Steve Yates

The strike had to be degrading the capabilities of the regime while they have maximum pressure to degrade the economic capabilities of the regime.

And the rest of the world is going to have to step in and help handle some of the other elements of the political transformation, in my view.

Buck, that is the most important issue that they have to work through.

And I don't take it as a given that whatever the U.S.

does in the near term is going to be about regime change.

I think what they demonstrated in Venezuela...

is that a step along the way is that we are going to change the maybe the nature of the current regime and renegotiate sort of the terms of trade and dealing with the united states and the world and under these new terms maybe we buy more time for a longer term transition to whether it's an opposition or a reformed country but in venezuela the opposition is not yet in charge it may be in the not too distant future if there's an election

The same goes with Iran.

I mean, the debathification issue in Iraq, which you know as well as anybody, just is one of the biggest ghosts of what people think of as a failure in the Iraq strategy.

Keeping some of those institutions in place so there isn't broader instability and mayhem across the region is one of the priorities they have to have.

So I think there could be a move that gets –

at the top leadership, and there could be a change to someone else in the regime.

Personally, I would love it if this regime went away, but I personally just think that the U.S.

role is to strike hard the way no one else can, to contain fallout as best anyone can.

But it's the Abraham Accords countries and others that really need to be managing more of how do we have an economic and political relationship that's different with Iran.

Well, I agree, and that could be a viable alternative, but I think one of...

The thing we felt got stung in the Iraq situation was having a leader that comes into place that is just viably identified as the American choice.

And for a lot of the world that suffers from pretty high dose TDS, if it's perceived as being Trump's choice.

There could be a problem of trying to hold coalitions and investment and other security engagements that are necessary for that transition.

I think that might explain why we have this muddled or middle ground approach in Venezuela, too.