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The Iran war is spilling over into Yemen. And now, the country is on the verge of a full-blown civil war that could drag in Saudi Arabia, Iran — and potentially the United States.
Over the last several weeks, the Iran-backed Houthis and the Saudi-backed internationally recognized government have been clashing at a pace and with a fury not seen since a 2022 ceasefire brought a halt to a devastating eight-year civil war. The war in Iran has changed the dynamics of the region in ways that have left Yemen poised to become the next place where the conflict spreads.
My guest today, Alexandra Stark, is a political scientist at RAND who studies the region. She is the author of the book The Yemen Model and recently wrote a New York Times op-ed about the prospect of Yemen becoming a new front in a widening Middle East conflict.
We kick off by discussing recent events on the ground in Yemen, their connection to the U.S.-Iran war, and the mechanisms through which Yemen could once again become engulfed in a devastating civil war — one fueled by Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.

Zambia's election is raising fresh questions about the country's democratic trajectory — even as its vast copper reserves make it increasingly important to the global economy and to strategic competition between the United States and China. In this episode, Zaynab Hoosen of Pangea Risk explains the political tensions surrounding the election, Zambia's economic outlook, and why the global race for copper is putting the country in the geopolitical spotlight.

Oman has long played one of the Middle East's most unusual diplomatic roles: maintaining close ties with rivals and quietly creating space for enemies to talk. Secret U.S.-Iran negotiations in Muscat helped pave the way for the 2015 nuclear deal, and Oman has continued to serve as an intermediary on prisoner exchanges, regional conflicts, and nuclear diplomacy.
But the Iran war has thrust Oman into a much more precarious position. Sitting directly across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran, the small Gulf state is no longer just a mediator on the sidelines. It is now deeply exposed to a conflict that threatens shipping, regional security, and the very diplomatic relationships Oman has spent decades cultivating.
I'm joined by Tyler Parker, a professor at Mercer University who studies the foreign policies of the Gulf states, to discuss how Oman became the region's indispensable intermediary, why the Strait of Hormuz has made Muscat so important to the current crisis, and whether Oman could ultimately help create a path toward ending the war.

Last month, a Russian drone flew toward a gas station in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia. It crashed into a wall and exploded, killing three civilians.
What made this strike different — and potentially a major turning point in modern warfare — is what investigators found afterward. According to reporting by The New York Times, the drone was equipped with an artificial intelligence system that allowed it to navigate toward the gas station and, once it got close, apparently choose its precise target on its own. Ukrainian officials and experts who examined the wreckage say the drone carried the telltale signs of being a fully autonomous, AI-powered weapon.
If that assessment is correct, it represents a disturbing new threshold in the evolution of the war in Ukraine — and warfare more broadly: a weapon using AI to autonomously identify and attack a target, with lethal consequences.
The day after The New York Times report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the International Committee of the Red Cross renewed their call for states to establish specific prohibitions and restrictions on autonomous weapon systems. "We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines," Guterres said.
Given this development, I wanted to revisit a conversation I recorded last year with Anna Hehir of the Future of Life Institute. We talked about lethal autonomous weapons, what it means for a machine to make targeting decisions without meaningful human control, and, crucially, whether diplomacy can prevent these systems from becoming a routine feature of warfare.

The United Nations is in the midst of selecting its next Secretary-General — and the race to succeed António Guterres just got more interesting. Last week, the Security Council held a straw poll to test the viability of the eight women and men vying to become Secretary-General in January. The results: we have a new frontrunner, though her apparent lead is narrow. Meanwhile, some candidates once considered frontrunners now look like long shots.
On this episode of our sister podcast, To Save Us From Hell,  Mark Leon Goldberg and Anjali Dayal dissect the results of the straw poll and discuss the latest developments in the Secretary-General race
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