ed: the president has suggested in some public remarks that he believes iran and its leadership is in a precarious place right now because of the nuclear deal you mentioned, the u.s. pulling out. their economy has already been in pretty desperate straits. the u.s. and world sanctions coming back, snapping back, if you will. how precarious of a position is the iranian leadership in now? >> it's at the same time strong because we haven't stopped them really in syria and in iran. the arab coalition has done a job in yemen. hezbollah still controls lebanon. what we need to add to our strategy in addition to iran civil society is engage with our allies inside those countries. we have many allies in iran. we have kind of abandoned them. we need to go back and work with them. kurds, moderate shiite and moderate sunni. there are moves we can do in syria to block iran from bringing more weapons. in lebanon, we have completely abandoned civil society against