spill-over effects, and to shed light on that issue, we begin the show with a conversation with ehud barack, so let's get started. >>> joining me from tel aviv, the former prime minister and current defense minister of israel, ehud barack. welcome back to the show. >> thank you for having me. >> you have long argued that we need more pressure on iran. president obama announced recently that he believes that there is sufficient oil in the world. the supplies of oil in the world are sufficient to pursue an even more stringent set of sanctions. these will be the tightest, harshest sanctions that have ever been put in place, i think, against any country. do you think this will be enough to put the kind of pressure on iran that you have ped stwloosh no one can predict, fareed. it's clear that the depths of the sanctions different than what we have in the past, and its impact both the closing of the it probably len courage them to move, but to tell you the truth, we hope for the better, but i don't believe that this amount of sanctions and pressure will bring the iranian leadership to the conclus

enrich uranium not at all and not even the 3.5% which is what is required for peaceful purposes and ehud barackicated that iran would be able to enrich with 3.5%. real lines breaking out on what they're willing to accept and that will be very person as these talks continue in may and the sanctions get much tough or iran this summer. >> conflicting messages coming from high officials in israel, civilian and military. erin, one other point in the interview, and i watched all of it on your show this week. some repercussions and some reaction in the arab world specifically after the prime minister spoke to you about a two-state solution and israel living along palestine and you pressed the issue of a contiguous state for the palestinians. i know you will be getting intoer mo of that tonight, but what did he say? >> it was interesting. wolf, this something as you know, u.s. presidents have troyed to get him to support, not just a two-state solution and a palestinian state that is contiguous without israeli lands breaking out. he said yes, i support it, i don't want a swiss cheese solution and very i

this is political decision, but in my judgment neither ehud barack nor benjamin netanyahu want to doant to do is create a strategy which minimizes our on suns -- options and maximizes the prospects that we will do this. and, i think they have been brilliant, israelies have been absolutely brilliant in orchestrating this campaign. in fact, even with diskin and, the most, dagan's objections. if i believed in conspiracy theories i would argue this is all part of a carefully orchestrated plans to force the american president to do exactly what he is doing which is shifting the locus of action from containment to prevention. our president is now on the hook for preventing iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. not even george w. bush on whose watch iranians laid the basis for crossing the nuclear threshold was prepared to do that. so i think the israeli strategy frankly is working. if the israelis have a strike today, i think they would be hard-pressed to justify it. zone of immunity or no zone of immunity, they would be hard-pressed to justify it. so let it play out for the next several m

confidence in president barack obama's willingness to -- when all the chips are down, to act if the israelis really feel it's necessary. and because they do have this as matt referenced, what ehud barak has referred to a zone of immunity because of their limited military capabilities, i think there's a decent likelihood they'll strike in the coming months. i don't think that this administration can do anything more than it's already done over recent years or the previous administrations have done to convince the israelis otherwise. just because i do think that the israeli assessment which seems similar to our assessment is that iran is getting increasingly close to at least having that capacity to make a final push towards a nuclear weapon if it's so designed. >> just two quick points. one is i, surprise, surprise, agreeing with matt on both. one is that i don't think the latent capability is a highly likely outcome. i think it's a low probability toward which we should work and i think it's a probability that decreases if we strike iran. so i think the most likely outcome of not striking is iranian nuclearization. i just think we can contain that. the second point is i think i