Ishaan Tharoor in Vienna: On Trump’s war with Iran, the future of US foreign policy and the crisis in the media

At the invitation of the Bruno Kreisky Forum, the renowned US journalist and foreign policy expert Ishaan Tharoor visited Vienna. Following the public panel discussion on 15 June on ‘HOW TO CHALLENGE TRUMP: DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIES AND THE GLOBAL DIMENSION OF U.S. POLITICS, the long-standing Washington Post columnist and current writer for The New Yorker spoke with Raimund Löw on 16 June at the Presseclub Concordia about one of the most contentious issues in current international politics: Trump’s war against Iran and the role of the US media in times of geopolitical crisis.

The discussion centred on the consequences of the recent conflict between the US and Iran. Tharoor painted a picture of an American public that is largely sceptical of the war, and of a government that is increasingly making its military decisions without broad political or public support. With regard to relations between the US and Israel, a noticeable generational shift in American public opinion is evident, and there is a growing willingness to critically scrutinise the Israeli government’s policies. These developments could bring about lasting changes to US policy in the Middle East in the long term. At the same time, he analysed the tensions within the Republican camp and the question of how Trump’s foreign policy course can be reconciled with the originally isolationist self-image of the MAGA movement.

Finally, attention turned to the media itself. Tharoor described the far-reaching upheavals in the US media landscape – from economic pressure and declining readerships to the growing influence of technology platforms on public debate. Quality journalism, he argued, faces the challenge of maintaining trust and attention in an increasingly fragmented digital public sphere.