joining me now to discuss the whole issue, martin indyk the former u.s. israel, now a distinguished fellow at the council on foreign relations. robin wright a contributing writer at the new yorker and tarek masoud. martin, it struck me -- let's talk about pompeo's speech because that was meant to the administration's grand middle east policy. what's striking about it, it was largely anti-obama, these are all the bad things obama has done, this is what we're now doing, but it suggested an america deeply engaged in the middle east, asserting its values that sounded like he hadn't been listening to what his president had been saying about what america wanted to be in the middle east, which was get the hell out of there. >> he had one line in the speech, fareed, in which he said when america withdraws, chaos often follows. then the next day we have the announcement of america's troop withdrawal from syria. so i think that was really the heart of the speech was this gap between promises and delivery, between objectives and the means to achieve them, and more fu

. >>> we are back here on "gps" talking about the middle east with martin indyk, robin wright and tarekd. robin, let me ask you when you look at this withdraw from syria, is it fair to say that iran must be pleased about this, or is it really true that iran is at this point particularly with the new sanctions and the new pressure is overwhelmed and dealing with its own problems? it's economy is in pretty bad shape, it's currency has i think collapsed 30% or 40% in the last few months. how is iran viewing what is going on in the region right now? >> i think both russia and iran are thrilled with the idea that the u.s. is withdrawing, that basically ensures that they will keep their dominant hold, that the u.s. presence with its removal will, you know -- this will affect the peace process or the post conflict process that plays out next. president assad now appears to have cemented his rule both physically and politically and there will be no challenge because the u.s. doesn't have anyone its backing as an alternative, but at the same time one thing that's really important to understand i