Day: March 10, 2026

Trump Reverses Himself on Ending the Iran War After A Call With Putin

We begin with yesterday’s press conference at Trump’s golf resort in Florida at which he made little sense and appeared to contradict himself after saying he would only accept an unconditional surrender from Iran, announcing that the war would be over in a week or so. Joining us to discuss how much Trump’s one hour phone call with Putin before the press conference influenced Trump’s change of mind is Jonathan Guyer, program director at the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group. A reporter and editor focused on foreign policy, national security, and the Middle East, he is an Arabic and Hebrew speaker and spent 5 years as a correspondent in Egypt. A regular contributor at The New Republic, New York Magazine and The Guardian among others, he has an article at The American Prospect we discuss, “The Blowback From an Unpopular Iran War.”

Iran’s New Supreme Leader Will Likely Reverse His Father’s Fatwa Against Nuclear Weapons

Then we examine whether the so-called “dead man walking,” Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei will reverse his father’s fatwa against building nuclear weapons and speak with Dr. Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and an expert on religious and political authority in the Middle East and North Africa. She has worked as a journalist in Egypt and Yemen and served as a foreign affairs officer at the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor until resigning over then President Biden’s policy on the war in Gaza. We discuss her article at The New Republic, “The Unbelievable Madness of Our War With Iran.”

A Military Analysis of the Iran War and the Russia/Ukraine War

Then finally we get a military analysis of both the Iran war and the Russia/Ukraine war from Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow & director of military analysis at Defense Priorities where her research focuses on U.S. military strategy, force structure and defense budgeting, the defense industrial base, and U.S. military deployments and interventions. Previously, she was a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and she has an article at Responsible Statecraft we discuss, “Is Ukraine peace toast, now that the Middle East is on fire?”