the week's top stories. this week. with the syrian opposition. troops. between. the president. and the u.s. . state. of

the stories that made headlines this week and today this is the weekly. welcome to the program. the israeli defense minister today for the first time that his country was behind this week's attack on syria. security. suggested his nation's warplanes. let's get more now. joining us live from. d.c. today and thanks for coming on so quickly we thought the comments from iraq and now we're just hearing straight from syrian t.v. the president bashar al assad is saying that israel is trying to destabilize his country what do you. well as you say this is the first public comment from an

israeli official over the israeli strike into syrian territory last week it does come from the israeli defense minister. and he has said that it is proof that when israel says something it means that he did stop short of actually a third israel's involvement now u.s. officials have said that the strike targeted an arms convoy that was carrying anti aircraft weapons from syria to lebanon according to the israeli defense minister ehud barak he said that we do not think and i'm quoting that syria should be allowed to bring advanced weapons systems into lebanon and it is important to make the point that his comments does not constitute acknowledgment of israel's involvement in the strike but it certainly does suggest the possibility that it took place and it was responsible for it but also said that the syrian president bashar assad's fall is imminent and that it would serve as a major blow to his bella and iran now as you say syrian state television is

reporting that assad has said that israel plans to destabilize his country he also made the point that syria is able to confident any kind of aggression support of the israeli defense minister saying the certainly that is nations warplanes were behind the attack although there was a syrian. called for headed for lebanon or whether it was a syrian research center that's yet to be confirmed but if indeed israel's attack is taken at face value do you think there are any dangers now of repercussions. well certainly there are dangers of repercussions which is why we need to look at this israeli strategy and it's a strategy that israel has employed in the past and that is namely a strategy of silence it is strategic it doesn't give any kind of confirmation or any kind of denial what israel has done in the past does not want an attack then leave and it really its response has been a no comment which really leaves the question in observateur minds it is a culture lated moves because the silence allows israel's enemies to save face and

thus reduce the risk of reprisals and its collation against the jewish state these signs also smooths israel's discreet cooperation with its muslim neighbors and here i'm talking for example about turkey and jordan who if israel had to come out forefront and publicly acknowledge that they've carried out such a strike for example against syria these countries might feel bound to distance themselves and perhaps work against israel israeli leaders also benefit from not publicly acknowledging involvement and trumpeting over successes that might give the public or indeed they waste in allies and exaggerated faith in their capabilities and here i am with sensing also to the repeated war mongering we hear from tel aviv over a possible attack over to iran now it is an open secret that israel cannot launch any kind of attack without u.s. involvement so the analysis often is that by making such wall mongering statements israel is really just trying to send off an attack that it actually want to be able to carry out of course the international fallout from any kind of israeli strike in

syria in iraq would create immense arguments in the international community we've heard for example from moscow who says that if indeed israel did carry out the strike it was an attack on a sovereign state and as such it breached international law so israel of course would not want to come out publicly and acknowledge that it carried out such a strike because it would not want to have the kind of diplomatic complications and diplomatic fallout that would follow from such an admission or certainly put a real. try and get absolute confirmation that this was an israeli strike inside syrian territory according to syrian t.v. right now president bashar al assad has said that syria is capable of confronting any aggression which is of a see how this all plays out on how to use up honestly i think you. offer meantime our hopes of ending the ongoing conflict in syria have actually received a slight boost this on the sidelines of a key security conference in munich that's where russia's foreign minister sergei

lavrov held his first direct talks with the leader of syria's main opposition that of the national coalition and moscow's called on the rebel group to be realistic and unite in order to bring peace negotiations with president assad so he left off i once again reiterated that any use of force is unacceptable and that the war in syria could have already ended if indeed the geneva agreement on a unity government had been heeded the editor of a politics first magazine marcus papadopoulos things diplomacy still has a long way to go before any real success will be achieved yet on the meeting between the leader of the so the planes syrian national coalition and the foreign ministers of russia and the wrongs an acknowledgement by the leader of the syrian national coalition that the syrian government it's not going to be defeated on the military battlefields and it is acknowledgement that thousands of syrian civilians have died unnecessarily and all because outside play is in the region turkey saudi

arabia qatar and being fun and weapons and cash so the militants in syria i think certainly lateral the russian foreign minister said last year how surprised he was in the emergency over the phone by a syrian opposition in coolie. sure kristen's a sense to go from palace resigned to step down except that's not the way diplomacy works that's not the way peace process. hillary clinton about a year ago accused russian government of having blood. and its hands flow unfortunately it's more the country sadly arabia qatar and saudi arabia who have the blood of thousands upon thousands of syrian civilians in the hands because of their own geo strategic ambitions i.t.c. the removal of presence is sad and the syrian government's. this is artsy france led a military campaign in mali has been marred by alleged human rights abuses and activists reporting civilian deaths torture and ethnic reprisals by the local army he has an

exclusive report now from one of the war ravaged areas. these dummies in this mop the area we've discovered allegations of war crimes information about them is under the control of mali's military government. i think it's getting more and more difficult to talk to people a lot of. human rights activists who are trying to identify witnesses are saying that people are climbing up and feeling the heat they are scared to speak a lot of people here. very few fool the malian army seems to be doing whatever it can to prevent people from speaking to openly. and this government took advantage of the media's interest in all and for the first time visited the city's worst affected by hostilities today in the town of qana we were surprised by the arrival of mamadou cd bed the minister for humanitarian action and solidarity this

was an attempt to bring the bomb a call government closer to the people who regard the capital as remote from them with this visit in this event staged by politicians coincided with the publication of reports by international organizations such as amnesty international and human rights watch alleging atrocities crimes and violence on both sides for instance in qana several civilians were reportedly killed in french air force shelling we tried to interview the injured however were unable to obtain evidence in a community that has until now been strictly regulated by the military authorities he said. and the ministry says an investigation is underway so far no evidence has been provided so let the judicial system do its job in this all of these government its people and military. well aware of current events and we know that we cannot play this game with. the government has been attempting to assert political power

despite very poor infrastructure today we spoke to an army private on his way back from them he told us he hadn't been paid or even properly for fifteen days and if this war continues there will be a need for justice after a comprehensive internal investigation rather than heartfelt celebrations and demonstrations of power. now i during his visit to mali president francois hollande claimed that french troops will remain in the west african state in till the complete reinstatement of its sovereignty it comes only days after the u.k. announced it's sending up to three hundred fifty non-combat military personnel into the area for assistance jeremy corbyn british labor m.p. he says that he believes his country could be in for a rather lengthy operation. david cameron is getting sucked into something that i don't think he's seriously thought through two weeks ago we started offering transport planes to france we then sent force protection to back up the transport

planes we sent trainers and we have additional force protection to protect them we then have surveillance aircraft going overhead and there are reports of u.k. special forces i think we've been dragged into this the danger is the more you send any troops in trainers over anything else just suppose something awful happens like one of the training groups is killed by what the term to be insurgent forces what then happens you then go after those groups you then have a greater british military involvement we may well be in for a quite a long high tech surveillance. warfare being conducted by the french and possibly with britain and others as it's against people that know the terrain very well and will be hidden by the local population this could be a very long and very nasty conflict. let's shift gears not of out of egypt where deepening fissures in egypt society continue to grow this week there's an ongoing

crackdown on anti-government protests fail to silence calls for president morsi to quit some of the latest violence so one person shot many others injured and security forces are trying to disperse angry crowds with china typed out of the presidential palace there's only worsen the political and social stalemate the opposition yet again refused to join a national dialogue about to step up their protests the president warned of decisive measures in dealing with the unrest and military currently has increased powers due to a month long state of emergency in khost last week opposition activists to. claims the government's actions are heavily influenced by the on. the surface interpretation of what's happening definitely that there are groups who are willing to sabotage anything and try to embarrass the government specifically morsi and the military. on the surface however there are deeper interpretations of what's going

on some of the interpretation goes as far as that the military council or the military is behind all of this so that they can have. the grip over this way to intensify their presence militarily over there probably don't want to see an economic development of this specific strategic area because it would mean handover to civilian oversight of the canard rather than military oversight of the kind of according to the new constitution there's something called the national defense council this council in most countries and previously had an advisory stature right now it has more of an executive branch and it has more military members on this board than civilians which numbers the civilians including the commander in chief the president which means they can force the president to take certain decisions which we have just seen in the past couple of days when they had the commander in

chief see that he will declare martial law or emergency emergency law in those specific areas. for to still to come here on our final say before going behind bars . we don't even realize how much of a police state the united states has become as he told to the former cia officer turned whistle blower of america's torture program is also having two and a half years in prison. and green protesters clashed with police outside the labor ministry in central african republic growing ever more weary of the government's ongoing spending cuts. is he. if you.

believe. we speak your language or not at the end of. the music programs in documentaries and spanish matters to you breaking news a little tonnage of angola's kidneys stories. for you here. in troy altie spanish to find out more visit. all tito's comb. the for.

live from moscow this is arts here on rory sushi for the first. man convicted for blowing the whistle on america's prison torture program has now begun a two and a half year prison sentence cia veteran john kiriakou was convicted of exposing washington's secret interrogation tactics and one of his final interviews before being locked away he told r.t. exactly what he thinks he's being punished for first of all my case was not about leaking my case was about torture when i blew the whistle on torture in december of two thousand and seven the justice to department here in the united states began investigating me and never stopped investigating me until they were able to patch together. charge and force me into taking a plea agreement and i'll add another thing to when i took the plea in october of last year the judge said that she thought the plea was was fair and appropriate but

once the courtroom was packed full of reporters last friday she decided that it was not long enough and if she had had the ability to she would have given me ten years in this post nine eleven atmosphere that we find ourselves in we have been losing our civil liberties incrementally over the last decade to the point where we don't even realize how much of a police state the united states has become you know ten years ago the thought of the national security agency spying on american citizens and intercepting their emails would have been anathema to americans and now it's just part of normal business. the idea that that our government would be using drone aircraft to assassinate american citizens who have never seen the inside of a courtroom who have never been charged with a crime and have not had due process which is their constitutional right would have been unthinkable and it's something now that happens every every so often every few

weeks every few months and there is no public outrage i think this is a very dangerous development. senator john kerry was sworn in as the new u.s. secretary of state this week while defense chief no money chuck hagel was ultimately grilled by the senate sees military force as a last resort for you which is attracting both admiration and criticism among american politicians but some experts believe washington that once scaled down its foreign military campaigns no matter who is in charge at the pentagon and president obama was elected in two thousand and a we you know the same kind of hope to mizzen was there with shutting down gitmo and ending these wars and fighting the right kind of wars but then we find out when you know after the deal is done after the elections are over the nomination process is over we continue with our war footing around the world no matter what the politicians come before those cameras and tell you what the key factors are that we need to take care of it be a social safety nets or the economy or or jobs being created in this country the

united states will always have money for two things you can be rest assured bakers and bullets we already see the headlines coming out of the mainstream media talking about the sequester and how this is going to get our military we will have nonstop propaganda being a bombarded out of the people to fear of reducing the budget of the military so i'm absolutely confident that whoever is secretary of defense will have a very very loose pocketbook to spend to keep spending us into oblivion. just not running for twenty pm on sunday here in moscow about gary maybe about to pull the plug on the construction of a new nuclear power plant which is being financed by russia that's despite a national referendum voting in favor of the project last weekend the result though was an old due to a low turnout the country's ruling party is now expected to use its majority in parliament to stop the work on the but leave power plant due to high costs of it

some experts believe it's the result of pressure from bulgaria as allies who are concerned the country could become dependent on russia a local m.p. a lot of he says the government went out of its way to discourage people from supporting the project you have to take in to go that you're using clear nuclear power or for approximately forty years and the source of city in the country to all three books that we're losing really suffering through very real world will look to once in the super bowl you're uncertain usually supporting nuclear power or just. more of these. approximately twenty percent just because of the fear for the majority but if created special means special commissions in the parliament just just for that is that people look to both to support the new purple one but three even in these

conditions bulgarian vote. there was plenty of fallout in france this week following comments from the country's labor minister who said his nation was totally bankrupt michelle a second later corrected themselves claiming it was all just a simple joke but executive director of d.v. advisors patter young doesn't quite see the funny side. the problem is the french government is the biggest economic actor in france it spans the equivalent of fifty six point five percent of all of the economic activity the only other countries that spent more apart from sweden in the european union are places like north korea and we all know those are not the world's most prosperous nations there is absolutely no question the french need incredible radical economic reform it was not present on the sarkozy administration and frankly the feckless and incompetence of mr hall on the president has resulted in the situation we have noise massive outpouring of cash for these two three billion euros that's the equivalent of about

two percent of the entire economy left the country just during october and november last year let's face it the last time the french government balance their books was in the middle of the nineteen seventies france is in an appalling prices barely half the country are paying income tax you've got a situation where in fact public opinion is not starting to realize that france is bankrupt poland figaro today eighty percent of people agreed with mr suttles comments it's no joke what mr sipe on said it's the truth why world of a time here on our team starting with a bloody terrorist attack that has killed at least thirty three and injured many more in northern iraq a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a police headquarters and cut a cork it was followed by a heavy gunfire and grenades launched by men dressed in police uniforms the assault occurred in an ethnically divided city deeply embroiled in sectarian violence

between shia and kurdish and sunni factions. a roadside bomb attack in the southern province of afghanistan has killed a family of five two of the victims were small children they were traveling by car when it ran over an explosive device it's not known whether the family was targeted on purpose. still to come here on the program america's secret prisons uncovered we take a closer look at what went on behind closed doors of the so-called cia black sites in eastern europe. with a member of the family directly responsible of my torture she was beating me to the suited me a medical worker claimed. by the authorities just for tricking those. government demonstrations.

secret laboratory to mccurry was able to build a news most sophisticated robot which fortunately doesn't give a dollar amount anything tunes mission to teach music creation why it should care about humans in the world this is why you should care only. the first baby steps joy. folds and bones are not a big deal. but they can cause terrible trauma. for children can be broken by touch. and only the will of life can make. i'm source. fragile people on our team.

to the. science technology innovation all the lives developments from around russia we've got the future covered. good to have you with us here in our role research i live in moscow medical workers in bahrain say they're being targeted by the authorities for simply treating injured protesters doctors say they retribution has been severe or the government insists it's now investigating the allegations. looked at those at risk for trying to help nada dhaif was among a group of doctors who were trying to help the injured during a protest in bahrain she claims that after violently crushing the dissent the or forty's turned their attention to her and her colleagues who were providing first

aid they deny. health care to the patients and protesters. the doctors did not obey the orders for such. decided to punish those doctors i was taken to a place for ten days that i didn't know where it was. all that time i was blindfolded and handcuffed i was in a solitary confinement for back to twenty one days. and they would just open the door of the cell and beat me up and. there was a member of the royal family who directly was responsible of my torture she she was beating me and she looked cute to me almost two dozen doctors were arrested back then this for the fuel the anger of the protesters and turned the hospitals grounds into the scene of the rally the sound money hospital is bahrain's leading medical institution and that's where most of the arrests have been made after those events

it now looks like a fortress guarded heavily by the right police and not everybody can get in human rights activists say if you had suffered for speaking out against the regime and decided to come here for treatment you could make matters even worse for yourself anyone who was injured from the protests they cannot go to the hospital because they would be interested in getting beaten and taking to the jail last year many protester and in jail where torture insults and money we have a story and testimony of people and protester being tortured and the jail but in my country protester were tortured and so. britain not a was charged with treason and sentenced to fifteen years in prison before being acquitted because of what she believed to be international pressure on bahrain's government the fate of many other doctors remains unclear the person who allegedly tortured not and others princes. has been officially charged by police she

denies all allegations against her meanwhile the guy. woman stands recently learned that the action it took against the hospital was the right thing to do. these doctors managed to control the emergency unit in the first floor of the hospital and started to perform political acts when a hospital was journey to the base for political ethic work this is a real disaster we had an unbiased committee investigating the hospital eight condemn the acts of these doctors and the case against one of the members of the world family may seem as an indication that bahrain's government has bowed to the negative global reaction with the doctor scandal being far from the only torture accusation c.c.t.v. cameras have been installed at all prisons in a move to become more transparent according to the authorities but with protests in the gulf states to continuing and accusations of human rights violations intensifying the opposition is still wondering what happens in the places where the

cameras cannot see. reporting from the kingdom of bahrain. or for being held hostage by the russian mafia eight months an irish real estate tycoon claims he was given a punishment he would never forget find out what was right into the man's forehead so on our website. also online for the russian football premier league's course. squad it was said to be the third most expensive transfer in the country's history to discover and join samuel eto'o and friends. but. for now hundreds of protesters clashed with police on wednesday after storming the building of the labor minister's office and activists were demonstrating against reforms to pay and pay pensions part of the latest spending cuts announced by the

government around thirty people were arrested following the protest and lawyer george says the authorities response was part of a new approach to the strikes which have crippled the country. the government has decided to follow up one of the c. of zero tolerance as it says ideas that is distance to your state emissions so we have steam the government to take the medicine measures that they are unconstitutional i guess the recent strikes and now we have seen the order it would least like very violently against a generally peaceful and calm the most recent when it seemed the last three or four weeks a campaign of propaganda try to convince us that now they're worse has become the us the reason i don't believe that this is through is exactly because we are following this same set the full resources of was thirty minutes of that for three

years has condemned greece to us five of slow death that this recession of the economy kentucky and of the economy unfair source of measures followed by the opening season of the population and also attack the source of rights i think that as far as what we're following this said to of course is there's no call for us. this is our duty now britain which once boasted some of the best legislation in the world to homelessness now has over fifty thousand people sleeping rough where the government ushering in public sector spending cuts in the age of austerity the number of homeless people is only going to rise his party boy who went to meet some of those living on the streets. it's freezing cold wet and hungry there's no way for you to go to trial and no money in your pocket this street is all you've got and there's no one that will help you welcome to banning

in the case capital hence this. right i think. she said drop grandma don't have my reach. but you have well i mean you shouldn't be homers a lot of people you called me a short time on me real rock carpark were reportedly. all over the place this is what i got. there yeah yeah and radio. michael is by no means alone in fact the number of homeless people in britain has skyrocketed by twenty five percent since twenty ten reaching fifty thousand people in twenty twelve the biggest spike in the city of birmingham you don't think again people can see you could be walking past you can be sleeping next to warsaw. for. the cold this is stupid specially this time we have to go back for four days on the

phone to its twenty one year old matt fled his family home where he came to blows with his stepfather he had to sleep rough before being granted emergency shelter in a birmingham hostel it's run by a charity that helps anyone down and out to find employment and get back on their feet looking for work. on the don't know like job running from the moment trying to get its style second stay at the hostel in three years after growing up in the now to foster care he struggled to keep a roof over his head you going to do every takes to find some let's say found money . help and support it's a scary thing like you know you still go face all over again there just isn't enough low cost housing available and with unemployment rising hostels just like this one desperately need to expand the figures from the local authority

of people presented as homeless having crace on average by about four hundred percent. for the growing homeless community squatting in one of the city's twelve thousand empty homes used to be an option anymore just before the winter set in westminster upgraded sporting from a civil matter to a criminal offense predictions that it would translate to more rough sleepers on the streets came true there are a lot of deprived areas and there are a lot of people that don't have working. with it being such a one time many industrialized center working class families but those jobs just don't exist anymore so i suppose that the poverty is just sort of breaking the poverty and the reason the reason big mix of paper in the population is expanding the housing stock isn't it reached the point where it's just spilling over and can't cope anymore and with more government budget cuts kicking enough to rate

prole many more persons are predicted to slip through the net as the housing crisis escalates polyploid are to see birmingham. come to live from moscow as investigations into america's so-called black sites are brought her very old very little so far in polling numbers circular few details have been released from a years long probe of a covert cia jails as authors are going to go to school reports even if folks were forthcoming and justice might not be. guantanamo may hold all the headlines but all the interested it means people are moving their focus elsewhere so-called black sites secret prisons were established by the cia during its well publicized war on terror unlike the cause however these secret facilities were never publicly discussed by the authorities the us claimed they could hold prisoners outside the us because then they wouldn't be subject to the geneva conventions to international

law and humanitarian law reports suggest such prisons were in existence from two thousand and two basically not long after the events of nine eleven the us government denied the existence of these prisons until two thousand and six now the only country in europe which has acknowledged the presence of a secret cia facility on its territory is lithuania and if you were to look at it you will you will see something almost a deliberate site except for the imposing fences surrounding it likewise a suspected secret prison poland is believed to be located here apparently in one of the most beautiful spots in the country according to various reports mostly from journalists or human rights organizations so-called high value detainees were flown in by the cia for interrogation at these polish facilities. i managed to get the flight records from the airport in germany where it's clear that they have learned an aircraft used by the cia very important evidence because until then everyone

denied bs landings and reported different destinations of these flights to europe controlled however just like their american counterparts the authorities in warsaw have been extremely frugal with the details and investigation into the secret prisons has been dragging on for almost five years now but what is on earth during its course remains unknown therefore the extent of the investigations progress just like any information about the torture of prisoners regarding who wants where when and how all of it remains a mystery and the investigation is rumored to conclude next month by the looks of it whatever its outcome it may also be a state secrets and swept under the carpet. it is a ridiculous current washington's and for most rendition of regime was one of the key issues raised during the week of pretrial hearings for the alleged mastermind of the nine eleven attacks and his four accomplices in guantanamo bay senior counterterrorism counsel of the human rights watch. says that those responsible for

administering torture were never going to be punished. one of the issues that the fans have raised is if they want to be a black reserve they consider them to be beings in crime which i do it while the men were tortured there and they think that relevant to the case and i think they have a very strong argument that they were secret eagle detention sites where people were tortured in violation of u.s. and international law so there was never any reason because i'm president obama's close them but the reality is the real concern in the us is that no senior official has ever been held accountable the only people who have been prosecuted for a detainee abuse have been first of all very limited number of people handful of people and always low the level of people never the senior officials who created the regime of torture and ordered it in authorized and implemented so human rights watch of the own research suggests that there are sufficient grounds for a criminal investigation into the conduct of senior officials all the way to the office of former president george bush and other. it's good to have you with us

here in oz he today after a very short break our very own guy nature to talk to former presidential foreign policy analysts hillary and flynt leverett all about america's approach to iran this is. reparable fiasco actually caused a fiasco by singing a song highly critical of president obama ironically at a concert in honor of his second inauguration according to the huffington post he was thrown off stage by security for insulting the dear leader the sounds really bad like something out of one thousand nine hundred four where thoughts come out of nowhere the second you say something out of line about the party. to the song loop

it was singing had been going on for thirty minutes at that point this rant was more like a hip hop filibuster stopping the whole show and dragging on and on and on the so i think security just wanted to silence him in general not silence his anti obama opinions so you know loopy next time when you want to bring up obama's drone usage or total disregard for the constitution then keep it under three minutes and everything will be just fine but that's just my opinion. there are twelve cities in the united states in which half of the people with hiv aids lives within a year of a diagnosis of. over sixty two percent of those species i diagnosed with this is a problem that frankly is substantially preventable but was like the big elephant in the room and nobody wanted to talk about it there were really good public health campaigns that people were really focused on this problem you certainly should be

able to have a lot less a trophy a lot less human suffering. i'm joined by hilary lever it flynt leverett form and lists for both bill clinton and

george w. bush administrations two of america's most informed middle east experts their new book is called going to tehran which offers a way out of the current diplomatic crisis it's called why the united states must come to terms with the islamic republic of iran thank you very much for coming washington seems to be very happy with the sanctions there quickly in the arena chrono me why should they change policies now why should they come to terms with iran sanctions are not going to work sanctions have not worked we've seen sanctions imposed on the islamic republic of iran for thirty two years we saw crippling sanctions in effect imposed on iran during their eight year war with iraq from one thousand nine hundred ninety eight we saw at that time half their g.d.p. was a racist half of it and still the islamic republic of iran did not surrender to hostile foreign powers the idea that now that sanctions are going to force the islamic republic of iran to surrender to what it sees as hostile foreign powers and their

demands there is no place for that in the history of the history of the islamic republic of iran and frankly there is no basis for that anywhere the united states imposed crippling sanctions for example on saddam hussein's iraq for over a decade killing over people half of them children and even then saddam hussein's government did not implode and it did not concede to the demands of hostile foreign powers it took a massive us land invasion to do that the ability to stand in the other side's shoes to be show that you can do it is key to diplomacy i think you would agree with that but everything the u.s. has done so far showed you ran the opposite of that starting from the u.s. helping get rid of their democratically elected leader in the fifty's putting the shah in power much hated figure in iran what can the u.s. do to. now to show iran that they respect their national interests the first thing

that has to happen is this basic acceptance except in some of these low mcgrew public as a legitimate and rational actor. this is the model that nixon and kissinger used to pursue the diplomatic opening with china in the early one nine hundred seventy s. it's not their achievement was not that they started talking to. the united states have been talking to beijing for years but it was this very narrow kind of dialogue very focused on grievance american grievances toward china and what china was going to need to do to to bring itself in line with american preferences nixon and kissinger flip that on its head they said we are going to convey to the chinese both in words and in actions that we we accept the people's republic of china and on that basis the rest of these issues can be taken care of

that's what enabled this dramatic turn in american diplomacy toward china that's what we need to do toward the islamic republic of iran to accept it and then to back that up with concrete actions in terms of rolling back covert action programs in terms of stopping economic warfare against iran but what are the chances for diplomacy i mean iran is surrounded by u.s. military bases by nato patriot missiles they have to sanctions that are crippling your rating economy it seems there's more ground for blackmail now than for diplomacy unfortunately i think that is the american hope that we can still force coerce outcomes that's what the united states has been doing really since the end of the cold war we have focused on coercing outcomes by as flynt said projecting enormous amounts of conventional military force in.