The following is the transcript of the interview with Karim Sadjadpour from the Carnegie Endownment for international peace and former CENTCOM commander and CBS News contributor Ret. Gen. Frank McKenzie that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on March 1, 2026.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by Iran policy analyst Karim Sadjadpour, who is with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as former CENTCOM commander and CBS News contributor retired General Frank McKenzie, who joins us from Tampa this morning. It’s good to have the both of you here. This is such a dynamic situation right now. Karim, I want to start with you. Apparently, President Trump has told the Atlantic that he’s willing to talk to the new leadership of Iran. Who is the new leadership of Iran?
KARIM SADJADPOUR: I don’t think that’s even clear inside Tehran, who is the new leadership? You know, this is one of the most unpopular regimes in the world, and I’m skeptical that there’s going to be anyone who is palatable for both the senior clergy, the Revolutionary Guards, and 90 million Iranians. There’s probably no government in the world with a greater gap between its government and its people than Iran so I’m skeptical there’s going to be any single figure who can immediately fill the enormous void of Ayatollah Khamenei.
MARGARET BRENNAN: General McKenzie, what Karim is sketching out here sounds like chaos, sounds like the potential setting for civil war. Is that how you would assess what we might be seeing come next?
GENERAL FRANK MCKENZIE (RET.): I think we’re still in the early stages of this campaign. There are several days of continued strikes ahead of us from Central Command and from Israel to reduce the Iranian ability to volley fire rockets at us. We’ll see how that progresses in the next few days. The leadership targets have clearly had an effect, and I believe the loss of Iranian effective national level command and control is- is going to have a pernicious effect on their ability to wage this war. As to what might follow, whether it’s civil war, a fractured state, don’t know. Actually, for me, it’s hard to see how it could be worse than what we had before.
MARGARET BRENNAN: General, you know this morning we have CENTCOM acknowledging at least three American deaths, five seriously wounded. These are just the opening hours, but it does appear that the situation is only escalating. What should the American people be prepared for?
GEN. MCKENZIE: The American people should be prepared for several more days of exchanges of long-range- long-range rockets. We’re going to continue to strike them with our aircraft, with our TLAMs, our Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, and the essential calculus over the next 72 to 96 hours, Margaret, is going to be whether or not we can reduce the Iranian ability to generate volleys. And by volleys, I mean groups of missiles that are fired at our bases in the region. It’s hard for them to generate a lot of missiles at Israel because of the range and just for various reasons. But what we want to do is we don’t want to let them fire large numbers of rockets at Al Udeid Air Base, for example, Al Dhafra Air Base, or the cities of our friends in the region, which they have done indiscriminately. So that’s going to be a key thing to watch over the next 72 to 96 hours. CENTCOM has planned for this for years. We probably going to- we’re probably going to take more casualties. I think the president’s comments actually were spot on when he warned the American people that this wasn’t going to be- it wasn’t going to be a cake walk. I think he knows that, but I think you know, we’re probably going to have more casualties before this is over. I hope we can certainly minimize those, and I know that our commanders in the region are doing everything they can to keep those numbers down.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We have seen already some civilian casualties in some of those Gulf states who are taking the incoming. Karim, the president– you’ve heard all of our Republican guests say the President laid this all out very clearly. What I heard in that eight minute video was a recitation of 50 years of Iran’s malicious activities, everything from the bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 by Hezbollah, the taking over the embassy, all sorts of different things. Even linked the attack on the naval destroyer in Yemen to Iran, even though it’s often attributed to al-Qaida. It was just sort of an argument: Iran is bad. We haven’t necessarily gotten the detail on the immediate threat to the United States. You’ve been watching this so closely, when the president said at the end of his video that the Iranian people should rise up. Is there any chance that the Iranian people can do that?
KARIM SADJADPOUR: That is a possibility, Margaret. As I said, this is an incredibly unpopular regime. I think they probably have at best 15 support at the moment. The Iranian people are spectators, not yet participants. President Trump also implored them to initially stay home for the next few days, as it’s unsafe, and then to seize their institutions. And so I think people are watching very carefully to see if there are any splits within the regime. But you know, they say about dictatorships that they’re- they’re most murderous at the beginning, when- at the beginning of the reign and at the end of the reign, and we saw this regime massacre potentially tens of thousands of people last month, and the question is whether they still have that coercive and cohesive security forces to continue to do the same.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah, we’re listening there and seeing some- some audio from celebrations among some people at the news of the Ayatollah’s death. You have written, and I thought this was pretty eloquent, Ayatollah Khameini lived by death to America and death to Israel. He died by death from America and Israel. What does this mean for the Islamic Republic to have him gone?
KARIM SADJADPOUR: He was the longest serving dictator in the world. For four decades, he reigned over Iran. For most Iranians, three quarters of whom were born after the 1979 revolution, he was the only ruler they ever knew. And I think this is a society- I would describe it as perhaps the most secular society in the Muslim Middle East, perhaps the most pro-American society in the Middle East. And people- Iranians, recognize they’ll never fulfill their enormous potential as a nation so long as the ethos of their government is death to America and death to Israel. And so there’s an enormous demand for a government which is perhaps not democratic, but puts national interests before revolutionary ideology.
MARGARET BRENNAN: General McKenzie, very quickly, have you heard an end game? How does America declare victory here?
GEN. MCKENZIE: Well, first of all, Margaret, we need to have an end game in view, but we shouldn’t be thinking about an off ramp right now. We need to think about continuing to impose our will on the enemy and continuing this fight at a very high level. Yes, there’s an end game, and for me, at least an end game would be either you get a regime that you can negotiate with, a new regime. That may be unlikely, but I’m- but our history of predicting regime changes in the Middle East of totalitarian states is uniformly poor. The other alternative is you get some kind of successor state that you might be able to cut a deal with, while it may be unpalatable in some dimensions, nonetheless, you may get a regime that’s going to talk to you about the nuclear program or the ballistic missile program. So I think there is an end state in view.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We will watch for. General McKenzie, Karim, thank you for your time. And thank you all for watching. Until next week, and it’s been a busy one, for Face the Nation, I’m Margaret Brennan.
[/gpt3]
