Nearly two weeks after Israel launched its war against Iran, and almost a week after the United States joined the war effort by bombing Iranian nuclear sites, questions remain about Iranian nuclear capabilities and the future of the tenuous ceasefire. Israel and the United States have claimed that these attacks have “ruined” Iran’s nuclear program, while other sources have told reporters that these attacks have set Iran’s ability to get a nuclear weapon back by “only a few months.” Where does Iran’s nuclear capacity lie after nearly two weeks of air strikes? How much do these strikes on Iran hurt the likelihood that the Islamic Republic will come back to the nuclear negotiating table or alternatively rush for a bomb? How are these strikes being perceived inside of Israel, where Prime Minister Netanyahu was already deeply unpopular (although the war with Iran has been relatively popular)? And how will this conflict affect U.S.-Israeli relations moving forward? Join Perry World House and our two esteemed guests as we discuss the war and its most recent developments.
Speakers
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at CNS. Before coming to CNS, he was the director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation. Prior to that, he was executive director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, executive director of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a desk officer in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.
At the Middlebury Institute, he teaches courses on arms control issues in Northeast Asia and Chinese nuclear policy. The work of his team was recently covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and VICE. He is the author of Minimum Means of Reprisal: China’s Search for Security in the Nuclear Age (MIT Press, 2007), and Paper Tigers: China’s Nuclear Posture (IISS, 2014). He is a regular columnist for Foreign Policy, and has published articles in Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, and The New York Times. He is the founder of ArmsControlWonk.com, the leading blog and podcast on disarmament, arms control and nonproliferation.
Barak Ravid is an award winning journalist based in Washington DC. Ravid is the foreign policy correspondent for Axios and a global affairs analyst for CNN. He also writes for Wall news in Israel. Ravid’s book Trump’s peace: “The Abraham Accords And The Reshaping Of The Middle East” was the most comprehensive account of Donald Trump’s policy in the region. In 2024 Ravid won the White House correspondents association’s Aldo Beckman award for excellence in White House coverage.
Moderator
Marie Harf comes to Penn with two decades of varied experience in the U.S. federal government, higher education, media, and politics. Previously she worked as senior advisor for strategic communications to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and deputy spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, as the foreign policy director on Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, and as a Middle East analyst and spokesperson at the Central Intelligence Agency. She has also held senior roles at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and for Congressman Seth Moulton’s political organization. Since 2017, Harf has been an on-air commentator for Fox News. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Indiana University with concentrations in Jewish Studies and Russian and Eastern European Studies, and a master’s degree in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia.