America, Iran, and a World in Turmoil: A Conversation With Ian Bremmer

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31:41One of the most surprising effects in some ways is the ways this could reshape the U.S.-Israel relationship. We ran a piece early in the war by Dana Struhl, who had been a Pentagon official working on Middle East issues, warning that the fact of the U.S.-Israel fighting together really for the first time in this kind of war was going to be pretty consequential and, in her view, damaging to the U.S.-Israel relationship. It does seem like that may be true, just given the kind of rhetoric you saw from Vice President Vance from the podium at the White House a few days ago, tensions over Lebanon, as you were noting earlier.

32:15Do you see this as a kind of inflection point for U.S.-Israel as you project forward? Not yet. I don't. A few things. First of all, on the technology side, right? I mean, the fact is that the Israelis, the Americans, and increasingly the Emiratis are very, very integrated with American military industrial technology companies. the Palantirs, the Andrials, Scale AI, all of these guys. I mean, this capability is cutting edge. It is fast moving. And Israel is, they've made a complete bet and there's a lot of money involved in it. So it's consequential. I also think that it's real that the Americans continue to provide billions and billions to the Israelis every year.

33:05And while I saw Rahm Emanuel saying, we still want to be allies, but we don't need to pay them because they're an advanced industrial economy, they can afford it. And Rahm, it's easier for him to say that as a Jew than it would be when AOC does or when Gavin Newsom does, for example. So I see that, but I also see that the level of military and intelligence integration is so high. And Trump is still a very consequential, very popular, you know, leader in Israel. The Israelis immediately joined Trump's board of peace when, you know, almost no other American allies did. You know, you've got U.S. support for recognition of the occupied territory, the Golan Heights.

33:56It was Trump that moved the embassy to Jerusalem, despite so many other American presidents that had promised that they would. It was Trump that basically winked in a nod on accepting further illegal seizures of West Bank territory. Now, I think that that could change a lot with a new administration, more so on the Democratic side than on the Republican side. But I think Tucker Carlson might be running and and he would certainly lean into that heavily. But, you know, you and I both know that the institutional capacity to maintain stickiness of things that make a lot of money for the military industrial complex.

34:46But I recognize that the military industrial complex in the U.S. creates jobs in every one of the 435 districts for members of the House, whether it's red or blue. And they spend a lot of money on lobby. And that's even more true when you look at these new AI and technology players on defense. And they are all in on maintaining that relationship with Israel. So I do think that the interest of the so-called uniparty in ensuring that that relationship persists is really strong. And I don't know that even a Tucker presidency, as unlikely as that presently seems, though no less likely than a Trump presidency would have been in 2015, would really break that, would really break that.

35:35You mentioned the Board of Peace, and just as you say that, it's striking that, I don't know, it was about eight months ago, a little more than eight months ago, that the Gaza plan was announced, that the war ended, and kind of fairly ambitious, expansive set of objectives was laid out in the Trump administration's plan. None of that, or very little of that has happened, and Gaza seems to be in this kind of purgatory. That war persistent. Definitely, do you see any potential movement there, or is that likely working? I think it's like Iraq. I think it's, you know, you got phase one of the deal and you made a big announcement and then Trump's interests moved on and phase two and phase three are much harder and the Israelis aren't prepared to be supportive.

36:14And so it's like, whatever. But I don't think it's a priority. I think the priority is Venezuela. The priority is Cuba. Priority is Mexico. He's going to go back to the national security strategy where he's got legitimate wins and where the general, you know, sort of the trajectory and the the atmospherics are much, much more positive and favorable for Trump, for Marco, for others, where I think it's really hard to get to this nuclear agreement with the Iranians and the 300 billion deal that would be attended to that. that the Gulf states have no idea what it actually is. And the Americans are saying, well, we're not going to pay for it.

36:55Well, so it's not just about getting the Iranians to play. This is the Gulf government supposedly investing $300 billion in Iran for a week and everything else. Yeah, and again, since Trump says no taxpayer money is going to happen, so obviously it's mostly coming from them. And so you've got the Iranians not willing to give the nuclear piece. You've got the Gulf. We say we have no idea what the$300 billion is. You've got the Israelis with the Lebanon card. None of that looks likely. Same thing is true on Gaza. And I don't understand what the border piece is supposed to do. Again, this was weird.

37:27So you and I were at Davos. And of course, the border piece was meant to be a Gaza reconstruction mechanism. And there was a lot of movement. I mean, you know, I remember talking to Larry Fink weeks before Davos and his involvement. This is the CEO of BlackRock. Yeah. And I mean, to try to help provide funding for what would eventually be reconstruction for Gaza and the Gulf states were into it and Trump had succeeded in getting a Security Council resolution, no vetoes to support the Gaza peace plan that they had driven back in September. And so like if he had shown up at Davos and just done that, that was a big win.

38:14And that was it would have been some of the biggest news that would have come out at Davos. And instead, Trump decided to go bigger and he was going to announce a new mechanism that would be a global border piece where he would be chairman for life. He'd be in charge even after he was no longer president of the United States. And countries would give billions to that to have permanent membership. And Trump would determine where that money would actually go and be used. And of course, the Chinese immediately say, no, we're not joining that. We'd much rather just take over your old role in the United Nations, which is a meaningful organization.

38:51So he ends up standing on the stage with like Paraguay and Belarus and Albania and Mongolia. It was meaningless. It was meaningless. And he basically turned a winner into a loser. And one could argue that he did the same thing with Iran when, you know, he had his 12 day war with the Israelis. The Israelis started it. Trump came in just like he did with Qasem Soleimani. He hit him hard. There was no response against the Americans directly. They were able to push back their enriched uranium program, their processing. Right. And he could have done it again. And instead, he's like, no, no, no, no, no.

39:37I'm going to go bigger. And again, Venezuela, so successful for Trump on the ground. He was maximally confident in his ability to turn Iran into a new Venezuela. He was not listening to advisers that were urging caution, whether the head of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Cain, or whether his vice president, J.D. Vance, and instead was like, nope, I'm in charge. I'm the guy. I can make this happen. And as we've seen four months later, he has failed wildly, wildly. And it's unfortunate. But, you know, look, Trump is the leader of the most powerful country in the world, and he is an extraordinary risk taker.

40:21I wouldn't be surprised if he has more success in Cuba than Obama ever did. But he's also had bigger failures than almost anyone. And certainly since the Iraq war under Bush, it's hard to come up with a president that has failed more spectacularly than what we've seen Trump just pull off with Iran. And it's the same president. That's kind of extraordinary. You note in the piece that China's both the power that's likely to pick up influence in the Middle East in the wake of this war, but also much more broadly, the greatest geopolitical beneficiary of this. How do you think China is playing this moment, as you assess Xi Jinping's reaction to Trump this time around?

41:01Do you think it's using the moment well or not as well as people might think in this moment? I'd give them probably like a six out of 10, right? So again, I mean, because the Chinese are so risk averse, that they really want to take no no moves that could lead to regrets right it's all no regret moves it's all incremental and so they see all of these opportunities and they say great great great so let's just be very cautious this would have been a time for the chinese if they wanted to to take the lead in the iran peace negotiations they remember they put that five-point plan together with Pakistan.

41:44They could have nudged the Pakistanis out. They chose not to. They're like, ah, this could go badly. We don't want a part of that. And I mean, certainly Xi Jinping has made it more clear to Putin that he'd like to see a ceasefire and this war is not going well for the Russians. And we've heard that through Xi's conversations with Trump in Beijing, but also through conversations I've had with senior Chinese leaders since then, since Putin was in Moscow and since Xi Jinping was in Pyongyang. But they're not willing to play a prominent public role. And, you know, they've beaten up on the Japanese and this historic enmity.

42:26And they don't like the fact that Takeichi has said some, you know, sort of assertive things about Taiwan and that she's spending more money on the military. But the Japanese, like the South Koreans, are very, very worried that they can't count on the Americans going forward. This would be an opportunity to reach out to Japan and South Korea if you or she should think. They're not doing that. They're not doing that. They could be much, much more assertive in taking some risk and occupying that space. And they're not doing it. So I would argue that they're playing very cautious, long ball on let's just make sure that we've got we've got our AI investments.

43:10We've got our new energy investments. We're becoming the world's first electrostate. Our economy is not doing that well. Let's be very careful at home. no structural reforms, not trying to move towards a convertible RMB, no threat to the American dollar as a global reserve. It's all just really incremental. These Americans, they've got new leaders every four years. They've got elections every two. They make all these crazy mistakes. We're not going to make big mistakes, but we may not take advantage of very much that's out there. That's the way I would see it. So I think that in the Middle East, China has no real enemies in the Middle East.

43:50And remember, they facilitated that Iran-Saudi Arabia breakthrough, and they invited them to Beijing. That was a big deal. Why wouldn't you take more advantage of that going forward now? Why wouldn't you want to be the country that puts the Saudis and the Iranians together after this war? Maybe they will. I don't see them doing that. the other cause for skepticism as i see it when it comes to china's ability to really take advantage of this moment it's like that they haven't been able to adjust their domestic economic model at all that all of this is driven by huge numbers of exports so if you're sitting in in europe or in you know parts of latin america or sub-saharan africa or elsewhere in asia this should be a moment when given u.s policies there'd be interest in a better relationship with china but you're such economic threat that you have a kind of coming trade war between Europe and China, despite, you know, every reason why Europe would have a better relation with China.

44:47So that, I think, undercut. I couldn't agree more. But the only part of the Chinese economy that's really firing is manufacturing export. And they're leaning into it. And you see the trade surpluses are wild and massive. And this is making the Europeans feel much more vulnerable and hit them back. And that is also true with other countries, though. If you're sub-Saharan Africa, you really don't have a choice. Right. And they are they are engaging more with the Indians. And that's been smart. And that invitation with Shanghai Cooperation Organization and, you know, try the reduction of tensions on the border, the efforts to improve cross-border trade.

45:30Those things have seemed smart to me. But that wasn't being driven by such imbalances in the economic relationship where with the Europeans, it really is. And they would have to be willing to take domestic risk economically. And they weren't. And it reminds me of zero COVID. You know, Xi Jinping was all in on a very, very risk averse strategy. And he held on to it, held on to it, held on to it until it was so obvious that it just wasn't working. It was causing all of these challenges for him. So finally, just rip the bandaid off. But what was interesting, Dan, and we should remember this, when he ripped the bandaid off on zero COVID, I mean, they basically said everyone gets COVID.

46:17Right. And they did it within like three days. You had never seen policy move that quickly at scale. So we should recognize that China's ability to change their tune on policy at a big level could happen quickly, could happen quickly, even though it's not right now. I don't feel confident in saying that their focus on just incremental, no structural reforms in their domestic side, which is going to force them to continue with these deeply problematic export policies, that we won't see a sudden change there in a year and two years' time. I don't feel confident about that. What about the middle power approach to this moment?

47:03It's requisite in almost any conversation we have at this point to talk about the Mark Carney speech at Davos six or so months ago. So as you've watched both Canada, but also other middle powers, U.S. allies facing a much different Washington, how do you assess their efforts to shape this moment in a way that protects their interests? I think even Carney has climbed down from some of his more aggressive positions. But with this New York speech a few weeks ago, and yeah, we can be like great together. And so, Mark, first of all, I think that there have been three different speeches that are consequential in that regard on thinking about what's coming next geopolitically.

47:42All of them have been kind of subverted by GZERO reality. So Marx was really big, middle powers, big rupture, need a consolidated strategy, can't have a consolidated strategy. So as a consequence, you've got this, you know, sort of variable geometry where different groupings of countries will do more together and they'll hedge more on different issues when they can. Why? Because there's no there there in middle power alignment and everybody is going to go their own way in terms of how they do and don't hedge the Americans and the Chinese. Secondly, you've got the Chinese saying Thucydides trap.

48:19It's all about the United States and China. We need to avoid that. China's rising, America's in decline, we're going to be careful and cautious. But the reality is that the United States isn't declining. It's America's allies that are declining. China's not willing to actually play the kind of role that would be required to make a Thucydides trap come along. And there are lots of other countries that are very consequential. And there are non-country actors that are very consequential, as you and I have talked about and as I've written a lot about in foreign affairs over the last few years and technology companies who act as functional sovereigns in the digital space.

48:54And then we have Emmanuel Macron and the G7 and talking about these three different sort of economic policies, fiscal policies that are fundamentally imbalanced from the three major economic powers, the EU systematically underinvesting, the Americans systematically taking on too much debt, and the Chinese systematically manufacturing too much for export. And that would be a wonderful conversation for all three leaders to have to figure out how those imbalances could be set into balance, of which none of which are willing to do anything. Not all three and not any dyad. You would imagine that this would be a great conversation for the Americans and Europeans to have together vis-a-vis China.

49:48There ain't no way that's happening in this environment. So, you know, it's like three really interesting analytic perspectives on what happens in the GZERO and what happens is the GZERO hits you back in the face. That's kind of where we are. If you bring in those tech company actors, this goes back to a piece you wrote, I think in 2021 about the technopolar moment. We've seen so many kind of interesting dynamics around this over the last several months, whether it's Elon Musk and SpaceX and Starlink and the way that, you know, decisions about who has access to Starlink terminals can shape wars, the back and forth between Anthropik and the Trump administration on AI models.

50:32And I think it was several days ago that the administration very suddenly shut down Anthropik's most recent model because I thought the safety risks were not adequately addressed. How do you read the technopolar dynamic as it's played out in the the Trump administration. You and I saw the G7 and saw those CEOs, the tech CEOs sitting around the table with the G7 leaders and calling for a US-led AI coalition of governance and getting nothing. And absent that, they're writing their own rules. I mean, there couldn't have been a better visual for the technopolar world we're talking about than that.

51:09And these technology companies that AI is coming fast. It's extraordinary in the capabilities. You saw Mark Warner talking about the fact that all of the internal defenses for the NSA and others were broken when they were in an internal usage by mythos, you know, sort of we're seeing that, nope, they just found everything and were able to break it. And that's why the Americans had to shut down. But I mean, you know, how many months are we away from the Chinese having those capabilities, you know, six max, right? And it's not just those companies. It's going to be a whole bunch of smaller actors that will be able to start programming these things without enormous amount of scientific capability.

51:51So I worry a lot about what happens when the Russians getting hit deep inside Russia, even in Moscow, by the Ukrainians. And Putin seems to be losing the war. Marco Rubio was saying in the G7 to some Europeans that Putin seems to be the only person out that doesn't realize he's losing the war in Ukraine right now, but he doesn't realize it. He's not willing to act that way. He's certainly not willing to accept a ceasefire without preconditions as Zelensky has been willing to. What happens when Putin ultimately, unwilling to listen to his advisors, is unwilling to listen to anyone around the world with 5 ,000 nuclear weapons.

52:34You know, what might he do when pushed against a wall? I mean, I got a note from a world leader this weekend specifically on that. It's like, you know, seeing that a lot of the Europeans are acting like they're scared of the cornered rat. And how should they respond to that? Very interesting, right? I'm very worried about that in the next few years. That is the only purely geopolitical risk that gives me systemic pause. Dan, I can think of five risks like that from AI that give me systemic pause in the next three years. Certainly the bio threat that comes from people, never mind countries, deploying these AI models.

53:21Certainly the lethal autonomous drone swarms being programmed and what that could mean. Certainly the impact of cybersecurity ripping AI models and their impact on critical infrastructure, national security infrastructure, power grids. Impact of bot fleets, agent fleets on the functioning of a financial market. I just I just named four. Right. All of those, in my view, in the next one to three years, worry me as much as what I see happening from Putin. And they worry me as much because, like with Putin, there ain't no governance mechanism. Right. That's the problem. Like Putin wouldn't be such a risk if there was a governance mechanism, if there were people around him that some checks and balances.

54:19you had some rule of law you had some allies that could talk him off the ledge i mean all of that kind of stuff you don't have any of that with putin and you don't have any of that with this ai stuff like this stuff is the political scientists are not covering it they don't have models for it they don't understand it the the leaders in the g7 that like they have a much better clue in how to handle china on how to respond to russia you know even when they're going off the rails than they do in figuring out what to do with AI. We've got to spend a lot more time and effort and resources on this. Can I ask about the governance piece?

54:55Because you know the private sector conversations here. You've been involved on the UN side trying to get at least some nascent effort to create some kind of governance frameworks here. What is not working there? And do you see any hope that those will get traction? Or have you, I don't imagine you would've declared defeat on that, But the odds just seem very long that you'll get major progress on governance on a timeline that really matters, given how quickly the models are developing. I think Sam Altman was right about this a year ago when he said that a crisis is coming. We have to hope that it's, you know, sort of small enough that it doesn't really blow us up.

55:33But we have to hope it's big enough that it forces us to move. See, COVID was not a big enough crisis to force us to move. I mean, the U.S. out of the World Health Organization and all this money out of pandemic response just a few years after COVID. And it's because we just didn't take it seriously enough. We can deal with that. Right. So I think that on the AI side, given how fast it's moving and given how absent governance is, it's clear that we're going to have crises that will be part of the forcing of the response mechanism. It's not going to be proactive. There are some areas where I see some movement.

56:11I see some movement between the Chinese and the Americans. I think that the Chinese are very worried about the biosecurity threat coming from other actors, not U.S., not in China. I think that the Americans and the Chinese will have the willingness to engage in some of that. And that'll be constructive. And I look forward to seeing that. I think it'll be, you know, track one. I think we track one and a half. But I think that'll be useful. I think that there'll be some movement from the AI companies to try to do more on the bio side. And maybe the US government, maybe this one, maybe the next one will take it up.

56:48Maybe some other countries will too. But I mean, the reality is this kind of stuff that you and I have been talking about for years, like mechanisms, like an AI stability board that would recognize when there are threats that come from AI that surface and communicate them and immediately get all of the relevant actors together to try to contain it. The only thing you had close to that was Besant with all the bankers. And then you'd say, why Besant and not also CISA, which would have been on the critical infrastructure side? It's like, well, because critical infrastructure outside finance, Americans didn't have talent.

57:23Why only the banks? Why not the critical infrastructure companies? Well, because it was Besant. Why not the Canadians? Why not the Europeans? Well, because they didn't care as much about them. None of that works because AI isn't just about the banks and isn't just about the Americans. I mean, this is systemic stuff. So no, we're not moving quickly in that direction, in my view. What is the AI version of a Cuban Missile Crisis? You know, if you take the analogy that that's what really drove progress on arms control and non-pro, what's a scenario that you think would focus minds without destroying the world?

57:59I think that any of these sorts of attacks, I mean, again, God forbid, I've talked to so many chief security officers about the possibility of like a major drone swarm that kills hundreds of thousands in a stadium, someplace, an open air stadium. I think something like that happening anywhere around the world would make people treat the response on AI and drones seriously, immediately and put resources towards it. And so think about the equivalence of those in terms of scale in all of the other areas we're talking about. And that's kind of what you're looking at. The other dimension of the public-private dynamic in the Trump administration that is notable and challenges foreign policy analysis, because it's different than the kinds of factors we usually consider seriously, is, to put it simply, corruption or kleptocracy is the way we often talk about it.

58:54How do you factor that into geopolitical analysis, foreign policy analysis at this moment? And how do you think about the long-term effects of what we've seen in the last year and a half? So two ways. I mean, first, obviously, corruption is a long-term problem in the United States. The U.S. has become a coin-operated democracy. Billions of dollars go into its elections, go into its lobbies in ways that are well, well beyond that of any other advanced industrial economy. so much so that most average Americans are now feeling that they no longer feel like they will have opportunities for themselves because of a two-tier system.

59:29Two-tier justice system, two-tier legal system, unless you have access to power and can pay for it, system doesn't really work for you. That's how you got Trump. And unfortunately, Trump is not responding to it by fighting it, though that was the drain the swamp idea in his first term. He doesn't talk about that anymore. Instead, he's monetizing. I don't think you can assess Trump policies domestically or foreign policy unless you have as one of your independent variables who is getting paid. Right. And that should not be a principal driver of U.S. policy, but it is becoming a more principal driver of U.S.

1:00:11policy. And so I don't see how you can do the assessment unless you have that. But I also recognize that the growth in anti-establishment sentiment in U.S. political system is going to persist. and the fact that Trump's political revolution has failed and has not been true to many of its core promises, it has on border security, but it's not on ending all wars. And it certainly is not in draining the swamp or dealing with the Epstein files, for example. There will be other leaders that will be elected to respond to that. So I think that the next political revolution in the U.S. is much more likely to be a legitimate anti-corruption push.

1:00:58And the question will be, does that also mean general pitchforks against wealthy people, against oligarchs, against, you know, folks that aren't involved in corruption, but are seen as benefiting illegitimately from a system that is capturable, right, through its legal system. And I would also say that when Trump first became president. I thought there were three characteristics that Trump had that many presidents have had, but he had them to a greater degree than any American president that I had experienced. And the first was an authoritarian impulse, a greater willingness to support systems that did not have checks and balances on the executive and wanting that in the United States.

1:01:42secondly a personal support for corruption and kleptocracy and third an incompetence when it came to policy despite his genius in branding and his political id and his instincts and impulses but an incompetence when it came to policy and that of the three i thought the one that had the greatest impact was the policy incompetence and i felt that way in 2016 and i think that is even more true in 2026, that his belief that he knows better than everyone else and his willingness to run over, in many cases, quite smart political advisors, not all of them. I mean, some of them are like Hank Seth and wildly unfit, but some of them like Marco Rubio could be secretary of state for anyone and would certainly be effective.

1:02:35And Scott Bessent, in my view, and John Ratcliffe, in my view. Dan Cain, certainly in my view. And yet, and yet Trump does not listen to them with frequency because he knows better and he doesn't know better. And that, that leads to extraordinary policy mistakes. Whether you're talking about something wildly inconsequential and stupid, like a reflecting pool, or whether you're talking about something incredibly consequential that matters, like the war in Iran. And that's kind of where I think we are today. You definitely brought us full circle there. So we could spend another hour on Cuba and Ukraine and Washington and much else.

1:03:15But let's leave it there, Ian. Thanks for this. We'll do it soon, I'm sure, man. Yeah. The great recent piece, the AI and tech pieces from a couple of years ago are well worth going back to. But for now, thanks so much for doing this. Dan, great talking to you, man. Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com. This episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Mary-Kate Godfrey and Kanesh Therroer. Our audio engineer is Christopher Cook. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Irina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

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