Deep Dish on Global Affairs · The Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Are We Headed for a Bigger War with Iran?

March 4, 2026·24 min

The episode opens in the middle of a news storm. Benjamori lays out a conflict moving through strikes, warnings, and regional fallout that already reaches beyond the United States, Israel, and Iran. Her question stays tight: is this still contained escalation, or the edge of a bigger war? Daniel Shapiro joins from Tel Aviv and pushes back on the clean version of regime collapse. He does not treat air power as a magic lever. The regime has durability, institutions, redundancy, and hundreds of thousands under arms whose own survival may depend on the system holding. That makes prediction hard. Many people may want Iranians freed from repression, but Shapiro keeps returning to the awkward part: wanting change is not the same as having a plan. The opposition has no clear center. Its strongest leaders, in his telling, are dead, jailed, or in exile. Collapse might come in stages. Defections inside the security apparatus could matter, but they could also set off rivalries among ethnic, geographic, and social groups. There is no obvious focal point waiting. Without alternative leadership that can hold, the aftermath could look less like a transition and more like a vacuum. Shapiro broadens the warning from there. The United States, he says, has a terrible record with regime change, whether active, remote, on the ground, or from the air. Its capacity has also been weakened, with some government organs that understand post-conflict transitions degraded and talent dismissed. The episode ends with hope for change, but not with an easy story about how it happens.

As heard by us

A sober look at escalation, regime change, and the limits of air power.

This episode looks past the daily churn and asks what an endgame might actually mean. Daniel Shapiro, speaking from Tel Aviv, is strongest when he moves from strike-by-strike updates to the harder question of regime change, post-conflict chaos, and why air power is unlikely to…

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Why you'd press play

For when you need a calm read on whether this escalation is headed toward something bigger.

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