At the Water's Edge

The ceasefire MOU with Iran has expired, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has launched what he's calling an "economic D-Day" — the same day Iran's new National Security Council chief, Mohsen Rezaei, threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz to any nation that cooperates with US sanctions. Professo...

Iran has moved from survival to ambition to hard power — and it's reshaping the balance of power in the Middle East while Washington stays on the sidelines. University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape returns for his weekly real-time breakdown of the U.S.-Iran conflict. This week: a tentative Iran-O...

This is the latest episode in The Escalation Trap, an ongoing series with Robert Pape of the University of Chicago tracking the war with Iran in real time — and the first episode where audience questions go directly to Pape on air. We open with what's actually known about the pause in strikes and th...

America Can't Build Weapons Fast Enough | The Pentagon's Former Acting Chairman Explains Why Admiral Chris Grady (Ret.) spent over 40 years in the Navy, commanded at every level from ship to fleet, and served as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — including a stretch as Acting Chairman duri...

This is the latest episode in The Escalation Trap, an ongoing series with Robert Pape of the University of Chicago tracking the war with Iran in real time. Pape recorded this episode without power of his own — tornadoes had just knocked out electricity across the south side of Chicago — and turns hi...

Cities and towns across America are signing non-disclosure agreements with corporations — and in some cases, officials aren't even allowed to tell the public an NDA exists. Investigative journalist Miranda Spivack joins the show to explain how local government secrecy became a national security issu...

The war with Iran has entered what Robert Pape, Professor at the University of Chicago, calls the "spiral phase" — a dynamic that's both vertical, with harsher strikes on both sides, and horizontal, with the Red Sea now pulled into the conflict via a Houthi blockade. This week brings the death of th...

The war with Iran is back on, and according to Robert Pape, Professor at the University of Chicago, we are now knocking on the door of the most dangerous stage of the conflict yet. This week, Pape walks through why Iran's Supreme Leader has issued a call for revenge attacks on Americans anywhere in ...

Joe Kent spent 21 years in Army Special Forces and the CIA before becoming President Trump's Director of the National Counterterrorism Center — then walked away from it, resigning in protest over the war with Iran. This week I sit down with him to talk about what he saw from inside the administratio...

Just days after President Trump's Fourth of July weekend, Iran held a massive funeral for its slain leadership — and millions turned out. In this week's installment of our ongoing series on the war with Iran, Robert Pape, Professor at the University of Chicago and one of the leading scholars on coer...