megan o'sullivan with a deputy national security adviser for president bush. she's now a professor at harvard's kennedy school. megan, you handled the middle east a great deal. let me ask you, what do you think this means at the end of the day? because, you know, i hear people talk about russia and turkey, but it does seem like the principle beneficiary of all of this is iran. after all, iran has been the principle supporter of the assad regime. assad is now in greater control of that country. they continue to have influence in iraq. how do you see it? >> sure. thank you, fareed. i would say that the middle east got even more dangerous in this very short period of time. basically, if we look at the events in syria of the last week and we couple it with the attack on saudi arabia just last month, the fact that the united states has not -- or has been unwilling to use military force to protect two of its very direct interests, the saudis and the kurds, really sends the message to the rest of the region and the world that the u.s. is unlikely to use military force