Return to Transcripts main page

Fareed Zakaria GPS

Obama Versus Trump Versus Biden on Iran; Life on the Ground in Lebanon. Interview With Carnegie Middle East Center Director Maha Yahya; Interview With Harvard's Belfer Center Senior Fellow Ashish Jha. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired June 07, 2026 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:31]

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 from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, a look at the successes and failures of recent American administrations on Iran with President Obama's deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes.

Then could the Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo spread to other countries? Could it come to America? I ask a former COVID coordinator of the United States.

Finally, almost six months ago, Donald Trump declared that he would run Venezuela. How's that going? Actually, better than expected. I'll tell you why.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

Donald Trump faces plunging public approval at home and a messy war he initiated abroad. But he has an opportunity to change that narrative. Not in the Middle East, but more than 1,000 miles away in Europe, where a bloody war rages on between Russia and Ukraine.

In recent months, the tide has turned in that conflict in ways that make peace finally possible. Ukraine is now in the fifth year of a war against an adversary, with roughly 12 times its economy and more than four times its population. Its mere survival has been one of the great military and national achievements of the modern era. But now, Kyiv is no longer simply surviving. It is changing the arithmetic of the war.

For years, Russia's brutal advantage was not that it fought well, it was that it could fight badly and endure the cost. Putin's army used conscripts, convicts, ethnic minorities, poor men from remote regions, and anyone else the state could throw into the furnace. It lost staggering numbers of soldiers, but it could recruit more than it lost, often bringing in more than 30,000 men every month. That equation has begun to break. Russia is taking losses at a rate

that appears to exceed its ability to replace trained troops. Its advances, bought at enormous cost, have slowed to a crawl. Russian forces that once aspired to take all of Donbas are now moving in meters, not miles. In May, battlefield trackers suggest Russia barely gained territory at all and may even have lost some ground. Russia's size, once its great advantage, has become a liability. More logistics to protect, more targets to defend, more territory vulnerable to attack.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has substituted speed, intelligence and ingenuity for mass. It has built a formidable drone industry, much of it homegrown. It plans to produce seven million drones this year. By comparison, the United States is planning to produce around 300,000 by the end of 2027. Ukraine is using mid-range strikes to disrupt Russian logistics and command posts behind the front.

It is using long range drones and missiles to hit refineries, oil depots, airfields, radar sites and military factories inside Russia itself. Putin can no longer keep the war safely contained in Ukraine. Even Moscow's Victory Day celebration in Red Square last month was scaled down under the shadow of Ukrainian drones.

None of this means Ukraine is close to an easy victory. Russia is still pounding Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones. Kyiv remains short of Patriot interceptors. It still has manpower problems, and its politics have been strained by corruption scandals and harsh conscription. But the momentum has shifted.

One crucial reason for this change is Europe. Perhaps the most underappreciated success of the war this year has been Europe's ability to step in after America stepped back. European aid has now largely offset the collapse in American support for Kyiv. The E.U.'s 90 billion euro loan package is beginning to move, freed from Viktor Orban's obstruction after his defeat in Hungary.

[10:05:08]

Europeans have taken charge of this war. This is where Trump comes in. His diplomacy toward Ukraine has been so far a study in squandered leverage. He berated Zelenskyy publicly, treated Ukrainian concessions as the starting point of negotiations, and gave Putin reason to believe he could wait the West out.

But Trump still has tools no European leader possesses. He could threaten to restart major American military aid to Kyiv, tighten sanctions on Russian oil and the shadow fleet, and speed up the sale of U.S. weapons to NATO countries for transfer to Ukraine. Then he could offer Putin an exit ramp in the form of a peace deal. Remember, Russia has lost somewhere between 350,000 and half a million soldiers in a war that, according to a new independent survey, is now deeply unpopular at home.

Trump's pro-Russian bias ironically positions himself well to make such a deal. Putin knows Trump has long been skeptical of Kyiv and indulgent towards Moscow. Of course, for the Ukrainians and Europeans to accept the deal, it would have to be serious. Ukraine should be willing to concede territory, but its new borders must be defensible. It needs real security guarantees that anchor Ukraine in the West.

The war is not about Donbas. It's about whether Ukraine will remain a sovereign country, free to choose its future. Putin's twin theories of victory were that Ukraine was weak and that the West would tire. Both have collapsed.

This is Trump's opportunity. He could help end the worst war in Europe since World War II, secure Ukraine's place in the West, and deter a revanchist great power with an imperial project to defeat the West. This would be a real achievement, not a phony photo op ceasefire like the ones in the Middle East that Trump has brandished. It would be a deal that actually deserves to be called historic.

Go to FareedZakaria.com for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week, and let's get started.

Ever since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic has presented incoming American presidents with a dilemma. What to do about this sworn enemy of the U.S. that in recent years has enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon? Each president has taken a different tack. How do they stack up?

Joining me now is Obama's former deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes. He has a terrific new book out, "All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches."

Ben, welcome. I want to start by asking you, what was it? You know, how did the Obama administration view this that you think is fundamentally different from the way the Trump administration is viewing it? Because you were both concerned with Iran's nuclear program and determined that it not have a nuclear weapons program.

BEN RHODES, FORMER U.S. DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, I think what is clearly different is we determined that of all the various things Iran does, its support for proxies, its ballistic missile program, the nuclear program was the top priority, and really the kind of existential threat to nuclear nonproliferation and to kind of U.S. interests around the world.

But that essentially, there are only two ways of dealing with that problem. One is a diplomatic solution in which you don't get everything you want, but you have sufficient restrictions on the program and inspections, and you're shipping the stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country, or the other is to use military force against the nuclear program that we saw as a slippery slope into a quagmire of conflict.

Sanctions alone, which some people presented as the third way, was not going to cause the Iranians to abandon their program. Ultimately, it's a deal or it's a war.

ZAKARIA: And when you concluded the JCPOA, the so-called Obama nuclear deal, there are a lot of people now who say the Iranians cheated on that deal. What is your response? RHODES: Well, factually, they did not cheat. They were in compliance

with the deal. When Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018. His own intelligence community and most of his own national security team concluded that Iran was complying with the terms. And we know that because there was verification measures. They were shipping their stockpile out of the country as Trump is trying to get done now.

[10:10:02]

They had dismantled the core of their plutonium reactor. That was verified. They had drawn down the number of centrifuges that they're operating, put them under lock and key, under international supervision. There were international inspections into all the different components of that program. So, look, it doesn't mean the deal was perfect, but it is the case that they were complying with it.

And that compliance assured us that they did not have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon, or even to accumulate enough fuel for a nuclear weapon. I think the imperfections of the deal do not mean that they weren't complying. And frankly, the entire world was in that deal. The permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council were in on that deal. So it had the backing of international law. The U.N. Security Council resolutions as well.

ZAKARIA: And my understanding and my sources at the time, I remember asking, Israeli intelligence also believed it was complying with the deal.

RHODES: That's right. The -- it was always a bit of a discordance between the Israeli political leadership and, you know, the Israeli security establishment. Not to say that the security establishment thought the deal was perfect, but they did think that it was doing what it was intended to do, which was giving us assurance that they weren't pursuing a nuclear weapon.

Look, Bibi Netanyahu never wanted the deal to happen in the first place. He made versions of the same presentation that he apparently gave Donald Trump about the need to use military force. That was a source of great tension, as you remember, Fareed, between him and President Obama. He said that the deal would have to encompass ballistic missiles and support for proxies, and no capacity to enrich uranium on Iranian soil whatsoever.

These are terms that he knew that the Iranians would never accept. And these were the terms that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, I think, were presenting at the negotiating table before the decision was taken to go to war. And so you always heard an opposition to any kind of diplomatic agreement from the Israeli prime minister while we were there. We made a decision to not listen to him, not take his advice, not follow him into a military action that would lead to the kind of war we're seeing today.

And I think that was a far preferable outcome. We were now living with the alternative that I think, frankly, not that we were right about everything, but we warned about precisely this outcome, the cost of a war. ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, the Biden administration chose not to rejoin the

JCPOA, the Obama nuclear deal, despite its ongoing criticism of Trump for pulling out of the deal. I asked Ben Rhodes why, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:16:56]

ZAKARIA: And we are back with President Obama's deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes.

So after Trump one comes Biden. And here there is a bit of a puzzle. The Biden team was the Obama team. The Biden team had criticized Trump pulling out of the nuclear deal vehemently. And then when Biden comes into power, he does not try to go back into the deal. They try to go for something bigger and better, longer, stronger. They have various ways of saying it. Why?

RHODES: I was very disappointed in that decision. I think that they could have just come in and gone right back into that nuclear agreement. It was sitting there as a template. I think our European allies wanted him to do that, and frankly, Fareed, I've heard different reasons for it. It was a difficult time in the region, et cetera.

I'll be blunt. I think it was because of the political blowback that they expected to face over reentering that deal. It was an incredibly bruising fight in 2015 and 2016, as you remember, when we did that nuclear deal. I think President Biden came in. He thought, I have a lot of things to do. I have a big agenda. I have even Democrats who are not supportive of doing this nuclear deal.

So I'm going to kind of wait by my time, and then I'm going to demand something longer and stronger, which I think was a recipe for failure, Fareed, because the Iranian perspective was, we're not the ones that violated the terms of this deal. The Americans were. They're the ones that pulled out. And so if the Americans come back and say, well, essentially we need to renegotiate an entirely different deal, it kind of confirmed their belief that the Americans weren't serious about diplomacy.

So I do think that that was a missed opportunity because, frankly, after that window of opportunity in the first months of the Biden administration, Iran elected a more hard line president. The hardliners in Iran became even more empowered. Again, as I think we argued in the Obama years, not doing diplomacy only reinforces the worldview and foreign policy of the more hard line elements of the Iranian system. And that's what ended up happening over the course of the Biden administration.

ZAKARIA: And you've said that this is part of a pattern that Democrats, particularly in the Biden years, tended to do, which was, you know, they had said the China tariffs were stupid, but then they go along with them. They had argued in favor of the opening to Cuba. And then, of course, they don't pursue that. All in fear that there will be Republican opposition, which I think you've argued there was going to be anyway.

RHODES: Yes. I mean, look, I'm sure that there are people that substantively, you know, might have taken a more hard line or hawkish position on some of those issues. I think Joe Biden himself represented a kind of more conventional view of foreign policy that was a little bit more reticent to engage in diplomacy with adversaries and Barack Obama. But the bottom line is, I do think that for all the necessary conversations about policy, the Democratic Party has all too often been in a defensive crouch. Particularly since 9/11 on issues of national security. And look, let's just take the Cuba example, too.

[10:20:02]

That opening was available to them. I think it was a common sense approach to say that the better way to change Cuba is to open things up, to allow for travel, to allow for greater investment, that that would incentivize the Cuban government to change.

And again, because that opportunity wasn't taken, you know, in part, here we are. We're in a situation where the Democratic reluctance to kind of stand behind our own inclinations on foreign policy, it actually serves to kind of reinforce some of the Republican narratives about these issues.

And that leads to a situation in which you're kind of unintentionally legitimizing some of the more hawkish, you know, almost Lindsey Graham type views on issues like Iran or Cuba, or if you look at China, you know, I think, yes, did we need to move in a more competitive direction with China from the kind of period of engagement after the Cold War? Sure. But at the same time, when you look at this, we foreclosed a capacity to try to work things out.

We're looking at artificial intelligence today that China is going to have and America is going to have. And we kind of can't even have a meaningful dialogue about putting guardrails around that. So I do think that Democrats need to kind of finally do away with this sense that we have to kind of cautiously tack off of the Republicans on all these issues.

I actually think that that is as important as doing the substantive work of determining policies, because if you don't have the political will to stand behind your policy approaches in government, you're not going to be able to implement your agenda.

ZAKARIA: In a way, this brings me to your very fine new book where you have picked 15 speeches from American history to really try and help us understand the debate about what it means to be an American, what the core of American identity is. And you have this lovely line in there when you're talking about Obamas speeches, which come on the heels of the Obama speech you picked, which comes on the heels of the Ronald Reagan speech you picked, and you say, Reagan offered moral certainty. Obama offered moral struggle.

And it strikes me that if Reagan offered moral certainty, Trump is offering moral hyper certainty, and the Democrats are struggling to figure out, well, what do they offer in return? What do you think they should offer?

RHODES: Well, I think that's right. I mean, Reagan represented a kind of certain inherited sense of American greatness. You know, that moral certainty that we are right because we are American, whereas Obama represented that effort to kind of close the gap between what America says it is in the Declaration of Independence around equality and kind of the lived reality of American life for so many people.

You know, Fareed, actually, if I may tweak your formulation a bit. Trump offers certainty. There's no moral attached to it, you know, and actually, I think that that's the opening for Democrats. I think Democrats need to kind of recover a moral language. Yes, around foreign policy. I mean, let's just look at foreign policy for one moment.

You know, we've gone from, you know, I read about the "Four Freedoms" speech that FDR gave, giving a moral basis for America's entry into World War II. And now we're at open the strait and get rid of the nuclear dust. There's no morality in the language. But even here at home, I think people feel like there's a discordance between how some Democrats talk about things in kind of carefully calibrated, almost poll tested language or focusing on kind of the most popular issues.

And meanwhile, you know, we've got an economy in which people don't think that their kids' lives are going to be better than their own. We have wars around the world. We have artificial intelligence seemingly coming for our jobs or, you know, befriending our children through chatbots.

People want someone to tell a moral story about where we are and about where we can get to. And if you don't do that, you can't make people believe that there's an alternative future available.

ZAKARIA: Ben Rhodes, eloquent and intelligent as always, thank you.

RHODES: Thanks so much, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, since March, Lebanon has been rocked by intense fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. Why do efforts to secure a lasting ceasefire continue to fail? I'll talk to an expert on the ground in Beirut, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:28:31]

ZAKARIA: Since the killing of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei earlier this year, Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian allied militant and political group in Lebanon, have been engaged in fierce fighting despite on and off ceasefires.

To tell us what the situation looks like on the ground in Beirut, I'm joined by Maha Yahya, director of the Middle East Center at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Pleasure to have you on again, Maha. Tell me, what is it like to be living in Beirut through this? Because the reports are that, you know, large parts of the country are now occupied. Towns have been bombed. Hundreds of thousands of people have displaced. What does it look? What does it feel like to you?

MAHA YAHYA, DIRECTOR, CARNEGIE MIDDLE EAST CENTER: Good afternoon, Fareed. It's good to be with you. Look, the situation on the ground, people are very anxious. I'm in Beirut, and the city is literally throbbing with anxiety. There are more than a million people who've been displaced. Almost one third of southern Lebanon is occupied today, 15 percent, 10 percent to 15 percent of Lebanese territory, upwards of 63 towns and villages have been completely eradicated. Literally vaporized, dynamited, bombed from the air.

So it's very tenuous. People are anxious. They're tired of war. There's -- in some parts of the country, there's the performance of normality. People are trying to go about their daily lives, go out. But it's, you see, the effects of war, whether you're living under the bombs or not, everywhere. You see it in displaced people and the overcrowding of the capital, for example.

The population in Beirut alone has risen by 60 percent in the last couple of months. And just the sense of loss amongst people who are now, some of them are either living in makeshift shelters or some are still in tents on the streets.

ZAKARIA: So we have this peace proposal that the Israelis have made, and the Lebanese government sort of agreed to. But Hezbollah said, no. What is going on? Why is Hezbollah resisting the ceasefire?

YAHYA: It's not really a ceasefire. It's a kind of declaration of principles. And quite frankly, the declaration is very geared towards Israel's interests, if you like. It talks about -- it doesn't talk about Israel's withdrawal from the areas it's currently occupying. It doesn't talk about the return of people to the areas that they've been pushed out from forcibly, displaced from.

It doesn't talk about how are we going to rebuild and reconstruct. In fact, military operations continue. And it makes any kind of ceasefire contingent on the disarmament of Hezbollah. They've come out with these -- they've proposed what I think may be an interesting idea, which is to create these pilot zones where the Israeli army withdraws, and then the Lebanese army takes over, and Hezbollah withdraws from these areas. Their armaments are taken away.

But there's no timeframe. There's no timeline. And quite honestly, if one looks at what's happened in Gaza over the past two and a half years, the way this current Israeli government has behaved, all indications are it has no interest in any kind of cessation of hostilities. So, there are lots of concerns around this.

Now, Hezbollah will de facto say, no, we're not going to agree to this, in part, because Iran is not on board also. Since the assassination of the former secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah secretary general, the IRGC have effectively been directly involved in the affairs of Hezbollah, particularly its military arm. And they've worked on helping them regroup, rearm, et cetera. So, it's not a local decision at the same time. It's directly tied to the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. Iran is using Lebanon as well as part of its leverage and its discussions with the U.S.

ZAKARIA: So there are two narratives about what all of this has done to Hezbollah. One is that the Lebanese people are, you know, angry with Hezbollah for having dragged the country into a war. And the other is that given the extent of Israel's bombing people are now sympathizing with Hezbollah. There's a renewed sense of, solidarity with Hezbollah because, you know, they're -- because Israel is bombing so furiously. Which narrative do you think is more accurate?

YAHYA: Both narratives are accurate in all frankness. I mean, both are truths to a certain extent. A majority of the Lebanese people, including members of the Shiite community, are fed up. They're fed up of war. They're very angry that they've been dragged into a war that they really did not want to get into. As I said -- as I mentioned earlier, there is significant destruction in Southern Lebanon.

Entire areas have been literally had life bombed out of them. And we're not just talking about physical infrastructure. We're talking about health, education, cultural areas, historic sites, property rights cadaster. I mean, literally everything.

Phosphorus has been used in agricultural zones, which means that these areas can no longer be used for agricultural purposes. So all the pillars, things that would allow life to resume, economic life to resume have been totally eradicated. So, there's a lot of anger. And who is going to compensate?

However, at the same time, there is a sense that this is a war against the Shia community because most of the targeted areas in its rhetoric, in its bombardments, Israel is not distinguishing between Hezbollah and members of the Shia community. So there is a sense that the community itself is being targeted. This narrative is being amplified by Hezbollah. There is -- Hezbollah itself has lost its local allies.

[10:35:01]

It has no real partners, significant partners on the ground today from the other communities. So, there is a sense of need to -- a need to rally around the party as the only defense against what the community feels is an attack against it. And I think this is where there's been a big miscalculation over the past year and a half by the international community.

The idea that you cannot strengthen, help strengthen state institutions and a government that has taken incredibly courageous decisions over the past year and a half without dismantling Hezbollah. When you're dealing with non-state actors, you deal with them both politically and militarily. It's not one at the expense of the other.

ZAKARIA: Maha Yahya, a pleasure to have you on. Thank you for helping us understand it.

YAHYA: Thank you, Fareed. Thank you for having me. ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, the World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak in Africa a public health emergency of international concern. How bad is it and how much worse is it made by cuts the White House has made to the types of aid that could be critical here. We'll explore in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:53]

ZAKARIA: There have been more than 350 confirmed cases of Ebola and more than 60 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. But the full scale of the outbreak is still unknown. The WHO has declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. So far, cases have mostly been concentrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but some have been reported in neighboring Uganda. Ebola is one of the world's deadliest viruses and can spread rapidly through direct contact with bodily fluids or contaminated surfaces.

Dr. Ashish Jha joins me now. He was the White House COVID-19 response coordinator in the Biden administration and is now the co-founder and CEO of the bio intelligence firm BioRadar. Dr. Jha, welcome.

Tell me first, how bad is this? How serious is it? And are you worried that it could in fact, spread well beyond Uganda's borders, perhaps even to places like the United States?

ASHISH JHA, SENIOR FELLOW, HARVARD'S BELFER CENTER: Yes. So, Fareed, thank you so much for having me back. This is a bad outbreak. Right now, it's the third worst outbreak of Ebola we've ever had. I think it will quickly become the second worst as we -- as more cases get identified.

My sense is that this outbreak began probably two to three months ago, and it's been spreading quietly. And we are far from getting our arms around it. So, I think this gets much worse before it gets better. I certainly worry about other countries on the African continent, and I would not be surprised if we see at least a few cases ending up in Europe, or maybe even in the United States.

ZAKARIA: Now, there is something that people say about Ebola which I wanted to, you know, run by you, which is that it's a virus that tends not to spread quite the way that COVID-19 did, like wildfire, because sad to say, tragic to say, but it kills people much faster than COVID would. Is there something to that, that it sort of burns itself out because of the very vicious nature of the virus?

JHA: Well, there is a general view that more deadly viruses spread a little less easily. I mean, obviously, to some extent, if the patient dies, you have less of a chance. You can still spread this virus quite efficiently. The difference between this and COVID is obviously COVID spreads through the air. This is through bodily fluids.

The second is COVID can spread when people don't have symptoms. That's not true for Ebola. Ebola people spread it when they have a fever, when they're sick. So, that's why it tends to be not quite as transmissible. But boy, lots of people can still get quite sick from -- I mean, lots of people can still get infected from Ebola. And obviously lots of people get sick from Ebola.

ZAKARIA: What do you think has gone wrong with the Trump administration's kind of detection mechanisms? Because we heard about so many cuts from USAID to, you know, to cuts to international public health withdrawal from the WHO. Did all this have an impact?

JHA: It undoubtedly did. Look, USAID was our boots on the ground. That was where we had people in countries helping health systems. We had a lot of people in the DRC. Those people were eliminated. Their positions were eliminated.

My view is if those positions had still been there, those people would have been there. They would have heard about the outbreak. They would have known something was spreading, and we would have gotten our arms around this much faster.

The second is, once Ebola has been identified in the past, I mean, it happened 12 times during the Biden administration that Ebola or its close cousin Marburg, was identified immediately a phone call went to CDC. CDC sent in people. CDC sent in testing. And that's how we stamp these things out.

That phone call just did not come this time. And there was nobody at CDC to take that phone call in the same way. So everything has gotten substantially weakened by the Trump administration, really by the Kennedy strategy on health. And that has left us much more vulnerable to these kinds of outbreaks.

ZAKARIA: If you were back in your job in the White House, what's the one thing you would you would advise the president to do now?

[10:45:01]

JHA: Well, the first and foremost is you'd actually want a coordinator at the White House. We don't have one. For things like this you need all of U.S. government approach. CDC has a role. State has a role. Often the DOD has a role. You know, others have a role.

You need a senior person basically quarterbacking. Right now, the U.S. government doesn't have a quarterback. It has a lot of people on the playing field playing the ball but without anyone coordinating. So what I would say to the president is name a quarterback and give them the authority to do whatever it takes to get this outbreak under control.

ZAKARIA: Ashish Jha, pleasure to have you on.

JHA: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, earlier this year, President Trump said he would run Venezuela after U.S. forces seized the country's strongman, Nicolas Maduro. How is his plan working out better than you might think. I will explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:33]

ZAKARIA: And now for the last look. When the Trump administration seized Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro from his country earlier this year on drug trafficking charges, many analysts predicted the worst. Some warned of an Iraq style disaster, a sudden power vacuum, spiraling violence and a humanitarian crisis that would dwarf the one already unfolding. But nearly half a year on, those predictions have not materialized.

So far, the U.S. decision to take Maduro but leave much of his regime in place is producing a fragile stability. Much of the Trump arrangement appears to focus on tapping Venezuela's oil reserves. They are reportedly the largest in the world and have been mismanaged for decades.

Within weeks of Maduro's capture, Venezuela passed a new hydrocarbons law to open the sector to more foreign investment. Production has now rebounded to above 1 million barrels per day and is projected to rise further.

The economy has also benefited from another Trump fueled crisis, the Iran War. The disruption of the oil trade caused by that conflict has driven global prices up and made Venezuela's oil exports far more lucrative.

Today, foreign investors are rushing to get in on Venezuela's oil renaissance. In Caracas, the aging J.W. Marriott hotel has become an unusual symbol of this new era of Trumpian dealmaking. After the U.S. reportedly set up a de facto embassy on the top floor, the hotel is now a hotbed of diplomats, spies and oil tycoons where, according to the "Wall Street Journal," Spanish is spoken with a Texas twang.

But for most Venezuelans, this sudden prosperity is still very much out of reach. Annual inflation remains in triple digits, and reports from beyond the capital suggest the standard of living continues to decay, punctuated by looting, blackouts and water shortages. Political change has been far more limited. About 400 political prisoners have been released, though hundreds are still behind bars. The regime remains repressive and authoritarian, but does appear to be allowing more dissent.

"The Economist" recorded more than 1,200 protests in the first two months of this year, and despite this uncertainty, the Spanish newspaper "El Pais" sees a cautious optimism in Venezuelan polling, describing a country that is caught between a hope that has never before surged so quickly and a sense of distrust that refuses to subside.

As Caracas based Phil Gunson of the International Crisis Group observed to the "Atlantic, " when you look back at all the foreign policy disasters in U.S. history, this definitely ranks as a success, for now at least.

So, what did people get wrong? Some point to the surprising pragmatism of Maduro's former deputy and now interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who was recognized by the U.S. as the sole head of state. Rodriguez was once a loyalist shaped by the anti-western movement of former President Hugo Chavez. Now she's become the main broker of the bizarre new alliance with her government's longtime former enemies in Washington.

As Venezuelan economist and former national assembly advisor Francisco Rodriguez explains, her willingness to work with the U.S. is fitting in a regime that increasingly resembles a kleptocracy free of any ideology. As he put it, Chavismo is willing to cut whatever deal is necessary for its survival. That's why it worked so well.

The burning question is now whether Venezuela's partial economic opening can become a Democratic one. So far, Delcy Rodriguez has expressed little interest in elections. Polling suggests opposition leader and Nobel peace prize winner Maria Corina Machado would comfortably defeat Rodriguez in a landslide. But Machado remains in exile.

The Trump administration is showing little urgency to change this reality. Trump's Venezuela gamble has defied some early predictions, and Washington's current strategy of buying time may seem cautiously pragmatic to some.

[10:55:06]

But as political scientist Javier Corrales notes, it is the right thing to do for now if you don't believe in democracy. If your only interest is to make Venezuela great for U.S. businesses again.

Even economic growth, however, would require reforms of the courts, laws and political systems of a country that has been deformed by 26 years of populist authoritarianism, a country in which the most popular figure, Machado, whose coalition swept the last election, is forced to live in exile, does not seem likely to have enduring stability.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)