Cosmopolitics by Elise Labott

Three decades covering foreign policy has taught me one thing: the story is almost never as simple as your side wants it to be. That’s why I call balls and strikes without keeping score.That means you get reporting and analysis that makes partisans on both sides a little uncomfortable. Clear-eyed, fact-based, and beholden to no one.If that’s the kind of coverage you want to read- I hope you will support my work with a paid subscription or a one-time contributionIt would be a blinding statement of the obvious to say Donald Trump just suffered a stunning political defeat. Democrats took both houses of Congress, voters delivered a sharp rebuke to the administration, and Republicans are already fighting over who, or what, to blame.Dany Pletka’s word for it was “craptacular.”But does a weakened Trump mean a more restrained American foreign policy? Or could the next two years be even more unpredictable than the first two?That was the question at the center of the latest Hot Takes Happy Hour. Dany called the results a massive repudiation of the president and his party. Voters were promised lower prices and got higher ones. They were promised a secure border and got ICE roughing up Americans. They were promised the end of the swamp and got what Dany summed up in three words: corruption, corruption, corruption.Republicans can’t even agree on why they lost. Vice President JD Vance blames the Iran war. The president told Fox News the war may have pushed up energy prices but was still the right call. When the president and vice president disagree on the reason for the defeat, the party isn’t conducting a post-mortem. It’s holding an auction.The more important question is what Trump does next.Presidents who lose at home tend to look abroad, where Congress can’t easily follow. Trump may be a lame duck domestically, but he is still commander in chief, and that title comes with a lot of runway.Days after the election, he gave an early hint of where he’s headed. He replaced Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff. Miller is the architect of the administration’s hard-line immigration agenda and its most vocal champion of raw American power, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. Advisers say his promotion is meant to win back populist voters who stayed home or defected. Those voters were turned off, in part, by a costly war and harsh immigration enforcement. The remedy, apparently, is to promote the man most associated with both. Cuba should take note.Iran is the most immediate flashpoint. Dany and I agree Tehran can’t be allowed a nuclear weapon. We disagree about what went wrong. For Dany, the war wasn’t the problem. The diplomacy was, and she’d like Vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner kept far away from it. My question is simpler: after a strong first few weeks, what exactly is the strategy now? A third aircraft carrier is heading to the region. A clear definition of success hasn’t yet set sail.We also looked at whether Trump goes hunting for a legacy elsewhere: Cuba, Greenland again, or a grand bargain with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. With APEC and the G20 coming up, we’ll know soon how much he wants to play on the world stage.Then there’s the new Congress. Democrats will have real tools to investigate, to squeeze spending and to rein in some of the administration’s foreign policy. Whether they use them to legislate or to settle scores is another matter. Dany offered one idea with rare bipartisan potential: a constitutional amendment barring presidents from issuing pardons once they’ve lost an election, closing the “on the way out the door” loophole that both Biden and Trump have found so convenient.Regular viewers know Dany and I don’t always agree. But we share a concern about the erosion of political norms, the growing pull of the extremes in both parties, and a Congress that has spent years forgetting it has a constitutional job.Here’s the irony. Voters returned Trump to office on a promise to keep America out of new wars, then punished his party amid one. Yet by tying his hands at home, they may have given him every incentive to look for his next big win abroad.Trump may be a lame duck in Washington. That doesn’t mean he’s lost the power to reshape the world. Thank you Susan Heinrich, Kat Vav, Barry Gardner, Melissa Ebel, and many others for tuning into my live video with Danielle Pletka! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cosmopolitics.news/subscribe

Three decades covering foreign policy has taught me one thing: the story is almost never as simple as your side wants it to be. That’s why I call balls and strikes without keeping score.That means you get reporting and analysis that makes partisans on both sides a little uncomfortable. Clear-eyed, fact-based, and beholden to no one.If that’s the kind of coverage you want to read- I hope you will support my work with a paid subscription or a one-time contributionWashington woke up after the midterms to a Democratic Congress and a president with new limits at home. The wars, the rivals and the bills abroad didn’t get the memo.So what does a Democratic Congress mean for America’s military commitments overseas and the country’s role in the world?In my latest Cosmopolitics conversation, I sat down with Patrick J. Murphy, former Acting Secretary and Under Secretary of the Army, Iraq War veteran and former congressman, who now helps shape the next generation of military innovation at West Point. We talked about what comes next for American power, and whether a divided Washington can find common ground on national security.Murphy has seen the problem from every angle: in combat, in Congress and at the top of the Army’s civilian leadership. His view is that Washington’s ambitions and its actions are increasingly out of sync.Administration after administration has declared the Indo-Pacific the center of America’s economic and strategic future. Administration after administration has then poured enormous resources into the Middle East. The pivot to Asia keeps getting rerouted. Now the war with Iran has rattled global energy markets, strained allies and raised a fair question: are America’s military commitments serving its long-term interests, or just its most recent ones?But this wasn’t only a conversation about what Washington gets wrong.We dug into how drones, artificial intelligence, directed energy and other emerging technologies are changing modern warfare, and opening real opportunities for American innovation, manufacturing and investment. Murphy sees promise in public-private partnerships to rebuild the defense industrial base, secure critical mineral supply chains and build cheaper ways to counter new threats. In an era of million-dollar missiles fired at thousand-dollar drones, cheaper counts.We also talked about the politicization of military leadership, the erosion of congressional oversight, and what the new Congress could do to restore public trust, assuming it remembers it has oversight powers.The question underneath all of it: can America define its global leadership by more than military might?Over the next several weeks, Patrick will join me for a series of Cosmopolitics conversations on how national security and geopolitics are reshaping the global economy, and where that creates opportunities for American businesses, investors and innovators. We’ll look at where defense, technology, capital and competitiveness meet, and how the U.S. can put its considerable strengths to work in a fast-changing world.American power isn’t only about the wars we can fight. It’s also about the technologies we develop, the industries we build and the partnerships we forge. That’s where the next competition will be won.Watch our conversation below, and join us next Friday, November 13, for the next one.Thank you Cash Flow Collective, Joseph Tucker, Dan Smith, Beth walter, and many others for tuning into my live video with Patrick J. Murphy! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cosmopolitics.news/subscribe

Three decades covering foreign policy has taught me one thing: the story is almost never as simple as your side wants it to be. That’s why I call balls and strikes without keeping score.That means you get reporting and analysis that makes partisans on both sides a little uncomfortable. Clear-eyed, fact-based, and beholden to no one.If that’s the kind of coverage you want to read- I hope you will support my work with a paid subscription or a one-time contributionThree years after October 7, Israel is still wrestling with what comes next. A deadlocked election has left its political future in limbo, while the trauma of the Hamas attack, the war in Gaza and deepening divisions over the country’s leadership continue to define the national debate.For Liz Hirsh Naftali, those questions are deeply personal. Her great-niece, Abigail Mor Edan, was three years old when Hamas terrorists murdered her parents in Kfar Aza and took her hostage. Abigail was released after 51 days, spending her fourth birthday in captivity. Liz kept fighting for the hostages still in Gaza, becoming one of the most prominent American voices for their return.Abigail is now about to turn seven. She’s in school, has plenty of friends and, as the youngest of six in the family of the aunt and uncle who adopted her and her siblings, bosses everyone around. But Liz warns against mistaking resilience for recovery. The children know exactly what happened to them.That distinction between surviving and healing runs through how she sees Israel itself.The country, she argues, cannot truly move forward without an independent investigation into the failures of October 7. Israel has proven its military might, but its citizens still don’t know why no one was there to protect them that day. Liz doesn’t either. Even with the last hostage home since January, the government has shown little appetite for finding out.She also wants leaders with a vision for a future not defined by perpetual war, and a serious effort to rebuild bipartisan support in Washington. Having worked closely with the Biden administration, members of both parties in Congress and later the Trump administration, Liz believes Israel’s leadership made a costly mistake by letting its relationship with the United States become a partisan one. We also discussed the growing divide between American Jews and Israelis, the increasingly contentious debate over Israel within the Democratic Party, and where legitimate criticism of Israeli policy ends and antisemitism begins.Her mission now is not simply to remember October 7, but to help build a future in which Abigail, her siblings and children across the region can grow up safe. When Liz once asked Abigail what she ate in Gaza, she said pita and cheese, when there was food. Liz reminded her she doesn’t like cheese. “When you’re hungry,” Abigail told her, “you eat what you’re given.” Liz says that answer gets her out of bed every morning.Thank you Susan Heinrich, Stuart Cohen, Elizabeth Van Alstine, Gilda Johnson, RN4peace, and many others for tuning into my live video with LIZ HIRSH NAFTALI! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cosmopolitics.news/subscribe

Thank you Susan Heinrich, Candace Head-Dylla, Linda Jean, Lulu Lew, and many others for tuning into my live video with Danielle Pletka! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cosmopolitics.news/subscribe

There is a tendency to talk about women in power as questions of representation: How many women un governments or serve in parliaments or Congress? When will the United States finally elect a woman president?Linda Robinson thinks we are missing the bigger story. In her new book, Women in Power: Fighting for Democracy in an Age of Authoritarianism, Robinson, a senior fellow and director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that two troubling trends are converging. Democracy has been losing ground around the world, while decades of progress bringing women into political leadership have stalled – and that, she argues, is not a coincidence.In our Cosmopolitics conversation, Robinson identified three forces hitting women particularly hard: the rise of a more paternalistic strain of authoritarianism that seeks to push women back toward traditional roles; the normalization of violent misogyny; and a digital ecosystem — increasingly turbocharged by artificial intelligence — that makes it easier to target women with sexualized attacks, threats and disinformation.But Women in Power isn’t just a book about what is happening to women. It’s about what women are doing in response.Robinson takes us to some of the world’s most vulnerable democracies, where women have found themselves facing some of the world’s most powerful authoritarian leaders. Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen stood up to pressure from Xi Jinping. Estonia’s Kaja Kallas and Moldova’s Maia Sandu confronted Vladimir Putin and Russian efforts to weaken their countries from within.Sandu told Robinson something that stayed with me: Moldovans didn’t elect her because she was a woman. They elected her because they thought she was honest. In a country plagued by corruption and outside interference, she represented something different. And, Robinson argues, that pattern repeats itself: women emerging from movements demanding reform and then broadening the coalitions supporting them.Then there is Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who demonstrates another kind of power. The leader of a tiny Caribbean nation, Mottley has managed to force some of the world’s biggest financial institutions to rethink how vulnerable countries deal with debt and climate disasters. Her influence doesn’t come from military or economic might, but from ideas, persistence and an ability to build coalitions.The backlash can be brutal. Former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin was subjected to gendered attacks while leading her country into NATO. Death threats against New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern tripled during her final two years in office. Women politicians increasingly face sexualized deepfakes and other forms of digital abuse largely unique in their intensity and character.The United States has had women serve as vice president, secretary of state, congressional leaders, governors and generals, yet has never elected a woman president. Now Robinson sees a broader struggle over women’s place in public life, including inside the U.S. military. She was particularly blunt about the removal of senior women under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, arguing the effects on the leadership pipeline could last for years.Meanwhile, after 80 years and nine men, the United Nations is choosing another secretary-general, with several highly qualified women in contention.Robinson is careful not to argue that women are inherently better leaders, or even necessarily democratic ones. Women can be authoritarians too. Her argument is more interesting than that.At a moment when authoritarian movements are challenging democratic institutions, some of the most compelling examples of resistance are coming from women who have learned how to build coalitions, strengthen their societies and exercise power even when the odds are stacked against them. Three decades covering foreign policy has taught me one thing: the story is almost never as simple as your side wants it to be. That’s why I call balls and strikes without keeping score.That means you get reporting and analysis that makes partisans on both sides a little uncomfortable. Clear-eyed, fact-based, and beholden to no one.If that’s the kind of coverage you want to read- I hope you will support my work with a paid subscription. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cosmopolitics.news/subscribe

I’m writing this from the tail end of a few days in Myrtle Beach, where I came to celebrate a friend’s 60th birthday and ended up doing something I almost never do: actually unplugging. No filing and very little doom-scrolling. Just sand, old friends, wine and cake.Today is my birthday. And for whatever reason, this one has me thinking a little more than usual about how I got here.Earlier this week, I did an interview with my friend Kate Brower for her excellent podcast How She Led To Me. Thankfully, Kate didn’t want to talk about Iran or Trump or whatever crisis was breaking that morning. She wanted to talk about the women who shaped me. Most of you who know me know I’m much more comfortable asking the questions than answering them. I’ve never really talked about myself publicly. And honestly, preparing for this wrecked me a little, but in a good way. Attached is the recording. If you ever wanted to know more about me, here is your chance!I didn’t grow up around people who were particularly interested in foreign affairs. My obsession with the world came later, thanks largely to a high school teacher who talked about places like Kazakhstan as if they mattered, back when most kids my age probably couldn’t have found it on a map.But the people who built me weren’t diplomats or journalists or any of the presidents and secretaries of state I would later spend my career chasing around the world.My grandmother Libby took me in when I was in my twenties. I was broke, making about $12,000 a year at a little local newspaper and wondering whether I had any business trying to become a journalist.She fed me. She poured me wine. After dinner, I’d take the bottle into her bedroom and we’d watch TV while I complained about whatever terrible job or boss I had at the time. My grandmother always had a show tune, a pep talk and a home-cooked meal ready to make me — and everyone around her — feel special. She passed away in 2003, but left me with the lesson that you can be tough and still be funny and kind, and that it costs you nothing to look out for someone else.My mother taught me something else. She has lived with MS for decades, and I’ve watched it steadily take things away from her. She just refuses to let it take everything. For her 60th birthday, I saved every point and airline mile I had and took her on a blowout trip to Paris. Then I saved up for another ten years and asked where she wanted to go for her 70th.She wanted Vegas. She wanted the Bellagio. She wanted the shows. And she wanted to go to Chippendales. So we did.At the end, she couldn’t get out of her wheelchair to go onstage for the photo, so the Chippendales came down to her. This is a fabulous picture of my mother surrounded by half-naked men that probably says more about resilience than anything I could write here.Kate and I also talked about my friends who sustain me. You know Danielle Pletka from Hot Takes Happy Hour. I know her as my rock, who knows where all my bodies are buried — and even helped me bury some of them. And there are the Diplobabes — the women who covered the State Department with me all those years ago. We traveled the world together and somewhere along the way became family. We’ve since been through layoffs, marriages, new jobs, grief, kids and now grandkids. We still get together and do a ridiculous white elephant Christmas every year.Talking to Kate made me realize something I probably should have figured out years ago. When I think about the people who got me here, I don’t really think about my career. The people I think about now are the ones who picked me up, made me laugh and told me to keep going.Maybe that’s why this birthday feels a little different. I’m building something again. Cosmopolitics is still a work in progress. Some things have worked better than I imagined. Others haven’t. I’m learning what you want more of, what I want to spend my time doing, and how to make the whole thing sustainable without turning it into something I never want it to be.Which brings me to a quick update on my slightly crazy birthday experiment.The $25 annual membership has been such a hit, I am extending it until tomorrow. If you sign up this weekend, that’s your rate for good.That’s just over $2 a month. I honestly can’t think of much you can still buy for $2. And judging by how much you read, watch, share and argue with me, I’m pretty sure you’re getting your two bucks’ worth.I still hate asking for money. But I do love the idea behind this experiment: maybe good journalism doesn’t need another expensive paywall. Maybe less is more. Maybe it just takes enough people who value the work to kick in a few dollars.I’m heading home tan, rested and, for once, actually glad I stepped away for a few days. I’ll be back on Monday. Hot Takes Happy Hour will be back too, with Danielle ready to debate me, cocktail in hand, about something before the week is out.Thank you for being part of this — for reading, watching, arguing, pushing back and sticking around.And here’s to another trip around the sun. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cosmopolitics.news/subscribe

Three decades covering foreign policy has taught me one thing: the story is almost never as simple as your side wants it to be. That’s why I call balls and strikes without keeping score.That means you get reporting and analysis that makes partisans on both sides a little uncomfortable. Clear-eyed, fact-based, and beholden to no one.If that’s the kind of coverage you want to read- I hope you will support my work by subscribing.NATO summits are supposed to be historic. This one was, in the words of Ivo Daalder, “a nothing burger.”That’s exactly why it mattered. After years of Trump-era drama, Ankara was carefully designed to produce...almost nothing. No blowups. No walkouts. No alliance-ending crisis. Success.But underneath the carefully managed boredom, something much bigger is happening. Daalder, who served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO under President Obama, argues the real story isn’t whether Europe is finally spending more. It’s that Europe is gradually taking on more responsibility—and, inevitably, more influence. For decades, Washington wanted burden-sharing without power-sharing. That bargain is getting harder to sustain.We also talked about why Trump deserves some credit—but perhaps not for the reasons his supporters think; why Ukraine has gone from NATO’s student to one of its most important teachers; whether Turkey is becoming indispensable again; and why a more European NATO should not be confused with an American exit.The summit itself may have been boring. The future of the alliance isn’t. Danielle Pletka and I hope to see you TODAY for Hot Takes Happy Hour at our new summer time 5p ET. Thank you Roger Wilsher, PegsRiledUp, The Globalist Project, Victoria, MarcoNOTRubio, and many others for tuning into my live video with Ivo Daalder! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cosmopolitics.news/subscribe

More than five billion people are expected to watch some part of the 2026 World Cup. In much of the world, soccer is more than a sport. It is identity, nationalism, and, for some, something approaching religion.Which is why veteran foreign correspondent Conor Powell spent years investigating the people who control it. He joined me Tuesday to discuss before the start of the tournament. What began as a podcast about FIFA became something much bigger. His series Lords of Soccer traces how a relatively obscure governing body became one of the most powerful institutions on earth - one that negotiates with presidents and kings, influences national policy, and shapes how entire countries see themselves. After reporting the story, Conor arrived at a simple conclusion: FIFA is not really a sports organization, but a political institution that happens to run a sport.The popular mythology presents soccer as a game that transcends politics. As Conor argues, politics has been in FIFA’s DNA from the start. Founded in Paris in 1904 - by, as he puts it, “the same old European men who ran everything else” - FIFA made a habit of working with whoever held power. He calls the organization “probably the biggest political backer of South African apartheid outside of the British government,” and the pattern held for decades: military juntas in Latin America, monarchies in the Gulf, democracies seeking prestige.The clients changed. The business model didn’t.Then television turned the World Cup into one of the most valuable properties in global entertainment, and the money poured in. So did the corruption - bribery, vote-buying, kickbacks, patronage networks stretching across continents. When the U.S. Justice Department unveiled its sweeping case in 2015, many casual fans were stunned. Conor Powell was not. A central theme of Lords of Soccer is that the corruption was never the work of a few bad actors. It was how FIFA accumulated and maintained power. Development funds and tournament slots doubled as political tools, dispensed by an organization that is, on paper, a Swiss nonprofit. Yet FIFA survived. If anything, it emerged stronger.Enter Gianni Infantino, who inherited an organization facing an existential credibility crisis. To his credit, real reforms followed: more transparency, sturdier governance, and a harder environment for the old envelope-passing culture. Conor doesn’t dismiss those changes. He just declines to confuse reform with the disappearance of power.Infantino may be cleaner than previous FIFA presidents - a low bar, but a real one. He is also the most politically connected, having cultivated relationships with world leaders across continents, including Donald Trump, to whom FIFA presented its own freshly created peace prize last December.That relationship matters now. The upcoming World Cup, spanning the United States, Canada, and Mexico, will be the largest ever held. It promises record revenues, record audiences, and record attention - which to FIFA are three ways of saying the same thing.It also faces a uniquely geopolitical environment. Iran has qualified - and reports suggest its team may stay in Mexico and fly in for matches rather than risk complications entering or remaining in the United States. FIFA’s promise of universal participation may collide with national security considerations beyond its control.Nor is Iran the only problem. In a tournament built around global inclusion, access itself is becoming political. A World Cup referee from Somalia was denied entry into the United States days before the tournament because of what U.S. officials called “vetting concerns.”Then there is the cost. Ticket prices are pushing ordinary supporters further from the world’s biggest sporting event, and fans will not be allowed to bring their own water into stadiums in the summer heat. The host countries build the stadiums and run the trains; FIFA collects the broadcast money. It still markets soccer as the people’s game. But the people, increasingly, are priced out of it.That is an irony FIFA can live with, because it has no competition and knows it. “The problem with FIFA,” Conor told me, “is that there is just no amount of money they won’t chase.” Complaining about FIFA is itself something of a global pastime, and it has never once dented the ratings.The larger question hanging over 2026 is whether the World Cup can still bring people together. It is a cliché of international sport, but it feels unusually relevant today.And yet every four years, billions of people gather around the same event. For a few weeks, citizens of rival nations share a common experience. The same goals, wins and upsets become collective memories.After years spent cataloguing FIFA’s flaws, Conor remains fascinated by that paradox. The organization may be political, commercial, and imperfect, but the world’s game endures anyway. That may be FIFA’s greatest achievement - and its greatest source of power.You can listen to Lords of Soccer wherever you follow your podcasts. It is an excellent series worthy of your time. Thank you Cash Flow Collective, David Galinsky, Jane M Myers, Melissa Ebel, Edward Gregory Jones, and many others for tuning into my live video with conor! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cosmopolitics.news/subscribe

If you’re trying to follow the current state of the Iran war without losing your mind, retired military officers, former officials or Washington journalists are probably not the people to call. You call Arash Azizi. Because while Washington is busy arguing over whether a naval skirmish in the Strait of Hormuz counts as a ceasefire violation, a “love tap,” or the opening act of World War III, Arash is focused on something more useful: what Iran actually wants.And right now, that may be the most important question in the region.When we spoke this week — a follow-up to our conversation last month about Iran as a regime in transition — Arash argued that despite the missile exchanges, maritime confrontations, Trump Truth Social posts written in what increasingly feels like ALL CAPS diplomacy, and the general fog-machine atmosphere surrounding this conflict, both Tehran and Washington are moving toward the same conclusion: Neither side actually wants to go back to full war.That does not mean peace is imminent. It means reality is beginning to intrude. The latest sign came this week as reports emerged that the United States and Iran are inching toward a short memorandum of understanding that would effectively freeze the conflict and open a 30-day negotiating window on the harder issues: Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions relief, frozen assets, and future security arrangements in the Strait of Hormuz.In other words: after months of maximalist rhetoric, threats of capitulation, and military escalation, everyone may be slowly rediscovering diplomacy. Which, awkwardly, is where this probably was always headed.That tension — closest to renewed fighting and closest to a deal at the same time — has become the defining feature of this moment. The military phase of the conflict has not produced decisive victory for either side. Iran absorbed enormous damage but did not collapse. The United States demonstrated overwhelming military superiority but failed to force capitulation. And “Project Freedom” — the Trump administration’s latest attempt to reopen the Strait of Hormuz through naval escort operations — now appears suspended after only a few days of operation amid continued confrontations in the Gulf.Trump, meanwhile, continues to oscillate between threatening Iran with devastating force and hinting at imminent breakthrough agreements. One day the ceasefire is under strain. The next day the latest exchange of fire is merely “a love tap.” It is all very confusing. Which, to be fair, may not entirely be an accident.But underneath the chaos, Arash sees a more coherent logic emerging. “Success for Iran,” he said, “looks like preservation of the regime, but also recognition of Iran’s role in the region.”That word — recognition — came up repeatedly in our conversation. Not domination. Not conquest. Not some endless revolutionary project stretching from Tehran to the Mediterranean. Recognition.Iran wants sanctions relief. It wants economic normalization. It wants acceptance as a legitimate regional power with acknowledged interests and influence. And, crucially, Arash believes significant parts of the Iranian leadership — including elements of the Revolutionary Guards — may be willing to make meaningful concessions on the nuclear issue to get there.That is not how this conflict is typically framed in Washington. American debate tends to oscillate between two poles: either Iran is on the verge of collapse, or it is an irredeemably expansionist power that only understands force. What gets lost is the possibility that parts of the Iranian system may actually want integration more than permanent confrontation.“I think they want integration,” Arash said. “They want to be recognized as a major power in the region.”He is careful to note that this in no way makes the regime benign. Iran has backed militant proxies, fueled regional conflicts, and helped sustain Bashar al-Assad’s brutal war in Syria. He describes the Islamic Republic as containing contradictory impulses — part ideological revolutionary project, part traditional nation-state seeking stability and influence — and argues the second is now ascendant.One theory — increasingly visible in some parts of the Gulf — is that integrating Iran into a more stable regional framework could actually moderate its behavior over time. Another theory is that normalization would simply empower Tehran to pursue the same destabilizing policies with more money and legitimacy. As implausible as it sounds, Arash leans toward the former as the best way of restraining Iran.That argument will make many people deeply uncomfortable, particularly in Israel and among hardline Iran hawks in Washington. But it also reflects a reality becoming harder to ignore after months of war: Iran is not Libya. It is not Iraq. Despite immense economic pressure, assassinations, sanctions, cyber operations, and sustained bombing, Iran has not folded. Which raises an uncomfortable possibility for the Trump administration: maybe Iran cannot simply be bludgeoned into submission.That does not mean Tehran is winning. Far from it. Iran’s economy remains under severe strain. Inflation is soaring. The currency continues to weaken. Regional proxies like Hezbollah have been degraded. The regime itself remains deeply unpopular with much of its own population.But Arash argues that many in Washington fundamentally misunderstand how the Islamic Republic absorbs pressure. The question is not whether Iran is suffering — it clearly is. The question is what suffering produces politically.For years, American policy has operated on the assumption that enough pressure would eventually force either regime collapse or unconditional surrender. Two months of war appear to have complicated both theories.“What led to this particular war,” Azizi said, “was this temptation Trump had that he could dramatically change everything through military action. And that’s proven not to be the case.”Which helps explain why diplomacy — however chaotic, contradictory, and half-denied by all involved — is creeping back into the picture. The emerging framework reportedly under discussion would pause enrichment for more than a decade, require Iran to move highly enriched uranium out of the country, and create a broader negotiating process tied to sanctions relief and maritime security.It is not a peace treaty. It is barely even a roadmap. It is, essentially, an acknowledgment that nobody has found a military solution to the underlying problem. And perhaps that is the real story here.Not the skirmishes. Not the Trump posts. Not even the endless speculation over whether the ceasefire technically still exists. The real story may be that after all the fire and fury, everyone is slowly arriving back at the same uncomfortable conclusion: this ends with negotiation.The question is whether the politics — in Tehran, Washington, and across the region — will allow anyone to admit it out loud.As promised, Arash’s latest: Iran War -- deal or conflict Iran’s Leaders Mostly Want a DealIs a Militia Running Wartime Iran?and don’t forget to subscribe to Arash’s SubstackThere’s no shortage of shows built around people confirming what their audience already believes. That’s good for engagement. It’s not always good for understanding the world.What I try to do here is something different: conversations with people like Arash Azizi, whose understanding of Iran comes not from cable news panels or think tank groupthink, but from deep historical knowledge, real sourcing inside the country, and a willingness to challenge easy narratives.You may not always agree with what you hear. But ideally, you’ll come away thinking about these issues a little differently. That’s the point.If you value that type of coverage, I hope you will consider becoming a paid subscriber.Thank you Herman Jacobs, Linda Perry, Mara, Patty VanDyke, and many others for tuning into my live video with Arash Azizi! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cosmopolitics.news/subscribe

Iran, Lebanon, the King’s speech, the WHCD shooting and more…. Danielle Pletka and I are back in full force! Join us TODAY at 5:30 ET for some cocktails and what promises to be a lively discussion. We had an audio glitch at the very end of the last question, but by then the essential point was clear: Lebanon is not just another front in the Iran war. It is where that war’s contradictions are most exposed — and where any real resolution will be tested.In a wide-ranging conversation with former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman, one theme kept resurfacing: across the region, there is motion without clarity. Ceasefires, negotiations, military pressure — all of it suggests activity, but not direction. Nowhere is that more true than in Lebanon. The war with Iran has settled into a strategic stalemate. Both Washington and Tehran face the same constraint: compromise looks like weakness. So nobody is compromising. Meanwhile, Iran has discovered leverage it didn’t know it had. The Strait of Hormuz — long a theoretical choke point — is now central to the conflict. As Feltman put it, the nuclear file concerned a handful of countries. Hormuz concerns the world. Tehran has noticed.It is against that backdrop that Lebanon matters — and why President Trump’s push for a ceasefire there is about more than Lebanon. Feltman’s read: the president didn’t want an additional reason for Iran not to negotiate. Whether that’s grand strategy or triage is an open question.What’s not in question is that this moment has produced something genuinely unusual: direct talks between Israel and Lebanon, conducted openly and over Hezbollah’s explicit objections. One Hezbollah spokesman reminded President Aoun of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s fate after talking to the Israelis. Aoun proceeded anyway. For decades, that would have been unthinkable. That alone marks a shift.And while the Lebanese state is negotiating, it does not control the forces driving the conflict. Hezbollah is not simply a militia and a terrorist group. It is a political party, a social services network, and a military force whose capabilities rival the Lebanese Armed Forces. It answers to Tehran. And since its leader Hassan Nasrallah’s death, even more so — his successor Naim Qassem is, in Feltman’s words, essentially a fully owned subsidiary of Iran, without Nasrallah’s ability to balance Lebanese politics against Iranian demands.But Israel’s continued occupation of southern Lebanon risks handing Hezbollah back the resistance narrative that made it powerful in the first place. This is the same ground Israel occupied from 1982 to 2000 — and Hezbollah was born in the rubble of that occupation. It knows how to tell that story. It’s been telling it for forty years.There is one shift working against Hezbollah from within. The war has displaced more than a million people from the Shia south — the very constituency Hezbollah claims to protect. The group no longer has the deep pockets it had after the war in 2006 to rebuild and buy back loyalty. That erosion of support is real. Whether the Lebanese government can translate it into political movement before the moment passes is another question entirely.The Aoun government is attempting something genuinely difficult: asserting sovereignty without triggering collapse. Push too hard against Hezbollah and you risk fracturing Lebanon’s sectarian balance. Move too slowly and you hand Israel and Washington the argument that Lebanon cannot act — which, Feltman notes, they are already making.The Lebanese Armed Forces are part of the problem. It is not just capability — though a soldier earning $200 a month is not rushing into a fight with Hezbollah’s drone units. It is cohesion. Any direct confrontation risks the army splitting along sectarian lines.The opportunity, if there is one, exists not because these problems have been solved but because the political space for incremental movement may briefly exist. The Aoun government’s best path, Feltman argues, is not sweeping declarations but tangible steps that are hard to dismiss — replacing Hezbollah’s social services with state services, implementing the goverment’s security plan and eroding the political narrative that sustains the group’s legitimacy.None of it will happen quickly. None of it without significant support. And the risk, as always in Lebanon, is that pressure outruns capacity — that Israel and Washington lose patience before Beirut has had time to show what it can do.If this effort fails, the outcome is unlikely to be a return to the status quo, but could be a broader, more destructive conflict. If it succeeds — even partially — it could begin to shift the balance toward a Lebanese state that actually governs its own territory.For now, Lebanon remains suspended between those two outcomes. Balanced, precariously, on a line that has broken before.There’s no shortage of podcasts where two people who already agree sit down and spend an hour being outraged together. It’s good for the algorithm. It doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know.That’s not what we’re doing here.I’m convinced the people worth talking to are the ones who make you reconsider something — not the ones who confirm what you already think. That means serious conversations with diplomats, intelligence officials, and policy architects who’ve actually been in the room. People like Jeff Feltman, who was there for the 2006 war in Lebanon, survived an assassination attempt by Hezbollah, met with the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and has spent twenty years watching the same dynamics repeat themselves.You might not always agree with what you hear. You’ll probably learn something anyway.That’s the point. If it sounds like your kind of show, I hope you’ll subscribe. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cosmopolitics.news/subscribe