Richard Haass

There's no focus on anything else.

For the United States, it's eight strategic considerations.

We've got any number of others.

So I think there really is a strategic divergence here.

And what I don't know, you would know better than I would probably, is whether there's resentment in some places in the administration where they feel that the Israelis...

shall we say, persuaded them, quote unquote, to go into this war based upon assessments that either were wrong or that were disingenuous because the Israelis knew they would appeal to the president even though they knew they were wrong.

Interesting.

See, originally I thought Vance couldn't lose.

Let me give you the opposite, that he was being sent over there to negotiate peace.

And either if he succeeded, good for him.

If he quote unquote failed, then others like Trump would make the decision to escalate.

So-

Vance's fingerprints are not all necessarily on any military escalation, though I read just before we did this that the administration is thinking about resuming armed strikes, which I think is a particularly bad idea.

I'm not sure what, if anything, they'd accomplish militarily, but I just don't, again, if there's pressure to be had here in Iran, it's economic, not military.

We're going to run out of targets at the rate we're going.

And Vance, you know, the president may have been pissed off at Vance because Vance signaled in the New York Times piece, shall we say, his lack of enthusiasm for the war.

And he came out of that story so well that it tends to satisfy the first rule of who leaked, whoever comes out of a story best.

So the president may have wanted to take him down a peg or two.

But I'm not sure Vance comes off as a big loser here.

I don't think you necessarily look awful.