TAPPER: So, you’ll be on the debate stage Tuesday with the former Vice President of the United States, with three senators with decades of combined experience, an Afghan war veteran... What experience do you have that makes you qualify to be Commander in Chief and trusted to send American service members into harm’s way?

STEYER: Well, Jake, I did business for over 30 years working and traveling around the world, meeting with governments, talking to the heads of huge corporations and understanding actually what drives America’s business around the world and our relationships with other countries and what makes that trade and relationship succeed.

So when I think about our experience over the last 20 years, the person who I actually think did the best job in figuring out American foreign policy and military policy was a state senator from Illinois with absolutely no military or international experience named Barack Obama, who said against the advice of everybody who was an insider in Washington, D.C., that the Iraq war was a mistake.

So when you say, actually what we need to do is to have more D.C. conventional wisdom in our foreign policy and our military policy, I would say actually, when I am look at the last 20 years, you don’t actually inspire me so much, and listening to the earlier part of the show where in fact that very same conventional D.C. wisdom led to misinformation about why we got into Iraq, led to decades of misinformation about what we were doing in Afghanistan. When you tell me that what we need is more conventional D.C. thinking about our international policy, our foreign policy and our military policy, I would actually suggest to you that maybe this is more about judgment than experience.

TAPPER: Let me ask you, when you are look at the current conflict with Iran, how much of it do you trace back to what happened to Prime Minister Mossadegh?

STEYER: You know, it — there’s no way to get away from the idea that when the United States does something like depose Prime Minister Mossadegh which — you know, that’s how the Shah came into power, we basically put him into power, that what that does is it changes people’s opinion about the United States and what we stand for. Whether we’re the guys — the good guys, the people who stand up for democracy and people’s rights and freedom and equality.

And that’s one of the big problems that I have right now with the execution of General Soleimani which is America’s brand in the world is the most important protection we have. That even when we’re not getting along with an Iranian regime, or we’re not getting along with Vladimir Putin, the point is the people around the world know we stand for what’s right. And that was true when President Obama was the President, is that around the world it didn’t matter if we were disagreeing with the Iranian regime, everybody in the world knew we stood for what’s right.

And when we do something like depose Mossadegh, or we execute General Soleimani, the question we all should ask ourselves is not just the short term question, but long-term, does it make us less safe? Does it change everyone's opinion in the Middle East about what the United States really cares about and who we really are? So, yes, I think that was a dramatic mistake that has reverberated throughout the region for obviously multiple, multiple decades.

TAPPER: It’s something that the Iranians still talk about on the street today. Thank you so much, Tom Steyer. Appreciate your time.

STEYER: Of course they do! Thank you, Jake.