Last weekend, the United States and Israel started a war with Iran. The Trump administration has offered no real or convincing reason why they have dragged the country into war except “Israel was going to do it anyway,” and the president has no discernible war plan. Many have commented that this war seems to be an expression of pure power, undertaken by Trump largely because he can. Have we entered a new phase in malignant American foreign policy or is this just a striking “mask off” moment? In this episode of On the Nose, Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart speaks with Aslı Ü. Bâli, the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law at Yale and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, about what the war in Iran signals about the kind of global power the US has become, whether it represents rupture or continuity in the history of US imperialism, and what it means for the stability of the Middle East and the world.

This episode first appeared on the Beinart Notebook on Substack. Thanks to Daniel Kaufman for editing help and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Further Reading

“The Path to the Trump Doctrine,” Aslı Ü. Bâli and Aziz Rana, Boston Review

Transcript forthcoming.