The war in Iran may have come to an end, but both the course and the conclusion of that war have brought into sharp relief the forces that increasingly define a world of weaponized power and systemic risk: unconstrained leaders willing to gamble with military force; the search for, and use of, economic leverage; technologies destabilizing both decision-making and development models; and old alliances fracturing and new alignments forming.

Ian Bremmer is a leading geopolitical analyst and the president and founder of the Eurasia Group. His most recent piece for Foreign Affairs is about the long-term consequences of the Iran war, but he has also written on shifts in global power, the effect of technology on geopolitics, and much else. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Bremmer on Monday, June 22, about how to make sense of today’s global turmoil.

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

The Iran war may be coming to an end, as Washington and Tehran prepare to sign a framework agreement later this week. That deal should reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the blockade of Iranian ports, even as it leaves unresolved the issues that brought both sides to war in the first place, including the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. But policymakers in Washington and other capitals are just starting to confront the ways in which the war has transformed Iran—and how it could transform the Middle East moving forward.

In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs, Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr argue that members of a new, emboldened generation of Iranian leaders are forging an entirely new approach to their own society, to the United States, and to the region. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Bajoghli and Nasr on June 15 about the potential implications of a deal—and about how the last three and a half months of war will shape both the Middle East’s trajectory and the future of geopolitics more broadly.

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 has insisted that he will have the “honor of taking Cuba.” Although the administration has not specified what that might mean, following interventions in Venezuela and Iran over the past six months, there is reason to take seriously the possibility of some kind of forceful U.S. action, including military action. Already, a combination of U.S. pressure and the Cuban government’s own failures has resulted in unrelentingly dire conditions on the island—leading many to expect some kind of break before long.

In recent weeks, two of the sharpest observers of Cuba and U.S. policy toward Cuba have written essays in Foreign Affairs on the choices facing policymakers in both Havana and Washington. Michael Bustamante is chair of Cuba and Cuban-American studies at the University of Miami. And Ricardo Zuniga is a longtime U.S. official who served at the embassy in Havana and helped lead the secret talks that brought the Obama administration’s opening to Cuba. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with Bustamante and Zuniga on June 8 about what U.S. policymakers could and should do in the coming weeks and months—and what those decisions will mean for Cuba’s future.

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