Next to seen as Farid Zahkari, a host of Farid Zahkari, GPS, and retired NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark. General Clark, what's your reaction to these news strikes?

Well, I'm glad that we followed up. I think we are still doing BDA. We've got to do a better job of targeting. The way you do it is you strike, you put the eyes and ears back on the area, you watch the reaction, you look at it carefully, and you build your target packages. But in every case, I would hope that we would try to achieve escalation dominance over the hooties. If they fire one missile, we take out three targets. If they fire three missiles, we take out six targets. In other words, we try to stay away from a tit for tat. And ultimately, if we can't take out the assets they're using to strike these ships, then we've got to go to find assets they value more highly.

Fried, what did these strikes Both last night and this latest round, what do you think it means for the prospects of a wider conflict in the region?

It definitely increases the prospects, and it has always been true that this is a conflict that is always turned into something larger. The reason is, Iran has many allies, and most of its allies are like the Houthis. These are proxy fighters, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, of course. What the Houthis have done is they have found a way to inflict a cost on business as usual. The United States has to respond, and it has to try to achieve escalation dominance, as West Clark was saying, but it has to also try not to let this spread out of control. That's a very delicate balance. It's trying to reestablish deterrence while at the same time not itself produce a widening of the war. I'm not sure. There's a lot of danger here because the United States could get drawn into precisely the thing that Washington was selling Saudi Arabia to be careful of, which is if you drag yourself into a Yemeni civil war, siding with one side, attacking the Huzis, that could go on for a long time. So there's that danger. On the other hand, you've got make sure that the shipping can go through the Persian Gulf.

This is the lifeline of much of the world. This is where oil flows to lots of places all over the world.

Farid, assuming the Houthis are rational actors, what's in this for them? I mean, obviously, they are saying this is about the Israel's war against Hamas, what's going on in Gaza. Is it simply that? Are they doing the bidding of Iran? Why would they be doing this?

I think you have to view this in a broader strategic context, which is Iran has been trying to essentially assert that the American-led Middle Eastern order is not viable, that it contains Iran, it presses Iran. Iran has been put into a box. It's under sanction. So the Iranian Americans have been trying. President Raisi, in an interview with me, said, You will not be able to do this. We have ways of opposing the American-led Middle Eastern order. The whole idea that Saudi Arabia and Israel were going to make a happy peace. That is what Iran is trying to prevent. It is helping Hamas, it is helping Hezbollah, it is helping the Houthis. In that sense, the Houthis are part of this larger strategy. I don't think they, in a in a particular sense, gained something. It's a very good question, Anderson, because it's difficult to see what the Houthis are gaining from this. But if you think of it as the Houthis, the Hezbollah, Asad, Iran, this larger group of forces in the Middle East that are all opposed to an American-led strategic stability in the Middle East. That's the big contest.

General Clark, given what Farida just said about the larger context of this, there were reports that Houthi fired a ballista missile at a ship today, but missed. Under this scenario, do you expect more of that, more attempts at retaliation, staying in this, trying to keep this game going?

I expect them to continue to do this because Iran wants them to do it. As Farid said, this is Iran's quest for regional hegemony. This is why you can't pay too much attention to what you hear from the Arab street. They're manipulated by various social media. But the leaders in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, they know what the states are. They want America there. Even in Iraq, they want us there. They're looking at the United States for strength and for leadership. When we strike back, they like it, no matter what the protests say about it and all that. Also, no matter what we say about not wanting to escalate, they want escalation. Our friends in the region, they want to see a strong America. Now, they want to see us effective. We have to really... Now we're engaged with military force. We better really do that targeting well, and we better not try to tit for tatt it. We've got to try to cap this off. The alternative is we go closer to the source. Iran is playing a very cagey game. They do not want the United States or Israel to strike their nuclear facilities.

They may be very close to a nuclear weapon. They're asking themselves, Should I get it? Should they declare it? Should they test it? What will be the consequences? They're very sly and clever dancers around this nuclear issue. And in the meantime, they're trying to discredit the United States. And we're looking at it and saying, Can we stop this without going to the source, Iran?

Farid, the role of Saudi Arabia in all this is fascinating. Their response to this latest round, but also their war against the Houthis. They bombed extensively a lot of civilian casualties, fatalities. They came under a lot of criticism for it. What do you make of Saudi Arabia's role in all this?

You put your finger on it. The Saudi's waged a multi-year, very expensive war, a lot of bombing. And what they found was that the Houthis were extraordinarily resilient, that they could bounce back, that it was very hard to destroy them completely. Eventually, the UAE, which were Saudi's allies, pulled out because essentially they thought it was an unwillable war. That's why I say this is a delicate balance. West is right. You want to achieve some escalation dominance or re establish deterrence, but you do not want to get sucked into this because all the Houthis have to do is survive. It's the classic problem of this warfare. They win by not losing. We lose by not winning. That's a dynamic where that's a tough trade-off. So establish escalation elements, show them that they can't do this reckless attacks on ships. West makes a very interesting point. Is there some way to convey a signal to the Iranians? I'm not sure that I would be in favor of military strikes at this point, but in some way, indicate like this is crossing lines that you haven't crossed before, because otherwise this could really spell out of control.

Farid Zkharia, General Clark. Thank you. We will, of course, continue to monitor the story, bring you any developments as they come.