When they're ready to let us know, very simple. Ready to do whatever. Doesn't make any difference. Whatever they want to do, I'm ready.

That's the president talking about Iran and we said to ourselves, we said we need to talk to somebody who knows a lot about that part of the world about what could be going on with us in Iran.

Indeed, a lot of strong statements, a lot of talking heads who don't have half an idea what they're talking about. And then you have Ambassador Faisal Al-Estrabadi, who's the former Iraq ambassador to the UN, one of the authors of that country's constitution and director for the center of something behind Sean's head.

Thank you. The study of the Middle East at Indiana University, my apologies. Ambassador Al-Estrabadi, how are you, sir?

I'm very well. Thank you. Delighted to be with you again. Thank you. It's been too long. So why don't we begin with Iran and their recent actions, their motivations? What's their game? What are their goals?

Well, I think that a couple of things. One, as is always the case, regime survival is the number one priority. And there are people in the U.S. administration that have given conflicting signals about that.

John Bolton, the national security adviser, very famously, wants regime change in Iran. Now it's interesting because the president has said that he is not interested in regime change. He only wants to ensure that Iran doesn't obtain a nuclear weapon.

Now the problem with that is that the United States is actually transferring nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia as we speak. And so Iran will be looking back across the Gulf and saying, this doesn't look good for us. In the meantime, they were actually complying with the terms of the so-called joint comprehensive plan of action, which is what the president calls a nuclear deal.

And there is zero evidence that they were not in compliance with those terms. It's the United States, which went out of compliance and withdrew unilaterally, couldn't even bring the European allies aboard.

And so the Iranians are looking at this and saying, what's our incentive for negotiating? When negotiated, we came to an agreement, we abided by an agreement, and the other side violated it. So what assurances do we have that if we negotiate again, we won't be in the same position a year, two years, three years down the road?

It's one thing to renegotiate. It's another to withdraw and re-institute sanctions without a justification under the original agreement, at least. And then expect the other side to negotiate again. It's a very tricky situation the president has put the US in. And the Iranians aren't playing his game.

Maybe that was the problem with the agreement I was watching Senator Mark Rubio make the point yesterday that while they were in a compliance with the agreement, as you just said, with the specifics that we discussed, they were not in compliance with the spirit of the agreement and that they were continuing to be the world's number one exporter of terror and be involved in a bunch of things that we don't like. So how do we deal with that?

Well, you deal with that as such. That made, first of all, there's no such thing as spirit of an agreement. There's an agreement and there are terms of an agreement. And Senator Rubio knows that.

You know, you would be hard if you had made every payment on your mortgage on time and in the proper amount. You would feel mightily put upon if your mortgage company foreclosed on your house because it felt you were not in compliance with the spirit of the mortgage agreement.

There are terms of a mortgage agreement. And if you are the comply or you don't, this is an international agreement that is sanctioned by six countries, seven if you include Iran, but five, some of America's closest allies and the United Nations Security Council on which the United States sits where it along with four other powers has a veto.

You have never had a guest on your show more critical of the Iranian government and of its actions in the Middle East than I. There may be others who hold it in the same lower regard, the government of Iran as I do, but you've never had one that has a hold it in lower regard than I do.

But this isn't a game of monopoly. This is, you know, playing at the highest level in the international community and there's ways of doing things and what the president did and unilaterally withdrawing us generally is not it, particularly because I can't tell what the strategy behind the United States actions is.

I know what the steps they're taking are, but sanctions are not a policy. What's the policy?

I have to agree with the president's point of view on the previous agreement, but walking away from it is an enormous gamble.

But the way Donald Trump candidate Donald Trump agreed with that. Jim Matt as general matters of former secretary of defense was against the agreement.

He thought he was out of government at the time, of course, and he thought the agreement that the Obama administration entered into was a mistake.

But he also thought withdraw and testified in Congress when he was still secretary of defense that it was a would be a strategic mistake for the United States to withdraw.

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