On June 13, 2025, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a massive series of attacks aimed at Iran’s nuclear program and senior military leaders. The initial set of strikes – which included missiles, warplanes, and drones intended to devastate Iran’s military infrastructure – has led to what can be described, for all intents and purposes, as a hot war between Isael and Iran. The regime in Tehran responded by launching ballistic missile strikes across Israel, a back and forth that has continued since, with casualties on both sides. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized the reason for the attack was that, in their estimation, Iran was days away from building a nuclear weapon, his rhetoric and actions since indicate that regime change may in fact be the ultimate goal. Of course, Operation Rising Lion did not emerge in a vacuum but on the heels of major Israeli military victories against Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas over the past year. With the conflict entering its second week, what impact can we say it has had on Iran’s military capabilities? How has the region – namely the Arab states – responded? What actions is U.S. President Donald Trump likely to take to end the conflict? Please join Perry World House for a virtual event assessing the first week of the conflict and what the next phase of the war will look like.
Speakers
Arash Azizi is a lecturer at Yale University and a contributing writer at the Atlantic. He is the author of What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom and Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US and Iran’s Global Ambitions.
Hussein “Huss” Banai is 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.
Ilan Goldenberg is Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer at J Street. He is a seasoned foreign policy and national security expert with two decades of experience advising American leaders on the Middle East, US-Israel relations, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iran.
During the October 7 Hamas attacks and the early months of the war in Gaza, he served as Special Advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris on the Middle East. Subsequently, he became the National Director for Jewish Outreach and Policy Advisor on Harris’s 2024 Presidential campaign.
Ilan previously served at the State Department as part of the small negotiating team supporting Secretary of State John Kerry’s initiative to conduct permanent status peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. At the Department of Defense, he was the Iran Team Chief, advising department leaders on all issues pertaining to Iran’s nuclear program and regional behavior.
A prolific writer and commentator, Ilan has authored 15 reports on US policy in the Middle East when he served as the Director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. His writing has been featured in leading publications, including The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Politico, The Atlantic, and Haaretz. He has also appeared as a commentator on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and CBS. He is currently the author of the Dialogue and Dissonance SubstackNewsletter.
Born in Jerusalem to American parents who made Aliyah after meeting at Jewish summer camp, Ilan moved to New Jersey at age eight.
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.
Moderator
Farah Jan is an International Relations Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in May 2018. Dr. Jan’s research focuses on interstate rivalries and alliances, the causes and consequences of nuclear proliferation, and security politics of South Asia and the Middle East. Her dissertation, Adversarial Peace: A Comparative Historical Analysis of Nuclear Rivalries, examined the impact of nuclear weapons on strategic rivalries. Her writing has appeared in a range of scholarly and policy-relevant publications, including, Foreign Policy, Arab News, Asraq Al-Awsat, Foreign Policy Journal and Democracy & Security.
For additional context, read our Q&A with Hussein Banai and Marie Harf about the strikes.