Donald Trump pledged not to entangle the United States in wars in the Middle East. But last weekend, he joined Israel’s air campaign against Iran, bombing three nuclear sites before claiming that Iranian facilities targeted by U.S. aircraft and missiles had been “obliterated.” Iran responded by firing missiles at U.S. bases in the region just before Washington announced a cease-fire.

But key questions remain unanswered—about the risk of continued fighting, about Iran’s nuclear capability and ambitions going forward, and about the shifting balance of power and rapidly changing regional order in the Middle East.

To make sense of the conflict, Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with Eric Edelman, Suzanne Maloney, and Andrew Miller. All three have served in senior positions overseeing U.S. Middle East policy in the White House, the State Department, and the Defense Department across multiple administrations. They spoke on June 25 about the war’s escalation and abrupt de-escalation and about its long-reaching consequences—for Iran, for Israel, and for the United States.

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

Less than a week ago, on June 12, Israel launched a barrage of attacks against Iran, targeting nuclear sites, missile depots, and military and political leaders. Since then, the two countries have exchanged a series of attacks.

Philip Gordon is the Sydney Stein, Jr. Scholar at the Brookings Institution and a longtime observer and analyst of the Middle East, and his writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs for over 20 years. He has also been one of the key practitioners of U.S. Middle East policy, as White House Middle East coordinator during the Obama administration and, more recently, as national security adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Shortly after the start of the Trump administration, Gordon wrote in Foreign Affairs, to the surprise of many, about the opportunity Donald Trump had to make progress in the Middle East. On June 17, he joined Dan Kurtz-Phelan to discuss the dangers of this latest round of escalation—and also how wise U.S. policy could prevent it from ending in catastrophe.

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

U.S. President Donald Trump famously tweeted during his first term, “Trade wars are good, and easy to win.” But the record of the trade war that Trump started with his so-called Liberation Day tariffs in early April suggests that things are a bit more complicated.

In an essay for Foreign Affairs appropriately titled, “Trade Wars Are Easy to Lose,” the economist Adam Posen argues that the United States has a weaker hand than the Trump administration believes. That’s especially true when it comes to China, the world’s second-largest economy and perhaps the real target of Trump’s trade offensive. “It is China that has escalation dominance in this trade war,” Posen writes. “Washington, not Beijing, is betting all in on a losing hand.”

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Posen, who is president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, on June 9 about the short- and long-term effects of Trump’s tariffs and the economic uncertainty they’ve caused, about what it would take to constructively remake the global economy, and about the growing risks to the United States’ economic position at an especially dangerous time.

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