Fareed Zakaria on the Endgame in Iran

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Welcome to a special episode of the PropG Pod.

We're recording this on Monday, March 2nd,

just three days after the United States and Israel

launched a large-scale military campaign against Iran

following months of escalating tensions.

On February 28th, US and Israeli forces

struck hundreds of military missile

and command infrastructure targets across Iran.

In an operation the two governments

say killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Hamani

and scores of Iranian senior leaders.

President Trump has said the campaign

could continue for four or five weeks

and the Pentagon has confirmed US military casualties

with American troops killed in action and more expected.

In response, Iran has launched ballistic missiles and drones

at Israeli cities and US bases across the Middle East,

including in Gulf States.

Rocket and drone exchanges have also drawn in Hezbollah

and Lebanon prompting Israeli strikes there as well.

The conflict now spans multiple fronts

has disrupted oil markets and global air travel

and drawn warnings from world leaders

about the risk of wider regional escalation.

Here with me to discuss all of this

is Friede Zakaria, a journalist, author,

and political commentator.

Friede, I imagine you're one of the most

in demand people in the world right now,

so let's bust right into it.

Imagine your Secretary of State,

which, by the way, is not a stretch

and these days when we have talk show hosts

or are now on the cabinet,

but imagine your Secretary of State

in three days or three weeks, maybe,

before what might be an imminent attack,

you're asked to do kind of a risk assessment,

risks to the upside,

risks to the downside of attacking military action against Iran,

walk us through each of those in your view.

Sure. So it's a surprising mission

because remember eight months ago,

the United States and Israel did a very successful

series of strikes that destroyed Iran's nuclear program

killed most of the leading Iranian nuclear scientists,

something that often isn't talked about,

and killed about 20 senior commanders

of the Iranian military.

So the upside here would be

that you get a decapitation of the regime

that causes the regime to collapse.

That is clearly what the great hope has been,

not just for the president who announced that

as the goal of his mission,

but also Prime Minister Netanyahu,

who said that in a video,

he said, this is a 40-year dream of mine.

And remember, the Iranian nuclear program

is not 40 years old in that sense.

It's, you know, what he's talking about is really

getting rid of the regime itself.

So that's the big prize.

That's the main thing they're looking for on the upside.

Next, really defang Iran.

So this is now not just about the nuclear program,

but about Iran as a regional power.

And you can achieve, you can do a lot of damage.

You can destroy their navy.

You can destroy their ballistic missile capability.

You can destroy the military industrial complex.

So the ballistic missile making facilities,

the port facilities that actually house the ships,

things like that.

And finally, you can use this opportunity also

to destroy them and to set them back so much economically,

that they're not going to be able to fund his bullet anymore.

They're not going to be able to fund the Iraqi militias anymore.

At least, you know, not any substantial degree.

So basically break the back of the regime

and hope that the regime collapses.

That seems to me to be the big upside.

The downside is this is a highly institutionalized regime.

This is not a single dictator.

This is not Saddam Hussein.

This is not even Putin.

This is a very complicated institutionalized regime

with a clerical establishment, a military establishment,

of a worked out relationship between those two groups.

It's a little bit like the communist party

and the army in the old Soviet Union

and to a certain extent in modern China.

And so it's not clear that that's going to be as easy.

You can always get lucky, but it seems hard,

and it's particularly hard given that

you're not going to use ground troops.

You're trying to do it from the air.

It's very hard to do regime change from the air.

People, you know, you can look at Afghanistan and Libya,

but remember, there were ground forces.

They just weren't ours.

The Northern Alliance was in Afghanistan

sweeping through province after province,

while the CIA and American air power helped them

in Libya. There was a huge insurgency

that the United States and others were helped by the bombing.

Here we don't have anybody.

There is no army on the ground.

So that's the principal limitation

and the danger here is at the end of the day,

you have defined success as regime change,

President Trump announced it in his message,

Prime Minister Netanyahu talked about it,

and it's obvious survival is victory for them.

The second challenge is going to be the regional element,

though I wouldn't put this that high, but it's real.

They could disrupt things regionally substantially.

My own view is that's a short-term risk.

You know, this oil prices have not gone through the roof.

They've gone up. Gas prices haven't gone through the roof,

because all these facilities can be repaired.

Iran does not have an unlimited supply of these kind of weapons.

What's really striking is how well the air defenses

of the UAE have held up,

even of Saudi, though we know a little bit less about it.

And most importantly, this was the biggest miscalculation

the Iranians made. They've united the Gulf in support of this mission.

Think about it. You now have the Gulf Arabs supporting an American

Israeli mission against Iran,

because the Iranians have been, you know,

retaliating willy-nilly at nine different Arab countries.

This was probably the biggest single mistake they made.

And the other downside I think is you could imagine a circumstance

where there is now a kind of, you know,

generic instability built into the region,

a little bit like the Houthis in Yemen, you know,

that you're going to have to deal with,

Persian Gulf becomes the kind of dangerous territory,

insurance companies aren't willing to go there.

I think the principle danger is the survival.

The other two are reasonable dangers,

but remember, overall Iran is very, very weak.

So it doesn't have a lot of cards that it can play.

Let me propose another potential upside.

I find I'm actually a pessimist,

so I was trying to ask myself what could go right.

90 million people, incredible scientists, universities,

sitting on top of the second largest natural reserves of gas,

third largest reserves of oil,

has been kind of punching below its weight class for a couple decades now.

Maybe it doesn't become pro-est, it becomes west,

neutral, and decides that the organizing principle

isn't at the Israel Agatha America,

and becomes a great trading partner for Europe in the west.

And this incredible culture of Persia is unlocked again.

And we end up with kind of the peace and prosperity

that we've all envisioned for the Middle East.

Is that a pipe dream?

It's not a pipe dream.

And the conditions you described inside the country

are 100% right.

I mean, I've been to Iran and always struck by how pro-Iranian people are.

Now, I have to be careful.

Mostly, you know, they only let you go around Iran.

And rural areas are more pro-regime,

older people are more conservative, more religious.

So the way I put it is,

that's why I said the principle upside is regime collapse.

You need a regime collapse for your scenario to unfold.

Because these guys are going to, you know,

they are hard-line, very repressive,

and they can stick it out.

They've got the guns,

and they're willing to kill as they showed.

So in order for your dream to come true,

we need to see some cracks in the regime.

You need to see some, maybe parts of the army,

distance themselves from parts of their clerical establishment.

That's typically the kind of thing that you see

when you begin to see regimes fall.

But if that were to happen,

to play out, to spin out the what can go right scenario,

look, Iran is one of the great trading nations of the world.

It has always been very pragmatic in its foreign policy historically.

Iran had relations with Israel, you know, under the Shah.

In fact, the Iranian, the Tehran's water system was built by Israeli engineers.

And if one of the reasons they're running out of water,

the President of Iran has talked about maybe having to move the capital from Tehran

because they're in such bad shape.

And part of the problem is they can't get the Israelis to come in

and help them fix it,

because they're the ones who would probably be the best experts at this.

So there is a tradition of Persian trading practicality

that could absolutely come to be.

But I would caution, it's a very tough regime.

They are very institutionalized.

And I don't want to discount entirely.

There is a Shia religious element within its Iran that is real.

I give you a simple example.

Look next joy at Iraq, where they have free elections.

The Shia population, a large part of the population votes for parties

that are religious and political, often led by Mullahs, like Muqtad al-Sader.

So there is within the Shia tradition a conflation of religious and political authority.

It's very alien to those of us in the West.

It's also very alien, by the way, to all the people who I met in Tehran,

who are like urban liberals, who very much espoused the kind of vision of Iran that you described.

But there is another Iran out there in the rural areas.

And just a matter of humility, we don't know enough about it.

But as I said, they tend to seem to be a little more religious,

a little more conservative, a little older.

And when you look at Iraq, you see that even free elections,

you end up with a lot of religious and political authority being given votes.

I've heard a theme across sort of right-leaning media figures,

most of the podcasters that this has all been orchestrated by Netanyahu and Israel.

To what extent do you think Israel's influence played or didn't play a role in this?

I think the kind of way they put it, I really dislike,

because it's a kind of, as if there is this nefarious Israeli group on American foreign policy

using all kinds of anti-Semitic tropes that I think are both terrible and wrong.

And I think people should really be careful not to do that kind of thing.

I think in this case, remember, the United States has been opposed to the Iranian government

since its founding.

The Iranians took Americans hostages.

The Iranians have tried to attack Americans in various places all over the world.

This is a very adversarial relationship the United States has had with Iran.

I think it's fair to say that BB Netanyahu has personally a lot of influence with Donald Trump

and Trump is a man very swayed by personalities, by people, and he likes BB

and he likes listening to him and he likes the idea of doing things with him.

And I think BB Netanyahu sold him a dream that you can be the guy who liberates Iran.

Every other president has had to tolerate them.

You can be the guy who liberates them.

And Trump is, I think, a manable to that kind of idea.

I think he sees himself as a man of destiny, a person who's going to do big things,

particularly when dealing with countries like Venezuela or Iran or Cuba.

You know, you can see it. He wants to bring them to heal.

So I think BB Netanyahu convinced him that there was a great moment of opportunity.

Iran would never be weaker, the forces are arrayed in the right position.

So I think that's the way to think of it and I think that is accurate.

But I think the whole idea that the United States is doing Israel's bidding misses the fact

that the United States has been in, you know, existential opposition to the Islamic Republic

and the Islamic Republic has been, of course, in a deep existential and violent opposition

to the United States for 47 years.

You brought us something really interesting in yours.

One of the first people to point this out that this huge strategic blunder

of attacking civilian infrastructure and residential properties in different Gulf states.

I think they've attacked 9 or 10.

I think they're rational. The Iranian's rationale is we are going to sow instability throughout the region.

You want to war. It's not going to be confined to Iran.

We are going to make it so that, you know, Saudi oil facilities are damaged.

The Qatar National Gas Facilities are damaged.

Straits of Horn most, the shipping starts slowing to a crawl.

The problem is they don't actually have the firepower to pull that off.

So what they've ended up doing are bin brick attacks that militarily have very little significance.

The facilities are going to be repaired in a few days, if not a few weeks.

But the political effect has been to take all the Gulf states that were neutral.

Many of them had said you can't use our bus facilities.

Some of them said you can't even use our airspace.

Now all the Gulf states are all in.

And they're telling the United States and Israel privately go for it.

In fact, they some of them even want to participate to show the Iranians

that you can't do this kind of thing to their territory.

So I think it was a big miscalculation, as I've said from the start.

But their rationale, I suppose, was look, we've got to hit somewhere.

We, you know, hitting American naval ships is impossible.

They're very well protected.

So this is where we can go.

But they didn't think through the fact that this has had a political boomerang effect on them.

So say that the Trump administration isn't able to affect regime change.

It feels as if, well, let me put forward the hypothesis that

the Trump administration may be a bit naively was hoping that the boots on the ground

would be sandals or sneakers on the ground that the Iranian public would rise up

and catalyze the actual regime change with cloud cover from American military attacks.

Does that seem like a reasonable hypothesis?

It seems like that was what they were hoping.

And look, you can always get lucky.

And if they keep at this and they continue to pummel the regime, who knows?

They can say historically that has, you know, I can't think of it in a case where that has happened.

It's tough, right?

Because these guys still have machine guns.

They're still not going to be able to get rid of those.

And they'll use them.

They've used them in the past.

We'll be right back.

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I've described these military operations as a bond film.

The openings are always amazing.

The films always nail the opening.

And then we go on to see, all right.

Is it Kosovo or Kuwait that it ends really well?

That it's a great bond film or is it a rack or Afghanistan?

And it's the second ending that is always sort of a bit unpredictable.

I have been struck at what, from my perspective,

seems like really poor, inconsistent messaging around,

I think it was the pal doctrine of always have objectives.

I don't go into something unless there are specific objectives

that once you accomplish, you can declare victory and leave.

What are your thoughts so far on the stated or lack thereof,

stated objectives from the Trump administration?

Yeah, this is the biggest mistake.

They don't have clear objectives.

To the extent they have one, it's a very hard one to achieve,

which is regime change.

And it's very hard, short of that,

to understand what they would define as success.

They would have laid out a series of, you know,

this is what we would like to degrade Iran's ballistic missile capability

so they did no longer threatens its neighbors.

We wanted to degrade Iran's navy so they did no longer poses a threat

to the safe flow of oil in and out of the streets of Hormuz.

We wanted to degrade Iran's command and control

so that they can no longer run these militias around the Middle East.

Those would have been, you know, goals that you could understand.

Frankly, they could kind of define success because, you know,

a lot of the information would be classified,

but by defining success by something very large and very public,

we can all see, right?

And it's hard to say that they've achieved that goal

because the regime has not fallen.

And again, they may get lucky, but so far,

the regime has not fallen.

Do you think one strategy for success might be saying

all right, we're going to neuter them militarily,

kinetically, politically, economically?

And it's out to me to tell me if you agree with this,

that the only thing standing between the Middle East

and relative stability right now is Iran.

It seems like in kind of under under the breath,

if you will, the majority of the Gulf States have sort of made peace

with Israel.

So if in fact, if the Trump administration was able to accomplish,

all right, it's now, it used to be a tiger.

Now it's a comatose tiger and poses no threat to anybody,

even without regime change.

Couldn't they just sort of declare victory and leave

and potentially we'd have a much more stable Middle East?

Yes, I think that that's true.

I think it's important to remember Iran is a destabilizing factor.

It has been supporting these militias.

It has been in many ways trying to intimidate.

You know, I've always thought its nuclear program was designed

to intimidate more than to use that.

So they always wanted to be one step before nuclear weapons,

as a way of saying, you know, we could have these.

And they are, you know, a kind of very brutal,

repressive, military, and regime.

Remember, this is the only military innovation

that Iran has produced is a drone,

the name of which is Shahid,

which is used by the Russians in Ukraine.

And Shahid means martyr.

So even their drones, they call martyrs, right?

There is a kind of cult of martyrdom about it,

which is, you know, we're willing to pay these prices.

And you're right, nobody else in the Middle East is like that.

And that's very big transformation, you know.

It's only 20 years ago that the Saudis used to host telephones

for Palestinian terrorists who they call Palestinian martyrs.

The Middle East, the Gulf Arabs,

have been totally transformed.

Egypt has been transformed.

Turkey is still, you know, a kind of a complex power.

But yeah, in general,

you would have a much more stable, predictable Middle East

if you didn't have this particular regime in Iran.

And maybe you will find that what ends up happening, Scott,

this is one, another kind of what could go right scenario.

That is that the regime survives,

but in a form that it essentially becomes more

military dictatorship than a theological military dictatorship.

And as a result of that, it is more practical.

And, you know, maybe it's a little bit more open at home,

but most importantly, it is much less medallism abroad.

It realizes that that game is over.

It's hard to think of a nation that has fallen further faster

in terms of its power or the power it can exert domestically,

regionally and internationally than Iran.

And there are ramifications not only within the country

and in the Middle East, but beyond that.

My understanding is 80% of the oil from Iran was going to China.

They obviously have proxies all over the, you know,

they were allies with Russia.

You mentioned Ukraine that they were supplying drones

for Russia in their war against Ukraine.

How do you think the collapse or the defanging, if you will,

of Iran affects nations outside of the Middle East?

They haven't had a large footprint outside the Middle East,

but they did have this one fairly close connection with Russia.

The Russians now make the drones themselves.

Effectively, the Iranians have kind of licensed the technology to Russia.

But look, I think it's a blow to that whole idea

of a kind of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea axis.

And these guys are bad actors.

And to the extent that they get, you know, taken down a notch,

it is a kind of blow to that axis of instability

and the anti-Western axis that it represents.

The challenge is the way the Trump has done it, you know,

without going to the UN, without using any kind of invocation

of broader principles, international law,

without using any of America's traditional allies,

without even consulting Congress.

It, you know, which of course Trump wants,

because Trump hates anything that constrains him.

Anything that involves relying on, you know, the IAA inspectors

or a UN Security Council resolution,

or consulting with the British and the French,

all that, for Trump, these are constraints on his power.

Those would have given a lot greater legitimacy to this.

This, that would have created more of a kind of rule-based sense

of like, Iran is the one that's outside of the rules.

They are the ones violating things.

Right now, we have done this in a fairly ad hoc way

that is outside of, you know, most accepted rules and such.

And I wish that, you know, it would have been easily easy to do that,

because Iran is a, is a rogue regime.

It has been acting in ways that are violations,

all kinds of international norms and laws.

And it wouldn't have been difficult to do that.

But I think that there's a core kind of Jacksonian element

to Donald Trump's foreign policy,

which is about, I get to decide everything on my own.

I, we get to act unilaterally

when never going to be constrained by anybody else.

Let's talk about allies,

because I never thought I would see,

well, Australia and Canada have weighed in with what I'd call,

not full-threaded support, but support.

I was really shocked there to see Prime Minister Starmer offer

what I thought is just really reluctant, conditioned hesitant support.

Like, we'll let you use our airbase, but be clear,

it's only for defensive purposes.

Talk about where we have received

and where we have not received support

and what it says about the Trump administration

in America's place in the world right now.

So, first, let's, let's talk about this issue of, you know,

building legitimacy.

I think the countries in Europe, which care a lot about that,

which care a lot about, you know, does this seem to uphold

a rules-based international system?

Is this within some kind of broader principles

that we can, we can understand and support?

They're the ones who have been the most, you know,

who've had the greatest degree of reluctance

and as you put it exactly, right,

Starmer's, you know, tortured,

pained, quasi-support.

And remember, all these countries for the most part

with the exception of the French supported the Iraq War,

because Bush did go to the UN.

He did get resolutions. He did go to Congress.

He did frame it in larger terms.

He did assemble a coalition of 40 countries

that went to Iraq.

Sometimes, think of, remember it as, you know,

a lateral American action wasn't.

So that's that group.

What's very interesting to watch among the global South

is you have a whole bunch of countries

that have condemned it, you know, instinctively,

because it might make right as the United States acting

unilaterally in violation of international law and such.

But then there's a whole bunch of countries

that have not quite done that.

For example, very interestingly, India.

India has not done that because there's very close relations

with the Gulf States.

It has a very good relationship,

particularly under this Prime Minister with Israel.

And in a sense, India is looking to its economic equities

as an emerging economic powerhouse and saying,

we want close relations with Israel for technological reasons.

We want close relations with Gulf States

because we need the oil and we need,

we want to have the capital.

Access to the capital.

And so what you're seeing in India is a very interesting phenomenon

where India has denounced Iran's response

to the attacks on Iran.

But it's essentially tried to stay out of the, you know,

it has neither celebrated nor condemned

the American Israeli attacks on Iran,

at least the last I saw.

And that I think reflects a very interesting,

you know, kind of rise of real politics

amongst some of these emerging powers

that are saying to themselves, you know,

what is our, where are our equities here?

And what they're saying is, you know,

the countries of the future are the Gulf States, Israel.

Iran is a country of the past.

Let's bring it back, or let's come home domestically.

It strikes me that this has caught Democrats,

flat footed.

And while they voiced what I think is really legitimate,

concerning opposition to the fact that Congress

wasn't consulted on this,

I mean, at this point, the Congress feels more like the Duma

under the Trump administration.

But at the same time, I personally think Trump

and Rubio come across as leaders right now.

I think that this could potentially be arguably,

if things go right,

the kind of geopolitical unlock of the century.

And Democrats have to walk a fine line between saying,

okay, we're supposed to have co-incal branches

of government and the American people,

pretty much across both parties,

obviously much more so on the Democratic side

than the Republican side,

do not want this war,

and especially do not want boots on the ground.

But talk a little bit about how this has affected

politics in the U.S.

And if you can, just even in the context looking forward

to 26 and 28,

it feels like everything's been kind of thrown up

in the air right now.

We don't know where it's going to land.

Yeah, I agree with that.

It's moving very fast,

and a lot depends on where things go.

Yeah, I think what the Democrats should do

is have a principled opposition to the idea

that the President of the United States can act

in an almost authoritarian fashion.

I mean, look at it.

Right now, he's ordered boats to be shot out of the Caribbean.

He's ordered essentially an invasion of Venezuela

and the capture of the head of state.

He's ordered this attack on two attacks now on Iran,

none of which has been any congressional involvement

and remember the Constitution vests with Congress

the power to declare war.

So, you know, they should have, I think, you know,

a strong sense of opposition to that.

They should have a strong sense of opposition

or not doing it with some sense

of the broader principles of, you know,

international law in the UN and things like that.

But they should be clear.

Iran is an enemy of the United States.

It has done very bad things to the United States.

They were one of the principal sponsors of the militias

that killed Americans in Iraq

by the dozens and that, you know,

it would be a very good thing if Iran's wings were clipped,

if its power was degraded.

And it would be a very good thing

if the Iranian regime had to be transformed

into something more pluralistic, democratic,

you know, and representative and reflective

of the will of the Iranian people.

I don't think that's such a hard position to explain to people.

I think most people would be able to understand it

that like, you know, you can do,

you're going to have an adversary,

you can agree that the adversary is bad,

but you also don't think the president

should be a dictator in the way he wields power.

We'll be right back after a quick break.

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Let's go places.

Hi, this is Cara Swisher,

and this week on my podcast on with Cara Swisher,

I talk to California governor Gavin Newsom,

while he isn't officially announced or run for president yet,

he's telegraphing it all the time.

It's exhausting.

He's also got a new book out,

which is what you do when you're running for president.

It's called Young Man in a hurry.

I recently interviewed him live in San Francisco,

have a listen.

The problem with the Democratic Party,

so often is we appear weak,

and we've got to be stronger,

and we've got to be more assertive.

And so that's, you know, it's the spirit I think

that is required of this moment.

I've known Gavin Newsom since he was mayor of San Francisco

a million years ago, a million hair gels ago,

and he's a really interesting and compelling politician.

He's done a lot of things in his career,

and this one, this run for presidency,

which is going to happen,

is among the most interesting.

You can find a full conversation

wherever you get your podcast,

and on YouTube, obviously,

be sure to follow and subscribe

to on with Cara Swisher for more.

The big question is,

if there is going to be a next strong man in Iran,

what kind of strong man will that person likely be?

I don't think that there's going to be

another powerful cleric, supreme leader.

I'm John Feiner,

and I'm Jake Sullivan,

and we're the hosts of The Long Game,

a weekly national security podcast.

This week, we sit down with Cream Sajapur

to discuss what to expect in this next phase of the war

against Iran.

The episode's out now.

Search for and follow The Long Game,

wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back with more from Farid Zakaria.

I used to think that our entry into Iraq

was the geopolitical first ballot,

Hall of Fame, screw up of the century.

And now I'm beginning to think that,

and there's some bias here,

so often to push back,

that the new winner is October the 7th.

That if you had told Sinmar Sadat,

how many, that they,

you're all going to be dead in three years,

and your institutions are going to be

so dramatically weakened,

that, I mean,

we used to call around the superpower of the Middle East.

Everyone was scared to death of Hezbollah,

this supposedly the sleeping military giant.

Hamas was always a threat.

All of these things,

you know, I saw it as playing video games in Moscow.

Everyone else that we know their names is dead.

And these organizations are either eliminated

or incredibly neutered.

Will October the 7th go down,

as arguably the biggest geopolitical disaster

of its sponsors of the last, of this century?

I think it's probably one of the biggest miscalculations

that any group has made.

I mean, Hamas,

when people say this was all Hamas wanted this

because we draw attention to the Palestinian cause,

I think this is nonsense.

I mean, this resulted in the essential elimination

of Hamas as a fighting force

and even as a political entity.

I mean, it is now, you know,

a faint shadow of an organization

with absolutely no capacity.

Hezbollah has been largely defanged.

The Syrian regime collapsed in no small part

because of all this.

And now Iran has been neutered.

Look, I've been writing for a while

and saying, Israel is the superpower of the Middle East.

I've been saying it for a while.

What October 7th did was it unlocked

the restraints on Israel.

Israel decided that it no longer was willing to, you know,

to stay on the back foot and react

on a point-by-point, pin-pric-by-pin-pric basis,

that it was going to go all out.

That it felt, you know,

being in Netanyahu felt probably correctly

in the Israeli public that this was the moment

he could lean as far forward as he wanted

and he would be fine.

And there was a change geopolitical reality

which was that the Gulf states were no longer

in, you know, existential opposition to Israel.

In fact, as you say, we're kind of in a tacit alliance

with Israel against Iran.

And so all those things come together.

October 7th allows the unlock

and Israel goes for it and the Gulf Arabs

silently cheer on.

That's the big story.

In the Israeli military has become, as I said,

the superpower of the Middle East.

You know, what its capacities here have been extraordinary.

What's also extraordinary, by the way,

is the intelligence to know where these people are.

And I think that is a really untold story

that is really extraordinary.

The Iran has been penetrated in so many different ways.

Its nuclear establishment, its military establishment,

even some parts, so this is the least,

even some parts of its clerical establishment.

Talk about how this impacts Russia and China.

For the Russians, I think, the most important impact

is there was an ongoing military relationship

and one wonders whether it has much of an impact there.

The short-term effect, of course, is good for the Russians

because the price of oil goes up and Russia needs that.

For the Chinese, you know, I think it's more complicated.

The Chinese were getting Iranian oil, as you pointed out.

And they were getting a good deal because of Iran's isolation.

They were able to get it highly discounted.

But there is a fundamental difference between what I think

are the core interests of China and the core interests of Russia.

And this is sort of a broader issue.

It's even relates to our relations with Russia and China.

Russia is a rogue state.

It likes instability.

It wants to destroy the rules based international order.

Why?

Because fundamentally, it is in opposition to that order.

It believes that it has been largely expanded and created

on the back of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

And it is a commodities and oil superpower,

which means instability is good for it.

Right?

Instability means the price of oil goes up, the price of gas goes up,

often the price of other commodities go up.

And that's all good for it.

China is very different.

China is a country that needs integrated global markets,

that needs trade, that needs a free flow of capital,

free flow of goods.

So China should want an Iran that is the kind you were describing,

a great trading nation with whom they could do business.

And maybe they're not as hostile to the West as they are now,

but they would be neutral and they might look favorably on the Chinese.

You could imagine an alliance between a very different Iran and China,

just based on their economic interests.

But Russia is a rogue regime that wants instability.

I think this is one of the big larger geopolitical realities

we should be trying to exploit, which is that China does not benefit

from a world in chaos.

And we should be trying to make that case to them,

much more carefully and strongly.

Russia does.

And Russia is, at the end of the day, very tough country to do business with,

because they have this fundamental interest,

which is opposed to the way America wants.

They don't want to stable Europe.

They don't want to trade in prosperous relations with Europe,

because that means they become smaller and smaller and less and less important.

Russia strength derives from its ability to cause chaos,

to be a rogue state, to use its nuclear umbrella,

to intimidate countries, to use its hybrid warfare,

to undermine democracies.

China is different.

China is growing strong because of an integrated global economy.

And that's a big difference.

And we should try and drive a wedge between those two countries.

It strikes me that if we're still talking about Iran

and we're still flying swordies over to Iran,

and there's still this kind of video footage,

and there's, in any war, there's going to be an X-Factor,

American servicemen and women are going to be killed,

or allies are going to take hits.

If this is still going on in October,

it strikes me that it's probably bad for the Trump administration

and Republicans running for re-election or election.

But one, do you agree with that?

And two, if you were advising the Trump administration

around kind of an ideal messaging and strategy

for an off ramp before then,

what do you think?

All right, Fried, outline what you think the objectives are,

and probably the most, the optimal off ramp

that recognizes that America does not support boots on the ground,

and that if this goes on much longer than say three or six months,

their term forever war is going to be in every campaign

out of every Democrat come November.

Yeah, so first I agree with you.

I think let's remember,

foreign policy, by and large,

does not usually play much of a role in American elections.

Remember Bush, the Bush senior,

the victor of the Cold War,

presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union,

the collapse of the Berlin Wall,

then wins the Gulf War on almost technically perfect terms,

had a 91% approval rating,

and then lost the election to Bill Clinton.

So foreign affairs often does not have as big an impact

as we would think it would.

But I agree with you,

if it feels like this is going on and meandering,

and they haven't been able to find a way to get out,

what it does is very important,

which is it for the first time you could imagine

it dividing Trump's base.

Because Trump's base does involve a lot of people

who think that the United States

should not be spending time worrying about any of these countries

out there.

And if you listen to the Tucker Carlson's of the world

and the end cultures of the world,

and there are more and more of them,

that voice is real.

So that's, I think, the principal danger for the Republicans

and the Democrats will do exactly what you described.

I think what, look, what I would do if I were them

is start setting out a series of goals

about Iran not being able to threaten its neighbors,

so discord, fun militias,

and, you know, itemize the things that have been destroyed

and saying, we have now achieved,

we believe, you know, a 70% reduction in Iran's offensive

military capacity, and a 50% destruction of its

military industrial complex,

list the factory, you know, the things that have been destroyed,

and say, you know, we now regard this operation as successful.

I would do, I would do that.

I would look, the United States has started,

every war the United States has started since World War II,

started with great enthusiasm,

and then you start with the exception of the first Gulf War,

it has been very hard to figure out how to end them,

you know, what is the point in which you can declare victory

and go home?

And the lesson, I think, is the sooner you can do it the better,

you know, have some identifiable markers

that you can say you achieved, point to them,

they are real, and get out.

You know, I can't help but feel irrationally optimistic here,

and a lot of this is it's anecdotal.

I went to UCLA and I just hung out a lot and got to know

a lot of Iranians,

and it struck me that more than any immigrant side met,

including Canadians, people from India,

I felt like Iranians were more American than many Americans I know.

A love of capitalism, education, science,

a super sort of merchant culture, like, in a good way.

I just felt, they just, they felt like they just slipped streamed

into American culture.

And I wonder if, you know,

and my understanding is that actually in Iran,

there's actually a huge population,

a next generation that's less theocratic, less anti-West,

doesn't buy into this organizing principle event

of death to America, death to Israel,

with that type of resources sitting on,

sitting beneath education, unbelievable culture,

and this potentially being the kind of the last remnant

of hostility and chaos in the Middle East,

it feels like Europe can be an enormous winner

as a trading partner.

It's just as hard as I try,

and there's always an X-Fact with war.

I feel like this could be,

we could be on the precipice of something,

something really wonderful for the Middle East

and for the world.

Prove me wrong.

Well, first of all, the Iranian diaspora,

you're 100% right, is amazing.

I mean, they are not only,

all the things you said, they are amazingly capitalistic

and, you know, they love America,

they love democracy.

Even the ones that are in Europe,

they love Western democracy.

They're very civilized, they have, you know,

like high levels, not just of education,

but they're very cultural,

they're very culturally aware.

I think they're also,

they have a real desire for their country to,

do you once again be, you know,

the kind of, the kind of player it was in the world.

Generally, Iran is probably one of the oldest countries

in the world with continuous,

if you ask yourself,

what country in the world was around 5,000 years ago,

roughly the same geography, roughly the same, you know,

cities and things.

Iran and Egypt are probably the, you know,

the two oldest places you can think of.

And so there's this extraordinary tradition

that the Iranian diaspora does absolutely represent.

And I mean, I'm always struck by a lot of the emails

and texts I get out from Iranians

and anytime some of this issue comes up

and the passion that would,

which they engage is amazing.

As I said to you, that's the goal.

My question is, how do we get there?

And to get there, this regime has to collapse.

And I just, you know, that's the difficulty.

How do you get a, you know, highly authoritarian,

repressive regime with a lot of guns

and 47 years to dig itself into power,

to collapse easily, not easily, but, but, you know,

all of a sudden.

And I haven't seen the signs of that yet.

That's, you know, and when I say that,

I know that a lot of people in the Iranian diaspora

don't like it.

But what I'm just trying to do is to be honest

and look at the world as it is,

not the way I would like it to be.

I love to see a secular Iran that, you know,

was, was playing the kind of role

that you're describing in the world.

All I'm saying is to get there,

this Islamic regime needs to collapse or be toppled.

Freed Zikari is a journalist, author,

and political commentator.

Freed, I meant what I said.

I can't imagine you are you aware of the probably

the most in-demand commentator in the world right now.

Very much appreciate your time.

Always such a pleasure.

Thank you, Scott.

This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez

and Lord Jenner.

Kami Rik is our social producer,

Bianca Rosario Ramirez is our video editor,

and Drew Burrows is our technical director.

Thank you for listening to The Property Pod

from PropG Media.

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