huge debt troubles are far from under control. plus destination unknown to russia approach but this current was initially went astray before settling there i find it plunged into the ocean two months up to its launch but it's not here to clear up it's landed in the pacific both the atlantic ocean. this is a weekly on r.t. hello and welcome to the program the cuts to news that shaped this week the crisis in relations between iran and the west peaks again fueled by wednesday's assess a nation of a top nuclear scientist in tehran iran officials blamed the murder on the u.s. any zero who want to stop its nuclear program meanwhile american and british warships were gathering in the persian gulf where iran had threatened to block a crucial oil lane that's made up pending all embargo aimed at forcing tehran to

abandon its atomic ambitions. the cold run of tension between iran and the west is simmering. it seems the slide is the increase of heat could make it boil over into an all out confrontation. where will be that boiling point the point of no return we're getting closer and closer to war with iran the iranians are playing with fire and the problems in a crisis if you get were any small thing can really set it off and it doesn't clear washington that the international nuclear watchdog these arms side closely monitoring iran's nuclear activities are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon no but we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability and that's what concerns us and our red line to iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon iran's main source of livelihood its oil export is in danger the u.s. is. fresh sanctions that will dramatically complicate transactions though he ran

central bank iran is also close to losing here apposite customer the reason that this is happening is that this is the logical conclusion of our current strategy against iran we have sanctions in place with no diplomacy the only way that that and is through confrontation cornered by crippling sanctions iran's threatening to block the strait of hormuz a vital oil artery through which a sixth of the world's oil is shipped the u.s. replied by moving its hands fully to the region and saying if iran goes for it they will attack thousands of u.s. troops are being deployed to israel experts say the policy of isolating iran may lead to other threats from tehran and the possibility that one day they will go through with their threats but washington signals that it's ready or it wants everybody to believe that it's ready could way if we had to without using nuclear weapons ourselves take out their their nuclear capability well i certainly want

them to believe that that's the case well is that if i absolutely want them to believe that that's the thing that secretary would you add anything to that some believe it's just a war of words and neither side will go for an all out conflict considering what it is that after it will be for the whole region frankly speaking this tension is artificial it doesn't have to happen it doesn't need to exist the iranians would do themselves an enormous favor by saying less. and we would do ourselves a favor by ignoring most of it all of this i sadly i think is connected to israel and the israeli fear of iran for rhetorical reasons more than military iran might feel cornered and therefore make drastic moves right now it's in a war of words but one bullet shot and the powder keg can blow up the question is what's going to provide that deadly spark i'm going to check our reporting from washington our team. coming out this hour on r.c.

the politics and cons of stance take snap elections and any of the common people and season with a few fulfilled promises that the elusive recipe for peace that graphic stan is serving up in a region simmering with an address. and also a u.s. military option is going to progress is crushed by a leaked the cia report painting a grim picture of what's going on in the country suggesting netas decade long occupation as hate stalemate. serious president bashar al assad has issued an amnesty for crimes committed during the ongoing and to government uprising in the country according to the official state news agency it will cover a peaceful protesters also those who carried on licensed weapons and army defectors who turned themselves in before the end of the month so meanwhile you want to ban ki moon has demanded that the regime stops the crackdown on protesters with reports suggesting twenty seven were killed on sunday this comes as the ruler of capital

has backed military intervention into the country if it's the only option to end the bloodshed and he has become the fast arab leader to open the door such a step and the respect and middle east research at. the university said this exposes the double standards of the strict. this is just really unbelievable to hear this is especially considering that today. mir is actually in sri lanka another country whose government violently oppressed its people and there was no word not a peep from the international media from the international politicians and nor from the security council and so this is really problematic that can get away with this kind of violence but you know when it comes to a country that is against western interests there is a different standard and of course we have to remember that the tar forces to rein to help you know quell a demonstration a brutally repress. democratic protesters in bahrain with you know with the

invitation from the. autocratic government there so this call for interference or intervention in syria really is quite ridiculous when one looks at the undemocratic past and present of these gulf countries and how and why they believe that they can use force to you know interfere in a country that's going suffering from a civil war really and from the violence from its own citizens what you know who is who are the arab troops going to shoot at if they enter syria. syria's longtime ally turkey is among the increasingly vocal chorus calling for president assad to step down its lending its support to the armed opposition and keeping its own troops at the ready near the border but as always he is maria for notional reports on current might not be getting an accurate picture of what's happening in syria.

the bloodiest to schooling the syrian crisis mind my money she is a growing violence may start spreading beyond the country's borders especially with its close neighbor to keep once a close friend to now harsh critique of damascus. should be a solution to its people and. not to denounce others sort of massacring its people we should listen to them. so glitter glue is a harsh critic himself but he says he's criticizing the turkish government ankara is on the side with the free syrian army and the syrian national council and military and diplomatic forces aimed at overthrowing the regime of bashar al assad it supports a buffer zone and a humanitarian corridor which some fear could bring turkish troops to syrian soil what does that mean according to international law it means aggression against a country it means war but any intervention would be different from the one in

libya since russia and china have made it clear new war no fly zone resolutions which means the role of visual players like turkey increases dramatically but for new claims and korea's behavior is irresponsible and risky it has larger implications beyond the bilateral context of turkey syria as such the situation in syria must be handled with great care by all powers and unfortunately i don't see that. sufficiently especially the part of our government on hand works with a middle eastern studies center based in ampera it's sponsored by the turkish foreign ministry to help shape policy and its opinion on syria it's clear syria is killing their own people. not always that's clear nobody has objectively

information what is going on in syria the center specialists haven't been to syria for over here it means the picture they paint for officials in ankara is unlikely to be an accurate one the technology changing you know when you look at the photographs or the videos coming from these governorates you can easily see that there is something going on with the sources of these videos are often questionable so it's easy to be misled and get a false picture of what's really happening but there does. stop researchers from coming to firm conclusions military operations this is the last option which turkey does not want to see but this is an option that may have declared it doesn't welcome a military solution to the syrian crisis but turkey hasn't ruled it out why the plain and eve game if there is massive migration from its troubled neighbor turkey says it will have to protect its own people and while officially and currencies it wants peace and stability in the region its troops are already discussed on matters

from the border with syria. r.t. turkey. the euro struggle for survival got that much more difficult this week after a major credit rating agencies slashed the credit scores of nine nations they downgrades handed out by standard and poor's come amid growing concern that the euro zone's fails to rein in its runaway finances and debt from its indorse chair were especially hard hit losing their prestigious aaa status that made them a safe haven for investors is one of the reaction from e.u. leaders was varied with some calling the move and justified while others accepted the decision and called for action economists across the you are now waiting for monday when markets are open to gauge how much damage has been done and to laughlin from the district for democracy and corporation of power is believes the euro project has reached its and. downgrading of france but not of germany obviously means that the franco german axis is no longer a turn of all proposition what we see in the euro is are those that there's only

one country calling the shots not two and that's germany there's no doubt that it will extract a terrible blow for sarkozy's only real chance of winning the election was to show himself as a safe pair of hands as the devil you know in a crisis now it's clear that sir france has both a crisis and the devil look you know i mean it's true that these agencies are not above reproach they've made a lot of mistakes in the past but i. think that european leaders are being completely paranoid when they blame the ratings agencies for their problems any fool can see that there is a massive debt problem in europe and i think when the euro finally collapses as it will do surely within i would think probably the next year we will see this this announcement downgrading of france or as having been one of the decisive moments and investment analysts patrick young says he believes they're raising cats who are well. it's been deserved frankly for several years i mean the french government has

been economically incontinent for the course of several decades they've lived in never neverland they have no concept of how to run a reasonable economy charms of not little or money than they can afford it's a disaster for mr sarkozy but then again it's been coming since the start of his presidency it's been building for twenty five years and he did nothing about it so he's just as cold as everybody else in this issue on the future of the ural everything is not up for grabs again it emotionally destabilizes every single aspect of the euro because we still have no leadership in the euro zone we've got situations like greece needing fourteen and a half billion euros to refund in march alone the euro sits on the precipice tragically and that's a terrible thing for all our viewers throughout the world. all right this is our cia later this hour attained by torture are now ten years old were caught on the

last british citizen being held in guantanamo bay despite barack obama's election pledge to sharpen down and repeated calls from protesters for him to keep his word . also a look at how washington's latin american folk america has warms the heart warmed the hearts and homes of half a million people in the glass. the debris of russia's failed a marshall space probe caught for his crew and has fallen back to earth but where it's landed remains unclear what is peace to all of that has more on the mission which has cost one hundred seventy million dollars. it's a merge appear to be three theories as to where the revenants of phobos grow and eventually hit the earth now most of the probe burnt up in the atmosphere along with any of the toxic fuel it was carrying but around two hundred kilograms it's believed the module made it through the earth's atmosphere now we heard initially

from the russian military saying that that landed in the pacific ocean around one thousand two hundred fifty kilometers off the coast of chile we then heard from cosmos the russian space agency who said this well maybe it landed in the atlantic ocean over the other side of the south american continent now we've also heard from a ballistics expert putting forward a third theory which is that the remnants of they say this probe that came back down to earth could have spin spread over such a large area that it could have actually hit both the atlantic and the pacific as well as parts of mainland brazil it was a hugely anticipated mission from the russian space agency it was supposed to go to the martian moon a focus pick up soil samples bring them back to earth for analysis plushy where it gets its name from food is good and basically meaning phobos soil in russian now that information that data that the scientists were craving could potentially they

were saying of lead to developments towards a potential martian settlement a human settlement on the moon of course all that data gone now it was a hugely disappointing mission at the probe got into orbit and then pretty much stayed there no matter how much effort was made by ross cosmos as well as the european space agency to try and contact it and get it back on its way eventually crashing back down to earth on sunday evening. they waddle sharks this week by an online video that showed american marines urinating on their dead bodies of time about a fight it's the u.s. military's identifies the soldiers and the cliff and appointed a three star general to investigate. but rachel experts say they've done that has already been done and it will be the u.s. troops currently in afghanistan and. let's not forget that the americans came to understand with the explicit objective also off transforming this country into a more humane country into a democracy and we are seeing happening right now with the appearance of this kind

of a video is the opposite and it is having an impact let's not forget that this is a region where religious values are really very deep deeply entrenched and the way you treat bodies and the way you treat the dead is something that is treated very secretly here and with this video you can you can rest assured that this will have an impact in terms of the kind of reaction the kind of backlash to this will generate this video will generate against the very. the american soldiers who are there right now in a lot of stuff it really in danger is their lives. and many now fear that the jail encourage more young muslims to join radical terrorist groups like they ton of an oil kind and. afghanistan will that transcends that they slate a scandal along with previous that he says is that perfect at that assessment for recruiting terrorists. just to remind people of a few incidents that occurred while barack there was the burning of the koran that

happened with you know jerry jones and then there was the i will grave incident and before then there was the decision to invade iraq that had nothing to do with nine eleven so all of these these situations pyo on and they add up and what happens is al-qaeda and other terrorist organizations and they're using this video and they put it in their recruiting videos that end up on you tube across the jihad of web channels and they end up reading anti-american sentiment this is the hugest recruitment for al qaida that we can do it's unfathomable how pathetic this is become because the war hasn't been brought to it and like obama said he was going to do and what we've seen abu ghraib has happened twice now in afghanistan. and not everyone in america is outraged but would the filmed marines are doing as you can find out on our web site. c.n.n. contributor praises the troops school saying i should do the same in that position

also my. violent clashes spread across romania watch on footage as a stereo the anger and frustration with the government boils over into these treats for a fourth consecutive day. polling booths across concepts time have now closed and millions of people caused their votes to choose the country's new parliament and those votes are now being counted the elections come a little less than a month or work at staging a prolonged strike of a poor pay well looked in fatal clashes with security forces the elections were set to take place in august but the president dissolved parliament last november and ordered an immediate vote as a poll so i thought show that they're rooting policy has some eighty one percent of the vote with its closest competitor coming in at seven percent so that party will now become the. second it can croupe to enter parliament and as acts on a boycott reports preempting violent unrest is

a priority in kazakhstan having learned to having lessons from the arab spring but it wasn't for the snow and the freezing temperatures stands capital of aston i could easily be mistaken for one of the gleaming cities of the gulf a village just two decades ago it is now an oasis in the desert but its architecture having a distinct erotic flavor like many arab countries kazakhstan's primary sources of income are all in gas and it is that acts for it that allow this country the luxury of building its new capital city from scratch in fact kazakstan is now producing about as much oil as lieve beer was churning out prior to its civil war and the similarities don't and here both kazakstan and libya have predominantly muslim populations both were consider still roots of calm in their turbulent neighborhoods and both have experienced decades of rule by just one man in terms of style steps

fast notional time that is the exact opposite of erratic more market afy and of course he's still in power but the libyan scenario no longer seems improbable in kazakstan even to its leader some young people are fascinated with what's happening in the world right now in africa and europe but we have to explain to the new generation that blindly believes everything it's told that there are those who envy our well being the countries who are revolutions took place have gone back ten to fifteen years economically speaking the town of john knows and is rightfully called cassocks tons of oil capital but it's no match for glistening asked despite producing much of the country's hydrocarbons for decades it's been poor and neglected. the uprising in western kazakstan has smouldered since last spring but culminated in december in a weekend of clashes with police that left seventeen dead. and more than one hundred injuries as the protests spread to other cities. jittery in the wake of the

arab spring but it was because i stand has a semblance of democracy with several parties in parliament and some of position media but the essence of the regime is similar to those of the arab countries but the first thing the authorities did when their prize and began was to switch off the mobo networks and the internet connection before the people even demanded it out loud because i have the riches decided to offer a political reforms the people are now going to the polls to elect a new parliament recent constitutional amendments guarantee they'll be more than one party that has been up until now the challenge now is to keep all the good things stability prosperity. and at the same time allow the society to evolve. meanwhile the authorities have approved millions of dollars worth of programs to give the rest of cd a facelift and create new jobs between each case. the president's close associates

appointed to oversee the turbulent region says in a few years and will make some cities in the gulf pale in comparison. come here in a few years and you won't recognize this city while the arab spring may have been sparked protests around the world it's also taught authorities valuable lessons on how to contain those rallies and like all rulers and those that are by would much rather learn from the mistakes of others especially if they come at a price paid by gadhafi on a boycott artsy kazakstan. this week the anniversary of the world's most controversial prison go on top of it was marked by public protests on both sides of the atlantic demonstrators cold on u.s. president obama to all that he's election pledge and shut down the trail but critics say little change of that happening because of the recently signed national defense authorization act allowing america to detain anyone even deems hostile and

thomas a well known for several detainees in guantanamo believes that it's politics that how developed from closing the infamous jail as promised. this is a political problem in our democracy when certain people are playing with fear the republican party is basically playing on fear to influence their constituents in the face of that fear of the obama administration hasn't had the courage to oppose it or the courage to get the job done other things like the economy have seen more important it's a shame it's a challenge in a democracy and we need to continue to fight to have this close it's a stain on the reputation of the united states it's a horrible place. they're going to charge it says one leader that washington often portrays as an enemy but as it turns out venezuela's president may have the edge on his american counterpart because he's in a position to provide thousands of americans with a haitian oil they desperately need for free oh she's more in

a fortnight explains. winter morning in the south bronx new york city outdoors the temperature is near freezing indoors. seventy seven year old alice many otis is bundled up brewing a pot of coffee and raising the heat just enough good to take the chill out of the air the retired grandmother of seven lives alone on a fixed income and each winter as federal programs continue to be slashed the struggle to afford comfort gets harder. and waving i mean all they do was raise raise raise raise and i mean it's the same dollar you get and so how far can you push it one hundred gallons of oil one hundred fifty gallons of oil is about. right now about close to six hundred dollars however venezuela has been stepping in to make alice's life a bit easier by delivering one hundred gallons of free heating oil each winter she

is a four year beneficiary of the citgo venezuela heating oil program which provides free heating oil to five hundred thousand poor americans living in low income neighborhoods and shelters throughout the country president chavez often demonized by washington helped launch the program in two thousand and five following hurricanes katrina and rita all i know is that he was caught and he was crying to the people of the united states and i'm sure he he he ruled differently like obama rowland's differently and the whole we used to tell these people how they should live or how i mean are they going vay they are our country but they are not being generous to give us what comes out of their earth at no charge so could you really have ill feelings against them. i'm thankful for it. i really am in an interview with the venezuelan newspaper el universal america's leader fell

short of expressing similar sentiments of gratitude president obama recently accused the chavez government were strict ing human rights and taking threatening steps. democratic values the venezuelan leader didn't mince words wild responding directly to his u.s. counterpart you know what obama i feel sorry for you just toss the black communities in your country what you mean to them you're the greatest disappointment of recent years and go ask the poor people of your country you're a great disappointment to them it's time that we stopped minding everybody else's business and took care of business here we have children that are graduating from college with eighty ninety one hundred thousand dollars that they have to pay back it's to p.v. it's knowing them just that and they can't get a job a struggle getting that much harder in the land of opportunity arena portnoy r.t.

new york. times next in the program our interview with american academic jean shaab whose book is described by some as a landmark war k'naan violent traveling that's just half the headlines hailing out . it's not about spilling blood. just the war of the barricades from one side

and fears blockade from the other. invisible border has cut people from the land for twelve years. the conflict that divided serbia into two hostile parts is still not over.

welcome bob this is oxy and his that weeks him a new terror on planes the u.s. and israel what was behind that fascination on a rainy new class scientist in the city an effort to prevent the country's atomic adding further to mounting tension between america and based on microscopic. also more pressure on syria the enemy of consol because the first our visa to open a call for foreign military intervention the country well it keeps its forces all stunned by along the border with its former ally.