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If i were sitting in tehran in the government right now i would be shaking in my boots. with syria now under tremendous political pressure, i don't think there's any government in the region that's immune. one of the truly positive outcomes of this entire arab spring may be finally a real pressure for political change in iran and i think we should be supporting that. i don't think by the way, what's happening in libya has prevented the administration from taking egypt seriously. egypt is the most important game. i'm not thrilled with absolutely every detail going on in egypt but otherwise i wo...

Anti-corruption objectives in these countries. political space in participation. if local populations achieve those things they will decide who should lead them. we're in a transformation in the greater middle east, all of the countries will change their governments and we can't view libya as a one-off that will turn out in some good way in the next few days. this could be a very long intervention run by nato now, not by us. we have a lot of expenses involved in being in nato. this not as zero -- this is a zero sum game in terms of military assets. whatever we're putting through this war, we d...

Unilaterally that even when that kind of approach has come under criticism, sometimes it is hard for us to put ourselves in the other frame of mind which is to look at a multilateral way of doing things. i think it is a very interesting experiment, if you will, after the iraq and afghanistan adventures and we're working with others. i think we have to look also at the possibility of some kind of a united nations role here. it's not inconceivable to me, for example, that at some point the u.n. security council might vote for the establishment of some kind of peace keeping force in benghazi, for...

That said i'm hoping the administration does focus on all it can do encourage change in syria and iran and perhaps more than anything to focus on two countries, saudi arabia and egypt, those are the twin pillars of middle eastern stability. i worry about the political process taking place in egypt, speed, economic problems the country continues to face. i worry about what the saudis are doing in bahrain because i do think it is narrowed the possibility of political compromise there. ultimately what that might mean for saudi arabia itself. >> you mentioned iran, of course. the elephant in the r...

International whether under blue helmets at the u.n. or otherwise it is a very hard for me to see a scenario where ultimately do you not need some sort of international presence to provide order throughout this country. neither the regime nor the opposition i would argue is going to be any time soon in a position to essentially establish and police the sovereignty of the area. libya with ungoverned spaces and terrorists can put down roots. as bad as the situation has been, you don't need a big imagination to see things getting even worse. >> you don't. >> and i totally agree with that and woul...