Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, TED Talks daily listeners. I'm TED's head of media and curation, Helen Walters. And today we're bringing you a special conversation on the attack on Iran by the United States and Israel. I think it is plausible that in very short order, Iran will no longer have direct capacity to threaten Iran. other regimes in the region.
But that's very, very different from saying that Iran won't have the capacity to repress their people on the ground. That is not something that the Americans right now have a military plan for. I'm talking to Ian Bremmer, the president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media.
Chapter 2: What events led to the US and Israel's attack on Iran?
I do think that the fact that Trump now on a number of issues has absolutely not followed through on promises are why he is hemorrhaging support. And he's likely to become much more risk-acceptant as a consequence of that, which may well play out in other military episodes internationally. We recorded this for our series, Ted Explains the World, on Saturday, February the 28th, 2026.
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Try it now at adobe.com.acrobat. Hello, everyone. Today is Saturday, February the 28th, 2026. This morning, after weeks of escalating threats, the United States and Israel bombed several parts of Iran, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's compound in Tehran. Iran responded in kind with missiles launched towards Israel and four Gulf Arab countries which host U.S.
military bases, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. Now, this is a fast-moving situation which feels extraordinarily tenuous, so we obviously returned immediately to Eurasia Group's founder, Ian Bremmer, to help us make sense of what is happening now and what is to come. Ian, hi. Helen, good to see you, as always.
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Chapter 3: Why did Trump decide to strike Iran now?
And if they don't, then he'll say, well, I did everything I could. I gave them the opportunity. They didn't do it. Does he want to say that? He doesn't want to say that. But but he's not going to take responsibility for this himself because he is not intending to. to engage in the direct regime change himself.
He has already said in the initial hours of these operations that the actors that will engage in changing the regime will be the Iranian people. He has no control over the Iranian people. He has no influence.
over the Iranian people a lot of the Iranian people don't particularly trust him he said he was going to rescue the Iranian people and tens of thousands of Iranians died after he said that he was going to rescue them and and it was you know over a month later before he took military action so I mean I think that if you're an Iranian citizen today you know you're you're feeling pretty squeezed
You're not necessarily feeling like there are great opportunities in front of you in any circumstance. And it's going to be very dangerous what you decide to do going forward. Again, my hope. is that this regime collapses with a minimum of violence. I think that's everyone's hope. It's everyone's hope.
Whether you supported the US attacks or you didn't, everyone hopes that the Iranian people can have a government that actually respects and reflects their values, their rights, their hopes and aspirations. But we are very far from that. And the United States may have facilitated that to a degree, But they certainly are not causing it. And again, we're very far from here to there. Right.
There is a very long way to go. I am curious, and this is probably a really stupid question, so you're welcome. But why did Iran, why have they bombed Dubai, Riyadh? Like, why are they bombing other Arab states, especially without the kind of the U.S. ? Like, I get that, but I'm hearing about the Dubai airport being hit. Like, what's that?
Why would they- Yeah, just now, the Dubai airport looks like it was hit. And I mean, clearly, and some of the, I'm not surprised that they sent missiles and drones into the Gulf states, but I would have expected, as we saw after the 12-day war- that the attacks would have been against American bases there, as we saw in Qatar.
And maybe they fail, maybe they get knocked down, maybe in the process of getting knocked down, those Iranian weapons or the air defense, the missile defense ends up hitting other targets. That can certainly happen, but that's not what we're seeing. We're already seeing drones that are directly targeting civilian areas in Dubai, in Kuwait, in Saudi Arabia.
I have to tell you that we've not seen that before from Iran. So why would they do that? Well, I mean, on the one hand, these countries are seen by Iran as belligerents. They are in principle neutral. They've not joined the fight with the United States and Israel, but they didn't prevent it over the past couple of weeks.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Khamenei's death for Iran?
Same thing with the lawsuit against James Comey and Letitia James. And he failed and wasn't listening to advisors. But they are willing to do whatever he says in all of these instances, whether it's about military strikes or economic tariffs.
or about taking efforts to ensure that the next election is not quote unquote rigged, like the FBI investigation and the seizing of the ballot boxes in Fulton County in Georgia. All of these are unprecedented acts, but they're unprecedented acts that President Trump is ordering and that his inner circle, his direct reports and his cabinet are 100% support, not even an inch of space.
between Trump and those people. All right, let's head back to the Middle East. And you mentioned earlier the idea of asymmetric warfare. So if Iran has used up its missile armory, but the reality is that no one can actually dictate what happens with asymmetric warfare. What do you think happening, for instance, with the Houthis or with the Straits of Hormuz? Is that going to get closed?
What do you think is going to happen? What are the ripple effects of this, I guess, in the region? Yeah, that's the most significant market impact, and it might be the most significant vulnerability that that American servicemen and women have is is to the ships, both tanker traffic directly and military ships going through the Straits of Hormuz in the Red Sea and more broadly.
And the Houthis have shown that they have a capacity to make strikes against these boats, including like off the Horn of Africa in the Indian Ocean even more broadly. So, I mean, I do think that there is a pretty high likelihood that for at least a period of time that the Straits of Hormuz will be impassable.
And that means that oil prices, which have already spiked on these strikes and in anticipation of these strikes with lots of oil on the market right now and with relatively low demand, For oil, those prices are going up. Natural gas, same thing. You're going to have difficulty in getting that gas to Europe. And that means that those prices are going up.
You know, huge amount of American military capability. Mine sweepers, the rest. So, I mean, I don't believe that the straits will be impassable for long. I'd be surprised if it was more than a matter of, you know, inside a few days, outside a couple of weeks. I'd be surprised if it went longer than that. But there'll be continuing threat to tankers.
And that means that a lot of those tankers may end up having to go the long way and costing an awful lot more money as a consequence. All right, so to wrap this up, I'm curious what you're watching most closely in the next few days and over the next few weeks. Most closely, I'm watching internally Iran.
I want to see what kind of demonstrations we see, what kind of instability and how much of that gets out vis-a-vis Telegram and other sources, because it's not like there's an open media that can actually report on it. Do we see some towns that are farther away, you know, Tehran, away from Tehran, where you have ethnic minorities, for example, where, you know, it's harder, where there are Kurds,
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