biggest issue for america is not how the world sees us but how we perceive ourselves. let's start with the news of the day. we send the warships the iranians turn around. you say it may not be quite that simple. why? >> we were sending mixed messages to the iranians. on the one happened, we brought the uss theodore roosevelt, say 100,000 tons of diplomacy along with her cruiser escort, but we had been very unclear about whether we had any plans whatsoever to interdict the ships, much less board them if they made for the yemeni coast. i think a more decisive aspect was that the saudis who had been can conducting a bombing campaign in yemen against these iranian-backed houthi rebels, they declared a ceasefire, and then they started bombing again. my fess is -- this is a guess -- iranians didn't so much fear the americans, they feared the saudis would simply bomb their ships when they reached port.