On June 21, the United States launched strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, escalating the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran. Political scientist Ian Bremmer explains why President Trump decided to bomb Iran, the risk of a broadening war and what to look for next at this uncertain moment. (This interview, hosted by TED’s Helen Walters, was recorded on June 22, 2025.)For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
Hello, TED Talks daily listeners. I'm Helen Walters, TED's head of media and curation. Today, we're bringing you a special episode of our original series, TED Explains the World, with political scientist Ian Bremmer.
Ian and I discuss why the US launched strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, and what we should look for next at this uncertain moment, including potential responses from Israel, China, and Russia, among others. On June the 21st, 2025, the US bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, joining a war with Israel and plunging the world into uncertainty. Today is Sunday, June the 22nd. I am Helen Walters.
I'm head of media and curation at TED, and I'm joined by geopolitical expert and GZERO founder Ian Bremmer to make sense of the noise. Ian, we also asked our community to share some of their questions for you. So let's get right to it. Tell us what you're hearing. And let's start with one very important question. Why did America decide to bomb Iran?
The idea that the Iranians would have a nuclear weapons capacity has been anathema to the Americans and the Israelis for a very long time. There are lots of ways to deal with that. You can deal with it diplomatically. You can deal with it through economic sanctions. You can deal with it militarily. the Trump administration pulled out of the former Iranian nuclear deal, the JCPOA.
And after that, the Iranians started ramping up both their levels of uranium enrichment in country, as well as the stockpiling of that enriched uranium, highly enriched uranium, to the extent that they were getting closer to break out nuclear capabilities. The intelligence communities of the United States and Israel disagree on how close they were to nukes.
The Americans certainly are not convinced and were not convinced that there was any evidence that Iran was covertly working to break out a nuclear weapons capability. But they were not in compliance with the inspectors that were coming in, and they clearly were secreting some of their program.
Having said all of that, the Israelis decided to start this war, and they were the ones that were attacking lots of military sites as well as directly looking to target and assassinate
military leaders including one security leader that was leading had been leading the u.s iran negotiations on nuclear program from the iranian side and also some of their nuclear capabilities but this critical and everyone's been talking about it now for a week straight a hundred meters under rock and concrete under a mountain in Fordow.
The Israelis did not have either the delivery mechanism, the B-2 bombers, the pilots trained to use those planes, the access to that technology, nor did they have the bunker buster bombs that would allow them to destroy it. So they really wanted the Americans to take that step. They were pushing really hard.
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