We begin with the escalation of tension in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman following the shoot-down of a $100 million American Reaper Drone by the Iranians which has President Trump saying “Iran made a very big mistake” then backtracking furiously to caution “I find it hard to believe it was intentional”. Clearly our-art-of-the-deal President does not want a war which we hope does not happen, but he is also signaling to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that they can get away with taunting the “Great Satan”. A specialist of U.S.-Iran relations, Hussein Banai, an Iranian American scholar and Professor of International Studies at Indiana University and author of the forthcoming book, “Hidden Liberalism in Modern Iran”, joins us to discuss the incoherence of Trump’s foreign policy in handling a burgeoning crisis of his own making which is the result of his obsession with tearing up anything Obama achieved. Furthermore there is a deadly symbiosis between the hawks on our side and on theirs made much more dangerous by the messianic religious subtext of the Supreme Leader’s apocalyptic belief in their messiah the “Hidden Imam” returning and the equally incendiary spiritual pornography of so-called Christians invested in the “End Times” and Armageddon who like Secretary of State Pompeo, believe in the “rapture”.