the kurdistan region, the barzani turkish alliance. some of them are disappointed with turkey for not having come to the iraqi kurds' defense militarily. it remains essential, not only commercially but politically. so some of the same limitations that existed before the mosul intervention continues today. and i don't think that barzani is going to sacrifice his relationship with president erd waup for the pkk. that goes in terms of energy interests. that goes in the survivability of the kurds quasi-state. there's also a limitation, again, between even if some of the kurds and pkk are coordinating and fighting with the iraqi kurds, there's still an influence again over this power struggle.Ñx-áñ barzani still wants to influence the syrian kurds. and any alliance that barzani maintains with turkey is going to hurt him. technically when there was the release of the turkish hostages, how are the kurds interpreting this? erdogan cut a deal with isis and that's why they took barzani. so again, in the minds of kurds on the ground, as long as t

>> barzani: we were outgunned, yes. >> pelley: masrour barzani knows isis better than just about anyoneead of kurdish intelligence and the kurdistan regional security council. >> barzani: i think everybody underestimated the strength of isis, especially with all the weapons they seized from the syrian army and the iraqi army. five iraqi divisions melted away and, you know, they just left their weapons, which fell into the hands of isis. >> pelley: weapons bought by american taxpayers were captured by isis as it paraded into cities that had been won by american troops. how many isis fighters are there? >> barzani: there are perhaps 40,000 isis fighters who are carrying guns, fighting both in iraq and syria, maybe equally divided in two countries. >> pelley: and how many people collaborating with them? >> barzani: well, collaborating whether they believe in helping them or not or out of fear, i would say over 100,000. >> pelley: where does isis get its money? >> barzani: they generate their own revenues. and based on the information that we have, they generate something equivalent to $6 m

the pkk but in subduing the syrian kurds, pushing barzani influence, and it would help barzani be the king of all the kurds, which is one of thiz dreams. that was one part of it. the other part of it was the turkey pkk relations and barzani was enrolled as well helping this taes process, which still seems to be stymied. the third part is the whole curd stan regional government, the krg i'll call it, and the pkk. as we all know or some of us may know, these two trends have been at each other insurgent forms between cooperation, tacit agreement, leaving the pkk in the mountains in northern iraq, and also in direct competition with each other. and that competition still exists today. that is to say the two main nationalist trends within the kurdish movement across all are those led by the pkk and massoud barzani. the extent to which this competition for leadership of the kurds and to direct the nature of the kurdish nationals should be taken into account because that did not change after june 10th, 2014, and it continues today. so when you're looking at the changing relationship, look at

. >> reporter: barzani's intelligence service helps pick targets for the u.s. forces on the ground.h to defeat isis? >> i think it's very useful and we are very thankful to everything that the u.s. is doing so far, but i don't think it's enough. we believe that the strikes should target the nerve system and the leadership of isis, wherever they may be. >> i think you're talking about syri. >> even in syria. >> you would like to see u.s. air strikes in syria. >> we do, yes. >> reporter: barzani told us the kurds are talking to the white house about major support for the kurdish army known as the peshmerga. >> we are asking the united states that they should help the peshmergas with heavy armament. >> are we talking tanks and artillery? >> why not. tanks, heavy artillery, and mraps. >> reporter: many raps are armored tanks and it looked like the peshmerga could use them. there was evidence of a battle one, but all the weapons they loaded were light. no artillery, no effective armor. you can imagine how they feel about the sound of american jets. >> thank you, america. thank you, obama

masrour barzani's intelligence service helps pick the targets for u.s. pilots in support of kurdish forces on the ground. are the u.s. air strikes now enough to defeat isis? >> i think it's very useful and we are very thankful to everything that the u.s. is doing so far, but i don't think it's enough. we believe that the strikes should target the nerve system and the leadership of isis, wherever they may be. >> pelley: i think you're talking about syria. >> even in syria. >> pelley: you would like to see u.s. air strikes in syria. >> we do, yes. >> pelley: barzani told us the kurds are talking to the white house about major support for the kurdish army, known as the peshmerga. >> we are asking the united states that they should help the peshmergas with heavy armament. >> pelley: are we talking about tank tanks and artillery? >> why not, yes, tanks, helicopters, heavy armaments, because these are very important. >> pelley: mraps are armored troop carriers and the peshmerga we met looked like they could use them. there was evidence of a battle won, but all

and we sat down with the kurdish president, president barzani, yesterday and i asked him about the air strikes. he asked for more. he says they're great, they're doing a good job and helping our troops. but we desperately need more. the fight is ongoing. but they need more arms, more ammunition and more help. >> anna told me earlier, i think it still holds, there's no evidence the iraqi military is doing anything to protect these iraqi citizens, these kurds in the north right now, is that right? >> reporter: yeah, that's absolutely right. the thing is that the city of mosul is within iraqi territory. falls outside the borders of kurdistan. i put this also to president barzani yesterday, are you prepared to go outside your borders because you aren't getting that help from the iraqi security forces? he said if there is a comprehensive plan which president obama and the global coalition are putting together, this is something that they certainly would consider to do. but there is no doubt about it. the peshmerga are in control of northern iraq. they are the ones on the ground fighting isi

president barzani is working to arrange it. as a new generation we like this very much. we dreamt of it. we are waiting for it with open eyes. >> reporter: the kurdish north is safer, richer and bustling with commerce. two years ago raising a kurdish flag here would have been a problem in baghdad. now they're everywhere. increasingly it's the iraqi flag that is a rarity. the divide between the kurdish territory and the rest of the iraq can be seen in the oil field of kirkuk. last year they began writing contracts to sell oil directly instead of going through the iraqi government. and baghdad stop paying kurdish civil servants. this is the border of what the kurds would like to call their own independent state. >> reporter: they cross into this side, they wait weeks for iraqi visa. kurds can travel in and back, everyone else is turned away. >> sometimes even the res sent di permanent iresidency permanent is not enough. >> they told me to make an u-turn. i've lived in kurdistan for eight years. i want to return to my family. they won't let me. >> reporter: in the kurdish c

you have barzani up there. they are good fighters. they need support. what we should have never done, and we put it down in writing and begged the president not to pull everything out. at least leave the isr there, which is intelligence surveillance -- we don't know and we can't say, that should be a military decision. but this notion we're not having boots on the ground that the president is saying is just not true. we have boots on the ground right now. there's going to be more. >> senator, clearly, that idea of support from arab allies in that region is so significant to the president's plan here. do you expect that the plan being considered in the house will hit any roadblocks in the senate? >> i don't know, but i think when you look at our allies, we have some that really are allies. jordan comes to mind because the prince of jordan was in my office two days ago. he said, yeah, someone has to be the lead. no one else has the capability. >> are they going to show up with the numbers that the u.s. needs for this effort to work? >> well, i'll say this

it was a barzani/president erdogan tie. not only in the pkk but pushing the ties.would help barzani be the king of all the kurds, which is part of his dreams. that was one part of it, but the other part is there were turkey/pkk relations. and they were to help the peace process which still

barzani arrived in western kurdistan to plan operations on that front. the top brass of the kurdish peshmerga forces were there. the focus was on pushing the isz lammic radicals of i.s. out of kurdistan they captured last month.islamic radicals of i.s. kurdistan they captured last month. but the kurds are signaling they're ready to go further. >> translator: the peshmerga have been able to get back most of the parts of kurdistan that were lost. definitely, there's a bigger and broader plan to destroy the terrorists, the peshmerga are ready to play an active and major role. >> r >>. >> reporter: the dam itself was retaken recently by the kurds, with help from american air strikes. from here, the president could make out i.s. positions in the distance, improving slow going, dislodging the militants. they fight hard. some blow themselves up when they run out of ammunition. they also have access to advanced weapons that the kurds don't have. so the kurds are ready and willing to do their bit on the ground, no question about that, but what they stress over an

. >> ifill: fuad hussein is chief of staff to masoud barzani, president of the kurdish region in northernq. the newshour's margaret warner spoke with him this morning in washington, where he's pressing for military aid. >> reporter: do you think that u.s. military personnel will have to be on the ground embedded with these units? >> we think we can do the job. american support is very important to us. and if the air strike will continue and if we will get heavy weapons like tanks, and artilleries, i think we can do the job. >> reporter: but if the american people want to know how long this commitment will need to be what would you say? >> i don't think it will take long. i mean, destroying main bases-- main bases of isis will not take a long time but to uproot isis as a terrorist organization, then it will take a long time. >> ifill: hussein said americans need to understand they, too, have a vital interest at stake. >> isis terrorists they are not only dangerous for us, but they will stay somewhere and they will come to other places in the world. they are dangerous also for the united st

i think more of barzani than you do, dan. >> i have respect for barzani.shmerga is in northern iraq. this isis threat is thousands and thousands of square miles. peshmerga is not going to the central part of the country and fight. >> this is going to be piecemeal. we're not dealing with a single country. syria is no longer a single country and probably never will be again. they got their start at the end of world war i when the british and french drew arbitrary lines. these countries make no sense. >> i agree with you about that. >> so what's going to happen here is we're going to have to fight the battle on the terms of the tribal people down there. if we don't have tribal allies, we can't fight for people that can't fight for themselves. that was the lesson of the military adventures we've had. so i think the president is absolutely right. we do actually have some intelligence forces on the ground. he has a small force of about 1300 people doing what dan suggests. which i think is fine. but i do not think the kind of massive intervention in vietnam or ir

when we met with barzani, allawi and malaki, i was convinced they were willing to accept an american follow-on force. we just had to put it on a table in a way that mattered. when we were talking to prime minister malaki, he said, well, senator graham, how much -- how many troops are you talking about? i turned to general austin and our then-ambassador jeffries, and said, well, how many? he says, we're still working on that. we went from 18,000 recommended by general austin, the last time i got a number from the white house, it was below 3,000. this cascading downward from 18,000 to below 3,000 was not because the iraqis said that's too many. it's the white house couldn't pick a number because they didn't want to stay. it's about as accurate to say that the iraqis didn't want us to stay as it is to say the president never called isis the j.v. team. he did. he's trying to rewrite that statement because it looks pretty naive. look forward. let's beat on the republicans for a minute here. the republican party, the party of ronald reagan, embraced sequestration. and to those who don't kn

look, i traveled a few weeks ago -- i think it was a few weeks ago, to me with president barzani and talk about the government formation in the steps we would take. that wee make it clear have -- first of all, we conducted targeted airstrikes to stop isil's advance. kurds were courageous, but i will tell you, isil was advancing rapidly and president obama made the emergency decision and we went in and stop them advancing. number two, we immediately open a joint operations center to share intelligence at an unprecedented level for up number three, we let an international effort to provide weapons and ammunition and at least 39 international flights have arrived carrying arms for the krg. the coalition up to now has provided 22 million rounds of ammunition, tens of thousands of small arms, heavy mortars, heavy machine guns, a craft, adv april machine guns, and rpg's -- and ti-vehicle machine guns, and rpg's. the president of the united states provided $25 million and drawn out funds to support operations which directly supported the krg supply efforts. i thinke to tell you, some 17 fli

this is the barzani area. they were not going to parts of the diala where the puk was fighting. i don't mean to simplify this and say there's the puk area and the kdp. but these old historical riefshriefsh -- the historical rivalries have been reinforced. so iran is very much active. it's nothing new. except now it's on a security level. in this last very important batt battle, the iranians were essential with the puk in the iraqi security forces in pushing back isis in the area. indirectly, there's no official -- there's not an alliance between the united states and iran. iran is not part of the coalition. iran has not been invited. however, by coincidence or by virtue of the fact that both on the working toward the same goal, iran is doing some of the work that the united states is not doing in some of the areas. the iraqi kurds are a key ally to push back and degrade isis. part of that is not reaching all of the asias. the i don't see this as a threat to turkey. iran is not going to replace turkey. it's competing areas. that will likely continue. i think the kurds are playing

i know we could have lindsey graham and i were there in may with maliki, barzani, a and would you haveent the president made where he wanted to leave a residual force behind. the fact is we couldville the second could he decision was two years ago when his entire national security team, including the secretary of state, hillary clinton, recommended that we arm and train the free syrian army and he rejected that. there's 192,000 dead in syria. i know these young men who were fighting and i know that a lot of them are dead now and it's tragic because we could have made a difference by arming and training the free syrian army then and now, the president wants to do it and it's going to be much more difficult. >> well, then let's look forward then and let's start there on arming the -- on arming the rebels, if you will. there are a lot of questions about what that includes right now. one of your colleagues, bob corker, started to wonder if there is enough of a moderate opposition left to really interest us to be able to take on isis on the ground in syria, do you trust the free syrian army

barzani has been supporting and marginalized recently, the relation, unfrnortunately did n improve.maybe one reason many people believe turkey makes the benefit of making isis and ypg fight, getting rid of two evils with one stone. i think this is many people's thought. even if this is the case, still stay away isis. they are in the town of kobani. whoever is in route there, turkey is really in this war against them. so this needs to be seen. this is not without any ground. i think what has been done so far makes people believe that turkey is carrying out negative policy against them. in regards to impact, like isis, the targets of air strikes are not the kurdish towns, especially not kobani which has a difficult situation, it's raqqah. these kind of places. so because they are not directly fighting isis, it doesn't have any impact. if the targets around kobani are hit it might slow down the isis advance. it might give some opportunity, maybe destroy their weapons, this might be some room for better protecting themself for ypg, but this is not happening. so the yes, ma'impact is onl

i should also say that the role of president barzani in the krg has been significant. clearly, it is very important that the krg are supportive of the formation of this government and have focused attention on the need to build an inclusive iraqi government to push back isil, over and above agenda is about kurdish separatism, which were perhaps more to the force a few months ago. in terms of tribes, i think there is less sunni tribal buy-in then we would like at this stage, but i think we've always recognized that it's going to take more than simply standing up a government in baghdad for the sunni tribes that have aligned themselves with isil to switch back. they are going to need to see a sustained outreach that reflects their long-standing and justified grievances about the way their interests were ignored by the previous regime. i think only by doing that over the long-term will \mr.{-|}\mister al-abadi succeed gradually weaning them away from isil. >> presumably on that i level of support and commitment and that of the u.s. would be conditional on prime minister a