I'm John Batchel, with my colleague Ben and Ben Talibu, a senior fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, writing recently for the FD, about the Ayatollah suddenly a charm offensive.

Why? Well, desperation. And what is the evidence that there is no fact to depend upon here,

that this is not a charm offensive? It's a trap. Benham, you have three explanations as to why Mr. Trump

is more of a threat than, I believe, than any president in recent memory, certainly since

the revolution in under President Carter and President Reagan. What we're looking at here is

that Mr. Trump, amongst all the others, has backed up the resistance of the Iranian people.

Is that a blow to the regime?

Has he, in doing that, has he undermined the credibility of the regime to its own people?

Well, no source or no entity has undermined the credibility of the Islamic Republic

before the Iranian people other than the government and the officials

died to the Islamic Republic itself. That has been rather plain, in my view, for 46 years. But

make no mistake, in a recent meeting with the Sheikh of Qatar, Iran's supreme leader, and that's

a title meant to be taken rather literally, told the Qatari Sheikh that all American presidents are the same. Here, the Supreme Leader was trying

to bridge the gap between Democrats and Republicans, and he was trying to showcase his enmity

to Americans across the aisle. But that, you could say, ecumenicalism or bipartisanship in his view of his hatred and reviling of America,

obscures an unholy trinity that makes Trump much stronger and more apparent in the minds of the Islamic Republic's decision makers.

And that threefold understanding is one, Trump's

slaughtered the sacred cow, making a mistake, slaughtered the sacred cow that used to exist in this town

in Washington, D.C., where I live in work when it comes to vociferously supporting the Iranian people

from the highest levels of the American government. Yes, most of that was political and rhetorical, but that was a sharp contrast to 2009,

when the regime was literally teetering on the edge, and Iranian protesters looked at Obama's

quiet and muted and lacklust of responses and chanted, Obama, Obama, Yama una, Yabama, which is Obama, Obama,

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