so you ll work where he can and managing differences where they exist. related to this, not only russia, but also syria, iran, excuse my, hezbollah, the three together sort of forming an alliance in what they would like to do in the middle east. where does it leave that relationship? well, the interesting thing about the middle east is everything touches on everything else. and russiand at united states have a common aspiration. they don t want to see syria get worse. they want to find a way to resolve the iranian nuclear program. they have an interest, mutual interest, in middle east peace. so there is lots to talk about and see what kind of steps can be undertaken, some of which russia will agree with and some of which russia will oppose. so these consultations are very important even if there is not necessarily going to be an
what can the secretary of state do to get russia to come along? i m not sure that s the right con text. obviously consultation, managing differences that do exist. i don t see that there will be a breakthrough here. russia s interests in syria are different than the u.s. s. russia s solution is perhaps a political transition, but one that bashar al assad gets to participate in fp united states s position is that after 70,000 people are dead, there needs to be a political transition, but he has to step aside as part of this. so it will be managing those kind of tensions, but also on the bilateraled a jen came is the issue of make sure that his intelligence cooperation as we try to reconstruct tamerlan tsarnaev s rtrip to russia.
particularly after 10, 11 years in iraq and afghanistan. however, air strikes only as we did or air support only in libya was accepted pretty easily by the american people. right now it s mix the about 40 to 30 with about 25% of the american people saying they haven t made up their mind. it s possible the israeli air strikes would ease the pressure on the president. a lot of americans could say they re taking care of it. but internationally, i think it increases the pressure the on the president of the united states to follow through, to show solidarity with israel. on the president s recent trip to israel, there was a t-shirt i saw that said don t worry, america, israel s got your back with a picture about of an f-15 fighter. i don t think that s the image of united states needs to send to the region or to iran that we ll outsource this to israel. they have to show there is no daylight between us and israel. very important right now. emily, steve there making an important distinct
because on one side you have assad backed by iran, the other side you have these rebels now in-fill trafiltrated with al qa. so as chairman rogers said this morning, it s trying to side with the least bad option. i m not sure what that is at this point. the president said this weekend he made comments about the potential u.s. action in syria. listen to what he said. i don t take any options off the table as commander in chief. circumstances can change. you never know what contingencies you have to deal with. but what i do know is that i cannot see a scenario right now in which american boots on the ground would make any sense. so no option the off the table, but also american boots not on the ground as the president said. what sort of military operations would you support? i agree with what the president said right there. at this point if we re going to
certainly john kerry, it s unlikely that we ll see any kind of breakthrough russia and the united states to see the syrian challenge through fundamentally different lenses. part of the crowd here that we re watching on the right hand side, some of these graduating students, they could be rotc cadets, enlisting after graduating. what is the right tone for the president as he addresses this crowd understanding we now have the news of syria, we have the news of other major issues that need to be dealt with internationally by the president? we have the withdrawal time line coming out of afghanistan, as well. yeah, i wouldn t be surprised if his speech not only provides the wisdom that you expect a xhepsment speaker to provide, but also dealing with the domestic challenges that we ve faced which you ve mentioned.