US-Iran under Trump 2.0: prospects and challenges
Wednesday 15 Oct 2025
6.30pm-8pm
In-person and online public event (LSE campus, venue tbc to ticketholders)
This event will examine how a second Trump administration might reshape US-Iran relations and regional security—whether through renewed maximum pressure, diplomatic engagement, or military action to contain Iran’s nuclear and military ambitions.
The Middle East that Donald Trump left in 2021 is vastly different from the one he re-enters in 2025. Since 7 October, the region’s strategic landscape has shifted dramatically, leaving Iran at its weakest and most isolated position since 1979. Economic turmoil, internal dissent, and regional setbacks—amid mounting US and Israeli pressure—have further exposed Tehran’s vulnerabilities.
Meet our speakers and chair
is Editor of Survival: Global Politics and Strategy and Senior Fellow at the IISS, based in London. He is also Adjunct Professor of European Studies at the SAIS Bologna Center in Italy. He comments and writes widely on the strategic challenges and historical, political and social roots of US foreign policy.
Anahita Motazed Rad is a visiting senior sellow in the Department of International Relations. She has translated and published two books from English to Persian, the first one Who won the oil wars? by Andy Stern in 2010, and the second one Meditation on Diplomacy, Comparative Cases in Diplomatic Practice and Foreign Policy by Stephen Chan in 2020.
is the Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. Her expertise spans Iranian and Gulf politics, regional security dynamics, and US foreign policy, with a particular focus on the evolving strategic landscape of the Middle East and its global connectivity.
Chair:
Peter Trubowitz is Professor of International Relations, and Director of the Phelan US Centre at LSE and Associate Fellow at Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs.
This public event is free and open to all. This event will be a hybrid event, with an in-person audience and an online audience.
For the in person event: You can request one ticket via the online ticket request form, which will open after 12 noon on Monday 22 September. The ticket line will stay open until all tickets have been allocated.
For the online event: Registration for this event will open in early September.
For any queries email events@lse.ac.uk.
Find out more about this event