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

War with Iran: What the World Debated in New Delhi

March 12, 2026·36 min·3 clips

Days after U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran, a major global diplomatic conference in New Delhi grapples with the shock.

More than 3,000 people gathered in New Delhi for the Raisina Dialogue, one of the world's largest diplomatic conferences. It came in with a wide agenda: geopolitics, geoeconomics, multilateral reform, development, artificial intelligence, and technological change. Then the Iran strikes changed the mood. The host describes closed-door conversations and main-stage sessions getting pulled toward the war in the Middle East. The original agenda was still there, but urgency had entered the room. The episode works through that tension between long-range institutional ambition and a regional conflict that suddenly felt much closer. Leslie Vengimori brings in Karim Hagag and Harsh Pant, both tied to the New Delhi convening through their institutional roles. India becomes the center of the question. How does a country presenting itself as a convener handle trade pressure, geopolitical centrality, and the language of values-based realism? A U.S. trade message makes the question sharper. The deputy secretary of state is described as warning that Washington would not repeat with India what it believed it had accepted with China. Karim's answer is blunt. He describes disruption, weakening international frameworks, rebalanced power relationships, and trade and supply chains treated more and more as security issues. The recent conflict adds pressure, especially through a major oil and energy shock with consequences for the global economy. The optimism is still there, but the episode does not let it float free of the harder reality around it.

As heard by us

A steady conversation about India, Iran, and the strain on the global order.

This episode uses the Raisina Dialogue to take stock of a world where diplomacy, trade, multilateralism, and war are all pressing at once. Leslie Vengimori's conversation with Karim Hagag of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Harsh Pant of the Observer…

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If you want New Delhi’s Iran debate explained without the noise.

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