With the threat of U.S. military action against Iran very much in the news this week, I recommend spending 51 minutes with this thoughtful podcast from the folks at the Lawfare Blog.

The Lawfare Podcast: Scott Anderson and Suzanne Maloney on Iran, WTF?

Benjamin Wittes sat down with Suzanne Maloney and Scott R. Anderson to talk it all through. They talked about whether the AUMF covers Iran, why Iran is doing this stuff, whether the Trump administration brought this all on itself, and where it’s all going from here.

Ben Wittes is editor-in-chief at Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. I knew him back when he was a young reporter in Washington and I was relatively new at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Suzanne Maloney is deputy director of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution and a senior fellow in the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy and Energy Security and Climate Initiative, where her research focuses on Iran and Persian Gulf energy.

Scott R. Anderson is a David M. Rubenstein fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He previously served as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State and as the legal advisor for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.