Dennis Ross was a foreign policy adviser to Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. He tells Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson that when it comes to Syria, President Obama “overlearned” the lessons of Iraq.

“Every time he looked at Syria, he saw Iraq and feared this would become a new Iraq,” the former ambassador says. Ross argues the administration’s “policy of avoidance and then containment” contributed to a vacuum that ISIS has filled.