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Today we're going to talk about the new inspector general's report on the Iran war.

Last February, were the stated objectives of the Iran war aligned with the resources necessary to fight it? What about now? What does the IG have to say about the sometimes overlooked activities of the State and Treasury Departments with respect to the war? And what does the expansion of so many high-cost, long-range munitions and interceptors mean about how we're fighting this war? I'm Melanie Marlowe of CSIS, here with Chris Preble of the Stimson Center, and Dr.

Tom Karako, also of CSIS.

Whoop, whoop.

Well, we're gonna talk a little bit more about China, so if you wanna do a lightning round, say one or two things really fast.

One, do you think that there will be some big deals coming out of the Xi-Trump meeting, and what's your one big hope?

I'm not gonna say in advance what is going to happen with the Trump-Xi summit, because instead, at the Stimson Center, we report on what has happened.

So the China program, uh, my colleague Yinson, the director there, and I will be talking about that on Monday.

The experts' bios can be found on the National Committee's website, but to briefly introduce them, Dr.

Sun is the director of the China program at the Stimson Center.

Dr. Afterman is the head of the Asia-Israeli Policy Program at the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy and Foreign Relations at Herzliya Israel.

In the wake of US military action in Iran since February 28th, casualties have been reported in over 10 countries across the region, including both Chinese and American citizens.

This time, despite the prediction difficulties that scientists do realistically face, the event wasn't entirely invisible beforehand.

A hazard assessment published just two days after the event by the High Risk Scientific Consortium, which is a group working with the Asian Mountain Academic Alliance, the Stimson Center, and China's Institute of Mountain Hazards and the Environment.

What that found is what it calls pre-event indicators of the collapse.

Satellite imagery from August 24th, two days before the event, showed meltwater in the area had turned brown already, which is consistent with internal erosion or sediment being flushed through newly opened fracture pathways.

Glad to be here.

And also joining us is Emma Ashford, senior fellow at the Stimson Center and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

Great to be here.

Counterpoint is a production of Foreign Policy in partnership with Doha Forum.

Great conversation.

I appreciate it.

And Emma Ashford, senior fellow at the Stimson Center.

Thank you both.

That helps Beijing focus on what the Chinese leadership sees as its primary rivalry with the U.S., where Xi is scheduled to meet Trump this month.

The prospect of improved ties is undercut by the possibility that New Delhi could shift its alignment closer to the U.S. again after Trump leaves office, said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank.

The Chinese are also seeing that India is biding its time, just working for better options that might emerge, she said.

So I think that adds to the superficiality of the current improvement of China-India relations.

Today, we're going to talk about Afghanistan.

25 years after 9-11 and five years after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, what lessons have we learned about warfare? Does our experience in Afghanistan and now in Iran demonstrate that the American military has an outsized fixation on lethality? And to better prepare for future conflicts, how should strategists think about how adversary human networks behave? I'm Melanie Marlowe of CSIS, here with Chris Preble of the Stimson Center and Zach Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute.

How are you?

Hello again.

Well, thank you for listening to this episode of Net Assessment.

If you enjoyed it, please rate us wherever you get your podcasts.

We want to thank University FM for producing us and to the Stimson Center for hosting us.

We hope everyone has had a great Labor Day and that they have a very meaningful 9-11.

Today, are the oil markets any longer influenced by the daily pronouncements of President Donald Trump regarding the future of the conflict in Iran? When the war began at the end of February, any indication that it may soon be over would lead to an immediate and sometimes precipitate fall in the oil price, only to see it bounce back when traders realized they had been sold a bill of goods.

Emma Ashford, senior fellow at the Stimson Center, says after six months of war, things have changed.

There is an incentives problem here for traders if they do not guess correctly what the White House is going to do, particularly if they guess that the price is going to go up and it doesn't, they may end up paying a pretty concrete cost for that.

But there is very much a catch-22 here.

We have a conversation today with Dr. Emma Ashford.

Dr. Ashford is a senior fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center, where her work focuses on questions of grand strategy, international security, and the future of U.S. foreign policy.

She's also a columnist at Foreign Policy, an adjunct assistant professor in the Security Studies program at Georgetown, and the author of First Among Equals and Oil, the State, and War.

In this episode, we discussed her recent piece for Reason Magazine on why 9/11 accelerated an already existing American pursuit of primacist grand strategy.