Fareed Zakaria on the Endgame in Iran

19:53Fareed Zakaria:Yeah, this is their 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 should have laid out a series of, you know, this is what we would like to degrade Iran's ballistic missile capability so that it no longer threatens its neighbors. We want to degrade Iran's navy so that it no longer poses a threat to the safe flow of oil in and out of the Straits of Hormuz. We want to degrade Iran's command and control so that they can no longer run these militias around the Middle East.

20:39Fareed Zakaria: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.

21:05Scott Galloway:Do you think one strategy for success might be saying, all right, we're going to neuter them militarily, kinetically, politically, economically? And it sounds to me, 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 their 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?

21:48Fareed Zakaria: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, you know, trying to intimidate. You know, I've always thought its nuclear program was designed to intimidate more than to use that. 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, millenarian regime. Remember, the only military innovation that Iran has produced is a drone, the name of which is Shaheed, which is used by the Russians in Ukraine.

22:32Fareed Zakaria:And a Shaheed means martyr. So even their drones, they call martyrs, right? There's 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 a very big transformation. It's only 20 years ago that the Saudis used to host telethons for Palestinian terrorists whom they called Palestinian martyrs. The Gulf Arabs have been totally transformed. Egypt has been transformed. Turkey is still 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.

23:15Fareed Zakaria: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 of a 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 meddlesome abroad. It realizes that that game is over.

23:48Scott Galloway: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. 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?

24:27Fareed Zakaria: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, you know, a kind of blow to that axis of instability and the anti-Western axis that it represents. The challenge is the way that 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, which, of course, Trump wants, because Trump hates anything that constrains him, anything that involves relying on, you know, the IAEA inspectors or a U.N.

25:39Fareed Zakaria: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. 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 easy to do that because Iran is a rogue regime. It has been acting in ways that are violations of all kinds of international norms and laws.

26:21Fareed Zakaria: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. We get to act unilaterally. We're never going to be constrained by anybody else.

26:37Scott Galloway: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-throated support, but support. I was really shocked, though, 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 and America's place in the world right now.

27:08Fareed Zakaria:So first, 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 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, Keir Starmer is, 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.

27:50Fareed Zakaria: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. People sometimes think of, remember it as unilateral American action. It wasn't. The 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's might makes right. It's 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.

28:33Fareed Zakaria: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 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 has essentially tried to stay out of the, you know, it has neither celebrated nor condemned the American-Israeli attacks on Iran.

29:26Fareed Zakaria:at least the last I saw. And that, I think, reflects a very interesting, you know, kind of rise of realpolitik amongst some of these emerging powers that are saying to themselves, you know, 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.

29:52Scott Galloway: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, OK, we're supposed to have co-equal 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.

30:48Scott Galloway: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 and we don't know where it's going to land.

31:04Fareed Zakaria:Yeah, I agree with that. It's moving very fast. So it would be hard and a lot depends on, you know, where things go. So, 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 is, you know, 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 there been any congressional involvement? And remember, you know, the Constitution vests with Congress the power to declare war.

31:51Fareed Zakaria: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 to 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 was transformed into something more pluralistic, democratic, you know, and representative and reflective of the will of the Iranian people.

32:40Fareed Zakaria: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 can 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.

33:03Scott Galloway:We'll be right back after a quick break.

33:10Scott Galloway:Hey, Kara Swisher here. I want to let you know that Vox Media is returning to South by Southwest in Austin for live tapings of your favorite podcasts. Join us from March 13th through the 15th for live tapings of Today Explained, Teffy Talks, Prof G Markets, and of course, your two favorite podcasts, Pivot and On with Kara Swisher. The stage will also feature sessions from Brene Brown and Adam Grant, Marquez Brownlee, Keith Lee, Vivian Tu, and Robin Arzon. It's all part of the Vox Media podcast stage at South by Southwest, presented by Odoo. Visit voxmedia.com slash SXSW to pre-register and get your special discount on your innovation badge.

33:53Scott Galloway:That's voxmedia.com slash SXSW to register. Really, you should register. We sell out and we hope to see you there.

34:05Scott Galloway:What are the main takeaways of the foreign policy section from Donald Trump's State of the Union address?

34:11Fareed Zakaria:I do think they've made a decision to elevate domestic issues as we head towards the midterms. We'll see if that sticks because he keeps getting drawn back to the foreign policy issues. I'm John Feiner. And I'm Jake Sullivan. And we're the hosts of The Long Game, a weekly national security podcast.

34:28Scott Galloway:This week, we'll react to President Trump's State of the Union address, the situation with Iran, and the eruption of violence involving cartels in Mexico. The episode's out now. Search for and follow The Long Game wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Net Worth and Chill, I'm joined by Her First 100K, a.k.a. Tori Dunlop, a fellow personal finance creator who's changing how an entire generation thinks about money. Tori's journey is a masterclass in turning personal finance wins into a platform that empowers millions. She opens up about the real strategy behind hitting that six-figure milestone without the typical privileged blind advice and how she's redefining what it means to be a wealthy woman in 2026.

35:08Scott Galloway:We're diving deep into investment strategies for real people with real budgets and why financial feminism isn't just a buzzword, it's a movement. Get ready for an unfiltered conversation about money, entrepreneurship, and what it really takes to build both personal wealth and a business empire. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash yourrichbff.

35:29Scott Galloway:We're back with more from Fareed Zakaria.

35:34Scott Galloway: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 I'm going to push back, that the new winner is October the 7th. that if you had told Sinmar, Sadat, Khomeini, that 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, Assad is playing video games in Moscow.

36:17Scott Galloway: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 this century?

36:32Fareed Zakaria: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. neutered. Look, I've been writing for a while and saying Israel is the superpower of the Middle East.

37:17Fareed Zakaria: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, pinprick by pinprick basis, that it was going to go all out, that it felt, you know, Bibi and Netanyahu felt probably correctly reading 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 changed geopolitical reality, which was that the Gulf states were no longer in, you know, existential opposition to Israel. In fact, as you say, were kind of in a tacit alliance with Israel against Iran.

38:06Fareed Zakaria: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. And the Israeli military has become, as I said, the superpower of the Middle East. It's 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. Iran has been penetrated in so many different ways. It's nuclear establishment, it's military establishment, even some parts, this is the least, even some parts of its clerical establishment.

38:52Scott Galloway:Talk about how this impacts Russia and China.

38:55Fareed Zakaria: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.

39:36Fareed Zakaria:And this is sort of a broader issue. It 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 that order has been, you know, 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 China is very different.

40:18Fareed Zakaria: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, you know, larger geopolitical realities we should be trying to exploit, which is that China does not benefit from a world in chaos.

41:05Fareed Zakaria:And we should be trying to make that case to them much more carefully and strongly. Russia does. Russia is, at the end of the day, a 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 a stable Europe. They don't want, you know, trading prosperous relations with Europe because that means they become smaller and smaller and less and less important. Russia's 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.

41:48Fareed Zakaria:You know, 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.

41:58Scott Galloway:It strikes me that if we're still talking about Iran and we're still flying sorties 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 are going to be killed. Our 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 reelection or election. 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?

42:35Scott Galloway:All right, Fareed, 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, the term forever war is going to be in every campaign out of every Democrat come November.

42:54Fareed Zakaria:Yeah, so first I agree with you. I think, look, let's remember, foreign policy by and large does not usually play much of a role in American elections. Remember Bush, you know, Bush Sr., 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, you know, almost technically perfect terms, had a 91 percent approval rating and then lost the election to Bill Clinton. So, you know, 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, you know, they haven't been able to find a way to get out.

43:39Fareed Zakaria: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 Ann Colgers 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, fund militias, and, you know, itemize the things that have been destroyed and say, we have now achieved, we believe, a 70 % reduction in Iran's offensive military capacity and a 50 % destruction of its military industrial complex, list the factory, the things that have been destroyed, and say, we now regard this operation as successful.

44:57Fareed Zakaria:I would do that. 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 at 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.

45:41Scott Galloway:And a lot of this is 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 immigrants I'd 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 these, they just, they felt like they just slipstreamed into American culture. And I wonder if, You know, and my understanding is that actually in Iran, there's actually a huge population, next generation that's less theocratic, less anti-West, doesn't buy into this organizing principle of death to America, death to Israel.

46:35Scott Galloway: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 could be an enormous winner as a trading partner. It's just as hard as I try, and there's always an X factor with war, I feel like this could be, we could be on the precipice of something really wonderful for the Middle East and for the world. Prove me wrong.

47:09Fareed Zakaria: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 once again be, you know, the kind of player it was in the world. Remember, 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, you know, the two oldest places you can think of.

48:06Fareed Zakaria: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 from Iranians anytime some of this issue comes up and the passion with 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, you know, all of a sudden.

48:57Fareed Zakaria:And I haven't seen the signs of that yet. But 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 would love to see a secular Iran that 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.

49:33Scott Galloway:Freed Zakaria is a journalist, author, and political commentator. Freed, I meant what I said. I can't imagine you. Are you aware that you're probably the most in-demand commentator in the world right now? Very much appreciate your time.

49:44Fareed Zakaria:Always such a pleasure. Thank you, Scott.

49:55Scott Galloway:This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Genere. Kami Reek is our social producer. Bianca Rosario Ramirez is our video editor. And Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from Prop G Media.