As long as [the family members] are not trying to act against him, it will be hard to pull off a successful coup. That doesn't mean people may not try, but it'd be hard to pull off as long as they're in his corner. |
For the first term of his presidency, the Bush administration had a long list of complaints about Syria that got longer after Iraq. |
It's an undeclared posture of 'regime change' on the cheap. |
It's not a good path we are on right now. You have a situation now in which one or two things will happen, and both of them are bad. |
No one at a senior level was willing to push Iran on diplomacy. Was there at least a chance that we could have gotten something going? Yes, there was a chance. |
Since the second term started, I think they've been moving toward an undeclared policy of regime change, as long as it doesn't require too much effort by the United States. It's regime change on the cheap. |
There is now more energy behind the diplomacy than was usually the case in the first term. |
We can define a target set that we want to take out in the name of delaying Iran's nuclear development, and we're perfectly capable of taking out that target set. |