As part of the Brookings Scholar Lecture Series, Brookings Mountain West invites the faculty and staff to join us for a lecture titled, "Iran Strikes and Shifting Sands: America and a Remade Middle East” by Jeffrey Feltman on Wednesday, October 21st from 4-5 p.m. in the Greenspun Hall Auditorium. This lecture is free and open to the public.

In this lecture, Brookings Fellow in Foreign Policy Jeffrey Feltman will discuss the post-Iran war landscape, new regional alignments, and its effect on U.S. interests and relations. We are living through what could be the most transformative period in the Middle East since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. New, informal alliances are scrambling traditional politics, while longstanding diplomatic taboos (such as prohibiting direct Israeli-Lebanese negotiations) are tossed aside. Syria, its transitional leadership embraced by the Trump Administration, no longer serves as Iran’s land bridge to Hezbollah but risks becoming a flashpoint in escalating Israeli-Turkish tensions. Middle Eastern countries are increasingly looking beyond the immediate region for influence and power, with Sudan a tragic example of Arab countries arming and financing opposing sides. Israel’s elections short-circuit any creativity or forward progress on questions regarding the Palestinians, with deplorable conditions in Gaza continuing. The U.S. relations with the region have also profoundly changed, with the United States having joined Israel twice in less than a year in unprecedented direct attacks on Iran. America’s regional partners debate whether U.S. military bases in the region provoked the Iranian threats they were meant to deter. What are the primary political and security trends in the Middle East today, and what do they mean for U.S. interests and relations?