Peter Beinart interviews Iran expert Trita Parsi on the Iran war and what comes next

Apr 12, 2026

Our guest this week is Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of three remarkable books on the relationship between the United States, Israel and Iran. For as long as I’ve followed Trita’s work, he’s been warning that if hawks in Washington got their way, we would end up with the kind of catastrophe we’re witnessing in the Middle East. I invited him to give us a sense of what the Middle East and the world will look like going forward.

Topics include…

• the likelihood of peace talks failing
• the importance of Lebanon
• how this war has affected Iran’s internal trajectory *Iran’s nuclear capabilities
• the war’s effect on the US and Israeli militaries
• how Trump came to the decision to fight this war
• facing charges of self-hatred from the diaspora