one year and he was a lame duck anyway but he has been engaged in a sustained struggle with ayatollah khomeini and, these elections are an indication that mahmoud ahmadinejad is on the losing side of that struggle. now, what it means for iran's foreign policy, for its support for terrorism and pursuit of nuclear weapons, i think, is actually very little. there is no real dispute within the leadership about those things. there's a lot of dispute about tactics and economic and social policy inside iran and it is really those latter topics that were the real contested issues in the election. >> eric: in terms of its nuclear program you don't see much changing, even if he loses support? >> no, i don't think so at all. i think the more conservative element in iranian political affairs, has criticized mahmoud ahmadinejad for a number of years on the nuclear program for speaking out about it and their view was, if you keep talking about the nuclear program you will just get the attention of the united states an israel -- and israel and the others in the west and far better to have the centrifuges and

he didn't just walk into the famous interview with the ayatollah khomeini, he earned it through years, imam, forgive me, his words, not mine, a lunatic. >> i was uncertain whether mike was the most decent person i ever worked with or the most devious, but he was probably both. certainly among the most complex and without question the most competitive. >> there's a story that the correspondents used to tell to each other about, if you had a piece on sunday's show in the lineup and mike didn't, it was a bad week to go on the road, because by the time you got back, mike's piece would be on the air and yours wouldn't. >> now, wait just a moment. >> hold it a minute. >> around "60 minutes" he was just like he was in an interview. he drove us all crazy, made us all think on our feet, he made us all laugh, constantly reminded us when we were a few pounds overweight. >> and as someone once said, he had an underdeveloped sense of other people's privacy. can you imagine coming home from a date and mike wallace is waiting up for you? where did you go, he asks? what did do you? how do you explain

president carter hailed the ayatollah could manyy as a man of -- can many -- khomeini as a man of peace, as he came back from compile, and for the first time in so many years gave a foot hold for radical terrorizing islam to have a country in iran. americans soon found out the price of bad judgment in international affairs. not too long thereafter there was an attack against the american embassy in tehran. i know in fort benning, georgia, where i was, a lot of folks were put on alert, it may be necessary for us to go and defend this nation because an attack against a country's embassy is an attack against that country. it is an act of war. so there was an act of war committed in iran in 1979 and our response was so benign that it is still being used as a recruiting tool by radical islamists today. to show how americans are not very smart, they don't have a stomach for a strong fight. so we can still prevail. we had a benign response in 1983 after the attack on our marines and the loss of 300 precious marine lives in beirut. the response was to pull them out without a fight. so many time