March 6, 2026 — In this week’s episode of Around the World, hosts Dhruva Jaishankar and Rachel Rizzo zero in on the escalating conflict in the Middle East, unpacking the U.S.-Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s retaliation against military bases and critical infrastructures in the Gulf. They explore Israel’s push for regime change, the impact on U.S. domestic politics, and how Europe and the Gulf Arab states are being drawn into the widening war.
Available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Transcript Available SOon
Image: Avash Media, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Sneak Peek
Rachel Rizzo: On this week's episode.
Dhruva Jaishankar: Looking this from Iran's point of view, they say, well, Israel's hardened its targets, US military bases have hardened their targets. If this is an existential conflict from their point of view, they're trying to go after all commercial activity in the Gulf. They've hit all six GCC countries, Gulf Cooperation Council countries. So they have gone after, very deliberately after this sort of economic infrastructure, energy infrastructure, hoping that this would compel the GCC countries to lean on the United States to bring a swift end to this conflict, perhaps short of regime change.
Rachel Rizzo: The real wild card here is how does US involvement develop over time? Hegseth has said that this campaign is just getting started, which really creates a question about what the casualties for the United States might look like. If Iran emerges from this battered but not broken, you get a sense that these actions were for naught. I wouldn't say it's a popular move, but just how unpopular it is, we'll have to see.