In this moment, when global politics feel overwhelmed by unprecedented change and intense international upheaval, the Network for Responsible Public Policy convened foreign policy experts to discuss tariffs, conflicts between Israel and Gaza, Israel and Iran, the U.S. and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, North Korea’s role in all of this, and more. As program moderator and Axel Springer Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Gideon Rose put it at the outset, “Everybody's really interested in trying to figure out what is happening, what will happen next, what the consequences will be. The first point to make is that nobody knows anything. We are in uncharted territory in various areas.” Rose was joined by distinguished scholars, F. Gregory Gause III, Minxin Pei, Kathryn Stoner, and Shibley Telhami.

On Iran: Greg Gause discussed the situation in Iran and mentioned that, happily, the worst-case scenario based on the U.S. attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities did not happen, which is good for everyone. That worst-case scenario would have been an Iranian attack on Gulf oil facilities to bring in other actors to counter the U.S. and Israeli attacks. His concern with the current situation is that, with the U.S. President insisting that the nuclear facilities were obliterated, U.S. intelligence assessments must now be questioned, as they will necessarily be skewed to conform to the President’s preferred reality. Since it seems unlikely that the facilities were, in fact, destroyed, Gause believes that Iran now has an enormous incentive to race to develop a nuclear weapon. In what would become a main theme of this conversation (long-term stability even in the face of intense short-term upheaval), Gause mentioned that he does not believe that the current situation in Iran will result in a change to the Iranian regime.