i think it s inane. iranians are not interested in the consumer societied the way americans like barack obama are. that s something putin shares. when you talk about russia not having the resource, the reduction in petroleum prices have had an effect. but his adventureism in ukraine and syria are not big budget items. what he s facing is a vacuum of power because of the decline of interests by the u.s. in the region. they are playing a bigger game than looking at the current state of their economy. bill: there is a meeting today with raoul castro, the cuban president. i hope the president doesn t give away the gaw the guantanamf
syria, and as a result of that, he guaranteed the preservation of the assad regime and he is influencing other countries in the region to pay attention to him in a way they have not in the past. so you ever, you have the, u.a.e., you have kuwait, kingdom of saudi arabia, egypt, all buying putin s weapons in the last year. he is on the ground in egypt with trainers them. he clearly has a strategy to gain influence in the middle east in a way that russia has never ever been in the middle east. he is only able to do this because of the united states disengagement and unwillingness to confront what he is doing. heather: not only disengaugement, as we heard president obama say yesterday, he is willing to work with him possibly. that is the bluff. that is the concession he will get out of president obama. and what that means is they will work together to fight isis.
troops that left the void which isis came into being. and the president said a lot of things liking a reset with russia. like he said a red line in syria. but the facts on the ground are very different than the words coming out of the president s mouth. bill are said i have to appeal to democratic nations. how is that working out? not very well. we sees an axis of influence russia is trying to put together. you have iran, iraq, syria and russia working together, sharing information. the president keeps talking as putin moves troops, air power, fighter power into syria and putin there is to prop up assad. you see putin heading in one direction and the president heading in another. but that broadcast loudly around
you can get a lot of tour from the barrel of oil more so than you can from the barrel of a gun. bill: if you tbleef general keane if you believe general keane and general petraeus that putin is going run out of money, how effective can he be giving russia a food hold back in the middle east? putin will continue to be aggressive. we know he uses his energy as a political weapon. we ought to be using our energy as an economic as well as political weapon and we dock that by exporting morley questionified natural gas, including crude oil. i think that that would hayesen the demise of putin. putin is spread out with his investments in syria and ukraine and crimea and all around the world. putin becoming more aggressive in the arctic.
what does that really mean? what that means then, if he commits to that, that the united states now is involved with syrian regime, with iran, with the quds force, with the hezbollah. because those are the allies of russia that he will use inside of syria. does that make any sense to anybody that we would be conducting an effort like that, who are our adversaries in the region? what we would be underwriting then is the systemic, continued genocide of the syrian people which is largely producing the refugees we see pouring out through europe. that is what that decision, if he makes that decision, which i think he will. heather: yeah. that is the result of that decision. it is actually staggering. that is why i say, this is a game-changer. heather: definitely amazing we ve gotten to this point. general keane, thank you so much for joining us. we appreciate it. good talking to you, heather. bill: amazing stuff there. all right. 25 before the hour. donald trump now unveiling details on