Almost everyone inside both the society and the regime are just waiting for Ayatollah Khamenei to die.

He's 86 years old, he's not the man he used to be.

And so I think that right now people are just waiting for the moment to act.

Hello and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer and today I'm experiencing déjà vu all over again.

And that's because I'm asking a question that's become strangely familiar at this point in President Trump's second term.

Will the United States attack Iran again?

We saw one more round of talks this week between the Americans and the Iranians in Geneva.

But as of now, military strikes are looking increasingly imminent.

The Iranians seem unwilling to engage with the Americans on their ballistic missile program or their support for proxies in the region, both of which are non-negotiables, at least for America's close regional ally, Israel.

Nor does Iran seem open to President Trump's own demand to cease all nuclear enrichment.

As for President Trump, he didn't exactly mince words during his State of the Union address this week.

- I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon, can't let that happen.

- So the question changes from will strikes happen to what form are they likely to take?

Over the past month, the Pentagon has deployed the largest force of American warships and aircraft to the Middle East in decades, including two aircraft carrier strike groups.

If Venezuela was any indication, President Trump seems unlikely to send in the American armada just to bring them back home.

But there has been some wavering inside the White House about whether to order a full decapitation attack to remove Iran's leadership or to begin with a smaller strike.

The Iranians are clearly hoping for the latter and betting that President Trump won't want to further escalate things.

Now that's a hope the oil markets share.

As tensions have escalated, prices have remained reasonably steady because the markets believe that these strikes, though likely, are going to be contained in the near term and aren't going to lead to a massive Iranian retaliation.

There are still lots of ways this could spiral out of control, especially if Iran or its proxies, like the Houthis in Yemen, blow up an American tanker or a warship and end up killing American servicemen and women on duty in the region.

And that brings me to today's interview.

Recently, during a winter rainstorm in Munich, I met up with the Carnegie Endowment's Iran expert, Karim Sadjadpour.

At the time, he said a US strike on Iran was likely but not imminent.

Now that a strike seems both likely and imminent, that conversation feels even more relevant.

And later, GZERO's Tony Maciulis investigates a famous phrase regarding US involvement in the Middle East that now seems quite frankly quaint.

Don't worry, I've also got your puppet regime.

- Vladimir Putin here.

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And... - Karim Sadjadpour, welcome back to the show.

Thank you so much, Ian.

So here we are in blustery Munich for the security conference.

One of the big topics, of course, is going to be Iran and whether or not strikes are coming.

You say you think they're likely but not imminent.

Explain why on both counts.

Well, not imminent because I think the president has made clear he still wants to see negotiations through.

At the same time, I'm not optimistic that these negotiations are going to lead to a resolution.

And coupled with the fact that Iran drove a giant truck through President Trump's red line.

President Trump warned-- You mean on killing all of the Iranian civilians.

On killing the protesters, yeah.

And so I think the combination of those factors makes it much more likely that he's going to act.

So the latter front is interesting, right?

Because initially, that was what he was talking about.

He sent these posts, "We're coming to the rescue.

You and I know thousands, maybe tens of thousands of civilians actually killed."

But then Trump pivoted and said, "Well, yeah, they're not going to execute that one guy, you know, that they put up on these trumped-up charges."

And so now, you know, sort of we've moved on.

Is Trump -- I mean, in Venezuela, Trump wasn't spending a lot of time thinking about, you know, making sure that this becomes a democracy.

In Iran, is he really thinking a lot about, hey, I want to make sure that we protect the civilians?

Because that would be an unusual priority for him.

I don't think he's thinking about democracy, but he has several concerns.

One is the feedback he gets from some of his very close friends in the Persian Gulf, you know, leadership in Saudi Arabia and UAE, who would, on one hand, like to see the Iranian government degraded, at the same time they worry about the fallout.

They don't have the luxury of being thousands of miles away, and they know that the United States can't keep that giant military presence in the region indefinitely.

At the same time, he's worried about state failure or state collapse.

You know, President Trump himself has evoked the Venezuela model, where it was essentially an economic blockade as a prelude to a political decapitation.

And I think if they could somehow see the exit of Ayatollah Khamenei and replaced by someone more compliant, that's the scenario I think he would go for.

- Now, it seems like the Saudis have shifted their perspective, right?

Early on saying, "Under no circumstances, we really don't want you to strike," and then more recently saying, "Well, actually, you might lose credibility if you say all this stuff and then you don't do anything."

Where do you think the Saudis are on this, and where are the Gulf states more broadly?

Do they actually, do they want to see strikes?

Do they really want those strikes to be constrained?

Would they be okay with a decapitation effort, which we hear a lot about from the Trump administration right now?

Well, those countries are understandably ambivalent because Iran is their number one security threat, and Iran still has thousands of close-range ballistic missiles.

So those missiles can't reach Israel.

They certainly can't reach the United States, but they can reach the Gulf.

And Iran has used those before against oil installations in Saudi Arabia, against bases in Qatar.

But not in years for the Saudis.

And the base in Qatar is an American base.

That's an American base, but through still a menacing proxy they have, which is the Houthis in Yemen.

One lesson I learned many years ago, Ian, when I did a Fulbright in Beirut, was that it takes decades to build things.

It takes weeks to destroy things.

And the Islamic Republic of Iran is in the business of destruction.

And so those neighbouring countries are rightfully worried that, you know, they could primarily suffer the blowback.

At the same time, they absolutely do want to see Iran degraded.

And I believe they would like to see a government in Iran whose organising principle is their country's national interest, not revolutionary ideology.

So you think that limited strikes from the United States, you think the Gulf states are actually pretty much on board with that, even if we don't hear it publicly?

I think their view is that no matter what the United States does, whether it's a decapitation operation to actually kill Ayatollah Khamenei or to go after the Revolutionary Guards or their missile arsenal, they want to see the United States not do a one and done.

They want to see the U.S.

maintain that residual presence for a while to protect against any blowback.

Now, Israel.

We just saw Prime Minister Netanyahu make yet another trip to the to the United States to meet with yet again President Trump.

Of course, he's focused on ballistic missiles and degrading them.

He's been pushing the Americans toward military strikes, not the first time.

Talk about the existential threat that could develop to Israel.

Does he want all in or does he really want, "No, I just take care of the ballistic missiles for me"?

I think the Israelis would be happy with an operation which actually attempts to bring down the regime itself.

I think from the Israeli vantage point, so far we've always been addressing the symptoms of Iran's malign behavior, its proxies, its missiles, its nuclear program, but the underlying causes, the nature of the regime.

The Israelis, I think, in the last couple years have really stepped up their operations inside Tehran.

And I think the Israelis, obviously, are far more hawkish on these issues than the Gulf, because they're much further away and they're much stronger militarily.

Now, that leaves what Iran is thinking.

Before we talk about the US relationship, I did note that President Pzeshkian just came out and apologized to the Iranian people for the repression.

Now, ultimately, it wasn't the president's decision.

It was the IRGC.

It was the Supreme Leader.

But I still found that remarkable that he would make that statement.

Does that come from weakness?

When you saw that statement, what went through your head immediately?

I think for most Iranians, they view the president as almost irrelevant.

I don't think they hold him responsible for the killing.

They hold the Supreme Leader responsible.

But it's essentially a society which has come to the realization that this entire system is rotten.

And especially given this massacre that happened in January, I've argued, Ian, that there's no country in the world with a greater gap between the aspirations of its people and the conduct of its government.

- South Korea, one.

North Korea, the other.

- Exactly.

And that gap is, in my view, irreconcilable now.

We have not seen any internal rifts from within the military leadership, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, from the cabinet, from the theocrats.

We've seen none of that.

Why do you think that is?

I think almost everyone inside both the society and the regime are just waiting for Ayatollah Khamenei to die.

He's 86 years old.

He's not the man he used to be.

And I think even within the regime, I would say a pretty sizable majority, even within the body of the Revolutionary Guards understands that this status quo is not tenable.

But it's a big risk to try to launch a coup against someone who set up a system in which there's so much spying happening.

And so I think that right now people are just, rather than major rifts happening, you see people just waiting for the moment to act.

- Does that make a stronger argument for externally removing him?

Or does that martyr him in the eyes of the Iranians because the Americans are suddenly responsible, the Israelis are suddenly responsible?

- You know, this is a great question.

I'm reminded of one of Kissinger's quotes that many of the most important decisions in government are 51-49, and really no one can answer that question surely.

You know, my view would be that military attack is a gamble.

And I'll note that President Trump has gambled three times on Iran.

He left the nuclear deal in 2018, he killed Qasem Soleimani in 2020, last summer Operation Midnight Hammer.

- Yeah.

- 12-day war.

So I think in his head-- And he succeeded from his perspective all three of those times.

Each of them have been vindicated.

So I think he's more likely to take action, but no one can predict what comes after that.

Now, from the Iranian side, we may not be seeing any movement away from the regime internally, but we have seen-- we've seen Iranian drones.

We've seen sort of efforts to threaten American ships, tankers in the region.

This doesn't seem like a regime that is cowering and only trying to play nice, given all of this American military force.

Haven't they learned any lessons from Venezuela from the 12-day war?

Or do you think it's because they're divided in what they want to do and how they respond?

- I think they may have learned the wrong lesson, which is I think the lesson they may have taken away from last June's 12-day war was that by not retaliating in a meaningful way, they didn't exact any costs on the United States and Israel, and so therefore they feel like they can do it again.

Almost 100 Israeli civilians were killed in the responses from Iran.

That's not considered a meaningful response?

Well, they didn't-- it didn't really-- it was a short blip in the life of Israel, and for the United States, wasn't impacted at all.

I don't think the price of oil really went up that much at all.

No, they went down, actually, when the Qatari strikes.

So that's significant.

And so one of the few ways in which Iran can get the world's attention is by trying to spike the price of oil.

And one thing that they have telegraphed this time, whether it's an empty threat or not, they've telegraphed that they're going to regionalize the war if they're attacked.

And does that mean principally in your mind shutting down the Straits of Hormuz and squeezing oil, or does it mean actually turning on proxies and engaging in strikes against critical infrastructure and the rest?

If they try to shut the Strait of Hormuz, they're gonna really alienate their chief ally, which is the government of China.

90% of Iran's oil revenue heads towards China.

And so I think what they've telegraphed is that they will use their missiles against US bases in the region, against oil installations in the region.

There was one individual kind of connected to the Revolutionary Guards who threatened that they could destroy all of Dubai.

And so in the past, these have turned out to be empty threats for Iran.

And I'm not sure President Trump takes them that seriously, but if you're sitting hundreds of miles away in the Persian Gulf, you don't have that much room for error.

So the one piece of your analysis I want to press on there is China as Iran's ally.

I mean, maybe true, but so far, in response to America threatening that they're going to put all these strikes on, China has done nothing to make the Americans feel like they're going to come to Iran's aid.

It's hard to imagine as much they would do.

After Venezuela, China did nothing.

I mean, is that really, is that a credible motivator for Iran at this point?

I should have used the word partner.

They're definitely not an ally.

That's the other thing about the Islamic Republic of Iran is that it is probably one of the most strategically lonely countries in the world by themselves.

And so that 90% of Iranian oil that's destined for China, you know, China's getting deep discounts from them.

But I do think, you know, we commonly lump Chinese and Russian interests together vis-à-vis Iran, and I think they actually have different interests.

I think that China would benefit from an Iran which opens up to the world, who is not a source of instability in the Middle East, which fulfills its enormous potential as an energy superpower.

You know, Iran has the world's second largest reserves of natural gas, third largest reserves of oil, but it's punching way below its weight.

All of that benefits Russia.

Russia wants to see an Iran which is isolated, which plays a destabilizing role in the Middle East, which is a thorn in the side of the United States, which doesn't compete with Russia and their historic sphere of influence, which is Central Asia.

So we commonly lump China and Russia together, but I think they have very divergent interests vis-a-vis Iran.

- If you were betting in the course of the next three, six months as one of the safer bets out there that the Iranian people are gonna suffer more as a consequence of all of this?

Unfortunately, that's been the case, that it's the society which suffers most.

But, you know, I am confident that it may not be a near term happening, but in the medium term, this is one of the most politically mature societies in the region, arguably one of the most secular pro-American societies in the region.

And you know, it's a society which is desperate to live in a country that fulfills Iran's enormous potential as a nation.

You say pro-American, I mean, the Kurds have been pro-American for a long time and they've been very disappointed by different American governments over time.

The United States went out there and said, you know, we're going to rescue you.

There was no rescue.

And the amount of death we saw in a matter of a week or two was, you know, close to what we've seen over a year of the Gaza war.

Does that change the way Iranians feel about the United States?

I think the last chapter hasn't yet been written.

I think people are really awaiting to see what President Trump is going to do.

But if we fast-forward this story one year and nothing happened, or the United States did a mini-nuclear deal with the Iranian government, I think there will be profound disappointment in President Trump.

But ultimately, I don't think that people's attitudes about the United States changed that significantly, and that I think most Iranians now recognize that so long as the organizing principle of the state is death to America and death to Israel, it's never going to fulfill its great potential.

And reconciliation with the United States is one of the first prerequisites, I think people understand, for Iran emerging from isolation.

Karim Sadjadpour, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you, Ian.

From a conversation about America's next steps in Iran to a memory about the lead up to the invasion of Iraq and a political phrase resurfacing as old alliances shift and change.

Here's GZERO's Tony Maciulis.

What we're doing is very simple, peace.

It's called the Board of Peace, and it's all about an easy word to say, but a hard word to produce.

Peace.

- President Trump's Board of Peace, part of his 20-point plan for the future of Gaza, has a charter, a mandate to end wars, and a coalition of willing states signed up to help the effort.

What it lacks right now is membership from America's biggest allies, including the UK, France, Canada, or Germany.

Another sign, experts say, that the U.S.

is moving away from the transatlantic organizations it created, like the UN and NATO.

I talked about this with author and global strategist Parag Khana at the Munich Security Conference.

- Yes, America did build a multilateral architecture together with its allies and partners in the post-war system 80 years ago.

But at the same time, America has been practicing a la carte multilateralism, which is another way of saying identifying tactical coalitions that suit certain purposes for at least a few decades.

[applause] - Case in point, in 2003, after failing to secure U.N.

Security Council approval for war in Iraq, President George W. Bush created what he also called a coalition of the willing to support U.S.

plans to topple Saddam Hussein.

On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war.

Every nation in this coalition has chosen to bear the duty and share the honor of serving in our common defense.

Coalitions of the willing, it turns out, are the people that agree with you, even when traditional allies walk away.

The refusal of France to support the U.S.

in Iraq triggering a symbolic protest.

Instead of offering French fries, some restaurants across the country are now calling them freedom fries.

And today, in the midst of geopolitical uncertainty, Europeans have gotten into the coalition-building game, too.

We will go further to develop a coalition of the willing to defend a deal in Ukraine and to guarantee the peace.

Last year, more than 30 leaders formed what they called the Coalition of the Willing, in response to concerns that U.S.

support for Ukraine was wavering.

Within this coalition, we are working to provide robust security guarantees to ensure that Ukraine never faces such aggression again.

And today's global coalitions extend far beyond defense and security needs, from trade to technology to supply chain resilience.

As traditional alliances falter, new and more pragmatic partnerships are emerging.

Well, everyone is practicing what I call multi-alignment.

It's a term that we traditionally ascribe to the middle powers.

Saudi Arabia will multi-align, Kazakhstan will multi-align, Brazil will try to send a multi-alignment, India will, but now America's own allies.

All of this does not mean globalization is dead, it's quite the opposite, right?

As you can see, everyone building more networks with everyone else does not sound like deglobalization to me.

No, I was gonna say, I specifically was gonna ask you, is this the end of globalization or is it just globalization finding new friends?

Absolutely.

So what you can see with Canada is the, you know, the visit to China and trying to seek greater market access there, which Europeans are also doing.

You have the Europeans saying, "Hmm, if we can offset, or if we trade more, export more to India, to Southeast Asia, to Japan, and to Mercosur, we will offset 90% of what our export losses to the U.S.

are going to be."

That's the kind of calculation that every country is making.

And again, the more friends you find, the more resilient globalization becomes because you're fundamentally diversifying, right?

You're building more networks, and you're building more optionality into the system.

Making new coalitions, willing or not, politically necessary in an increasingly fragmented world.

For GZERO, I'm Tony Maciulis.

And now to Puppet Regime, where President Trump may be about to attack Iran, but where President Putin and Xi are trying their best to let dialogue win the day.

Vladimir Putin here.

Do you have trouble communicating with your spouse or partner?

In today's edition of This Authoritarian Life, world's most ruthless self-care podcast, President Xi and I will be modeling positive dialogue patterns that can save your relationship.

Let's start with this.

Trump is going to attack Iran.

Sure looks like it.

And I, note I'm using I statement, I feel unsupported because you seem unwilling to do anything about it.

I feel overburdened by the expectation that it's always my responsibility to rescue our friends, especially when you did nothing for Venezuela.

- That makes me feel defensive, especially since you are now repeating pattern of behavior with Cuba, where you are also doing nothing.

Well, I think the cycle of learned helplessness really began with you doing nothing for Syria.

I accept that.

I think I just had no more emotional bandwidth left outside of my toxic enmeshment with Ukraine.

And I acknowledge that I have enabled that.

Thank you.

I feel seen.

So are we helping Iran?

I just think boundaries are so important.

Boundaries, yes.

Borders, no.

♪ ♪ 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're also great at escalating tense situations, 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 and scale their supply chains.

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

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... ♪♪