captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: the republican candidates pushed on to new hampshire today, after mitt romney squeaked out a tiny eight-vote victory over rick santorum in iowa and michele bachmann ended her presidential bid. good evening, i'm judy woodruff. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. on the "newshour" tonight, we get the latest on the campaign in the granite state from our own gwen ifill and jeremy peters of the "new york times." >> woodruff: then, we examine president obama's move to sidestep the senate and tap richard cordray to head the new financial watchdog agency. >> brown: we have the story of libyan fighters recovering from their war-wounds thousands of

miles away in boston. >> many of them are gunshot wounds and there are severe hand injuries to shoulder injuries. there are, obviously, patients that also have p.t.s.d. >> woodruff: margaret warner updates the escalating tensions between iran and the west. >> brown: and we close with the discovery of new species found in remote hot springs far beneath the surface of the ocean near antarctica. >> just hoards of these crabs called yetty crabs that have sort of harry chests and harry arms that they grow bacteria on. >> woodruff: that's all ahead on tonight's "newshour." major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪

moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: the republican presidential caucuses in iowa were history today, after mitt

romney's record-close win over rick santorum. the outcome reduced the field by one, but most of the candidates began moving from the midwest to new england for the new hampshire primary. hours after the iowa results were finally official, romney, the former massachusetts governor, returned to his backyard. >> my goodness, we had a big night last night, what a squeaker. do we think we can do better here in new hampshire? >> woodruff: romney was already the strong favorite in new hampshire and to bolster his position, he turned to arizona senator john mccain, the man who bested him there four years ago. >> i say thank you for the kind it's with some nostalgia, i return to this place i know so well, but i'm here today for one reason, and one reason only, t

make mitt romney the president and new hampshire is the state that will catapult him to victory. >> woodruff: to do that, romney will have to top a new competitor in the granite state, john huntsman, who has chosen to make this his first contest. as huntsman joins the fray, michele bachmann leaves it. the minnesota congresswoman was once favored in iowa after winning the straw poll there in august. but she finished sixth last night and this morning, in des moines, she suspended her campaign. >> last night, the people of iowa spoke with a very clear voice. and so i have decided to stand aside. and i believe that if we are and i believe that we must rally around the person that our country and our party and our people select to be that standard-bearer. >> woodruff: texas governor rick

perry also flirted with dropping out, after his fifth place showing. >> with the voters decision tonight in iowa i decided to return to texas, assess the results of tonight's caucus, determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race. >> woodruff: but this morning, he indicated he was back in the race, perry tweeted a photo of himself in running gear with the text: >> game on! >> woodruff: rick santorum hoped to pick up social conservatives who'd backed bachmann and perry as he celebrated his near-win in iowa last night. >> because the message i shared with you tonight is not an iowa message or an iowa and south carolina message. it is a message that will resonate across this land. it's a resonate-- it will

resonate, i know, in new hampshire, because you think i've been in iowa a lot. i've been to new hampshire 30 times. >> woodruff: the former pennsylvania senator planned to pick up campaigning in the granite state tight. the third place finisher in iowa texas congressman ron paul also planned to campaign in new hampshire, after taking today off. so did newt gingrich, who saw a double digit lead in iowa evaporate this winter. he finished fourth after a barrage of negative ads that he blamed on romney. gingrich was still smarting as he arrived in new hampshire early this morning and on msnbc, he made clear he's going after romney. >> even here, i predict you will see him slide. by the time he gets to south carolina and florida, it will be obvious this is not a conservative republican he is not going to win the nomination and he is not the most electable candidate. he is simply the guy the news media likes to talk about.

>> woodruff: romney, in turn, acknowledged the gingrich criticism, on abc. >> well, i'm sure he's disappointed in the results last night. but i expect he'll go on and mount a spirited campaign. and, you know, we'll look forward to seeing him in the... in the... in the states ahead. look, i have pretty broad shoulders. i know the attacks are going to come. they're going to become more fast and furious now. and they're going to come from and if you can't handle the heat now, you certainly can't handle the heat down the road. >> woodruff: meanwhile, president obama stepped up his own campaign today, with an appearance in a critical swing state. >> it is good to be back in ohio! >> woodruff: the president's aides predicted it could be some time before republicans settle on a challenger for november. for now, the republican hopefuls face the immediate test of two debates between now and next tuesday's new hampshire primary. for the latest, we turn to gwen ifill, who was with romney in manchester today and jeremy peters of the "new york times," who has been covering santorum's

campaign. gwen, i'm going to turn to you first, you were covering governor romney when he received the endorsement of john mccain. tell us about the event. >> well, it was kind of interesting because if you were here four years ago or eight years ago when john mccain ran for president and he and ramny weren't on the same side of this. as a matter of fact, they were regularly attacking each other as flip-floppers but today they were best friends forever and you saw romney embracing john mccain. john mccain dressed almost the way he used to be at campaign events in new hampshire. he said he's here to defeat president obama, which, of course, is the man who beat john mccain. the key here is that john mccain did north and the west parts of new hampshire and mitt romney who used to be governor of massachusetts always did well in the southeast. if you can get that support together it will give him the

deal even though mitt romney is far ahead in the polls so far and frankly it wasn't all that. it was a lot of people in the room, a lot of school kids who came up from the high school cafeteria and there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm. there was some weak applause from time to time. it was odd for a campaign launch event? new hampshire post-iowa. >>. >> woodruff: gwen, as you say, mitt romney has the lead in the polls in new hampshire so how much of a bounce do his people think he gets out of this photo-finish win in iowa? >> well, winning tight is better than a poke in the eye with a stick. but it's unyear that translates into new hampshire. mike huckabee won in iowa pretty decisively four years ago. he came to here new hampshire and barely got 11% of the vote and was quickly out of the contest. in fact, no non-incumbent republican, someone who wasn't already president has ever won both iowa and new hampshire so

it's unclear to iowa really helps when it comes to new hampshire. i was talking to senator kelly i i can't tell in new hampshire, a republican, rising star freshman here and she said, well, that's nice that we won it, better than losing in iowa but it doesn't matter to us here. >> woodruff: let's talk about rick santorum. jeremy peters, you were following him around in iowa. how was he able to connect with voters so quickly there at the end. >> i think it was just a matter of voters looking around and being tired of all the other candidates and seeing them'm plod one by one and finally settling on the one guy who, a, didn't have a lot of baggage and b, spent a lot of time in their state getting to know very iowa-specific issues. >> woodruff: and what sort of voters... i mean, how would you describe the republicans and independents and others who voted for rick santorum? >> it was a broad spectrum and that's what struck me when i was

on the trail interviewing people and asking them why they supported senator santorum. on the one hand you have what you would expect, evangelical christian voters, social conservatives. but what surprised me were the number of white-collar onservatives who said they were supporting him. and often these were voters who had decided that newt going had too much personal baggage, that perry had been problematic in the debates and that michele bachmann they just couldn't go along with. so they had gone through the process of elimination and settled on rick santorum. and there were also a number of people who interestingly enough said they were trying to choose between mitt romney and rick santorum which is... there's a lot of distance between the two of them on social issuesnd a number of other things. so it was very surprising. i think a lot of people were trying to decide who they wanted to be the not mitt romney candidate and they settled with rick santorum. >> woodruff: so, gwen, how worried are the romney people

about santorum? >> not terribly yet. i talked to a senior romney advisor today and he said he thinks rick santorum can do reasonably well in new hampshire. santorum pointed out he's been campaigning 30 times, almost as many times as jon huntan who's basically taken up residence in this state as new hampshire is his last stand. so they expect if rick santorum can do well with the blue-collar crowd with which there's a significant republican vote and they suspect he can do well with catholics. he's, of course, a catholic and very evangelical in his catholicism but also there's a great catholic population here, especially in urban areas here in new hampshire who could be helpful to rick santorum. but mitt romney has a big, big edge here and it's only one week and it takes a lot of money to outrun somebody who's raised as much money and has gotten as much support like mitt romney.

>> and with that in mind, jeremy peters, how much money does rick santorum have? what does she in the way of structure? he keeps saying he's been to new hampshire a lot. what does he really is there on the ground? >> he has a campaign headquarters that's very thinly staffed. they rely on a lot of volunteers but he doesn't have much in the way of infrastructure and that is going to be his biggest challenge going forward building a campaign infrastructure should he advance that far. and right now it's almost impossible to see how he does that at his current fund-raising levels. >> woodruff: so, gwen, if there's a limit to how worried the romney people are about santorum, what about the other candidates? jon huntsman who they haven't faced with the voters yet. what do they say about him and the rest of the not have >> if you look at the tracking polls keeping track of what's happening to people over time, jon huntsman is creeping up slowly but not anywhere near to mitt romney's strength in the state so they're not as worried

as they might otherwise be about him unless he has something he's about to unleash. newt gingrich has made clear he has a lot he wants to unleash on mitt romney this week so they're keeping a clear eye on him as well. when asked about it, as we heard in our piece, mitt romney basically says, oh, you know, newt is such an angry man, i hope he gets over that and pretends to let it fall away. they're perfectly happy to lose michele bachmann who wasn't taking that as much away from them. probably not as happy that prick perry decided to stay. >> woodruff: and what about the theme, the message that rick santorum takes with him to new hampshire? do we expect to hear the same things he was saying in iowa which, frankly, many people haven't even heard yet? >> right, and that's one of the major problems for rick santorum going forward because most people do not know who he is and that leaves an opportunity for his rivals to paint that picture for him and they can do that like they did with newt gingrich and look at what's happened to his candidacy.

so i think what you'll hear from rick santorum is a lot of talk about how america is, in his opinion, a deeply broken place. he feels that the last three years under the obama administration have taken the country down the wrong path and that's basically his general argument, elect me and we will restore the country to its greatness. >> woodruff: so quickly, to sum up, gwen, how do we look for new hampshire to be different from what we saw in iowa and just in the way these candidates are now campaigning and getting their message out? >> well, judy, if you want to sum it up. listen to former governor, new hampshire governor, john sununu, former white house chief of staff from years ago. he came out today to introduce mitt romney and john mccain and he said the same two words over and over again. he said "mitt romney is conservative and a leader. when he talks about his conservatism it's a way of telling the people who might lean toward rick santorum not to get off the bus and when he says

he's a leader it's a way of turning the focus to president obama which is really all he wants to talk about." >> woodruff: on that point we'll leave it. on that, thank you both. >> brown: still to come on the "newshour": a gauntlet is thrown on the new consumer agency; libyan fighters on the mend in boston; new threats and new sanctions on iran. plus, amazing discoveries deep in the sea. but first, the other news of the day. here's kwame holman. >> holman: the big three u.s. automakers turned in upbeat sales reports today, for 2011. all three saw their business rise substantially. chrysler led the pack with a 26% gain over the year before, as it continued its comeback from bankruptcy. general motors sold 13% more cars, just two years after its own bout with bankruptcy and ford gained 11%. the company sold two million vehicles for the first time since 2007. japanese automaker nissan also

reported surging sales. but honda's business was down nearly 20%. and toyota sales were flat. the auto sales news did little to boost wall street. trading mostly was quiet, after yesterday's big open to the trading year. the dow jones industrial average gained 21 points to close at 12,418. the nasdaq fell less than a point to close at 2,648. in syria, opposition leaders said today the government is misleading arab league peace monitors. activists said the regime is hiding armored vehicles and tanks in dugouts, and painting other vehicles in police colors to make it appear the army has pulled out of cities. the 100 peace monitors are on a month-long mission to try to ensure syria keeps an agreement to end its crackdown on protesters. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to jeff. >> brown: even as the presidential campaign heats up, president obama and congressional republicans are at odds once again. this time it's part of a long- running battle over the

president's nominees who've been blocked from confirmation. president obama chose the cleveland suburb of shaker heights, ohio to name the state's former attorney general richard cordray as director of the new consumer financial protection bureau. >> his job will be to protect families like yours from the abuses of the financial industry. his job will be to make sure you've got all the information you need to make important financial decisions. >> brown: but the move set off what could be a constitutional showdown, between the executive and legislative branches. white house aides said the president acted under his authority to make recess appointments when congress is not in session. republicans said the senate remains in so-called pro forma sessions over the holidays, open for business even if no business is scheduled to take place. in a statement, senate minority leader mitch mcconnel said:

the president had nominated cordray in july to run the new agency created under the dodd- frank financial reform law. consumer advocates initially hoped that elizabeth warren-- the bureau's chief architect-- would oversee it. but the harvard professor and the agency itself ran into strong opposition from republicans. alabama senator richard shelby: >> this massive new bureaucracy was designed by the drafters of dodd-frank to be virtually unaccountable to the american people. before we spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new federal government agency, i believe we should ensure that it can be held accountable for its actions. >> brown: last month, senate republicans blocked action on richard cordray's nomination. but in his announcement today, the president said, "i refuse to take 'no' for an answer." >> but when congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and puts people at risk,

i have an obligation as president to do what i can without them. >> brown: for his part, cordray was trying to stay above the fray. he told reuters: cordray is set to begin as director of the new agency this week. his appointment is good for at least two years. the president upped the ante this afternoon by making three recess appointments to the national labor relations board. the five-person panel oversees labor-management issues as well as union elections. the nlrb recently lost one of its members and was unable to make any major decisions due to lack of a quorum. we look at the appointment battle over richard cordray now, with david hawkings, who follows this as editor of cq roll call's "daily briefing." and binyamin appelbaum, who covers the consumer protection bureau as a financial reporter for the "new york times."

i'll start with you, binyamin. originally this started as a fundamental fight over the creation and powers of this new regulatory body. >> that's right. this agency was a centerpiece of the democratic vision for how financial regulation should be overhauled in the wake of a 2008 financial crisis. the ideal is that the responsibility for protecting consumers, for enforcing all the various regulations that are intended to pro text borrowers and other financial products should come under a single agency which would have the authority to enforce those rules to evaluate whether new rules were needed to look for places where consumers were being abused by deceptive practices, by overcharging, by hidden fees and to take action. >> brown: and it's been up and running but leaderless. what does that mean? >> the way the law was written was that so long as the agency doesn't have a permanent director, its power were very

circumscribed. it can enforce existing regulations on the largest banks but it cannot enforce anything over non-bank financial companies, that's payday lenders student lenders, debt collectors, a whole range of companies that interact with consumers have never fallen under federal regulation before will now for the first time but until a permanent director was appointed those powers did not come into effect. >> brown: so david hawkings, republicans, knowing this, blocked the appointment now it's come down to a fight over recess appointment. >> this is something you would never even study in a.p. civics but it's important now. there's been an argument about this for at least 100 years as to when is the senate? recess in such a way as the president can come in there and bypass the advice and consent requirements of the constitution for most big deal appointees. teddy roosevelt 100 years ago used a tiny couple of second break between the end of one

congress and the beginning of another to put 100 people on the job that the senate refused to confirm. harry truman did something similar in the modern day for... there's been a different sort of fight since the 1990s when bill clinton and the republicans who had power to block his appointees in the senate went to war over this and most recently, since about 1997, when george bush put about 60 of his people on the job with recess appointments, harry reid said "from now on, we're not going to go into what is traditionally thought of as a real recess, one lasting three days or longer. we'll come back every three days turn on the lights in the senate and say the pledge of allegiance and we go home. >> brown: this is the pro forma session in >> pro forma session and if you do it every third business day in parry reed's view, and mitch mcconnell, this was enough senate activity to fore swear these recess appointments. >> pelley: so democrats did this before and had these pro forma

sessions. >> yes, they did. >> brown: but president obama is doing something that president bush did not do. he's saying "i don't care, i'm making appointments." >> he's saying i'm not bound by this seemingly gentleman's agreement and i don't view these pro forma sessions as counting or in his view what the framers would have had in mind as a true recess. i don't think these are real sessions of the senate. they're really not. there's... nobody's in town except for the people who live in virginia and maryland to come to the senate. the only... so there is no business being transacted and the president is saying that's what the idea was to have in mind. if really gone as a practical matter i can slip it in. >> brown: at the same time, it stirred up republicans and why mitch mcconnell is saying it's unprecedented. >> he's furious about this and whether he will have the standing as the senate majority leader to take that to court, that's for another di to decide.

my own guess is that probably it will be some regulated entity like a payday lender who will eventually go to court and say richard cord say are not legitimately in office so i shouldn't be bound by his regulations. >> brown: that's the way it might play out rather than going directly to the courts? >> i think it will be a lawsuit probably brought by somebody with absolute legal standing to file such a claim and somebody who's regulated by the agency who claims it's an illegitimate agency. >> brown: binyamin, the opposition is not so much to cordray himself but to the agency. tell us a little bit about richard cordray. >> richard cordray came to national prominence as the attorney general of ohio. he won a special election to that office in 2008 and sort of walked into the middle of the foreclosure crisis. homes were being foreclosed all over ohio. it was the center of the devastation and he became an aggressive advocate for suing mortgage lenders, holding companies responsible for the way they foreclosed for the

condition of the homes after they were foreclosed. filed other lawsuits against financial companies not directly related to foreclosures but related to other forms of malpractice and became one of the most prominent attorneys general in this pursuit of the financial industry for its misconduct. >> now, do you have a sense of how this goes legally or what happens next? what kind of challenges there might be? >> what kind of challenges? well, i tend to agree that the test of this is going to come when this agency embarks on what it has said is a top priority, the regulation of non-bank financial companies which have never fallen under federal regulation before, areas where many consumer advocates believe there are extensive abuses, practices that would not be possible inside a regulated bank happen everyday outside the confines of that sort of regulated area now there's a federal agency that has the authority to go deal with that.

as it does so, i think it's inevitable some of those companies are going to go to court and say "you don't have this authority, you can't do this stuff." >> brown: david, it's impossible to talk about this without putting it in the context of what we were just talking about, the political campaign, and judy looked that the in her piece. there was president obama doing this in ohio. >> that's exactly right. long before this plays out in the courts-- if it does-- it's going to play out on the campaign trail. this is a perfect melding for the president, i think, of his two themes of the year which is, one, we can't wait. this is a mantra, we can't wait for congress to act, congress is dysfunctional and hopelessly partisan, the republicans won't cut me a fair shake, they won't even give any of my nominees some of these jobs an up-or-down vote. so he gets to drive home the theme that congress is so dysfunctional he has to do this extraordinary move his other theme, of course, is i'll be the

president more interested in expanding opportunities for the middle-class and giving the middle-class a better shake and putting richard cordray on the job helps me do that. >> brown: binyamin, you talked about what hasn't happened without a director. in spite of the politics, he comes in and is the director, right? so what happens? how quickly do they start taking the actions they were avoiding sfwhfr >> this agency has been up and running for about half a year and even before that for almost a year under elizabeth warren. was gearing up and starting to investigate some of these practices and to consider what types of actions it might take. so you may see them move quickly. they've been getting ready for this moment for a while. this kind of flips the switch on a machine that's already been built and pointed in the direction that it wants to go. we've seen indications of what this could look like. one early focus for them under their existing authority has been an overhaul of the forms you get when you apply for a mortgage loan. anyone who's been through that process has found it thoroughly confusing and they've been testing out a number of simplify

formsto make it easier for people to compare the prices of loans offered by different lenders understand those terms. they created a web site to allow people to interact and make suggestions and create an improved form. you may see them quickly move to start doing that kind of thing with respect to other financial products. >> and you would expect a to play into the continuing sflix >> as a matter of fact it was only about an hour or two after this announcement was made that cordray got his... it wasn't a subpoena but it was a demand for him to testify the republicans on the house government oversight subcommittee that supervised the banking industry. the republicans think they'll be the winners. they think they will be able to portray the president as overreaching, as asserting his authority in inappropriate ways and that what they really want, however, is a little bit of a policy matter is what this ultimately a fight about from

the republican view is they want the ability to control thes per strings. the law is written inuch a way that they don't get to control this. they want the power to subject this agency to spending increases or decreases depending on how they view it. >> brown: all right, david hawk and binyamin applebaum, thanks very much. >> woodruff: now, the story of libyan rebels who have come to the united states to recover from injuries suffered in last year's war. the reporter is jared bowen of wgbh boston. >> reporter: for libyan fighters back from the brink, that is haven, a place of recovery, rehabilitation and therapy. >> the injuries that i'm treating, many are gunshot wounds and there are severe hand

injuries to shoulder injuries, nerve injuries. there are, obviously, patients that also have p.t.s.d. >> reporter: these men-- most were civilians before the fighting began-- are being treated at spaulding rehabilitation hospital in salem massachusetts, a continent and cultural divide away from home. spaulding is the only facility in the country now treating wounded libyan fighters. it was selected by the state department in part for its care of american soldiers returning from iraq and afghanistan. >> it takes time for the patients to feel comfort with us and then tell us a little bit more about what happened to them and how they were feeling. >> reporter: all of the 22 libyan men receiving treatment here were rebel fighters wounded while fighting against the regime of moammar qaddafi their injuries were extreme, sustained from conflict and torture. their care at spaulding-- a facility nationally renown for ushering patients back from the trauma of surgery, stroke and

brain injury has been funded entirely by libya's transitional government. spaulding has placed all of the men on the same floor here, preserving their sense of community. since none speak fluent english, they have an omni present translator. post it notes turn a walk anywhere into an english lesson and a room at thend of one corridor has been transformed into a place of prayer. >> i think it's going well. people went on google to learn about the customs in libya, what kind of foods people eat, what kind of music they listen to. >> reporter: among the wounded here is salim mohammed, a civil engineer. one morning in august he says he joined a caravan of about 400 men to attack qaddafi forces in southern libya. his brother, a videographer, recorded the attack. >> ( translated ): i was

surrounded by the militia of qaddafi. by that time i got injured in my hand. >> reporter: mohammed came under intense gun fire while manning a gun on the back of a pickup truck. he was hit by shrapnel and was carried, bloody and unconscious, into a libyan hospital. >> ( translated ): that injury actually cut all the vessels in my hand and also injured nerves and the tendons of my arm. >> reporter: how is the pain in your hand? >> ( translated ): we've been received by a very warm welcoming from the medical team and the hospital management team. from the psychological aspect, from the physical therapy, from the entertainment and the social aspect as well. >> reporter: no one is more surprised about their treatment here than 21-year-old bellgassem ali, a 21-year-old student who arrived from the u.s. assuming the worst about americans, he

says. >> ( translated ): when we came re, we changed completely our... the image that qaddafi put about america in our mind, that american nation are selfish. >> reporter: ali is still undergoing treatment for a gunshot wound to the abdomen. he's happy to remain in the u.s. for the time being. he and his fellow patients organize routine soccer games on the hospital roof top and have visited new england tourist attractions. but they also intently monitor libya's regime change via facebook, skype, and phone calls home. >> ( translated ): you are witness, actually, to our revolution and how we stood on the face of the oppression. >> reporter: as moammar qaddafi's violence, public death ali has no remorse for what his countrymen did. >> when we captured him, we didn't show any mercy toward him. he got the same fate the same way that he oppressed us we oppressed him. >> reporter: the men will return home in small groups over the

next several months as their therapy wraps up. they are confident that all they fought and suffered for has been to a worthwhile end. >> i believe that libya is going to move to the best future. i believe that it will be an election. it will be a constitution and that i believe libya will be more advanced. >> reporter: a country on the mend just as they are. >> brown: several of the patients went back to libya late last month. those needing more complex treatments are expected to go home in february. >> woodruff: next, the iran story. facing more western sanctions, the hran regime lashes back. margaret warner has the story. >> warner: a drumbeat of new threats from iran began last week, punctuated by a show of naval force in the persian gulf. its military leaders insisted they could and would block oil shipments through the strait of

hormuz, if western sanctions target iran's oil exports. >> ( translated ): closing the strait of hormuz for the armed forces of the islamic republic of iran is very easy, it's a capability that's been built initially into our naval forces abilities. >> warner: one-fifth of the world's oil production flows through the strait, just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. the strategic passage links the persian gulf to the gulf of oman and the arabian sea. further upping the ante, on monday, iran test-fired a new, longer-range cruise missile in the gulf. its tne-day naval exercises ended yesterday, with a new warning from iran's army chief. >> ( translated ): in my opinion the enemy has received the message of the military drill, and we want to emphasize that we have no plan to begin any irrational act, but we are ready against any threat. and we recommend, advise or, better to say, we warn the american warship which was previously in the persian gulf, which is a threat to us, that it should not return, and we are not used to repeating our

warnings. >> warner: the ship in question is the aircraft carrier "john c. stennis" seen here in july. it recently left the persian gulf as a scheduled tour of duty ended. pentagon officials were quick to say tuesday that american warships including carriers will continue to deploy in the region. tehran suggested its tough talk was in reaction to new u.s. sanctions against iran that congress adopted in mid-december, as part of a defense bill. the sanctions would impose penalties on foreign companies that do business with iran's central bank, which collects payments for iran's oil exports. the bill is the latest effort to pressure the islamic republic give up its nuclear program. president obama signed the bill into law on saturday while on vacation. tehran responded sunday with a surprise new year's day announcement: the country has produced its first nuclear fuel rod.

the tehran regime says it's only trying to develop a civilian nuclear power capability. the u.s. and its allies suspect iran is trying to produce nuclear weapons. in washington yesterday, white house spokesman jay carney said tehran's bellicose moves show a certain desperation. >> i think it reflects the fact that iran is in a position of weakness. it's the latest round of iranian threats and it's confirmation that tehran is under increasing pressure for its continued failures to live up to its international obligation. >> warner: the new sanctions don't take effect for six months, but they've already sent iran's currency, the rial, plummeting. all this comes as the regime faces domestic tests as well with the approach of parliamentary elections in march and an ongoing power struggle between president mahmoud ahmadinejad and supreme leader, ayatollah ali khamenei. late today there were reports that the european union had agreed in principle to ban imports of iranian oil.

at the same time, china-- the biggest buyer of iranian crude-- criticized the new u.s. sanctions. and a turkish official told reuters ankara would seek a waiver for its biggest refiner, a major customer for iranian oil. for more on the ratcheting up of tensions, we turn to haleh esfandiari, director of the middle east program at the woodrow wilson international center for scholars. and karim sadjadpour, an associate in the middle east program at the carnegie endowment for international peace. welcome back to you both. there's a lot of saber rattling, i mean missile tests, naval exercises, threats, announcement about the nuclear fuel rod. what is driving this kind of in-your-face belligerence, this new round of it? beginning with you on tehran's part, kareem karim. >> the behavior has become me predictable. the iranian supreme leader's m.o. is respond to pressure with threats of your own.

so he wants to make clear to to the outside world, specifically the united states, that western pressure only going to harden, not soften, iranian behavior. >> warner: what would you add to that? >> i would add to it also that there is a domestic element to it, too. that they have to prove to the people that, look, when we are under threat, when we were sanctioned we are under threat therefore we don't just sit and accept it with react to it. so i think there is the domestic element which is equally important. >> warner: do you think this threat to close the critically important strait of hormuz, is that bluster or a serious snoblt >> i think it's bluster on tehran's part because as soon as they announced it the commander of the army said that they don't think they will do that. and anyway, i mean, they can't risk losing the strait of hormuz

because their own exports go there the strait and they need the revenue. >> warner: so they'd be cutting off their nose to spite their face, karim. >> they likened it to drinking a glass of water. "we could close the strait of hormuz as easily as drinking a glass of water." in reality it would be like drinking a glass of gasoline. it's like the logic of conducting a suicide bombing. they would hurt others but they would hurt themselves the most and they would also be hurting their chief commercial and strategic patron, which is china. so i... >> warner: the buyer. >> yes, it's mostly bluster. >> warner: so how... what impact are all of these sanctions? we've had four rounds of u.n. sanctions, e.u. ones, who has been the overall impact on first of all let's begin with you, haleh, the economy of iran. the last round of sanctions has been really back breaking for

the iranian economy. what one hears from iran is that it's... cost of living has raised five times more, six times more. and it might be exaggeration, there are not exact figures, but people complain about it all the time, number one. number two, i think what these sanctions are doing is that they are also creating a rift, a division, among the leadership, too. there are those who say why do we bring this on ourselves for the first time? and also the population is unhappy with the position that iran is taking. >> warner: and what about the currency devaluation which really... it's been devalued quite a bit since last year but this week with the signing of that bill it's even worse. what... how does that affect an ordinary iranian? >> i is in a way a lot of people are now running to the

banks and also to the monday lenders, money dealers to change their savings into dollars because they expect that the... the government cannot do anything about it. there is this instability and uncertainty that has that has led to this current situation. today the government announced that they will only allow travelers to take with them a thousand dollars. until recently they could take up to $5,000. if you went to the airport in tehran, there was a big sign saying $5,000. because they need the currency themselves. >> warner: so karim sadjadpour, is the white house spokesman correct or do you agree with the assessment that a lot of this bluster really reflects a certain sense, if not of desperation, than of

vulnerability on its part? >> well, iran has this schizophrenia because it simultaneously has delusions of grandeur and profound insecurity. you could call it the sarah palin of nations. i would say this about the white house strategy. what obama administration is trying to do is to subject the iranian regime to enough pressure to bring it back to the table and get it to make meaningful compromises and there has been tremendous pressure in terms of the central bank sanctions, the currency crisis. there's external pressures as well, the syrian regime is the verge of collapse. the question is whether iran's supreme leader ayatollah khamenei will calculate whether he will seek deliverance in a nuclear compromise in order to bring about some relief or whether he will seek deliverance with a nuclear weapon itself thinking that that will bring him a shield from outside pressure.

i think recent history doesn't bode very well because the example, the lesson which khamenei learned from the example in libya, qaddafi's example in lbya, was that when qaddafi abdicated his nuclear program, that made him vulnerable to outside intervention. war war and what do you hear or read on that score in terms of the effect that these sanctions are having on really the number-one question of sfwroes the united states and its allies which is somehow providing enough of the disincentive or slowing down in other ways the nuclear development program. >> i think sanctions are (inaudible) the average iranian and that is very important because there's going to be an internal pressure on the government and they will take it a step further because they would say look if your program

is really a nuclear program for peace than why not? why not discuss it? why not negotiate. why not allow the i.a.e.a. to come into the country. >> warner: well, they do have inspectors, the i.a.e.a.. >> yes, but under very rigid conditions. open up everything. and i think if ayatollah khamenei is going to blink it isn't because of internal pressure which the result of internal pressure. >> warner: over the weekend the chief negotiator for iran did at least say publicly or to journal... to a group in europe that he had somehow let the five u.s. allies who've been conducting these negotiations that he was ready to reopen them. do you consider that a sign of blinking? or was this... is this just a way to buy more time? >> the big question is whether iran is after the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or do they just want the rainbow?

meaning are they interested in negotiations as a prelude to some type of a nuclear deal or do they just want negotiations as a way of buying time? >> warner: that's the rainbow only. >> that's the rainbow only. and i think if past is precedent there's a good deal of cynicism about whether iran is willing and able to make the types of meaningful nuclear compromises that could bring about some type of deal with the west. >> warner: and the leadership can see the pot of gold is becoming a nuclear power. >> yes, but then they also see the danger of accessing that pot of gold which might be an attack on iran which they would like to present definitely so therefore i think they will have an important notion but they might drag it out. but by now the european... the

anti-americans know when to stop these notion notions and they would say "where do we go from here? >> the same is true with american notions called "getting to yes." and if that book was written from the iranian advantage point it would be "staying on maybe." >> warner: thank you. >> thank you very much. >> brown: finally tonight, scientists are calling it a "riot of life": new species never before seen. researchers plunged to the depths of the "southern ocean", near antarctica, miles below the surface amid so-called hydro- thermal vents or what look like chimneys that spew boiling black smoke. there they discovered such creatures as new kinds of crabs, an albino octopus, and much more. the team of scientists have just published their findings in the journal "p-l-o-s biology". here to walk us through the discovery is mark schrope, a

freelance science writer and former oceanographer. welcome to you. give us a bit of background first, what exactly is a hydrothermal vent and how did scientists come upon this one? >> well, these vents are places in the sea floor where you have a lot of volcanic and geologic activity under way. so you have a lot of heat down there below the sea floor and water makes its way down into the rocks and down below the sea floor and finds various places to seep back out eventually and the water is super heated hundreds of degrees and because of that path through the rocks below the water's filled with minerals and chemicals and some of those chemicals with form these huge formations that are the vent, they call them chimneys. and there's chemicals in the water that are able to support life.

>> brown: now, they refer to this as what we called a riot of life. tell us about the discoveries that were found there. >> well, the most striking feature was just hoards of these crabs called yetty crabs that have sort of harry chests and harry arms that they grow bacteria on. but everywhere they went one of the scientists described it as just discovery after discovery. they got... i can't even remember the count on the number of species but there were these barnacles that grow in clumps, there were sea anemones, there was a star fish that goes around and eats some of this stuff. there was an albino-looking octopus. there was just a whole range of species that were all new. >> brown: so new, previously unown? i mean, that's what the excitement is here, right? that's what makes this so interesting and important? >> right, well, new species are always interesting but also the

fact that you had... nobody had ever seen these crabs living like this. they looked like... they look a little like bone bones, it was described, because they're whitish but as far as the big picture it's almost like a beehive. these crabs are just covering these things so you can't even see the rock below and kind of jockeying for the best position and fighting each other. >> brown: now, you wrote a piece on this today. you said it was the first ecological system found to use chemicals rather than sunlight as a foundation. this goes back to your initial description of what these vents are. but explain that a bit. >> well, that was the discovery they made in the 1970s and people know there are certain connections such as oxygen with the surface. but for the most part what they found in the '70s was that these communities that completely separated from the surface certainly no sunlight makes it there so they don't have plants to sort of start life going there. so, instead, what you have are

bacteria that can in a similar way to plants using sunlight to make food, these bacteria use the chemicals in the hot water that comes out to make food. so all of these vents are dependent on that chemistry, the bacteria at the base of it. and all of the animals either get their food from those bacteria-- and some of them actually eat the bacteria-- or they eat the things that eat the bacteria. so it was just a whole new scheme of life that people didn't realize was out there and so each time they've made it to new vent systems, they find these new different... different types of animals but they're all doing the same thing in the sense that they're all dependent on those chemicals for life. >> brown: and are there likely to be more of these vents or areas of previously unknown biological life? >> absolutely. they know these things now are

everywhere. they call them spreading centers. they're the places where the geology are spreading apart on the sea floor and these things, if you look at a map of the sea floor, they run like seams down the middle and in some places the sides of all the ocean and they've pretty much shown that just about anywhere that you have these seams where the... where the sea floor is spreading apart if you look reasonably long enough you're going to find these vents. >> brown: and you quoted in your article one scientist saying "it's remarkable we can be in the 21st century and still not know fundamental things about what lives on our planet." kind of striking. that's what this is all about. >> it is. and it's a really sort of common aspect of ocean exploration especially. there's so few vehicles to do this and there's so much ocean floor that it's not a surprise when you find something amazing

and new. it's a matter of getting to these places. >> brown: mark schrope, thanks so much for telling us about it. >> happy-to-do it. >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day: most of the republican presidential candidates pushed on to new hampshire after mitt romney squeaked out an eight-vote victory over rick santorum in iowa. but michele bachmann ended her presidential bid, and rick perry headed for south carolina. the big three u.s. automakers reported surging sales in 2011. chrysler had the biggest gain at 26%. and president obama installed richard cordray as head of the new consumer financial protection bureau. the move could provoke a court fight over when and how the president gets to circumvent senate confirmation. our politics page has much more on the campaign. kwame holman has a preview. kwame? >> holman: find our new hampshire preview on the morning

line and sign up to get daily dispatches from our political team in your email every day. on our homepage, you can explore the iowa results county by county. see patchwork nation's breakdown of how the republican candidates fared in different kinds of communities in the hawkeye state. that's on the rundown blog. plus, economics often is called the dismal science, but a new book of cartoons on the subject aims to provoke chuckles. check out paul solman's making sense page. all that and more is on our web site: newshour.pbs.org. judy? >> woodruff: and that's the "newshour" for tonight. on thursday, we'll have interviews with defense secretary leon panetta and g.o.p. presidential hopeful jon huntsman. i'm judy woodruff. >> bwn: and i'm jeffrey brown. we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. thank you and good night. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

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