Sir Niall Ferguson

These people aren't serious.

So I think the Trump administration, at least some of the more hawkish elements within it, want to reestablish deterrence.

And there's nothing like precision missile strikes.

This has been true since the 1980s to remind everybody that when the sheriff is around, you are actually quite vulnerable.

The Iranian point, though, is the more important one.

What is coming, I think, this half of the year is that the Iranians are going to say at some point, no, we won't just give up our nuclear weapons program as you, President Trump, want us to.

And at that point, the Trump administration will say to the Israelis, OK, go ahead and do what you can do to the Iranian nuclear facilities.

And we'll kind of not participate, but kind of will participate to make sure that you get the job done.

So I think we should assume that the reckoning is impending for Iran.

My friend Ron Dermott.

The minister closest to Prime Minister Netanyahu has just been in Washington.

I think his main message will be we can't wait indefinitely.

We've got to do this while the Iranians don't really have much in the way of an air defense.

So I think there's going to be some quite meaningful action there.

And then the U.S.

is simply going to leave.

And the troops will leave Syria and Iraq and the Middle East will be far less a preoccupation of this administration than has been true of any administration in the last 50 years.

Well, I think there are three groups within the Trump administration, at least three different theories of this, as is often the case.

US administrations are complex things and they're at least

two, if not three, foreign policy theories in any given administration.