Fareed Zakaria

Regime change by jazz improvisation is how one of your recent guests put it.

Let's talk about Iran for a bit.

Here's something that you wrote recently, Fareed.

For about 15 years, many American leaders, including all three presidents in that period, believed that the U.S.

was too deeply entangled in trying to reorder the societies of the Middle East.

They felt the more pressing challenges included rebuilding America's industrial base and confronting the rise of China.

Yet here America is once again.

fighting a war to reorder a society in the greater Middle East.

And like in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, this war seems unlikely to turn out quite as its proponents may hope.

Why, you wrote, does this keep happening?

So I'll bite, why does this keep happening?

Okay, so if you're an imperial elite, you presumably believe in your imperial power, your military power, your ability to dominate a weaker enemy.

When we last spoke, Fareed, a couple years ago, you said that Iran...

was weaker than it appeared.

You called it a paper tiger.

Yet you've also written recently, why is the most powerful country on the planet, that's us, unable to get its way with a much smaller, weaker country that has been ravaged by economic sanctions and military strikes?

So what is Iran doing well and right from its perspective to fend off for the time being, at least the United States?

Why is their refusal to buckle working so far?

Farid, what do you think Iran looks like a year from now?

Who's running it?