Hello and welcome to the G0 World Podcast.

This is where you can find extended versions of my show on public television.

I'm Ian Bremmer, and we are just weeks into an Iran war that is quickly widening in scope.

President Donald Trump was hoping for a quick and decisive military operation like he had in Venezuela.

Instead, a successful first strike that crippled Iran's ability to retaliate and killed its

supreme leader as metastasized into a broader regional conflict, pulling in Gulf states

and pushing up oil prices.

It reminds me of Secretary of State Colin Powell's warning to President Bush in the

run-up to the Iraq War. You break it, you own it. Or maybe the reverse. If you can't own it,

you break it. Ahead of the strikes on Iran, Operation Epic Fury, Trump offered multiple

rationales, stopping Iran's nuclear program destroying ballistic missiles,

alleged assassination plots, even regime change.

President Trump's definitions of victory may not be quite the same as Israel's Prime Minister

Benjamin Nanjahou's, and the Islamic Republic may beat down, but it's certainly not out.

In fact, senior Iranian clerics appointed Iran's new Supreme Leader,

Mushaba Hamani, on Monday, days after Donald Trump called him an unacceptable choice,

and as Israel threatened to kill the successor to the former Supreme Leader?

So where is all this heading?

I just came back from Washington, D.C., where I caught up with Thomas Wright, the Brookings Institution.

He served in some of the highest national security posts during the Biden administration.

He understands the implications of a cornered Iran better than most.

So let's get to it.

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