many of the details of the cease-fire remain unclear, as do its chances of holding. A war that began with Trump’s call for regime change now seems destined to leave the Iranian regime in place, emboldened and more certain of its resilience than ever before.

Suzanne Maloney is vice president of the Brookings Institution and director of its Foreign Policy program. She has helped craft U.S. Middle East policy, serving in positions in the White House and the State Department across multiple administrations. Executive Editor Justin Vogt spoke with her on the morning of Wednesday, April 8, to help make sense of the cease-fire and get a grasp on what might come next.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

In 2024, when he was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns wrote in an essay in Foreign Affairs about “the plastic moments that come along only a few times each century”—and argued that “the United States faces one of those rare moments today, as consequential as the dawn of the Cold War or the post-9/11 period.”

If that claim seemed bold at the time, events in the past couple of years have made it undeniable—a major war in Europe, two wars in the Middle East, sharpening U.S.-Chinese tensions, a U.S. administration committed to projecting power in new and disruptive ways, and technologies adding complexity across all of these other challenges. “Inflection point” is an overused term. But this is a moment when, as Burns argued in that essay, it really does fit.

Before becoming CIA director, Burns was one of the most highly respected diplomats in recent American history. He started the secret negotiations that led to the Iran nuclear deal. He served as ambassador to Russia. As the State Department’s top Middle East official, he warned internally of the consequences of invading Iraq in 2003. He has spent years sitting across the table from American allies and adversaries, trying to understand what drives them and how Washington should—and should not—deal with them.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Burns on the afternoon of April 1 about the course and consequences of the war in Iran, about Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine, about Xi Jinping and U.S.-Chinese competition, about the future of intelligence, and about what the Trump administration will mean for the future of American power. 

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview. 

Just a few weeks after its opening salvos, the war in Iran is already going global. Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, stranding oil tankers and causing energy prices to skyrocket. Donald Trump has asked European partners to help restore freedom of navigation. So far, they have largely rebuffed his requests for military assistance. But as the economic pain mounts, their resolve will surely be tested.

Europe’s difficult position is indicative of a dilemma the continent’s leaders have faced since Trump’s return: whether to marshal their resources and will to push back against Trump’s coercion, or to give in to it. In 2025, according to the political scientists Nathalie Tocci and Matthias Matthijs, they chose wrong. “Instead of insisting on bargaining with the United States as an equal partner,” Tocci and Matthijs wrote in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, Europe “reflexively and consistently adopted a posture of submission.” 

But this year, Europe seems to have begun to stand up to the United States. In January, it strongly rejected Trump’s posturing over Greenland. Now, with Washington pressuring European countries to support its war on Iran, Europe may have no choice but to assert itself. Deputy Editor Chloe Fox spoke with Tocci and Matthijs on Tuesday, March 24, about the choices facing Europe in the age of Trump.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

When the United States and Israel launched a joint war on Iran two weeks ago, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Iranians to rise up and rid themselves of their tyrannical rulers. He seemed buoyed by his success in swiftly removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January. But the war in Iran has not progressed as smoothly as Trump might have liked. The authoritarian regime that runs the Islamic Republic remains firmly in place. 

The historian Stephen Kotkin, who is the Kleinheinz senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, has spent decades thinking about how these regimes function, how they survive, and how they come to an end. In “The Weakness of the Strongmen,” an essay in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs, Kotkin anatomized authoritarianism, arguing that many of the features that bolster autocrats also present vulnerabilities. 

Kotkin is the preeminent biographer of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a close observer of contemporary Russian and Chinese politics, and a sharp analyst of American foreign policy. He spoke with Executive Editor Justin Vogt on Friday, March 13, and explained what makes authoritarian regimes tick, how their weaknesses can be exploited, and what history tells us about the prospects of success for the American and Israeli effort at regime change in Iran.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

For about two weeks, U.S. and Israeli forces have bombarded Iran. They have targeted Iranian military and nuclear sites. They have slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian officials. They have even sunk an Iranian vessel deep in the Indian Ocean. Iran has responded by hurling missiles and drones at targets in the Gulf, Israel, and elsewhere in what has become a surprisingly broad and sustained retaliation. U.S. President Donald Trump has promised Iranians some kind of regime change, but that will not be so simple. Iran has declared Khamenei’s son Mojtaba to be his successor, a move that seems to double down on the old order. 

In this two-part episode, Senior Editor Daniel Block spoke with leading experts on the course of the war, the future of the Iranian regime, and the upheaval and uncertainty in the wider region. 

First, Afshon Ostovar, an associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, explored how the Islamic Republic has been reshaped by the attacks—and what it would take to truly dismantle the regime. Then, Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, discussed the widening remit of the war and how it has upended the assumptions and hopes of many Gulf countries. 

Block spoke with Ostovar and Vakil on Tuesday, March 10. Both agree that while much remains uncertain about the trajectory of the war, it is already remaking Iran, the Gulf, and the wider Middle East in dangerous ways.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Over the weekend, U.S. and Israeli forces struck hundreds of sites across Iran and killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Large crowds of Iranians took to the streets, some to mourn, others to celebrate. The Islamic Republic has retaliated and launched strikes of its own across the Middle East. 

Much about the joint U.S.-Israeli operation remains unclear—was it meant to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capabilities after failed negotiations? Was it meant to force regime change? With no path to de-escalation in sight, Washington may end up in a larger conflagration than it bargained for.

In this two-part episode, Executive Editor Justin Vogt spoke with two experts to help make sense of the situation. 

First, Nate Swanson, the director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council and a former Iran policy adviser to the Trump and Biden administrations. He was director for Iran at the National Security Council between 2022 and 2025 and he served on the Trump administration’s Iran negotiating team in the spring and summer of 2025. Vogt spoke with him on Wednesday, March 4 about the situation on the ground in Iran, Iran’s strategy in the wake of the U.S.-Israeli attacks, and how Iran policy gets made in the Trump administration. 

Then, Richard Haass, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. Toward the end of his long career in government, Haass served as the director of policy planning in the State Department during the George W. Bush administration, at a time when the United States was carrying out a war aimed at regime change in Afghanistan and planning another such war in Iraq. Vogt spoke with Haass on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 3, about the history of regime change operations and how the current war on Iran fits into it.

Both Swanson and Haass make clear that this is a watershed moment for the United States, Iran, and the Middle East more broadly.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

President Donald Trump wields American power like few leaders in U.S. history ever have. By imposing tariffs, threatening territorial conquest, and ordering military intervention, he deploys the United States’ strength to assert dominance over friends and foes alike.

Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard, describes this uniquely Trumpian grand strategy as “predatory hegemony” in a new essay in Foreign Affairs. The central aim of predatory hegemony, Walt writes, “is to use Washington’s privileged position to extract concessions, tribute, and displays of deference from both allies and adversaries, pursuing short-term gains in what it sees as a purely zero-sum world.” Walt argues that this approach may appear to yield immediate wins, but that over time it will erode the real sources of American power, leaving the United States “poorer, less secure, and less influential.”

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

February 24 marks the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. After Moscow’s initial onslaught, Ukrainian counteroffensives, and slow Russian gains since, the war has settled into a brutal pattern of attrition, adaptation, and endurance. Ukrainian cities are rationing electricity, as the Ukrainian military struggles to muster the manpower and munitions needed to gain a decisive edge. Meanwhile, the battlefield has become a hellscape of drones and artillery fire—with no clear breakthrough for either side in sight.

Michael Kofman has been one of the sharpest observers and analysts of the changing nature of the war, from Russia’s troop buildup in late 2021 to the present, in the pages of Foreign Affairs and elsewhere. He has also considered the geopolitical implications of each new phase of fighting—what the continued threat of a belligerent Russia means for the West, and how Ukraine’s allies can prepare it for sustained conflict. Now, as the war enters its fifth year, Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that “Russia retains battlefield advantages, but they have not proved decisive, and more and more, time is working against Moscow.” “Yet ending the conflict on terms acceptable to Ukraine,” he writes, “will not be an easy feat, either.”

In this special bonus episode, Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with Kofman on Wednesday, February 18 about where the war stands four years in, and how it might change in the weeks and months ahead.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

A year into Donald Trump’s second term, the United States’ allies on both sides of the Atlantic seem to have recognized that they need a new strategy for this age of rupture, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called it. Trump’s grab for Greenland, his tit-for-tat tariffs on Canada, his approach in Ukraine—all have opened up rifts between the United States and many of its closest partners.

Chrystia Freeland has for years been on the frontlines of the battle for the future of the alliance as Canada’s foreign minister, deputy prime minister, and finance minister—roles in which she went head-to-head with the Trump administration on a host of fraught issues. She recently left the Canadian government to serve as a volunteer adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

As much as Freeland sees the cracks in the relationship, she still stresses the imperative of making the alliance work despite them. Freeland and Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on February 15 about how to negotiate with Trump, what Ukraine can offer Europe and the United States, and why American allies must rethink their approach to this moment. 

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.