David E. Sanger

You know, in Venezuela, they took out the leader but left the structure.

In Iran, it's really hard for me to understand how you would get away with doing that.

Because the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps...

the besieged militia that puts down the protests in the streets, they are the core of the Iranian power structure.

And it's almost impossible to imagine right now living with them still in power and just removing the very top.

Well, that's possible, but there are so many other possibilities that you can't live in the thought that it's even likely.

We've got a regime here that is in control of the guns.

We've got exiles who want to come back and take power.

You have the people on the street who envision a different Iran, but may not envision the same kind of Iran.

That's all the formula for the possibility of civil war.

There's also cyber risk out here.

They're quite skilled cyber actors.

They're not up at Chinese levels or necessarily the Russians, but they're in the next rank.

And if you don't have missiles that can reach the United States, you certainly do have electrons that can.

And they've proven in the past that they know how to use them.

Remember, the British would not let the U.S.

use the bomber base that the United States frequently makes use of in Great Britain to run this attack directly because they fundamentally didn't believe the United States had just cause to do the attack, didn't want to be part of it.

And I think one of the big concerns coming out of this is, does he emerge from the Venezuela and Iran experiences emboldened to use the American military as his number one tool of coercion?

And if so, how does that change the way the world views the United States and the way other leaders may copy what the president views as his own expansive power?

Well, certainly at the Munich Security Conference two weeks ago, you heard a lot of skepticism about the military buildup from European officials who thought it was just an extension of the kind of threats they had seen around Venezuela and even the president's vaguer threats about taking Greenland.