On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched wide-spread, coordinated attacks against Iran which struck military, naval, and nuclear infrastructure and killed many of the country’s senior leaders. On a special episode of World Class, Colin Kahl discusses the war, its immediate impacts, and its possible trajectory with Israeli security expert Ori Rabinowitz and Iranian studies professor Dr. Abbas Milani. The audio of this episode was originally recorded during a panel discussion held at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University on March 4, 2026.

Colin Kahl is the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow. He has served as a senior White House and defense official advising on national security policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Most recently he was the under secretary of defense for policy at the U.S. Department of Defense from 2021 to 2023.

Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a visiting professor in the department of political science. In addition, Dr. Milani is a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution.

Ori Rabinowitz is a tenured senior lecturer at the International Relations Department of the Hebrew University and a visiting fellow at the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. Her research covers the Israeli defense posture, U.S.-Israeli relations, nuclear proliferation, and the security landscape of the Middle East.

The original panel was moderated by Jim Goldgeier, who is a research affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and a professor at the School of International Service at American University.

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H.R. McMaster and Jake Sullivan, the respective national security advisors of the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, join Colin Kahl to sort through everything that has happened in U.S foreign policy since the start of the year, from Venezuela and Iran to Greenland and strain on U.S.-European alliances, and the ever-present competition with China and Russia, and how all of these issues may affect the rest of 2026.

H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 25th United States National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2018, and was appointed as the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute from 2018 to 2019. His podcast, Today's Battlegrounds, can be found on all major platforms.

Jake Sullivan served as the National Security Advisor for all four years of the Biden administration. He is now the Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire, and he hosts the podcast The Long Game alongside Jon Finer.

This episode's reading recommendations are "What Is Claude?" by Gideon Lewis-Kraus for The New Yorker, and "The Weakness of the Strongmen," by Stephen Kotkin in Foreign Affairs.

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There are a lot of changes happening in the world, from the "rupture" in the global order to a new host of World Class! Colin Kahl, the new director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, joins Michael McFaul to take on the role of podcast host and discuss how institutions like FSI can better study and contribute understanding about the rapidly changing world.

Colin Kahl is the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow. He has served as a senior White House and defense official advising on national security policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Most recently he was the under secretary of defense for policy at the U.S. Department of Defense from 2021 to 2023.

Michael McFaul is a senior fellow at the the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and former director of the institute. His latest book is Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America and the New Global Disorder. His personal blog can be found on Substack.

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Gabrielius Landsbergis is the former minister of foreign affairs of the Republic of Lithuania. Previously, he was the chairman of the Homeland Union Party while concurrently a member of the Lithuanian Parliament. Before assuming these roles, Landsbergis was also a member of the European Parliament and began his career as a diplomat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania. He is currently based at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he is the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow.

His recent opinion piece in the New York Times can be viewed here.

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Marshall Burke is a senior fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment and senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. His research focuses on social and economic impacts of environmental change, and on the economics of rural development in Africa.

Colin Kahl is the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), an interdisciplinary research hub in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. From 2021-2023, Kahl served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense. In that role, he was the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense for all matters related to national security and defense policy.

Or Rabinowitz is a visiting scholar in the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Her research interests include nuclear proliferation, intelligence studies, and Israeli American relations.

Larry Diamond is the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy.

Steven Pifer is a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and an affiliate at the Center on International Security and Cooperation and The Europe Center. Pifer’s research focuses on nuclear arms control, Ukraine, Russia and European security.

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Michael McFaul the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2016, and has spent much of his academic career researching political change, great power competition, and American policy toward Russia. His new book is Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America and the New Global Disorder, which is available for purchase from major booksellers.

If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

Larry Diamond is the the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. 

His "Diamond on Democracy" series is available on the Persuasion website. 

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Ruth Gibson is a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University’s Department of Health Policy and an affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Her research focuses on volatile regions affected by war and sanctions. She also works with the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights on the use of unilateral sanctions.

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Arzan Tarapore is a research scholar at the Center in International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. His work focuses on Indian military strategy and regional security issues in the Indo-Pacific. Prior to his scholarly career, he served for 13 years in the Australian Defence Department in various analytic, management, and liaison positions, including operational deployments and a diplomatic posting to the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

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Jim Goldgeier is a research affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is also a professor at the School of International Service at American University. He writes extensively on European security, NATO, Russia, and Ukraine.

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