This is CBS Island the World. I'm John Batchel with Malcolm Holine Conference of President's

Major American Jewish Organizations. And we're very pleased to welcome our colleague, long-standing

colleague Elon Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council to comment on the President's

mission so far to the Middle East.

Elon, I'm very good evening to you. I want to get to the Russian component, but we begin with

that handshake with Shara. That astonished me when I first saw it, but then again, I thought,

you handshakes with monsters in order to tame

them. Is that going to do it, or is this stage one of taming monsters? Good evening, too, Elon.

Hi, John. Hi, Malcolm. So I think that's really the $64,000 question because to me, I think think chara's rehabilitation because that's precisely what

it is right we've seen over the last couple of months we've seen a real international push to

rehabilitate him and it's not just in the persian gulf it's also in europe and now uh with the trump

administration as well, a lot of

this is, as I read it, very preemptive. Sharra is still a very weak leader. He was a specially

designated global terrorist on the U.S. State Department's list until December of this year,

a position he held for 12 years preceding.

And he hasn't, he doesn't have much control in a very practical sense.

He doesn't have much control of Syria.

So I understand the idea of lifting sanctions preemptively as a shaping tool to shape his

behavior to get him to act better.

But I would have counseled a little bit more insistence on concrete steps because Shara right

now is getting pulled in a whole bunch of different directions, including by country like

Qatar that are pushing him in a decidedly unconstructive direction.

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