This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, July 23rd, 2019. I'm Caleb Brown.

The President's instincts on war seem to be correct.

He's ordered to withdraw in Syria and pledged a substantial drawdown in Afghanistan.

But on Iran, the Hawks and the Trump administration are pushing for continued maximum pressure.

If the president were more serious about lowering the temperature with Iran,

what might that look like?

Cato's Doug Bandau comments.

There have been a couple of incidents recently with respect to seized ships on the part of

Iran and the British. What has been the US reaction thus far?

America's reaction has been fairly muted.

You know, the president basically brought up again his idea of having some kind of an international

force that would patrol the Gulf.

I think he recognizes that the fact they seized a British ship

is very much tied to the fact that British seized an Iranian ship.

So he's been careful jumping into that. It's a bit different than

simply trying to interdict, you know, shipping in the in the straits. And I think he

recognizes he'd be kind of getting into a bilateral situation.

So unusually, you know, for the president, he's been fairly cautious, which is certainly

the appropriate attitude.

So with respect more broadly to the U.S. potential conflict with Iran, Iran recently said

that it had exceeded a limit with respect to enriched uranium that it was exceeding limits placed on it by the

JCPOA. What does that indicate with respect to the JCPOA? I know a bunch of other European countries

...