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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 live from New York. Today on the program, the supreme leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khamenei, is dead. President Trump urges the Iranian people to overthrow its government. The big question is, will that happen? And it's been less than 36 hours since the attacks started, but they are far from over. Trump says the heavy bombing will continue throughout the week. What is left to accomplish? Also, all of this comes as the American talks with Iran over its nuclear program were ongoing. The Omani foreign minister, a key player in the talks, said on Friday breakthroughs had been reached. So why this? Why now? I have a series of top experts in the field to help answer those questions and many more. But first, here's my take. My first reaction to news of the death of Ayatollah Khamenei was relief. Relief for the 92 million Iranians who are freed from the grip of an 86 year old tyrant. A man who, over nearly four decades ran his country into poverty at home and isolation abroad. Khamenei was the hardest of the hardliners who defined Iran's unyielding opposition not only to America and the west and Israel, but also to freedom for his own people. He shaped the modern Islamic Republic into the strange hybrid regime that it is, run by clerics, military officers and bureaucrats, all repressive, dysfunctional and corrupt to the core. No one should mourn his passing. But when we step back and ask, where does this go next? Things look murky. President Trump has chosen to go to war with a country that did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. His claims to the contrary are belied by his own words. After the United States bombed Iran last June, the president loudly and repeatedly declared that he had obliterated Iran's nuclear program. Yet eight months later, he asks us to believe that this obliterated program posed such an urgent threat to the United States that Trump had to act without seeking authorization from the United States Congress. In his brief speech announcing the attack, President Trump revealed the true purpose of the military action. Regime change. He explicitly called on the Iranian people to overthrow their government. In doing so, he has defined the purpose of this war and the measure by which it will be judged a success or failure. Historically, regime change from the air has rarely taken place. I cannot think of a single case in which a government fell without military forces on the ground actually doing the toppling and More broadly, the record of American sponsored regime change in the Middle east is not a happy one. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya, there's always the possibility that this time will be different, that Iranians are more educated and desperate for freedom. But it is likely to be a long and complex struggle. Fears of a broader regional war are likely unfounded because Iran has already acted in self defeating ways that are uniting the region against it. Rather than drive a wedge between the United States and the Gulf states, which had expressed neutrality in this conflict, Tehran went after the Gulf states in attacks that caused little military damage, but incensed those countries. Above all is the basic reality. Iran is very weak. Iran's military battered, dozens of its leaders killed in airstrikes. Its allies like Hezbollah and Hamas are also in tatters. Meanwhile, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are bristling with military might. Yet none of this will easily translate into success on the terms that Trump has implied. Regime change and a substantially better government for the long suffering Iranian people. The most likely outcome is that a badly bruised government stays in power with new faces. Perhaps the military becomes more powerful and the mullahs less so. Perhaps Iran comes back to the table with even more concessions on the nuclear issue. President Trump seems already to have recognized the complexity of the regime change strategy and has floated the idea that one of his off ramps might be to deal with new leaders of the same regime. But once you call for the overthrow of a government, that becomes the definition of success or failure. There is also the legacy of the way that Trump went to war. The United States has a messy and far from perfect record of using force abroad. But in modern times it has usually done so by first defining the broad principles at stake, working with international law and organizations, building a broad coalition of allies, and consulting with Congress and the American people. None of this was done in Operation Epic Fury, an apt name. This was a decision making process that was fast and furious, as much about a dramatic show of strength as anything else. As other countries look around and think about what kind of world they are living in, what what rules they can rely on, what institutions they look to for stability, they're confronted by the reality that the world's leading nation, the creator of the international rules based system, has said loudly and clearly, might makes right. It's a new rule and one that will gladden the hearts of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. And let's get started. The campaign against Iran has killed not just Khamenei, but other senior officials, including the Iranian Defense Minister, the chief of the armed forces the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, not to mention scores of Iranian civilians. Iran has retaliated by launching missiles not only against Israel, but also Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and the uae, Hawaii, which all host American military assets. And this just in. U.S. central Command says three U.S. service members were killed in action as part of Operation Epic Fury, and five more were seriously wounded. Joining me now is retired Admiral James Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and a vice chair at the Carlisle Group. Admiral, welcome. And tell us first, what has surprised you so far about the military side of things? As you look at where we stand now, day two, day three,