James Rosen

Well, great to be with you again, Steve.

Thanks for having me.

I might pause before applying the word war to whatever might come.

There may be some hostilities, there may be some short-term military action, but I'm not certain that it's going to necessarily provoke war or lead to war.

Even if there's an exchange of hostilities, that doesn't necessarily

rise to the level of a war.

But yes, this is serious.

And yes, the United States has deployed an extraordinary set of assets to the Middle East.

And never before, as many commentators have pointed out, Steve, has the United States deployed so many assets to a given region without using them.

I think that's what it's been to date.

But, you know, it was Wendy Sherman, who was a senior State Department official under President Obama and an architect of the Iran nuclear deal of that era, who testified before the Senate at the time that DNA is or excuse me, deception is in the Iranians DNA.

Of course, she was speaking about the regime and not the people of Iran.

But so there are a lot of folks who have gazed upon President Trump's efforts to to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran with some

perplexity, because number one, after the strikes of last June, President Trump himself told us that the Iranian nuclear program had been obliterated.

And that's a very strong word with very clear meaning.

It means gone.

And yet now we have some need for a nuclear deal.

Well, how could there be a need for a nuclear deal if the entire program was obliterated?

And then, again, to that question of whether the Iranians will ever abide by the terms of a deal, negotiate faithfully towards a deal, just as the Obama administration understood, it's in their DNA to deceive.

And a number of columns recently have been written to the effect, and I think this is true, that there are different estimations or assessments on the part of the United States and its allies and Iran as to what success in a war or a limited military exchange