approaches. what's going to happen is inevitable because there are going to be more shootings in schools, there are going to be more shootings in movie theaters, more shootings in malls. this is going to happen, it's just a question of how many more people have to die before it happens. >> the fact of the matter is gwen is right, there are things that are happening about mentally ill people. how do we keep mentally ill people like criminals from not being able to have guns. how do we stop that or have some way to deal with that. we need to look at the entertainment industry. if you go to a gun store they will tell you why do people buy these rifles? they see them on tv. they see them in the video games. there's a lot here to work on. i think gun control is not an answer at all. but there are answers we have to find. >> all we hear, we saw in your proposal, the federal proposals, mentally ill people should not be allowed to get guns. that's great.

how about getting mentally ill people easy access to care, that comes up in nobody's proposal and yet that's the one thing everybody seems to think really might be helpful. >> i happen to come from a state that has 40,000 people covered by medicaid that wouldn't be covered in any other state. and because they're covered by medicaid they have that kind of access. we're going to grow that access and and one of the things that obama care does is grow that access. we have to build that system. we will leave it there. >> i have to go. come back, again, all of you. thank you. and thank you for watching "state of the union." i'm candy crowley in washington. head to cnn.com/sotu for analysis and the extras. if you missed any part of today's show, find us on itunes. just search state of the union. fareed zakaria "gps" is next for our viewers here in the united states. this is "gps the global

public square." welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world, i'm fareed zakaria. it's oscar time. the annual academy awards. many of the nominated films have raised crucial issues about american foreign policy, from the war against al qaeda to the efficacy of torture to our policy against iran. we will talk about these issues confronting us in real life with a panel including the former director of the cia michael hayden. also, iran might be moving toward a nuclear weapon but it seems to be coming apart internally with political infighting that makes washington look positively civilized by comparison. we'll ask two experts to explain what's going on. # why are we being bombarded by meteors and asteroids and what's the difference anyway? i'll talk to our favorite astrophysicist. neil tyson. also the next war, the war for water. will you have enough to drink in the coming decade?

here's my take. with big budget cuts looming, it might seem crazy to talk about new spending but let me try anyway. there is a belief for a tiny but vital increase in federal spending. in his state of the union address president obama promised to expand early childhood education for children from poor families. this is an important idea that could begin to help address a huge problem in america. the lack of economic mobility. america has long been seen as the place where anyone can make it, yet, studies over the past two decades point to a different reality. economic mobility in the u.s. is low compared to what it was in times past and with current levels in many european countries and canada. you hear all about rags to riches stories, but they are the exceptions. a comprehensive study by the pew economic mobility project documents that in the u.s. today, few poor people become even upper middle class.

now, some of the criticism of president obama's program has come from people who worry about the government's track record in the area of early childhood education. they point to head start, the long-standing program that provides this education to disadvantaged children. the department of health and human services released a study of head start in 2010 which was updated in 2012 which concludes its positive effects begin to fade in a few years. this has led many to call the program a failure and urged the government not to throw good money after bad. people are jumping to conclusions about a very complicated subject without understanding the study or social science research. three scholars from the university of chicago and university of california davis painstakingly explained why it is premature to reject head start. they know many factors may have intervened to erode the early gains in test scores. for example, there have been sharp rises in single parent families and rises in nonenglish

speaking households and rises in severe health problems like diabetes. most important, some studies show the test scores level out children who have been through early education do better in their professional lives. the more we learn about neuro science, the clearer it becomes that the human brain develops much sooner than we believe. early stimulation and education can be highly effective. look at the data from the rest of the world. a 2012 report from the oecd concludes that early childhood education, "improves children's cognitive abilities, helps to create a foundation for life-long learning, reduces poverty and improves social mobility from generation to generation." in many rich countries, 90% of 3 year olds get early childhood education. the average for 4 year olds is 81%. in the u.s., it is only 69%.

and those children tend to be from middle and upper middle class families. american government set the pace for education for the past 150 years. we've been the first country to offer mass education anywhere. that lead is now gone. obama's proposals will help the u.s. start to catch up in the great struggle for high-quality human capital that is going to define the next century. for more on this, you can read my column in this week's "time" magazine. let's get started. spies and spy agencies are all over the big screen and in the news these days. we have new revelations about hack attacks from china, renewed debate over drones and the still running controversy over torture which bobbled up again with "zero dark thirty's" five oscar nominations. i want to get to the bottom of

some of these issues of national security from people who come at it from different angles. >> michael hayden was the director of the cia and nsa and a global security advisory firm. reuel marc gerecht is now senior fellow at the foundation for the defense of democracies. richard haass former top national security official under both presidents bush. he is now president of the council on foreign relations and the author of a forthcoming book "foreign policy begins at home." and jane harman retired from congress in 2011 after nine terms. she has been a leading legislature on national security issues throughout her career and she now runs the woodrow wilson center in washington. with that stack of resumes, i hope to god we have an interesting conversation. >> go to a break now. >> let's talk about drones, richard, you took a fairly strong stance for a republican national security official.

you think we've gone too far with drone strikes. >> i do. i think we ought to make them possible. they do some good. on the other hand, we have to realize they're one tool in the arsenal. we don't want to alienate governments and populations. the whole idea is to gain progress in the war against terrorists and terrorism. i think essentially we've probably shot them off a little too frequently and haven't limited them quite enough to high-value targets and high chance of success and little bit too much willingness to use them when we think there is a chance the terrorists might be involved in a certain activity. i don't want to stop them, fareed. don't get me wrong. on the other hand, we don't want to go the other extreme and make it casual or something of an everyday affair. >> jane, you have a suggestion. you say let's get some kind of institutionalized legalized process, drone courts, you call them. >> well, beyond drone courts. i have lived the entire fisa cycle, foreign intelligence surveillance act, and it worked very well for 23 years, it established the intelligence committees on the hill and a specialized court to review efforts to read the communications or hear them

between people. i think that framework could fit drone strikes. i agree with richard, they should be very occasional, but they're necessary and when they're necessary, not only americans, but foreigners should be assured that america abides by the rule of law. >> mike, you face these issues front and center. what jane is describing is, i think, a significantly reduced use of drone strikes. could you live with that? running the cia? >> fareed, keep in mind that circumstances change. as richard pointed out, what may have been necessary and very appropriate for a battlefield four, five or six years ago may not be the same today. look, we're a bit safer than we have been in the past. we have had great success. some measure due to drone strikes. once again, i wouldn't take them totally off the table. we need to be able to defend ourselves with all the tools available. with regard to the drone courts, i'm personally not comfortable with that.

putting a judicial body between the president and any of his operating forces. but we need to develop a mechanism that most of america feels comfortable about we're doing. i don't think it's a court, but some sort of review, a commission named by the president and congress that doesn't get into the chain of command, but reviews drone operations. and reports to both of the political branches with very prominent and trustworthy americans and trusted americans on such a commission may give the kind of political sustainability that programs like this need over the long term if they're going to continue. >> i worry about some kind of a commission. i don't know what training they would have and the record on commissions is fairly bleak, let's just start with bowles-simpson. >> reuel, one of the collateral issues with drone strikes is the issue of civilian damage, collateral damage to people who

may not be al qaeda. one of the things donald rumsfeld used to say about the war on terror, the question is not how many people we're killing, but are we changing the dynamics so we're not producing more of them as we keep killing them. presumably that's one of the things that one has to take into account. if you radicalize an entire village via drone attack, maybe you've got one guy, but was it worth it? is that a calculus? >> i mean, it's possible. i think with some drone strikes, if an individual is worth a missile, perhaps he's worth risking american lives and capture and interrogate. >> that's one of the things that stan mcchrystal is saying. we're using drones because we're trying not to push american forces out there, but maybe we, you know, the implication is sometimes we may want to take that risk. >> i agree. i think drones are easy. they're an easy way of escaping a very hard question. and i think it behooves us to review it. i'm not terribly in favor of any

type of judicial review. there are two warmaking bodies in the u.s. government, congress and the president, and i think the type of review is quite, if the senate and the house kest on intelligence want to review what the president is doing, they have the authority to do so and can get in that debate. >> let me just quickly move to another issue before we take a break because i want to get in it. the china hacking story. this is pretty serious, don't you think? >> absolutely. it raises real fundamental questions about china's commitment to the rule of law internationally. it's a form of espionage. it's a form of economic warfare. it could be also in some ways targeting vulnerabilities in american society so should the united states and china ever have a crisis, china could either threaten to do certain things or actually do certain things, say against the american electricity grid or against the american financial system. these people aren't freelancing. you know china as well as anybody. these people are clearly

operating with the tolerance of the communist party in china under the liberation army. this is serious and i think the chinese are underestimating the impact this is having about the nature of the relationship. this sends a message to americans across the board that this relationship is not what it should be if china is treating us in this way, essentially going after our information and going after potential vulnerabilities in our system, stealing our intellectual property. this is not how you want to act if you talk about words like partnership. >> the chinese will say in response, some will say, look, you guys do it, too. why are you getting so head up? you ran the cia and the nsa. what would be your response to them? >> i'd freely admit that all nations spy, all nations conduct espionage, but some nations, like ours, self-limit. we steal other nation's secret s to keep americans safe and free. we don't do it to make americans

rich or to make american industry profitable and what the chinese are doing is industrial espionage, trade secrets, negotiating positions, stealing that kind of information on an unprecedented scale for chinese economic advantage. that's why i think our response should be in the economic zone. we need to make chinese cyberbehavior part of the overall portfolio of american relations and we need to begin to exact a price on the chinese in the economic sphere for what it is they're doing to us. when we come back, we'll talk to this panel about torture. does it work? did it get osama bin laden? i think there are some people here who know the answers, when we come back. all 335 foot-pounds of torque. it's chevy truck month! the silverado is also recognized for the lowest cost of ownership. hey, what are you gonna do with it? end table. oh. [ male announcer ] it's chevy truck month. get 0% financi for 60 months,

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>> you guys met in iran back in the '90s. >> i don't know. it's oscar time and best picture nominee "zero dark thirty" has brought the topic of waterboarding to the front. some argue the movie makes the case waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques were instrumental in finding osama bin laden. some senators and the cia disagree and let's open it up to

the panel, michael hayden, richard haass and jane harman. michael hayden, you more than anyone else can tell us, did enhanced interrogation techniques, specifically waterboarding, get us the vital information on the path to osama bin laden? >> well, fareed, we waterboarded only three people. several detainees in cia custody against whom enhanced interrogation techniques were used, not including waterboarding, that did provide information that formed part of the fabric, part of the tap pesstry of information that we used to finally get to abbottbad. if you look at the movie, it was artistically true. not factually true. artistically, it portrayed the cia interrogation program, but factually, it was overwrought inaccurate. artistically, it seemed it to draw tight connections between the interrogation program and abbottbad. there were connections, but they weren't that tight. finally artistically, it had mea against the world and a large

fraction and the rest of the agency which wasn't true. this was a team effort over a long period of time. even director panetta has pointed out that some of the information formed some of that fabric and the hunt for bin laden came from detainees against whom enhance interrogation techniques have been used. >> reuel, you were in the cia director of operations, do you think from watching the movie that the portrayal, the connection between waterboarding and osama bin laden is real? >> i suspect that it did have something to do with the success. i mean, we all want there not to be a contradiction between our ethics and counterterrorism. we want to do well by doing good. the only one problem with that, the history of counterterrorism and the history of espionage suggests that pain is a very effective tool in interrogation if used well. the debate really ought to be what is the type of pain that a liberal democracy wants to use to stop individuals from taking down skyscrapers.

>> there are issues about that. can we have confidence and information that is obtained this way? i think a lot of people have looked at it and raised fundamental questions about how much confidence can you have about information you extract from someone who has undergone all these techniques. on occasion it's good. on occasion, it's not. it's hard to tell. >> fundamentally, there's no difference in an interrogation where you serve as a father and you use pain. the verification has nothing to do with the individual says to you when he's under duress. the objective is to get the individual talking. >> jane? >> sure. but the information i've seen and i haven't -- i'm not a trained interrogator, is that if you can build trust with the suspect, you have the best chance of getting accurate information. you have to verify, you have to trust, but verify. that's how, by the way, we are

getting information in advance on some of the intentions of these lone wolves in our country. these are people with clean records and if their families and their communities don't trust our law enforcement and come forward and tell us what they're thinking about, we're likely not to find them. so, this technique of building trust, i think, is the one we should be using and it also portrays our values. and the goal in the end is not to play whack-a-mole here decide to win the argument with the next generation trying to decide whether to strap on suicide vests or join civilized society. >> mike, how do you address that issue because it is true that the cia seen in many parts of this, of this world as being utterly ruthless, utterly immoral and is that something you want, you have to worry about when addressing this larger issue of the -- of what again, president george w. bush used to call winning the hearts

and minds of the arab world? >> no, it's very important. i mean, some activities are designed to deal with people who are already convinced they want to kill you. but you always have to keep in mind the production rate of people who want to kill you in the future. and your action is to fight the close fight may actually affect and make worse the deep battle over a long period of time. to get quite specific here, fareed, when we talk about enhanced interrogation, we rarely, if ever, asked a detainee information we didn't already know the answer to while he was undergoing the enhanced interrogation. the idea here was not to get to truth. the idea here was to move him from a zone of defiance to a zone of cooperation. we held about 100 people. we found that we needed to do that to about a third of that 100. once you got them into the zone of cooperation, this was a conversation that went back and forth. much is portrayed in the movie when the primary source over a

very decently prepared lunch began to tell the interrogators much about what they needed to know in order to begin to track osama bin laden. look we didn't raise our hand and say, we had this plan for interrogation in our lower desk drawer for a decade and we got a chance to do it. the agency was asked to do things in extreme circumstances. it did it out of duty, not out of enthusiasm and i believe firmly that it made america safer because we did that. >> but you're saying, richard, that now is the time to dial back some of this. >> in each case you have to look at all your tools and you have to look at the situation. it's not a legal question as much as it is a smart question. we want to do things and do them in ways and on balance that make a tough situation less tough. we're not going to eliminate terrorism, we're going to reduce it. we want to persuade young men to make a different career choice, not to become terrorists in the first place. we always have to ask ourselves what we're going to gain in some

operation. whether it's a drone strike or whether it's an interrogation technique. is it worth it in the specific situation and in the large? i think, yeah, we dial it back a little bit, but we don't switch. we don't stop ourselves from doing things, there are going to be future attacks. we are not going to succeed all the time. it's the law of numbers. too many terrorists out there and too many means in this global world and we are too open as a society. we're too open as a society. there are times we are going to succeed and we want to reduce the number of times and severity of if and when it happens. >> we have to leave it at that. thank you all very much. up next, how a body of water the size of the dead sea simply disappeared from the middle east. what in the world, when we come back. searching for a bank designed for investors like you? tdd#: 1-800-345-2550

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now for our what in the world segment. imagine a large body of water, about the size of the dead sea, simply disappearing. it sounds like science fiction, but it's not. it's happening in real life and

we've only just found out. a pioneering study from nasa and the university of california irvine shows how the middle east is losing its fresh water reserves. as you can see from the satellite imagery, we're going from blues and greens to yellows and reds. that's 144 cubic kilometers of lost water between 2003 and 2009. what do i mean by lost water? well, most of it comes from below the earth's surface from water trapped in rocks. you see, in times of drought, we tend to drill for water by constructing wells and pumps. but the earth has a finite supply. nasa scientists say pumping for water is the equivalent of using up your bank savings and that bank account is dwindling. this could have serious implications. conflicts over water are as old as the story of noah in 3000 bc. the institute lists 225 such

conflicts through history. what's fascinating is that nearly half of those conflicts take place in the last two decades. are we going to see a new era of wars fought over water? consider the nasa study is of one of the most volatile regions in the world. we tend to think of the middle east and its upheavals as defined by oil. perhaps in the future, they will be defined by water. we often talk about a world of nuclear have and have nots but a world of water have and have nots can be more dangerous. part of the problem is that the world's needs have changed. look at the population boom. we've gone from 4 billion people in 1975 to about 7 billion today. the u.n. projects will hit 9 billion by 2050. meanwhile as india, china and africa continues to add millions to their middle classes global demand for food and products will increase. all of these products cost money except for water, which we like to think of as abundant and

free. yet water is the resource we need to worry most about. according to the world health organization, more than 780 million, that's two and a half times the population of the u.s., lack access to clean water. more than 3 million die every year from the shortage. as our needs expand, so will ha shortfall. what can be done? well, most of our water is actually wasted. and the united states is actually one of the worst culprits. we can change that. singapore already treats sewage water to convert it into clean drinking water. we might need to consider large-scale descalization where the united arab emirates and saudi arabia are world leaders. and remember, agriculture uses up as much as 70% of water. we need to fund research into more effective crops. perhaps most simple and

effective would be to put some kind of price on water. so that people use it with a greater sense of efficiency and care. all kinds of innovations are under way and i hope nasa and accelerates those processes. we've linked to their work on cnn.com/fareed. next month, the u.n. will mark world water day and the international year of water cooperation. it's a good time to start thinking about big global measures to regulate the world's most important resource. up next, another global issue to worry about. falling asteroids and meteors. the astrophysicist neil degrasse tyson is next. with an irregu. the usual, bob? not today. [ male announcer ] bob has afib: atrial fibrillation not caused by a heart valve problem, a condition that puts him at greater risk for a stroke. [ gps ] turn left. i don't think so. [ male announcer ] for years, bob took warfarin, and made a monthly trip to the clinic to get his blood tested.

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then you're going to love this. right now they're only $14.95! wow-a grt deal just got a whole lot better. hurry. $14.95 won't last. hello. i'm fredricka witfield. congress returns to work this week with a friday deadline to avoid $85 billion in forced spending cuts. if the congress and the white house don't reach a budget deal, you can expect everything from longer security lines at the airports to reduced food inspections. and olympian oscar pistorius is not the only member of his family in trouble with the law. his brother carl is facing a culpable homicide charge for the

death of a motorcyclist in 010. carl pistorius was supposed to go on trial last week, but that has been rescheduled for the end of march. in 30 minutes we'll have more on the pistorius cases and how it's tearing views in south africa and beyond. getting ready for tonight's academy awards and hollywood. at 2:00 eastern we take you there. and fareed zakaria "gps" continues right now. the meteor that exploded over the euro mountains nine days ago and the asteroid that flyby that quickly followed it, raised concerns around the world. why didn't we know the meteor was coming and what do we do about the next close call? are we sitting targets? let's find out. the director of the planetarium the astrophysicist, neil degrass tyson is with us. >> thanks for having me back on

the show. >> first of all, should we be worried or is this just a complete coincidence that these two things happened? >> yes. first, it was a coincidence that they happened on the same day, just to clarify for those who might not have remembered, early morning there was an asteroid that enter ed earth's atmosphere in russia and exploded in mid-air about 20 miles up. it shattered windows and the blast was brighter than multiple suns. in fact, subsequent measurements of how much energy it contained rivaled 30 times that of the hiroshima bomb. the reason why everything wasn't just pancaked flattened from it because it exploded so high up in the atmosphere. all that was left was the energy that remained after it diluted into the space in which it exploded. later in the day, another asteroid that had a close approach, which we have known for about a year knowing the laws of physics and trajectory, you can see where it was going to come.

that was of interest because it not only became between us and the moon, we have tracked many that did that. this one came inside our technological space. it came closer than our orbiting communication satellites. that one you take note of. that asteroid is half the size of a football field and the one that hit and exploded over russia, that is about a third of that size. we have no capacity to protect earth from things that small. >> so, what should we be doing? i mean, how scared should we be? >> we're just sitting ducks. >> the laws of math, at some point the probability is that one of these things will hit? >> fortunately, the larger asteroid, the ones that could disrupt civilization and disrupt the energy grid and the transportation grid and the emergency services response set ups -- >> or just plain kill us. >> it will kill somebody right below it. yes, of course, we care about that. globally what deeply concerns you is that the asteroid is

strong enough, you have to restart civilization. at another level you risk extinction. fortunately, those are large. we have a plan in place, nasa has a plan in place to detect, map and track every single asteroid large enough to disrupt civilization. the one that exploded over russia was not large enough to disrupt civilization. they're dangerous and they hurt and they can kill, but the fact that we can't track them is not as bad at not being able to track the big ones that could really destroy us. once you know where they are, your next question would be, perhaps, do we have a plan to do something about it and the answer is no. it's all just on paper how to do it. >> what would be the plan? would it be some kind of military, you should shoot a missile to shatter it in outerspace? >> that's the macho solution. you pull one of the missiles out of the silo that have been sitting there doing nothing since the cold war and you blow the sucker out of the sky.

the problem is here in america we're really good at blowing stuff up and less good at knowing where the pieces land. >> that's a metaphor for america. >> i was sticking to asteroids. you take that where you want. so you -- people who have studied the problem, generally, i'm in this camp, see that a deflection scenario is more sound and more controllable. so, if this is the asteroid and sort of headed towards us, you send it one way, you send up a spaceship and they'll both feel, the spaceship hovers and they'll both feel each other's gravity and they want to drift towards one another but you don't let that happen. you set off little retrorockets that prevent it and in the act of doing so, slowly tugs the asteroid into a new orbit. >> because the spaceship has the kind of gravitational pull? >> exactly. they want to draw towards each other. but if you don't let that happen and you constantly yank the spaceship away ever so slightly

then the asteroid will chase the spaceship ever so slightly. that's all you need if you get it early enough because the tiniest change in your orbit early can completely avoid the target. of course, it's there to harm you another day. if you get really good at this, then you can have a protection system for the earth that will, that will prevent humans from going extinct. >> which seems a laudable goal. >> yeah. >> is it fair to say we don't need any innovation in physics and engineer, we know how to do this. the question is the will and the resources to implement a plan like this. >> yeah. i mean we used or nary physics to know how to make this work. physics and engineering, of course, because you have to make the hardware to enable it. the price is not even all that expensive, given other activities that humans have undertaken. the problem is the asteroid that we might find that may one day hit us, you want to get it early, all right.

when do we start concerning ourselves with a budget to handle it? if it's going to come in 100 years. what do you say? let our descendants worry about that and their congress? 88% of congress faces re-election every two years. so, senate and house, of course. so, that's not a long enough time scale to match the time scales that matter for our survival. plus, if an asteroid is going to strike somewhere else in the world, is it nasa that's going to take care of that? what you really want, i think, is a world organization, maybe every country chips in proportion to their gdp, something sensible like that and then there is a pot of money. whoever has the space faring resources at the time it's necessary, space know how will tap into that money and you save the earth. i think that's a reasonable path. >> so, we have your next job all mapped out for you space czar for the world. neil degrasse, pleasure to have you.

>> thanks for having me. >> when we examine back, the two top politicians in the country openly show their disgust for each other. i'm not talking about washington. but rather iran. this has global implications. i'll explain when we come back. . while going shoeless and metal-free in seconds. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle...and go. you can even take a full-size or above, and still pay the mid-size price. now this...will work. [ male announcer ] just like you, business pro. just like you. go national. go like a pro.

if you think the tension between president obama and house speaker boehner is bad, let me introduce you to a similar relationship, the two top politicians in the land where the animosity is extreme and out in the open. the very public feud between iran's president mahmoud ahmadinejad and the speaker of the parliament, ali larijani has gotten so bad that both of them had to write letters apologizing for their bad behavior with the man with the real power in the land ayatollah, who said the spat made him feel sad. there are implications for the rest of the world, which eagerly wants iran to sit down at the nuclear negotiating table. joining me hooman majd and karim sadjadpour. a senior associate at the carnegie downment for international peace. so, what on earth is going on, hooman? this is a very public feud. >> yeah. i think it's related somewhat to

the presidential elections coming up in june, and ahmadinejad's desperate attempt to remain relevant after the election, unlike other presidents or the previous president who faded into obscurity. i think he is determined to remain relevant. >> does he have a certain kind of popular power and appeal -- >> i think he has some base. the base is exaggerated by some people who are his supporters, but he does have a base among a certain segment of society and i think he's trying to appeal to a larger segment of society including the middle class. if you go up against the ayatollahs and against the clerical regime, which is what he's doing effectively and has been doing for two years at this point, i think you gain support among people who dislike the idea of a theocracy to begin with. >> in america, people think of ahmadinejad as the bad guy. but here you have this odd

situation where ahmadinejad is really openly fighting against the mullahs who have much of the power. >> i joke ahmadinejad comes from the school of politics which says, these are my principles if you don't like them, i have some others for you. ahmadinejad began his first term of being the supreme leader, a bludgeon internal opponents against the united states, but i think after seven or eight years of being in power now, ahmadinejad is not ready to leave the scene. i think a big challenge for the supreme leader in the coming months is not only helping to select the next president of iran, but helping to -- helping ahmadinejad managing ab jads's abdication for power. >> vice president biden put out these remarks. >> we would be prepared to meet bilaterally with the iranian leadership. >> which had seemed a long-standing iranian question, that there be direct talks with the united states on

direct talks with the united states on a range of issues and biden said we're open to that possibility. and in response, ayatollah khamenei shuts it down and says anyone who wants to go down that path, remembering to ahmadinejad, because ahmadinejad had seemed excited about this prospect, is a traitor and they're trying to bring back american domination. what does all of this mean? >> i think you have to look at it from the iranian side. when vice president biden made that remark, it was a couple of days later that new sanctions were put in place. it was continuing pressure on iran. i think inside the administration, inside the regime of iran, the view is unless the pressure is let up, there is no reason to talk. i don't think he completely eliminated the possibility of having direct talks with the u.s. and other iranian officials have repeated this. if you hold a gun, as he said, if you hold a gun to our heads, we're not going to negotiate. >> i think that is true. there's been a lot of pressure on iran. iran has backed off negotiating,

because they feel they don't want to be viewed to be in a weak position. >> certainly, there's a lot of domestic politics. the nuclear program is still relatively popular in iran. they don't want to be seen to be backing off and giving in to american demands. they don't want to be seen to be negotiating or making a deal because of the sanctions. because of the pressure. the pressure that america could make us do something that we don't really want to do. >> but the timing, kareem, looks very bad. because you know the americans have put all of this pressure on the iranians, from what khamenei has said. it certainly doesn't look like likely that in the next month or two, something is going to happen on the negotiating front. >> i'm equally pessimistic, i think it is worth pointing out that the biden, obama himself, and secretary of defense, chuck hagel, i would arlg is the most pro iranian engagement national security cabinet since the 1979 revolution. so these guys seriously do want to do a deal and i think if

ayatollah khamenei generally wants to try to build confidence with the united states this is the best administration to do that. i think the dilemma khamenei has is since 24 years, since 1989, he hasn't left the country since 1989. he sought to preserve the status quo by avoiding transformative decisions. and he's now put himself increasingly with the back against the wall facing unprecedented international pressure, sanctions, et cetera. whereby if he wants to reduce this pressure. either he needs to do a nuclear deal, to reduce the pressure or go for a nuclear weapon. the so-called pakistan option. whereby if they get a bomb. they believe that the outside world will be forced to deal with them. but these are both transformative options. and he, both transformative choices for him. i think he's put himself in a very uncomfortable position. >> and he's a conservative guy by nature? >> by nature. you're a revolutionary until you acquire power and then you become a conservative.

and the obama administration is not interested in going to war. they're trying to get out of the war business, out of afghanistan, out of iraq. i don't see 2013 actually being a decisive year. because i think that the obama administration is reluctant to attack the israelis want the americans to do it. and i think the iranians will continue to move forward in a very incremental fashion. so we can avoid worse-case scenario, which is a military conflagration, but i also don't see a diagram in which israeli national security, iranian revolutionary ideology and international politics all intersect in one place. when we come back, football players are famous for going to disney world after they win the super bowl. what do presidents of failed states do after they're deposed? find out, when we come back. automatically filter ses just the right amount of light. so you see everything the way it's meant to be seen. maybe even a little better.

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the italians are going to the polls to vote in parliamentary election. the italian republic has been around for less than 70 years. before that, it had been a kingdom. who was the last king of italy? was it a, vktor emanuel ii. b, victor