hell i am a host o what use chronicle, cominright up. in foreign-licy therere cliches in whi we talked. we talk about sticks and

carrot it doesn't make a horse do anhing in a way accept look for another character. and a stic you can't get much -- a horse to do much with eight sck except show i to a horse. the whole thing is just a ssage. in forei policy, it tendto be othwise. wheat also assume that we are the people with the carrs and sticks,ot that we e t victim of other pople's carrots and sticks. i have assembledhree of the great minds of journism to deal with foreign policy we will write back to apply sticks and carrots andther remedies to e ills of the world.

and now the prram host alan ng and linda gasper allow. s/ i promise you three remarkable people and here they are. a widely syndicated columnist in e washingn times. it is pleasure to have you. i am joined ain iro by ron marks.

i am delightedo have john wis of hearst newspers here in whington. a longime journalist, and somee's usually respecd. what is the big international news at the moment? i wod say it is still ira whether or n israel will bomb iran, whether t.s. or the obama in the session will go along with it. that policy has not been there. joe biden,ith a little slip of the tongue. he also unerstands the pow of aipac better than anyone.

anybody who has served in congss as long as joe bid knows this. th is a crude w of going after anything. he wou have to overfly parts of iraq. saud arabia will do a nk and and nod. they have 11 air-to-ai refueling tankers. what the chairman o the joint chiefs, mike mlen and others, and i'm surehe president feels the same way, thairan has asymmetrical abiliti up and down the gulf. you n have oil at $0 almost ovnight. take bahrain, two-thirds of the

population ishia, and they are under a ruling family. >>et's clarify these term antheir position as oil exporters. it is not just thathey export 1.5 -- two 0.5 million broke -- barrels, but the nation's waterways. >> they had a major nal base there, they can hurt her u.s. and our friends interest up and down t gulf. that doesn't even begito mention hamas. >> seven or $8 a glon for gasoline. that would be a catastrophe. >> that would put us in a

worldwide tailspin. it is still not clear h far w would dr. if you bng that up to 00 a barrel, all bets ar off at tha point. >> i used to be involved with an aspen institute study on th. at a much ler level, and they had a growth rate of 23%. tota economic, collapse is very close to i >> one assum that the israelis wi attack iran. what a you looking at that will lead to that concsion? >> they are going through an existential crisis. byirtuehat they have nuclear weapons ambionsor the last 25 years, they have been hped by the famous black marketee

the bomng of iran, ift takes place by israel, it is six-nine monthsway. >> this is inspiredy the success, is it not, that israel had bn bombing iraq in 1982? 1981, where th struck two actors? >> the fous reactor in baghdad. the israeli air fce pulverize it, andut the iraqi nuclear program totally o of business. despite the weapons of mass destrucon, i don't think the iraqi clear proam ever recovered from that. >> isn't there another way? is it you let tm do it orou bombed them? yoused to work in the agenc the cia.

are the other ways of interrupting the eleric suply, causing the enrichment process -- >> what alternative what take -- would i take? they kno wherehe sites are. they coul engage in some forms of disruptio i would say aut the program -- ey talked a lot about proding uranium. they talked a lot about structuring the bomb. there is a certain chart that goes with this aut what gets develop anhow far it goes ahead, how do weaponi it. they could kk the sting out of a c130 and havehe same results. i think it is a little longer down the road in terms of weaponizing it. >> it is ao tougho give

sanctions. 60% of their gasolin has to be impoant. >> i don'think people realize w open they are to sanctions. americans tend to dismiss sanctions. fr a banking standpoint, from the san point the standpoint of squeezing the economy, their onomy is not in a good condition. they he hadnternal problems. >> if you deprive them of their gasoline, that is an act of war. that mns blockade. >> you have inhe pason this program sugsted that it is not enrely irrationa for the iranns to sk weapons. if they have a neighbor called pakistan, with years of existen on this plane and they see that fi of the eight

world nuclear pers are in their nuclear viciny, they say ey are entitled to it also. >> i think american pnners ought to sume that iranill have nucle cability. we hav to get over this -- what we are going over now. we need to assume that they do have nuclear capability, and then what are we going to do? we will make them more of a commity of ntions, and not rattling ther swords all the me. listen to the iranians say they are all interested ineaceful nuclear ogram is total baloney. >> tt is all nonsense. there is a process going on, this is 80 mlion peopl 600,000quare miles. th u.s. ll not take them on militarily at this strike -at this tim

sometis you blothe roof off of something and things survive. >> o is really bomb on iran will be seens american. >> this will pla out overime. the.s. will continue to hold them back. the hope i have at this point, we saw in the last month or so after t election in iran, i think at this point time, but the same as the situation we have in polan and next -- 1981. it wil not be pretty, it will take a long time at this pnt. we wl not necsarily have a state issouri happing here or canad we will have people w have a different orieation and the wod. >> that is e argent against it. this is a process, thi is the

shipyards. we have gotten through this and we are in the xt page. the legitimacyf the government is now in question. south tehran, we were there which is a bit me impoverished ar. yo have lost thentelligence, we he lost the middle css who are alrdy getting squeezed economically. that is why the embargoesre important. >> we would be thinking iran has a means of helping us in afghanistan. >> let'go to the political side. obama,hen he was running for election said basical, i will sit downith the devil. we n hav this verywkward election i in, wherehe devil is more a dble that

he was before. do you tnk of oma will be able to deal with the iranians th the diplomatic engagement that they favoras been postponed? >> it has been the experience histor fleet, that in the end it is bad g you haveo sit down with,ot this mythical moderate. all theournalists ve and mythical moderate. >> i have been searching for one since 9181 over there >> -- since 1981 over there. >> that is how we describe khruchev when he defeate solid. >> whi he was more modern. -- wn he defeatedtalin.

>> as e empire was disintegrating -- >> i would like to ke this opportuny to remind our listener that on a seriouack some listeners i am joinedere by these journasts. back to sting down wi our enemies. sancons. margaret threat - margaret thatcher said they d not work. and they hav not. they have resultthat are not desirable, untended consequees. >> t germans have man -- have

made 10eals in iran. >> you don't ow whathey are doing inhe dark. how do you feel about sanctions? >> the only sanctions i have se that makes sen would be to depve them of 60% of th gasone they need, because they don't have sufcient refining capacity. >> notng else? >>hey all drove around cars these days. think there ascensions and there areanctions. i go world war roomne, a blockad i, that wasn't just a ll document. it was in war-time also. >> i ws in world war ii.

the blockade of iran would be a serious form sanion, it would reire an act of war alst, blockg a count. short of that legal sanctions and diplomatic sanctions a economic sations have limited opinion. here is a major oil producer thattill relies on impord gasoline to fuel its econo. >> it is extrrdinary. that mas them vulnerable in th respect. i am very skeptical of that sanctions have long impact on a place like iran. iran is a very sophisticated country. it is much more sopsticated thanraq. e engineering community in iran -ny have been a

educated in america. they do shisticated things. i am surprised they are slow in gettingohe nuclear age, but expect that will hapn. so there areillions of iranians in t unitedtates that are in uch. >> the analogy of the stick and rrot which always seems to come up in foreign affas. ro we apply thes we are talking about applying the sticks to iran. w is applying thetick to us? we know that rusa has applied the stick toour. who is applyinit to us? >>e're talking about cooration. rope has been silent or cooperates, france, germany, certaly in the u.k. -- what e we getting out of this?

there is a part of me that sympathizes with this. you start to make peop sick, or whether or not you can finish them offith any kind of change of policy or approach. i think that is a rl trick. we wil not get rid of t regime. at least notor a while. you e looking for behavior dificationt this point. i think shifting from the bh administration to e obama. ministration haseft them a little less to beat up on. in tms of theverall sanctions, we c't continue to play that ga on our own. if the europeans do not cooperate with u, and they are making money, the french in paicular, it is cottage industryf diplomats going back

and forth over, how do we solve the problems korea? of to iran? how many wars werstarted by plomats lane two generals - at 1.60% of the erican people feel that saddam hussein was bend 911? >> i afraid you're rig? . >>ou he to get bind some behavioral change. that will takeime. the fact is, that i our audien right now. they are susceptible to the kinds of tecology that we ca use over by the -- tax, i am not su if we're doing very well with it. >>ne of the interesting is about iran is t internet and

her communicationsend to have broug in aiberal opposition there. this has not always ge that way. some of the other mlim couries conrvatives who ha used communicion toush the radil view. the extremes ofslam have been fed by modern communitions, where we naively thoug these people ctinue to see cnn, these people are librals. e had a meeting recently, and we were told that the pentagon had beenit 6 million time in one ur. it was a hailstorm. >> now we are ve suspicious by north and -- onorth korea.

>> it is surprising that they have that degree of sophistication >> 's not today's state of the ar >> it doesn't take very much. i only understandechnology enoug to understand my blackberry. i can get i on and off, and thats about it. doesn't take much to do this. it i just sending a lot of messages in one direction. a well-trained 16-year-old can do this. if you arsis -- paranoid,yo can put th following items together. the fact that they l him on the air ke that, h son is beingined up at this point,t age 26 whic is awfuy young for him to getn there. you have him firi msiles

off. if thicyber thing is true, lot ofhem -- lot of this has to d with ternalattles in rth korea. the mayor tl it -- military, they are the ones that lit -- chocked, let's come back to washington. how do think the state department idoing? how was the ainistration doing in its forgn policy? >> ware seeg a team of rivals jtling for position thes days. have vice-president bid who looks like a secretary of state, traling overseas. i think heooks the way to mself. >> we he senator mitchell wh a special portfolio to the ddle east. we he ambassador holbrke, another speci portfolio f iran.

i wonder what secretary of ste clinton is doing these da? she is having a ha time nding a niec -iche. i am told from some sources tha she is ing isolated, a she tends to be on her own, not close to the people around obama, and not close to the vice presidt. >>. is not true that richard holbrooke is seen running from the scene. >> fmer marine general jim jones, hehouldave obama's here -ear. there haveeen a number of stories saying he is competing with obama's campaign staff to help run the white house

jim jones i having to compete with this younger cads of campaign workers to getpace >> tts that -- not the way it is supposed to be. eready said he will ba heads together, he is one that looks blooed at the moment. >>hat we have in this white house, a strange thing,pecial envoy. we also have insde outside people in energy, someone on health care. in the wte house, which leads a ency and the cabet member th a layer between tha person d the president. >> i mu bthenly one that ppened -- that knowwhat

happened tohe czar. i have heaomplaints within state department that there is a shortage of space to p all of thspecial envoys' in. this whole thing is begning to loed a little bit moreike the rst clinton admistration. it was driven vy much by th polical. itould also be a natnal security meeng. to some eent what you are seeing, he looksood on the world stage. gates has good access. >> the secretary odefense perry >illary is isolated at this point, panetta was put ove at the cia to make sure that things go quietand jones is running the dayo day shop.

>> would not so jones short. he is a rmidable pernality. he has not shown his hand far,as he. >> he is straight as an arrow, maybtwo straight -- maybeoo straight. the high point here is at action in ira is not going to immediate. >> the hh point is that in spite of allhe fuss you are hearing, this is an internal battle. we wl keep ourool on this one. i have neutral point. i think we shld knowhe passing of fmer defense secretary robert mcnamara. a historic figure in allf this. all of the analyses and appreciati forver think about at heid, i think it is

a great time to be in the new siness right now. >>chuck, we see him as a trag figure. do you thinke s himself that way? t man who got it wrong? i think heid s himself that way. people need to understand that he had a blood that that he could never bring himse to say. he was responsib for thousds of america -- americs. you cannot look io the eyes of those thousands of people and say, we made a mistake. people wanted m to me a huge apoly. people do not alize the blood bthe felt. thank you very much. that is ourrogram for today. tha you for comg along.

you c hear us on x and radio -- serious and some radi sirrus xmradio. until then, cheers.