Event Recap
The Middle East is once again in upheaval. In the middle of negotiations surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, the United States and Israel began widespread air strikes against the Islamic Republic on Saturday. Almost immediately, Iran launched significant retaliatory strikes against Israel, U.S. bases in the region, and multiple Arab allies of the United States.
President Trump declared regime change as his ultimate goal in the Islamic Republic, and both U.S. and Israeli sources have now said that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozen of other Iranian officials were killed in the attacks. The U.S. Congress has not authorized war, as required by the Constitution. And sources say that neither the United States nor Israel currently have the manpower in the region to move forward with a ground invasion.
What does this mean for all parties involved, as well as the region and the world more broadly? Join Perry World House for a rapid-response discussion of the crisis and possible next steps in the region.
Speakers
Hussein “Huss” Banai is a non-resident senior advisor at Perry World House and an associate professor of international studies in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he is also faculty affiliate in the departments of Political Science, Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and Central Eurasian Studies. He is also a research affiliate at the Center for International Studies at MIT. Banai’s research interests lie at the intersection of political thought and international relations, with a special focus on topics in democratic theory, non-Western liberal thought, diplomatic history and theory, U.S.-Iran relations, and Iran’s political development.
Dalia Dassa Kaye is a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and director of its Initiative on Regional Security Architectures. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dalia is an internationally recognized expert on geopolitics and Middle East policy. During her fifteen years at the RAND Corporation, Dalia served as a senior political scientist and the director of the Center of Middle East Public Policy. She has received numerous awards and held previous positions at an array of research and public policy institutions, including as a Fulbright Schuman visiting scholar at Lund University, a fellow at the Wilson Center, an advisor at the Foreign Ministry of The Netherlands, an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill. She is the author of dozens of articles and policy reports, as well as three books, including most recently Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy (Stanford University Press, 2026).
Daniel Schneiderman is the director of global policy programs at Penn Washington. He also serves as an adjunct senior fellow in the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. Most recently, Daniel served as the senior coordinator for Afghanistan. He reported directly to the under secretary of defense for policy on all defense policy matters involving Afghanistan. The Office of the Special Coordinator for Afghanistan, which he led, acted as the official Department of Defense (DoD) liaison to the Congressionally mandated Afghanistan War Commission. Before joining DoD, he served as the deputy special representative for Guantanamo affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Previously, Daniel was the head of advocacy and research for the U.S. Program at International Crisis Group (ICG), where he served as a subject matter expert on global conflict issues and shaped Crisis Group’s engagement with the Executive Branch, Capitol Hill, and Washington-based nonprofit community. Previously in his career, Mr. Schneiderman served on the National Security Council (NSC) staff as director for Yemen from May 2016 to May 2017, where he helped lead the U.S. government’s preparations for engagement in the UN-brokered peace process and response to the humanitarian crisis in the country. He has also previously served at the Department of State as special assistant in the Bureau of Counterterrorism, where he advised the Coordinator for Counterterrorism on world-wide counterterrorism strategy, policy, and operations. He has been awarded the Department of State’s Superior Honor and Meritorious Honor awards for his work.
Moderator
Marie Harf is the executive director of Perry World House. She came 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.