As the 2025 Global Energy Forum convened on Tuesday in Washington, DC, just blocks away at the White House, national security officials were mulling over the US response to the war between Israel and Iran. “Right now, Iran has a choice,” Brett McGurk, distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and former White House coordinator for the Middle East region, said at the Forum. “The White House offered a deal to Iran about six weeks ago . . . Iran not only did not really respond to that; it actually escalated its nuclear program in the face of this,” McGurk said, pointing to activities at the Fordow nuclear site. For McGurk, if Iran accepts the nuclear deal, “this crisis would be over.” But if it doesn’t, it would be “looking at the possibility of a US strike on Fordow.”. When it comes to escalation in the Middle East, Helima Croft—global head of commodity strategy and MENA research at RBC Capital and a member of the Atlantic Council Board of Directors—said that “the risk of this spilling over into energy is low. But it’s not zero.”
What comes next in the Iran-Israel war, from a US response to energy impacts – Atlantic Council
