David Sanger

So in Venezuela, he also amassed a naval force and not as large as the one we've seen around Iran.

He sent in a Delta force that pulled Nicolas Maduro and his wife out of their bed and flew them off to the Brooklyn detention center.

But the rest of the government stayed in place.

And so far, the administration has been more successful than I would have expected, basically trying to run the government by remote control through the structure that Maduro left.

It's almost impossible for me to imagine, Terry, that you could do that in Iran, because you would be relying on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which runs the nuclear program and which has huge economic interests in keeping the status quo to operate the country.

And obviously, that does not fit with the president's goal of supporting the protesters.

Yes, there is a structure to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and its most elite unit, the Quds Force, which operates those terror operations that I was referring to before.

And they would largely be in day-to-day control of both the internal uprisings and responding to the U.S.,

There have also been, Terry, some fascinating leaks out of the discussions taking place at the White House and the Pentagon that have suggested that General Dan Kaine, who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was appointed by President Trump, while not taking a position on whether or not the president should attack,

has warned him that this may not go as easily as Operation Midnight Hammer.

That was the attack on the Iranian nuclear sites in June.

Or the operation against Venezuela, that the U.S.

could take casualties.

that the Abraham Lincoln carrier group that is in the Persian Gulf is vulnerable to those Iranian missiles.

And you could imagine what this would look like if it turned out that we lost an aircraft carrier or a destroyer or some other ship to an Iranian missile in the course of an exchange with them.

Well, first of all, if the military did have those concerns, they would go out of their way to avoid discussing it, even internally, because they have a pretty good idea it would leak.

I've spent a number of hours with President Trump in the past couple of months.

And, you know, I know I hear from a lot of people, oh, he, you know, I'm sure he can't, you know, operate the way he once did.

I know that he's impetuous and all that.

Well, Donald Trump is Donald Trump.