Camden Conference in the World (March 2026)

Have you wondered what renown University of Oklahoma professor and Syria expert Joshua Landis thinks about the now-active Iran conflict, after he spoke so eloquently in Camden last month on the broad governing background and ethnic divides in the region but not so much on Iran? Landis provided just that view two days after the Conference in Camden on an online “diavlog” site started by fellow Camden speaker Robin Wright, Bloggingheads.tv. The interview was conducted before Trump and the Israelis attached Iran and includes a fascinating discussion of the pros and cons Iran would face should it attack Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab oil and gas producers, as it has now done. Landis stressed the “high risk” nature of any Iranian attack on the Saudis, given that they tried to dissuade Trump from attacking in the first place and initially refused to allow the US ad Israelis access to their territory and air space. 

Speakers from past Camden Conferences have also been addressing the Iran issue. “No matter what they say, American presidents find it impossible not to go to war,” keynoter of Camden’s 2018 New World Disorder Conference and Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard Stephen Walt wrote in his Foreign Policy column just days after US President Donald Trump joined with Israel in attacking Iran. Reasons Walt cites for the inability to avoid war even of presidents like Trump and Barack Obama who strongly advocate peace are the “enormous latitude” all presidents now exercise over decisions of war and peace, the fact that taxpayers don’t pay for wars “in real time,”and the all-volunteer nature of the military. Just before Trump’s attack on Iran, Walt wrote a major piece in Foreign Affairs titled “The Predatory Hegemon” that charges Trump with squandering US influence and power. Non-subscribers can find many of the same arguments in a discussion Walt held with Chris Hedges, a former New York Times journalist.   

The themes from Camden’s recent Conference were also neatly summarized in a Bloomberg column by Kissinger Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced Studies and 2025 Conference speaker Hal Brands on the eve of the US war with Iran. This war will be “so consequential because of how the larger Middle Eastern landscape has been shifting beneath the key players’ feet” Brands suggests in launching into the topic. By the end, he concludes: ” Perhaps a new Middle East awaits on the far side of a looming conflict. Or perhaps we’re about to be reminded, yet again, why the regional landscape remains so treacherous.