Saagar Enjeti

So, number one, he was clearly convinced himself or sold a bill of goods from the Israelis that, oh, you can just take out the Ayatollah and some top leadership.

Whole thing is a house of cards.

It's going to collapse.

Trump was telling allies and I relied on you for this reporting that this is going to be over in a few days.

Don't worry about it.

Obviously, that had to be a little eye opening for him at the beginning.

This did not go the way that I was told that it would go.

The second one for me appears to have been that.

Pilot rescue or whatever happened there near Isfahan, where, yes, they were allegedly able to get their pilot out, even though we've never known who he is.

We've never seen him.

We've never heard about him since.

But in any case, we know for sure that it was a bit of a debacle.

You had U.S.

aircraft that got stuck there, had to be destroyed.

And I think that may have been an eye opening moment in terms of, oh, if we do something on the ground, this is going to be very difficult.

This is going to be a problem for us because it was right after that.

that he, you know, began to pursue our how do we step back and the most intensive bombing campaigns ended.

And then this is the piece I really want to get your thoughts on.

Potentially, the most recent turning point was the trip to China.

It seemed like Trump held out a view that he could go to the Chinese and they would basically save his ass.