Hello, my name is David Ronserman and this is Talking Politics. Today Helen and I are in the offices of the economist where we're talking to Shashank Joshi, the defence editor here about Trump, Iran, American power and the power of the presidency.

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Shashank, we are roughly three weeks out from the drone strike that killed Salimani. We could have had this conversation three days out and I suspect there would have been a conventional wisdom that we might have wanted to challenge there and about Trump's craziness.

We could have this conversation three months out and it would probably look different again. But as seen from today, a kind of conventional wisdom is a foot which is maybe a bit less than three weeks ago it looked like a crazy act.

Now the craziness has a logic to it which is it's been quite effective as an assertion of American power, as a reminder to the Iranian regime of who can do what in the region and get away with it.

Is the new conventional wisdom wrong? If this is a kind of madness or masterstroke choice, where are you now?

I think that wisdom has come about partly because of the shooting down of the Ukrainian plane which has put the Iranian leadership on the back foot and constrained their ability to weaponize this outrage, the assassination of one of their top political military figures against the United States.

And so they've been put on the back foot, they have looked like the bad guys, over 50 people died in the funeral procession for Salimani. And so that has helped the United States.

It's also very clear to see that countries like Israel that in the days after the strike were clearly rattled, countries that would have welcomed the death of Salimani were saying, you know this was nuts, right? This was the Americans.

But of course a week later, as though Iran's retaliation would be kept within bounds, BB Netanyahu saying this is death was a great thing for the region, we embrace it.

For all of that, I think once the dust settles, this is not going to play to America's advantage. When I speak to officials from the UK, the US, they point out that the revolution regards that coulds force, the special operations branch that Salimani led was bigger than him.

He built up an institution, he built up talent in the last five years of waging these campaigns in Syria, in Iraq, in Lebanon, people under him. It wasn't just a one man show.

And more importantly than that, the Iranians have done something quite deft in taking advantage of the political anger in Iraq in particular and using it against America.

At a time when of course, let's not forget, mass protests in Iraq were being directed at Iran's presence and they successfully neutered some of that.

So there's a lot to unpack and when we get on the politics of the region, lots of different things overlap here.

But just on that question, to Netanyahu says initially it wasn't us, it was the Americans. But there was also in that three day early response period, I kind of thought well it wasn't the Americans, it was Trump.

I mean that idea that this stood somehow outside the bounds of what you might expect from something that could be called an American strategic vision.

And even if that vision is quite trumpish, now three weeks on, it's been folded back in. There's a little bit more of a sense. So there was a point where it kind of was, well it was Trump actually was Pompeo.

Juna Haspel, the CIA director said that Salimani's loss would make a difference. So you know, it's about the good deep state credentials as you can get.

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