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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Three U.S. Troops Killed as Part of Iran Operation; Iran's Supreme Leader Killed in U.S.-Israeli Strikes; Interview With New York Times Magazine Staff Writer Ronen Bergman; Interview With U.S. State Department Former Senior Adviser Vali Nasr; Interview With Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Vice President And Director Suzanne Maloney; Interview With 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal Lead Negotiator Robert Malley. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired March 01, 2026 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:57]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you live from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, the supreme leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini is dead. President Trump urges the Iranian people to overthrow its government. The big question is, will that happen?

And it's been less than 36 hours since the attacks started, but they are far from over. Trump says the heavy bombing will continue throughout the week. What is left to accomplish?

Also, all of this comes as the American talks with Iran over its nuclear program were ongoing. The Omani foreign minister, a key player in the talks, said on Friday breakthroughs had been reached. So why this? Why now?

I have a series of top experts in the field to help answer those questions, and many more.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

My first reaction to news of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini was relief. Relief for the 92 million Iranians who are freed from the grip of an 86-year-old tyrant, a man who over nearly four decades ran his country into poverty at home and isolation abroad.

Khamenei was the hardest of the hardliners, who defined Iran's unyielding opposition not only to America and the West and Israel, but also to freedom for his own people. He shaped the modern Islamic Republic into the strange hybrid regime that it is, run by clerics, military officers and bureaucrats, all repressive, dysfunctional and corrupt to the core. No one should mourn his passing.

But when we step back and ask, where does this go next? Things look murky. President Trump has chosen to go to war with a country that did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. His claims to the contrary are belied by his own words. After the United States bombed Iran last June, the president loudly and repeatedly declared that he had obliterated Iran's nuclear program.

Yet eight months later he asks us to believe that this obliterated program posed such an urgent threat to the United States that Trump had to act without seeking authorization from the United States Congress.

In his brief speech announcing the attack, President Trump revealed the true purpose of the military action. Regime change. He explicitly called on the Iranian people to overthrow their government. In doing so, he has defined the purpose of this war and the measure by which it will be judged a success or failure.

Historically, regime change from the air has rarely taken place. I cannot think of a single case in which a government fell without military forces on the ground actually doing the toppling. And more broadly, the record of American sponsored regime change in the Middle East is not a happy one, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya.

There's always the possibility that this time will be different, that Iranians are more educated and desperate for freedom, but it is likely to be a long and complex struggle. Fears of a broader regional war are likely unfounded because Iran has already acted in self-defeating ways that are uniting the region against it.

Rather than drive a wedge between the United States and the Gulf States, which had expressed neutrality in this conflict, Tehran went after the Gulf States in attacks that caused little military damage, but incensed those countries.

[10:05:02]

Above all is the basic reality. Iran is very weak. Iran's military battered, dozens of its leaders killed in airstrikes. Its allies, like Hezbollah and Hamas are also in tatters. Meanwhile, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are bristling with military might.

Yet none of this will easily translate into success on the terms that Trump has implied, regime change and a substantially better government for the long suffering Iranian people. The most likely outcome is that a badly bruised government stays in power with new faces. Perhaps the military becomes more powerful and the mullahs less so. Perhaps Iran comes back to the table with even more concessions on the nuclear issue.

President Trump seems already to have recognized the complexity of the regime change strategy and has floated the idea that one of his offramps might be to deal with new leaders of the same regime. But once you call for the overthrow of a government, that becomes the definition of success or failure. There is also the legacy of the way that Trump went to war. The United

States has a messy and far from perfect record of using force abroad. But in modern times, it has usually done so by first defining the broad principles at stake, working with international law and organizations, building a broad coalition of allies, and consulting with Congress and the American people. None of this was done in "Operation Epic Fury," an apt name. This was a decision-making process that was fast and furious, as much about a dramatic show of strength as anything else.

As other countries look around and think about what kind of world they are living in, what rules they can rely on, what institutions they look to for stability, they're confronted by the reality that the world's leading nation, the creator of the international rules based system, has said loudly and clearly, might makes right. It's a new rule and one that will gladden the hearts of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

And let's get started.

The campaign against Iran has killed not just Khamenei, but other senior officials, including the Iranian defense minister, the chief of the armed forces, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, not to mention scores of Iranian civilians. Iran has retaliated by launching missiles not only against Israel, but also Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE, which all host American military assets.

And this just in, U.S. Central Command says three U.S. service members were killed in action as part of "Operation Epic Fury," and five more were seriously wounded.

Joining me now is retired Admiral James Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied commander and a vice chair at the Carlyle Group.

Admiral, welcome, and tell us first, what has surprised you so far about the military side of things as you look at where we stand now, day two, day three?

ADM. JAMES STAVRIDIS, FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: I'm happy to tell you what surprised me, and I will. But first, whatever your political persuasion, wherever you are on the political spectrum or however you feel about this set of events, please take a moment and hold those servicemen and women in your thoughts, your prayers. Raise a glass to them if that is your tradition.

That is 50,000 U.S. sailors, airmen, Marines, Army, commanded, by the way, by an admiral, Admiral Brad Cooper of U.S. Central Command. And we're just learning of the deaths of three and injuries. Sadly, I think there will be more to come.

Fareed, what has surprised me and I should get over being surprised by this, but it's the ruthless lethality, particularly of the Israelis, who are able, in their side of the strike, to take out the equivalent of President Trump, General Dan Kaine, Secretary Pete Hegseth. I mean, this really is a decapitation. So that has been a surprise to get in that easily and take out that layer of leadership. Now, however, the hard part starts.

ZAKARIA: You know, you point out that this lethality and precision is unusual. I was talking to the historian Timothy Naftali, who pointed out the U.S. in the past had tried assassinations famously of people like Fidel Castro and had always botched them.

[10:10:02]

This is a new feature on the international stage, and I suspect that while the United States and Israel are in the forefront, you know, this might become something, I don't want to say common practice but the other countries will have precision targeting and drones. And I wonder whether this opens up a kind of can of worms in which countries are going to be targeting senior leadership. Is that something you worry about?

STAVRIDIS: We should worry about it. However, it's always been a feature of war. What has prevented more of that kind of decapitation, taking out the leader, is simply the lack of intelligence, command and control. But I can remind you, in World War II, the United States shot down the aircraft that was carrying the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Armed Forces, for example. We have had this capability in the past.

One point I'll make here, Fareed, and we talked about what are the effects of air power and use of precision. I commanded the NATO war in Libya in 2011. We had plenty of opportunities to take out Gadhafi. We chose not to in those circumstances. However, this is a new feature of war, precision A.I. unmanned are here to stay. They'll be used against every level of military activity.

ZAKARIA: What do you suspect, Jim, is going to be the next wave of targets? Because they seem to have gone in, you know, in a fairly dramatic way, senior leadership, but also military sites, ballistic missile sites? So what do you think the next waves will be about?

STAVRIDIS: I think, and, you know the admiral is going to say this, I think we'll go against the maritime capability of Iran, which is not insignificant. And by knocking that out preemptively, while it hopefully sits in port, we can take out their minelayers, we can take out their small combatants, we can take out their diesel submarines. This reduces risk to our own naval forces offshore but more importantly, perhaps, it allows us to prevent the full closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Effectively that's happened because commercial shipping is making a decision not to go through it. Going after naval targets would be smart. And then a second level of targeting, I think, could be applied against mid-tier revolutionary guard. Not so much the conventional military because there is your hope of finding partners for protesters, rebels on the ground.

ZAKARIA: James Stavridis, always a pleasure to talk to you. And we will be following this. We will probably be back to you for more in the weeks to come. Thank you, sir.

Next on GPS, we will dig deeper on the mindset in Iran and in Israel when we're back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:17:38]

ZAKARIA: Since the October 7th attacks, Israel has all but incapacitated its nearest enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah. But its biggest and most powerful one remained, Iran. Now, after Israel and America's attacks, Iran's supreme leader is dead. In response Israel's far-right wing national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir said, we have severed the head of the snake.

But is the snake still alive?

Vali Nasr is a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author of "Iran's Grand Strategy." Very interesting book. He joins me to talk about what is going on inside Iran.

Vali, let's start with the supreme leader. Were you surprised that he was in his office on the day that he was -- that he was killed?

VALI NASR, PROFESSOR, JOHNS HOPKINS SAIS: Yes, I was surprised because I knew that Israel had tried to kill him in June, that President Trump kept talking about wanting to get rid of him, and that he had been largely absent from the scene for the past six months. So now that an American attack or an Israeli-American attack was imminent, it was quite surprising that he was actually sitting in his office.

He wasn't in a bunker like the head of Hezbollah. It was almost like he was expecting this moment and maybe even courting it.

ZAKARIA: Because why? He's 86 years old and maybe better to go out in a blaze of glory with Israel killing you and he thinks of himself then as a martyr?

NASR: Well, I can't read totally to his mind, but given what happened in January, the massacre in Iran, the anger that the population had, that -- and also that the Islamic Republic has reached an impasse in many ways in terms of where it is with U.S. and Israel, that this perhaps would be the best exit, that he was martyred to his followers, to many Shias around the world, and he died fighting U.S. and Israel, which had been his life mission for a very long time.

ZAKARIA: So what do you think happens with this regime? Because it is -- it's very unlike killing Saddam Hussein. This was not a one-man show.

NASR: Well, the Islamic Republic from the outset was designed to survive, not to be popular. And it was a multimodal regime and it still is with very distributive authority in varieties of institutions, secular, military, clerical.

[10:20:02]

And since the Israeli attack in June, the supreme leader and the system has distributed even more power in a sense that decapitation really does not work the way it does in other countries. We even saw it in June. Israel killed 30 Revolutionary Guard commanders, and yet Iran was able to launch missiles at Israel and fight, and we're seeing that now again, that you can kill the top but the system has been built to function.

So I would say Iran is today functioning on the basis of a deep state, a set of bureaucrats, statesmen, clerics, and Revolutionary Guard commanders and military commanders who are running the system collectively based on the network of authority and power that they have, independent of the supreme leader. They got their guidance from him. But the day-to-day running of the country was not done by the supreme leader. It's done by this deep state.

ZAKARIA: So the foreign minister says that there will be a new supreme leader chosen. There is a process by which it happens. You seem to say that doesn't matter as much.

NASR: It doesn't matter in the short run. They have to appoint somebody because that shows continuity of the system. There is a constitutional process for them to choose someone, but that someone very rarely can come in and necessarily step into Khamenei's shoes. And I think what is much more important is that behind-the-scenes deep state. So during this course of this war and what happens immediately after the war, the United States and Israel are confronting that deep state.

And it's much more difficult for them after this initial shock and awe to break the back of a -- of an enemy that doesn't have a very -- that doesn't have a clear face to you, and you don't know exactly how it -- how it works. So they have to destroy systems rather than kill people. And that's much more difficult.

ZAKARIA: What do you make of this decision the Iranians have made to go after, you know, to attack the Gulf States? I assume that they're kind of trapped because in a way that's where the U.S. assets are. But in doing so, they really have turned the Gulf States against them. Almost all those states had been neutral. They had said, don't use our bases, don't even use our airspace to attack Iran, and now they're all on board.

NASR: Well, they may have said that, and they were very helpful diplomatically, but they are nevertheless close allies of the United States and they're host to U.S. bases. I think the regime in Iran sees this as an existential moment that Israel wants to destroy Iran's military capabilities. Even if Iran laid down its arms, they would like to still want to destroy its missiles, destroy its capabilities like they did in Syria after Assad fell, that the United States wants also Iran politically to have a different kind of regime.

So they are fighting essentially for the survival of not just the regime but in their mind for the survival of the entire system and the country so all bets are off. There is no niceties if you are, you know, fighting for your last breath. And I think their strategy right now is to stay in this fight as long as possible, impose more costs on the United States, and create a geography of risk that is beyond just what they can hit in Israel and what they can hit in Iran.

Now, the United States actually has to defend a much larger arena for a longer period of time if it's not able to knock Iran out very quickly. And Iranians think that in the medium to longer term will benefit them more. It is more likely they will survive if they get past these few first rounds. And so the more they confuse the U.S. the more it makes it to have to defend Saudi Arabia oil facilities, the Straits of Hormuz, all of these things that the U.S. may basically begin to look at this war differently.

ZAKARIA: When we come back, we're going to talk about what does all this look like in the region, to the Gulf States, to Saudi Arabia, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:28:23]

ZAKARIA: Welcome back to GPS. One of the top experts on Iran, Vali Nasr, is back with me. And joining us from Tel Aviv is one of the sharpest reporters on Israel. He's a staff writer at "The New York Times" magazine, Ronen Bergman.

Ronen, welcome. Tell us what is the thinking in Israel right now? Does Israel have a realistic belief that these attacks are going to result in what President Trump has called for, which is the overthrow of the Iranian regime? That seems unlikely but is that what Israel thinks?

RONEN BERGMAN, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, YEDIOTH AHRONOTH: First of all, I think that there is a gap between the U.S. and Israel on how long this should take. From the beginning, from the planning, in the planning stage, the U.S. officials, CENTCOM are talking about, as far as I understand from sources, both sides, they were talking about four days. So a very short attack, and then Israel said this should be -- this will take no less than two weeks.

And as far as I understand, today we are in the second day, U.S. officials already wants to shorten this, even from four days to three. Israel says we need more time to take care of all the hundreds of targets that they identified before this one. The second is that, at least in the planning stage there was some kind of consensus that there's no case in history where someone -- a country was able to topple another regime from afar and this could not -- possibly not be the first case.

So there was a maturity I think in saying this cannot be done. Maybe it will evolve gradually. But the thought was to set the goals in inflicting as much damage as possible to the regime, including many, many military targets, the nuclear project, the missile -- the surface to surface long-range ballistic missile that Israel will take care of. But doing all of that, not in order to topple the regime which may or may not happen, but in order to get Iran back to the negotiation table crippled and agreeing, that's according to that plan, to concessions that Iran is not agreeing now.

And I'm not sure that Iran would, but I think that the success of Israel and the U.S. yesterday especially on Khamenei and some of the -- his senior leaders and the generals that brought some appetite to do or to think that they can do more. And there are thoughts that maybe they can bring the regime change, the crowd back to the streets. I understand how this would happen, but, you know --

(CROSSTALK)

ZAKARIA: And is it your sense, Ronen, that when you say Israel wants a two week war the objective of that would be the complete destruction of the entire military industrial complex, not just the missile sites themselves, but even the production facilities. I'm trying to understand, like what is the extent, what are the targets in week two? Because they are already destroying almost all the military assets.

BERGMAN: Yes. Well, I think that from their point of view, they have a file, they have a bank of many thousands of targets. It will take a lot of time to destroy.

Israel started -- the first attack was in order to kill individuals, mainly Khamenei, and the meeting in his compound of senior intelligence officials. The rest of the day yesterday was devoted to taking out air defenses this is to pave the corridor for what they describe as the biggest single attack in the history of Israeli Air Force, 200 planes going into Iran, and dealing with everything about the missiles.

So, the stockpiles and the storages and the production. And this is what Israel took upon itself in the planning with the U.S. use is taking care of the nuclear project which needs different armament different bombs, including the law of the mother of all bombs that Israel cannot, doesn't have the capacity to carry. And Israel is taking care of something that is very concerning to Israel, which are the surface to surface long range ballistic missiles.

Originally, Israel saw this as only the vehicle for a potential nuclear warhead, but the last war has shown that even armed with conventional warheads, they are we just saw this, this horrible tragedy in the southern east of Israel where people, many people got killed. But today Israel started to go against regime targets.

The IRGC, the Basij, the few of the communication agencies. So, we see a mixture. And the separation is not just about the kind of target, but also geographically high coordination. And, you know, looking at this you see how deeply penetrated Iran military establishment is.

But what you don't see is what is the exit strategy for both the U.S. and Israel have been asking, Israeli officials, so how do you know that you succeeded? What's the goal? What's the bar after which you say, OK, we can stop here and maybe turn to diplomacy or, God forbid something like that. But I'm not getting an answer. I don't -- I don't really understand. I'm not sure that they understand.

ZAKARIA: Vali, so listening to all this, the question then becomes, if there -- if there is this lack of clarity in the mission and the hope seems to be as I call it, the bomb and hope strategy, the hope is that maybe the Iranians will be more willing to make concessions at the nuclear table. Is that likely now?

I mean, it seems like a tough situation to imagine these people who have just been battered and bruised suddenly making more concessions. After all, they've already suffered the penalty of not making the concessions.

VALI NASR, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: Well, I think the first step is how and when does this war end? I think to Ronen's point, I mean, if we end up at a place two weeks from now where Israel and the U.S. have achieved a lot of their objectives, but they haven't broken the back of the regime, and they also have suffered a notable casualties and damage then it's a very different calculation as to if this thing can get wrapped up with the collapse of the regime or its back is broken. So, I think what the Iranians expected at some point they will have to talk to the Americans again.

[10:35:17]

I think their whole calculation, when they knew the war is coming is that -- is that right now, President Trump thinks they just should capitulate. They have absolutely nothing. And Israel thinks that skies of Iran are open. They can attack at any time that Iran is not going to get anything at the table.

The only way they're going to change the calculation is through war, that in the next two weeks that President Trump begins to think very differently about going to war with Iran. And then negotiations could look -- could look different to him and to the Iranians.

So, this is all about changing the balance of power for the Iranians. So, the longer they stay, the more cost they impose. They can actually change President Trump's calculations.

ZAKARIA: Thank you, Vali. Thank you, Ronen. Next on GPS, what happened to America's nuclear negotiations with Iran over the last few weeks? A key participant said as recently as Friday that Iran had offered major breakthrough concessions. The bombing started hours later. I'll talk to a lead negotiator in America's last big negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:41:01]

ZAKARIA: President Trump campaigned on a platform of peace, pledging to avoid foreign entanglements and declaring, I'm not going to start wars, I'm going to stop wars. He relentlessly criticized President Obama's dealings with Iran, repeatedly warning that Obama would attack the Islamic Republic to improve his electoral standing.

Of course, President Obama never attacked Iran. Now, Trump has attacked Iran for the second time in the last year. What does all this tell us about American foreign policy under Donald Trump?

Joining me now are Robert Malley, a lead American negotiator on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and Suzanne Maloney, the director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.

Suzanne, what do you make of this? The peace candidate, the no endless wars candidate has been tempted, as you know, honestly, so many American presidents have into the morass of the Middle East and into some kind of military action.

SUZANNE MALONEY, FOREIGN POLICY VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Thanks, Fareed. I think what we're seeing from President Trump is a man who, in his second term in office, is really enamored with the use of American force and really believes that American greatness is best advanced through a really forceful approach to the use of the military. And he's done this in the Caribbean. He's done this with the regime change in Venezuela.

He had the successful attack on Iran and the elimination effectively of its enrichment capabilities back in June. And I think in the aftermath of the momentous protests that took place in January in Iran, President Trump saw himself as something of a main character. He promised to rescue the protesters. And even though the U.S. was not positioned to actually take action at that point, what we saw in the aftermath was a very clear buildup and an intention on the part of the Trump administration to take really big action against the Iranian regime. And that's what's playing out today.

ZAKARIA: Rob, it does feel like, you know, a president who, again, this is not unusual it doesn't seem to have much more he can do at home. Worries about a midterm with the Democrats will take the House and so foreign policy and -- for Trump kind of dramatic show of strength foreign policy becomes crucial.

ROBERT MALLEY, LEAD NEGOTIATOR, 2015 IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL: Yes, I think that's part of that. But I want to go back to what Suzanne was saying. I think President Trump now views himself as potentially a historic character who will have changed the regimes of not just one, not just two, but three countries that have been for generations now marked by an anti-American ideology.

Venezuela, whether we call that regime change or not, now has a government with which he can do economic deals. Today, maybe Iran and tomorrow maybe Cuba. And so, if he goes down in history as the person who -- forget about what he said about not going to war forget about what he said about stupid wars. As somebody who, through the application of overwhelming military force, unlawful, unnecessary, unjustified, but nonetheless overwhelming military force.

I think he believes that that's something that it should be part of his legacy at this point. And the more success he has at low cost, as he had in Venezuela, and as he had with the strike against Fordo last year, the more his appetite will be growing

ZAKARIA: Suzanne, what do you make of the point Rob makes which is, you know, this is unusual in that even by American standards, its highly unilateral? I mean, the Iraq war had 40 odd allies participating militarily in the -- in the attack. They went to the U.N. They went to Congress. This is all America and Israel. You know, how is the -- how do you think the rest of the world is perceiving that? I'm struck by the degree to which I see -- I've been watching, particularly in the, you know, global south countries like Malaysia and such all condemning it because of the sense that this is kind of, you know, outside of international law.

[10:45:08]

MALONEY: Well, this is a very clear break with precedent and tradition in the United States. The fact that the president didn't bother to make his case to the Congress or to the American people in any serious fashion over the course of the past weeks, even as this buildup ensued, really puts us, I think, in a difficult position.

I think it's also quite clear that the president isn't simply going to stop here. He sees this as a great success. He's not terribly invested in what happens in the day after in Iran, and that this is likely to be a super empowered American presidency. And that's not just going to, I think, create some trepidations across the Middle East but among American partners and allies about what the president might choose to do next.

ZAKARIA: Yes, a super empowered president and one who can declare victory and say, well, I told the Iranian people take -- you know, overthrow your government. They didn't do it and so I'm moving on. You know, next stop Cuba.

All right. Stay with us. When we come back, I want to talk about this issue of the negotiations, because it is likely to come back. What is Iran going to negotiate, coming back?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:51:00]

ZAKARIA: We are back with Rob Malley, a lead U.S. negotiator in the talks that led to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, and Suzanne Maloney, a scholar at Brookings. I want to ask you, Rob Malley, a question that's always puzzled me. Why are the Iranians such bad negotiators?

By which I mean, when you were working for Biden, you guys tried to get them back into the Iran nuclear deal, and they just raised new demands and made it, you know, as far as I can tell, very hard for you -- for you guys to find a way in. Now, it's clear that Trump wanted a deal, which would say, I got a better deal than the Obama deal.

And the nuclear stuff is so complicated. The Iranians could have easily given him some concessions that would have allowed him to make that claim. But they always seem to stop shy of the concessions that would make the deal work. Is it that there's -- you know, is there a strategy here, or is it just you know, that they are -- they're sort of self-defeating.

MALLEY: Well, that's a great question. You know, I think it's a mixture of ideological rigidity and overestimation of their power and their capabilities and that's been true along the way. Now, you know, they did conclude one deal with the United States in 2015, as you say. So, I'm not sure that that would qualify as bad negotiation. It depends on where you stand.

And from their perspective, the fact that President Trump unilaterally tore it up changed even their perspective on the utility of negotiating with the United States. We can go back about why things didn't work out under President Biden. Obviously, there's -- I think there's some blame to go around. But basically, I think there is a matter of principle for the Iranian regime about enrichment and about having a self-sufficient nuclear program.

However absurd it is economically and however much it gives rise to legitimate doubts and real suspicion about what their goals are. And as I said, they always seem to overplay their hand. They certainly did under President Biden when in August 2022, a deal was in hand. And they may have now.

I would say one thing, though, I believe and I still believe, although there's contradictory reporting at this point, that given the very credible threat of force that President Trump had assembled, that had amassed I think that if all President Trump wanted was a deal that he could credibly claim was better than the JCPOA I think he could have achieved it.

I think for the reasons we discussed earlier, President Trump viewed himself as a man of history, and he was not prepared to accept anything less than virtually total acceptance of his demands because he felt he had a real opportunity to go after this regime. So, why waste it for the sake of a deal that might be marginally better than the JCPOA?

ZAKARIA: Suzanne, where does this leave things? You know, where -- Iran seems pretty isolated as I think that its attacks on the Gulf have totally backfired. It's united the Gulf against it. Not a lot of people speaking out in its favor. The Russians are giving it verbal support, but nobody is giving it any material support. Are they -- you know, where do they go?

MALONEY: I think the main goal for the Iranian regime at this point is simply to hold on, to live to see another day, and to try to find some way to reconstitute its authority over the country, and to rebuild its position vis-a-vis the international community. It really doesn't have very many options. The U.S. has effective air dominance over Iran. It's been able to take out everything it is seeking to destroy in terms of Iran's ballistic missiles and other military capabilities.

Iran is able to harass and harm its neighbors, but it's not really able to project a better future for its own people, and it's not able to contend with the overwhelming dominance of the United States. The only thing that the Iranian regime can do is simply try to hang on, and that will constitute a victory, given the extent to which the United States is trying to prompt regime change here.

ZAKARIA: Rob, do you agree, survival is victory?

[10:55:04]

MALLEY: A hundred percent. I think survival is not just victory. It's victory of plenty for this regime at this point. Clearly the message is coming out of Israel and of the United States are that they want to see the back of this -- of this system and of this regime. And I think if they can survive, they will consider that more than enough to claim victory.

ZAKARIA: Let me finally, Suzanne, we don't have that much time. Sorry. I'm told our time is up. All right. We'll have to get you guys back. Fascinating, fascinating stuff.

Thank you all for being part of my program this week. We will, of course, be dealing with this next week as well.

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