This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Farid Zakary.

Today on the show, the Russians did it. 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations interfered with America's election.

That is what Robert Molle's latest indictment says. What does it mean for the president and the larger investigation? We'll explore.

Then Bill Gates. His first career made him the world's richest man. His second act is giving his tens of billions away.

I asked him how he feels about the Trump presidency, the America first agenda, and why he spends most of his money on non-Americans and eye-opening interviews.

Also, it may be frigid at the Olympics, but relations between the two careers continue to warm. What is behind Kim Jong-un's Trump offensive? Is it real or a ploy we will explore?

We will explore.

But first, here's my take. There's a lot to be optimistic about today. In almost every part of the world, economies are growing and war, poverty, and disease are receding.

But then, there's the Middle East. Syria remains a collapsed country. More than 5 million of its people have already fled. Yemen is now the site of the world's worst famine and the war there seems unlikely to end anytime soon.

The danger of greater conflict in the region seems ever-present. We are now seeing fighting between Turkey and American proxies, Israel and Syria, the US and Russian mercenaries.

The Trump administration's strategy, if it can be called that, has simply been to double down on its anti-Iranian stance, subcontracting foreign policy to Israel and Saudi Arabia.

But recent events make plain, it's not working. In the latest issue of foreign affairs, the scholar Valin Asar urges a fundamental rethinking of Washington's Iran policy.

The administration is working off the premise that instability in the Middle East is the result of a rising Iran that seeks to spread its ideology.

Nasr points out that this assumption is simply wrong. Today's instability in the Middle East did not originate with Tehran's ambitions.

It was the result of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, which overturned the balance of power between Arab states and Iran by dislodging Saddam Hussein and allowing chaos to spread.

Iran did pursue its national interests intensely, seeking influence in its neighborhood.

But it did not try to spread Islamic fundamentalism. In fact, it has been at the forefront of the fight against Sunni terrorist groups like ISIS.

Iran's strategy has been remarkably successful because it ventures into places where it has strong local allies like Iraq, Syria and Yemen,

is willing to put troops and militias on the ground and plays a long game.

Its adversaries by and large do not have these advantages. The United States and Israel are outsiders in the Arab world

and mostly fight from the skies. But air dominance has its limitations in terms of shaping political realities on the ground.

Where are the Arab countries in this geopolitical game? Nasr told me the most striking reality about the power struggle in the Middle East these days is the absence of the Arabs.

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