On Tuesday, Jan. 20, Donald Trump will mark one year as the 47th president of the United States. Most observers agree that Trump 2.0 is markedly different than the first edition: He has had more time to plan, he feels less constrained by norms, and he has a more stable and loyal coterie of deputies. On the latest episode of FP Live, I turned to the geopolitical risk expert Ian Bremmer for a big-picture look at Trump’s foreign policy and how the world is adapting to it. Bremmer is the co-founder and president of GZERO Media and the Eurasia Group.

Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

On Tuesday, Jan. 20, Donald Trump will mark one year as the 47th president of the United States. Most observers agree that Trump 2.0 is markedly different than the first edition: He has had more time to plan, he feels less constrained by norms, and he has a more stable and loyal coterie of deputies. On the latest episode of FP Live, I turned to the geopolitical risk expert Ian Bremmer for a big-picture look at Trump’s foreign policy and how the world is adapting to it. Bremmer is the co-founder and president of GZERO Media and the Eurasia Group.

Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: I half-expected the White House to order a strike on Iran this week amid the regime’s brutal crackdown on nationwide protests. It turns out that several Arab countries have advised restraint, and Trump seems to have listened to them, at least for now. What do you make of it?

Ian Bremmer: A U.S. attack looked less likely to me as soon as Trump started to repeat Iranian talking points that they were only shooting protesters that were shooting at them. Trump made it very explicit that the Iranian government should not execute the young protester, Erfan Soltani, but that is still very different from what he had said publicly just weeks ago: that the United States would come in and rescue the protesters.

They definitely were ready to engage militarily. They had picked targets. They were well on the way to taking action. Certainly, Trump’s initial inclination on the back of Venezuela was that they were going to go in hard.

There are a few things going on, most importantly that the Gulf states directly intervened and said American action would disrupt oil flow and trigger a more significant Iranian response. The Turks also conveyed that they were very skeptical and opposed.

But the demonstrations have also mostly petered out because the Iranian regime successfully used incredible brutality against them—a minimum of 2,000 people are dead. And the White House has good information that the actual level of violence was much worse. Contrary to German Chancellor [Friedrich] Merz’s comments that the regime only has a few days or weeks left, the U.S. assessment was that the demonstrations have been destroyed and aren’t likely to persist, at least for now. There doesn’t seem to be any fragmentation within the military leadership, the Basij, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The final point is that the United States wasn’t well-positioned to manage a large Iranian retaliation. They certainly have the ability to strike Iran, but the United States doesn’t yet have an aircraft carrier in the region. They were planning on deploying more air and naval assets, but it was probably going to take another week. So the military was also telling them internally that it was not the best time to do this. So you’re right that the decision had basically been made and then facts intervened. The Iranian regime lives to fight another day.

Karim Sadjadpour, who I think is by far the most capable Iran analyst living in the West, said that most of what would keep the Iranian regime in place has gone away. He was more optimistic that they were going to collapse but still recognized their ability to repress. That’s still true. The economy is not going to get any better, and the supreme leader has no inclination to do a deal with the United States. Trump’s belief that he can hit Iran militarily and get away with it continues to be very strong, not just on the back of Venezuela, but on the back of the 12-day war last year and the assassination of Qassem Soleimani at the end of his first administration. So all of those things........

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