Full Episode - The Real Cost of Trump's Iran Gamble + Ian Bremmer on How the Iran War Reshaped Global Power

**Chuck Todd** (0:00)
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Hello there, and welcome to the Thursday episode of The Chuck ToddCast. Look, I've got a pretty meaty episode for you. My guest is Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group. You know he is a frequent guest of mine when it comes to geopolitical situations. I think he is the best sort of independent analyst out there, frankly, around the globe, let alone in the United States. I've known Ian a long time, and I think, frankly, because of that it can become an even more useful conversation. Look, we spend a lot of time in the Middle East, but we don't just sit there and talk about that. In fact, I have a little bit more of a preview of what he has to say before we get to the interview. So that's the centerpiece here. And frankly, I think that's where I want to focus this conversation today. And for the weekend, it's a good one to sort of sit and stew in, which is just the, there's a lot of fallout from this.
And I think that's the question is, how is history going to characterize this confrontation with Iran? Is it a loss? It is not a victory, right? There's no way you can describe what the United States and Israel did with Iran as a victory.
But I accept the premise you can't yet call it a failure, right? It certainly doesn't look like this is going to end in a better place than where we began. In many ways, we're in a worse place than where we began in this sense. But it is not going to ever be seen as a victory.
At best, it may serve to turn out as an opportunity to reset the Middle East, and maybe the reset will be better than the current situation now. But I'm highly skeptical of that as well. I think that the biggest thing that America's failure here to win this confrontation with Iran, and I think that's the fairest way to, America did not win. And again, we're in World Cup season, so I guess you could say they salvaged a tie here, but that's the best-case scenario. We've not been eliminated from competition, but what the United States did signal was a bit of a retreat from being the stable, organizing force of the Middle East.
If you're the UAE, can you rely on the United States as your security blanket? If you're Saudi Arabia, if you're Qatar, frankly, if you're Israel. So, you know, when you introduce new doubt, right, that you know we've lost something.