Host Carol Castiel talks with Kenneth Pollack, Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, about US-Mideast policy under the Trump administration, including the appointment of General H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser. Pollack tells VOA that military force can only be part of a wider foreign policy panoply that must include economic and political development. Regarding Syria, he says that Daesh, the Arab acronym for the so-called Islamic State, is not the problem, but rather a symptom of the wider civil war, and denies that Russia would be a good counterterrorism partner for the US. In Iraq, Pollack advocates greater integration of the Sunni community and the eventual independence of Iraqi Kurdistan. Pollack also address Iran’s hegemonic designs in the region and the need to enforce the nuclear deal negotiated with six countries including the United States.