Hi everybody, I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes.

Joining me now as Ambassador Dennis Ross, a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute.

Ambassador, thank you so much for joining me.

Good to be with you.

You've worked in multiple administrations with a focus on Middle East policy,

and you've been described as the U.S. Point Man on the Middle East peace process for both the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations. So I'm really interested in hearing your perspective here when it comes to the war against Iran. You've recently penned a piece in the Atlanta called what Trump's goal in Iran should be. Seems like since the beginning of the war,

the objectives certainly have shifted. So to start off the conversation, what do you think

President Trump's goal in Iran should be? Well, I hope that the objective is to ensure that Iran can't be

a threat to the region for a long time to come.

I think that is something that's achievable.

I wrote about regime weakening, not regime change.

I think regime change is something that no one has the capability to ensure.

You could see a regime collapse somewhere down the road.

I can discuss why I think that's the case.

But there's no way of knowing whether, especially if we were trying to do this from the air,

that you can produce regime change.

And even if you could, I'm not sure you can do it anytime soon.

So if you don't want to be there for a long time to come,

regime weakening should be what you do. And to be there for a long time to come, regime weakening should

be what you do. And there, there's really two different dimensions. One is what I said already.

Reduce Iran's ability to threaten its neighbors or the region. That means you destroy enough of

its military infrastructure and its ability to reconstitute it by refabricating, rebuilding, taking away the basically

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