{"podcast":{"title":"The Foreign Affairs Interview","slug":"the-foreign-affairs-interview-5444628","podcast_index_feed_id":5444628,"rss_url":"https://feed.podbean.com/foreignaffairsmagazine/feed.xml","website_url":"https://www.foreignaffairs.com/","image_url":"https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/13951093/FAI_Logo_2023.jpg","author":"Foreign Affairs Magazine","episode_count":100,"summary":"Foreign Affairs invites you to join its editor, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, as he talks to influential thinkers and policymakers about the forces shaping the world. Whether the topic is the war in Ukraine, the United States’ competition with China, or the future of globalization, Foreign Affairs’ weekly podcast offers the kind of authoritative commentary and analysis that you can find in the magazine and on the website.","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-foreign-affairs-interview-5444628"},"episode":{"title":"How Strong Are Iran’s Strongmen?","slug":"how-strong-are-iran-s-strongmen","published_at":"2026-03-19T10:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-foreign-affairs-interview-5444628/how-strong-are-iran-s-strongmen","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-foreign-affairs-interview-5444628","url":"https://foreignaffairsmagazine.podbean.com/e/how-strong-are-iran-s-strongmen/","audio_url":"https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/xcmvz9j9t6u55dgh/260312_FAI_Stephen_Kotkin_v37ddhy.mp3","summary":"When the United States and Israel launched a joint war on Iran two weeks ago, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Iranians to rise up and rid themselves of their tyrannical rulers. He seemed buoyed by his success in swiftly removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January. But the war in Iran has not progressed as smoothly as Trump might have liked. The authoritarian regime that runs the Islamic Republic remains firmly in place. The historian Stephen Kotkin, who is the Kleinheinz senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, has spent decades thinking about how these regimes function, how they survive, and how they come to an end. In “The Weakness of the Strongmen,” an essay in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs, Kotkin anatomized authoritarianism, arguing that many of the features that bolster autocrats also present vulnerabilities. Kotkin is the preeminent biographer of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a close observer of contemporary Russian and Chinese politics, and a sharp analyst of American foreign policy. He spoke with Executive Editor Justin Vogt on Friday, March 13, and explained what makes authoritarian regimes tick, how their weaknesses can be exploited, and what history tells us about the prospects of success for the American and Israeli effort at regime change in Iran. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.","meta_description":"When the United States and Israel launched a joint war on Iran two weeks ago, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Iranians to rise up and rid themselves of…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4224,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-foreign-affairs-interview-5444628/episodes/how-strong-are-iran-s-strongmen/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-foreign-affairs-interview-5444628/how-strong-are-iran-s-strongmen.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}