Jeff Snyder

Well, you get them distracted over in the Middle East.

and having worried about all the stuff that's taking place over there, is Iran, which is an ally of China, are they solid enough?

Are they going to be a solid Chinese ally in a couple months, maybe?

And this goes back to, why did the US strike the Iranian nuclear facilities?

Yes, again, more than one goal was accomplished in that strike.

First of all, it set back the Iranian nuclear capacity, but also showed to the Iranian people that the Iranian military is toothless.

They had Israeli planes and U.S.

planes loitering over the country for, was it weeks on end?

Yep.

And they could do exact – they were taking out Iranian leaders.

It was sending a message, and it wasn't sending a message to just the Iranian people.

It says, look –

These leaders aren't as powerful as you think it is.

It was a message to China.

Look at what we can do.

Look at what we can do in Venezuela.

And by the way, Venezuela is hyper strategic.

And it's not just about Venezuela.

Venezuela, as you said, the next step toward reasserting dominance on Panama Canal and a whole bunch of other stuff that we probably don't even know about.

What I'm saying is I think the Trump administration doesn't act on simplistic impulses and irrational emotion as people have this caricature.