Israel and Iran at war

On June 24, 2025, the Foreign Policy program gathered a virtual panel of Brookings Middle East experts to discuss the rapidly unfolding war between Iran and Israel, joined by the United States, and the possible paths forward in this conflict. The discussion came at an especially urgent moment, just days after the U.S. military bombed Iranian nuclear sites, followed by Iran’s launching of ballistic missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest American military base in the Middle East, and the subsequent announcement of an Israel-Iran ceasefire by President Donald Trump.

The conversation featured: Jeffrey Feltman, John C. Whitehead visiting fellow in international diplomacy at Brookings and former under-secretary-general for political affairs at the United Nations; Philip Gordon, Sydney Stein Jr. scholar at Brookings and former national security adviser to the vice president; Suzanne Maloney, vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings; and Itamar Rabinovich, former Israeli ambassador to the United States and distinguished nonresident fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. Nahal Toosi, senior foreign affairs correspondent at Politico, moderated.

Maloney offered a note of caution in predicting the course of this fast-developing conflict. The Iranians have suffered damage to key installations, and “look far weaker today than at any point in the post-revolutionary era,” she noted. But the key question remains assessing the extent of the damage Iran suffered, “and the extent to which the Iranians can reconstitute some elements of their [nuclear] program and what the United States and the Israelis might do if they see there are still some elements of the program intact.” In light of Israelis’ and others’ calls for Iranians to rise up against the Islamic Republic, she said that observers should not expect Iranians to challenge their own authorities at a moment when the country is under attack by a foreign adversary.

When asked about the “best-case scenario” that the Trump administration might be envisioning—Iran’s nuclear program destroyed, its military degraded, and its leaders convinced that confrontation with the United States and Israel cannot be productive—Gordon said that events “could evolve in that direction, but aiming for that best-case scenario is a hugely risky one because one thing we’ve all learned in the Middle East is that best-case scenarios don’t work out.”

“It’s just as likely or more likely,” he said, “that [the Iranians] will conclude that they need a nuclear weapon.”

Feltman recounted his experience as one of very few Americans to have personally met Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei while serving as the U.N. under-secretary for political affairs. He said he would imagine that, as Khamenei was sheltering from airstrikes, his mind was on questions of deterrence and succession. “The deterrence that Iran had built up with the nuclear program, the deterrence they built up with their proxy network, and the deterrence they built up with their own air defenses is destroyed,” he said.

Rabinovich emphasized that the Israeli campaign aimed to set back both Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. He observed that if negotiations resume over a nuclear deal, then the “art of diplomacy … would be to find a formula that would do the job [of constraining Iran’s nuclear program] without humiliating Iran to the point where it won’t be able or willing to do it.”

Asked to conclude with the question of what he was most focused on, Gordon answered: “Does this lead Iran to realize that its nuclear ambitions are counterproductive and stop, or does it do the opposite and make them more determined to get a nuclear weapon? That’s the question at the heart of this whole operation.”