and trump and george w. bush adviser in both those administrations. it's a complicated situation, obviously, in the sense that president trump ran on pulling us out of these, out of the middle east, he ran on defeating isis. we know isis really has been largely, you know, defeated in these areas like raqqa and some of these other strong hollywoods are done -- strongholds are gone. how to you see it going forward, and is this an opening for iran? >> i don't think it is. actually, you know, the job we were doing in syria which is complete, killing isis as an entity that's able to hold land, to constitute a real military, by fighting those jihadists, we were actually in a sense making life easier for iran in syria. iran is aligned with assad, the dictator. and by, you know, basically containing the jihadists, it made it easier for assad to consolidate the control over the areas that were under his control. so removing these 2,000 forces