There was by its very nature a war of choice, right?

There was no reason necessarily to do it.

And the degradation of Iran's military capability has come at the cost of, you know, depleting a lot of U.S.

munitions and air defenses that are necessary for other theaters.

So there is a real sort of cost there.

Hello and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer.

The Iran war rages on.

President Trump may have been hoping for another quick and easy Venezuelan military operation, but instead a wildly successful first strike that crippled Iran's ability to retaliate and that took out its supreme leader has metastasized into a wider regional conflict.

Rich Gulf states are being dragged in, oil prices are spiking high, and casualties, including those of American service members, are rising.

If Venezuela was the smashed box office hit, Iran is the unwanted sequel.

And we all know how those sequels often turn out.

But it's early days yet and President Trump is betting he can still claim victory in Operation Epic Fury.

That said, his definition of victory may not be quite the same as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's.

And the Islamic Republic may be down, but it's certainly not out.

In fact, senior Iranian clerics appointed Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, on Monday, days after Donald Trump called him an unacceptable choice, and as Israel threatened to kill the successor to the former supreme leader.

So where is all this heading?

I just came back from Washington, D.C., where I caught up with Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution.

He served in some of the highest national security posts during the Biden administration.

He understands the implications of a cornered Iran better than most.

Don't worry, it's not all doom and gloom.

I've also got your puppet regime.

There is only one candidate who is strong enough to run Iran for us.

Welcome.

-Very glad to be here.

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What's your poison?

Crate and Barrel.

West Elm.

Target.

For the late US statesman Colin Powell, his go-to was Pottery Barn.

As Bob Woodward writes in Plan of Attack, a 2004 account of the start of the Iraq War, Powell invoked what he called the Pottery Barn Rule when counseling President Bush.

"You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," Powell told Bush.

"You will own all their hopes, their aspirations and problems.

You'll own it all.

It's the Pottery Barn rule.

You break it, you own it.

Try to remember what this country felt like then, a population still raw from the shock of September 11th, the president warning of a, quote, "smoking gun that could become a mushroom cloud."

And yes, a secretary of state seated before the United Nations holding up a small vial meant to represent all of Iraq's chemical weapons stockpiles.

The US government made a full court press case for war, and in the process, they owned it.

President Trump, however, has never been a Pottery Barn man.

No, if his renovation of the Oval Office is any indication, he skews a little more Liberace.

And in the lead up to Epic Fury, the massive joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Trump didn't just make one case for war, he made a bunch of them.

Prevent the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear weapon.

Destroy their ballistic missiles before they could reach US soil.

Assassinate the Supreme Leader before he could assassinate President Trump.

Free the Iranian people from brutal repression.

Regime change.

Now you might think that President Trump's mixed case for war was a mistake, but the muddle was, in fact, the point.

The president didn't fail to sell an Iran war to the American people or to Congress or to America's allies.

He chose not to.

And in the process, he is betting that he won't have to own what comes next.

Because for President Trump, what comes next has never been as interesting as what comes now.

The former reality TV show host has put on a hell of a show and judging by a recent phone call to an ABC News reporter, he knows it.

Referring to the war on Iran, Trump asked, "How do you like the performance?

I mean, Venezuela is obvious.

This might be even better."

As for how long the war will last, the president said, "Well, there are many people who say it's already over.

It's not over to me.

It's over when I want it to be."

But make no mistake, the Iranian regime knows how to put on a show too.

And as IRGC missiles continue to make it through Israel's Iron Dome and slam into wealthy Gulf state neighbors, as American service members die and as oil prices rise, President Trump may not be able to close the curtains on Epic Fury as quickly as he would like.

Here to discuss all this and more, Thomas Wright.

He served in Biden's National Security Council, and he warns that President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have very different ideas about how the war should end.

Tom Wright, welcome to the show.

- Thank you, thanks for having me.

- Gotta start with Iran, of course.

We have some different antagonists with some different perspectives in this war.

I mean, it's Israel and the United States fighting together, but not necessarily fighting for exactly the same things.

What does that mean to you?

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

You know, there was a very dramatic opening with the killing of the supreme leader and dozens of his senior officials.

But since then, I think we've seen a divergence between the U.S.

and Israeli strategies, and we've also seen a separate Iranian strategy emerge.

So the U.S.

position, the president's position is he wants a Venezuelan model, right?

He wants to do a deal with somebody ideally within the regime who wants to work with him.

He's not particularly concerned if they're democratic or if they're benign domestically.

And you think that's equally true even though he explicitly said, "I'm going to rescue these Iranian people," 30,000 of whom we believe were killed within three days by this regime.

Yeah.

I think it's, I mean, he has said a number of contradictory things, but this week when he's done a litany of media interviews, sometimes just answering the phone from journalists who will call him up, right, he's repeatedly talked about the Venezuela model.

And we know from Venezuela and from Syria and from other cases that he does sort of look for that strong figure who will be pragmatic from his point of view and sort of do what he wants.

The Israeli point of view is very different.

They don't want an IRGC dictatorship.

They I think are going to go full bore for regime change.

But they don't want any figure from the regime.

I mean, they want to get rid of the regime.

And I think they partly believe that if the regime holds on in some way and does a deal with Trump, that he will lose interest at some point, that they'll be able to rebuild their military over time, that the U.S.

may even be a partner in some ways economically of the regime, because Trump will see it as a success.

But it's pretty clear that the president doesn't really have a theory of the case for an end state beyond this sort of pragmatic dealmaking.

And then we have the Iranians, which we may come on to in a minute.

-No, go ahead.

I don't mind.

-But, yeah, but I think- -Obviously, they're not aligned, but yes.

-No, no, but yeah, but their approach, which the president said surprised him, has been to attack over 10 countries, to fire missiles into the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Even Oman.

Even Oman.

Which was involved in leading the negotiations.

Yeah, and that, I think, their sort of theory of victory, I mean, they just want to survive, right?

They want to endure, and they're trying to create so much economic chaos in the region that the Gulf states and maybe the markets will put pressure on the administration, you know, to end the war in the short term.

Because you know, as you know, like many of these Gulf states, if you look at a country like the UAE, their future economic model is sort of premised on the idea that they are safe and stable.

-That their airport works, for example.

-Yeah, but also- -Their hotels are like- -Yeah, but they're spending hundreds of billions of dollars to persuade the frontier AI companies to set up some of the most strategically sensitive and necessary frontier data centers in their country.

And one of those data centers, the Amazon one, was attacked the other day.

So what message does that send?

So I think the Iranians are sort of counting on, because they can't sort of win a narrow military fight, they're sort of counting on the enlarging of this war, bringing pressure to bear on the Trump administration.

-So I mean, I understand that logic.

That does sort of presume that the Iranians are acting in a more cohesive way, as opposed to they can't really communicate with their local commanders, this so-called mosaic structure where local commanders with missiles are just launching them at whatever targets they can actually hit.

And that means nearby GCC not hardened because they can get through.

Yeah, no, I think there's definitely some of that because of the compromised nature of the command and control, Israeli and US penetration of their communications.

So I think all of that is true.

And I'm not trying to make out that it's a super sophisticated strategy, but I think there is a plan there.

And their plan has been, I mean, because some people noted initially that attacking other countries just creates a bigger coalition against you.

So it seems irrational.

But I think there is a logic there to it.

And how long the Gulf Arab states can sustain this as they cycle through their air defence, like interceptors and other munitions, I think is an open question.

And so I think that's sort of where we are, you know, early into this war, is that you have these three strategies, and each of them is encountering difficulties.

Each of them is sort of not prepared in certain respects.

You know, the US obviously is not prepared for the evacuation of US citizens from the Gulf, many of these countries under attack.

Iran obviously, as you said, has no real means of communicating with itself.

They made some very foolish decisions early on, including having a meeting of the Council of Experts to select the new Supreme Leader above ground a few days into the war and then it was hit with an Israeli missile.

So they've all had different setbacks.

If you were advising the president right now, assuming we are where we are, what should the American medium-term strategy for the Iran war be?

Not a week or two, but six months out.

Where should they try to be getting to and for what reason?

I think, so firstly, my sort of assumption here is that this was an unnecessary war.

So we are where we are.

-So medium term, what do you then recommend?

-Yeah, I mean, I think he should try to end it in the near term.

And I think he shouldn't let it go on for four weeks or eight weeks or six months.

I think the longer it goes on, the greater the risk there is of a fragmentation within Iran and of it turning into a larger Syria.

The plan that was in the press to arm the Kurds, I think, is one thing that could further sort of destabilize Iran in some ways.

And so I think it's important to avoid that scenario.

Getting rid of the regime, getting rid of the supreme leader and bringing in a better government, obviously, that will be sort of a benign outcome here.

That will be a good result.

But there's no guarantee that that will happen.

And so there is a risk of something worse.

Now, I mean, Trump, in a sense, might argue in response the reverse Pottery Barn.

If he can't own it, if he can't have regime change, then break it.

Right?

So it's not going to be a unified Iran.

It's going to be the Kurds with one piece and, you know, sort of a regional solution.

At least then it's a much weaker regime that you're dealing with that you can't stand.

You would say to that what?

I would say that that could create a much bigger problem.

I mean, it could be sort of a serious civil war on steroids, you know, a country of 93 million people with nuclear materials, with all types of weapons, that has traditionally been a unified country.

But if you try to deliberately to break it and you have geopolitical rivalries, the region getting pulled into it, that's something and that could be a much bigger headache, certainly a much bigger headache than trying to manage a regime that was already at its weakest point since 1979.

I mean, I think this is a key point.

It was not a regime that was stronger than it ever had been in the past and was deeply threatening.

It was threatening, but it was actually weaker than it had been in the past.

And military action was taken last year.

And even if it wasn't a full obliteration, it still had a dramatic effect on its nuclear program.

So-- And their proxies in the region, like Hezbollah, decapitated.

-Yeah, exactly.

Syria, Assad gone.

So we had time.

Like we had time and you have to sort of in geopolitics, obviously, you know, manage different risks with different degree of urgencies, depending on the severity of risk and the imminency.

And they are choosing to prioritize one regime that was relatively weak, where there was no imminency.

And then they're ignoring, you know, completely ignoring, in fact, other threats that are far more significant.

So, but what you are recommending, what you would have to be recommending to Trump would be, "Sir, that regime that you thought that you were going to be able to work with and come in, stop the war, and you're just going to have to give up on that."

Is that- Well, unless they had, I mean, if they had real reason to think that, you know, the Israelis were on board and they were collectively going to do a deal with the regime, someone in the regime and they were willing, or, you know, that there was sort of a popular uprising that stood a good chance of success, you know, not having access to obviously any of the internal information, my assumption is, you know, just from the press is that that is not possible, at least in the short term.

Yeah, they certainly don't feel confident about that.

And they're not giving the impression that they have a real plan and they have a means of sort of achieving it.

And so the risk is that the longer this goes on, the more it destabilizes the region, the more potentially if they succeed in really in eliminating most of the leadership in the regime and maybe pounding on economic and energy infrastructure targets and if they do that sort of on scale you know they could bring about this fragmentation and and create this sort of giant black hole in the Middle East.

Now looking at the implications of this more broadly, the Americans did not give a heads-up of any sort to the Europeans, their allies in NATO, before they engaged in these strikes.

The response of the Europeans has been generally tepid, critical of Iran, not wildly supportive of the United States, not very aligned, kind of out of the picture, right?

The Chinese have been critical but aren't really doing anything.

I mean it kind of seems like if you take away what's happening in Iran the consequences for Trump, he's not deterred by anybody out there, doesn't seem to be needing their coordination at all.

I mean how does that make you think about where the world is and is heading right now?

This is consistent with their position for the last 14 months which is they have been broadly- -The Trump Administration?

-The Europeans and the allies, in that they've been broadly supportive of what the president is doing, they praised him in public, they've tried to accommodate him in their policy and they have been very muted in their criticism even when he has attacked them economically, you know directly and the reason for that is because they're absolutely terrified of you know breaking with him because they don't have a plan B for you know their own security without America and that's why they took a very unfair trade agreement without real retaliation because they believed they needed the US on Ukraine and on European security, and I believe it's why some European officials like the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte the other day were very praising and almost sycophantic toward the president on Iran and I think that's because they want to show that they don't want to give him an excuse to break with them and so they need America on board.

They're trying to hedge, they're trying to build up their own stuff but they don't believe that that will be viable within the next three years.

-That's fair.

So the accommodative position makes an awful lot of sense for allies that don't feel like they have a choice, but for China, right?

I mean, yes, the public statements have been critical without any question, but what they've actually done so far, crickets, in response, I mean, not only to the Americans taking out Maduro in Venezuela, now taking the oil, as it were, but now, you know, decapitation strikes in Iran and, you know, the Chinese might as well be the United Nations for all of the effectiveness of their statements.

Yeah, no, no, it's a really interesting point because we have seen greater alignment between China and Iran over the last few years.

And that, I think, has been mainly economic and some political.

And so China's taken more oil.

And there's been some problems from a U.S.

perspective with the evasion of sanctions.

I think China has helped Iran in some of that.

And then also, they brought Iran more into their political groupings.

And there's been more sort of diplomacy with Iran.

But as you point out, last June and also now, they have not been there for Iran militarily, and neither really has Russia.

There's some reports that they're sending, so have sent or will send some weapons before this conflict started.

But I think it's been much less than the Iranians would want.

And I think that's because the Chinese sort of need Iran less than Iran needs China, because they don't actually want to confront the United States directly over this.

I do think that North Korea and Russia are different, right?

I think this will sort of accelerate, you know, Russia-Chinese cooperation and, you know, Chinese-North Korea cooperation has never been great, but it will definitely accelerate Russia-North Korea cooperation.

So let's look a little longer term.

What do you think is realistically the best and worst case scenario for Iran in, say, a year's time?

I mean, the best case scenario, and I think this is unlikely.

Realistic scenarios.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, but I think it's, I wouldn't rule it out as impossible, is that there would be a better regime in place, a regime that, if not fully democratic, is more legitimate.

There's obviously considerable dissatisfaction and unrest within Iran at the regime.

They do not have popular support.

They lack legitimacy.

And so if that emerged, I think that would be very, very welcome.

And if there was the opportunity to do that, I think it would be irresponsible not to try to cultivate it.

I do think that that is, you know, unlikely, unfortunately, partly because the regime has not lost its capacity for domestic repression.

Even if it cannot fire missiles abroad, it can definitely kill protesters at home.

And there's no real way of achieving regime change from air power alone.

If we set that aside, I think that the worst case scenario is sort of fragmentation.

And the sort of least worst bad scenario is probably that the war ends and the regime has its capacity significantly diminished and is sort of tending toward its internal economic crisis and that the region can sort of get back to, if not normal, a greater level of cooperation and try to turn the page.

That baseline, which is what you seem to be trending towards, that is also a regime that from the perspective of the Iranian people, the 93 million, is going to feel very much like the regime it has been living under.

Yeah, yeah.

And they may, you know, I think that regime will continue to be very vulnerable because it will not have really the economic capacity to provide basic services.

It may not be able to provide energy and electricity to households and firms simultaneously, for instance.

And so you could end up with that breaking down of its own accord.

But I think that that was possible before the war started.

I think that's one of the reasons the war was a mistake is because actually just sticking with the status quo of keeping pressure up through sanctions, using the time that was bought from the strikes last June, you know, holding out the prospect of diplomacy if they were willing to engage, but just basically continuing on with no great degree of urgency was perfectly viable.

There was no reason to say that the choice is either a comprehensive deal that they were unable to accept or war.

That was completely a false choice.

Tom Wright, thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

And now the puppet regime, where President Trump has found the best and really the only viable replacement for Iran's supreme leader.

There is only one candidate who is strong enough to run Iran for us.

Welcome.

-Very glad to be here.

This is totally surreal and I like it.

Tell me why you want the job.

Well, I do think of myself already as a supreme leader.

You really are.

Very strongly.

Millions of people already consider you a sign of God.

But what if they protest in Iran again?

Why would that happen?

Well, didn't we say they should?

Well, if they do it against you, they'll be very ungrateful, radical lunatics, won't they?

They sure will.

Anyway, just do what I'm telling you and everything will be great.

Do what you tell me.

Yeah, that's right.

What, do you think I'm some kind of Delcy?

Ayatollah T answers to nobody but- Well, I'm not taking any fatwas from you.

Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you asked me to take the job.

What?

[phone rings] Hello?

-Hello, Donald.

How's it going with the regime change?

-Yeah, the new guy, he's, uh... [sniffs] He's gonna be very hard for us to work with.

[music] That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

If you like what you've seen, or even if you don't, but you enjoy the feeling of dread and panic that accompanies the show every week, why don't you check us out at GZEROmedia.com.

[MUSIC] Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint.

[MUSIC] And scale their supply chains.

[MUSIC] With a portfolio of logistics and real estate, and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

[MUSIC] Learn more at prologis.com.

>> And by Cox is proud to support GZERO.

The planet needs all of us.

At Cox, we're working to seed the future of sustainable agriculture and reduce plastic waste.

Together, we can work to create a better future.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And.

(upbeat music)