is this all just empty rhetoric we'll pose the question to the policy director of the national iranian american council. and states across the u.s. are declaring a state of emergency during the worst drought since the one nine hundred fifty s. but that's not the only thing affecting your food supply these days we'll tell you how a new bill aimed at helping one company in particular is changing the american food chain for the worse. it's wednesday july eighteenth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. . well as the civil war group syria doesn't look like there is an end in sight this after top syrian officials are killed they include the defense minister deputy defense minister security advisor and assad's brother in law now it's unclear whether it was a suicide bomber or a remote explosive device that was used in the explosion and as violence rages on in the region we want to take a look at just how the conflict is being covered and how the media is shaping public perception of what's going on there especially. after a new poll that shows perception of conflicts abro

is it all just empty rhetoric we'll pose that question to the policy director of the national iranian american council. and bradley manning is finally getting his day in port the twenty four year old private first class accused of leaking hundreds of classified military documents is in pretrial hearings this week does he stand a chance against the strong arm of the u.s. justice system. it's wednesday july eighteenth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r t. well as civil rest grips syria. doesn't look like there is an end in sight that's after syrian officials top syrian officials are killed they include the defense minister the deputy defense minister security advisor and assad's brother in law now it's unclear whether the a suicide bomber or a remote explosive device was used in the explosion and as violence rages on in the region we want to take a look at just how the conflict is being covered and how the media is shaping public perception of what's going on there especially after a new poll that shows that public perception of conflicts are broad is just plain wrong tak

middle east to break it down i was joined earlier by jamal abdi policy director of the national iranian american council here's his take. i know i know the history of the i mean i know what they have been alleged to have conducted even in recent years as far as conducting terrorist attacks inside of iran to assassinate nuclear scientists but at the end of the day it's not up to me i don't have access to the classified information that's up to the state department and what we have right now is this political campaign to pressure the state department not based on the evidence not based on these allegations not based on what's classified or unclassified but base purely on the political factors and this big money campaign to remove them from that list and i think that that regardless of where you sit on this debate that is a major problem to have a terrorist group actively pressuring the u.s. government inside of the u.s. to have itself removed from the terrorist list it does seem like wherever we deem as terrorists or not terrorists it happens to fall in line with of course u.s. has your moniker interests

new sanctions really achieve to discuss this is jamal of the policy director for the national iranian american council jamal welcome to the show so congress last year they announced these sanctions that would target financial institutions that do business with iran now they are expanding these saying share. what did these new new limits really do the new sanctions are really just a continuation of the old saying sions effectively they're tightening the screws on some of the same things that are already in place there's they're closing certain loopholes so-called loopholes they're imposing new sanctions on companies that insurer ships that transport iranian oil there are some so-called human rights measures in here that really fall flat and you know are not actually supportive of human rights in iran but basically what this bill does is it just advances what already is the case which is that we have this what is becoming an economic embargo on iran we don't ship anything to iran but we also prevent other countries from shipping items to iran or buying oil from iran and so this is just becoming. a bigge

in los angeles we cross to ravi said he is a policy analyst and an ambassador for the national iranian american council all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want karl let me go to you first where do we go from here damascus says it has chemical weapons and the u.s. and its regional allies have no interest in diplomacy anymore where do we go. i think. let's clarify one thing that all this talk about tipping point and game i think is very exaggerated it all started with the explosion last week that killed several of like a former and current defense minister and security leaders and now is basically a very high quality or peroration though is really a dramatic operation but in terms of the real dynamics on the ground in syria they're not going to shift very much and in fact what we have seen this is sort of given an impetus to the syrian regime to try to retreat take damascus so i predict that this violence of kind of burn floor of this syrian uprising will continue there is no substantive kind of qualitative or quantitative change in the balance of power b