and i think-- there had been negotiations under olmert and a bass before netanyahu came in. i think they would have liked to continue those negotiations. i talk food a lot of people outside the obama administration and elsewhere about this. netanyahu was not willing to continue those negotiations. abbas feared that netanyahu who hadn't even said he was for a palestinian state at all until june of 2009, wasn't serious in the negotiations he wanted to pursue. and so the obama administration came up with this idea of a settlement frieze that i think coupled with some moves towards diplomatic recognition by the arab --. >> if they could get israeli to engage they might pro moment action. >> yes, i think the problem with that strategy was given the right leaning nature of this israeli government and the fact that they expected at least publicly also a settlement freeze in jerusalem which is particularly hard for an israeli government to do, they weren't realistic about their chances of success unless they were willing to put a lot more pressure than they were. it would have taken

i was at a session with ehud olmert, the prime minister of israel, where he basically bragged that when he was prime minister in his talks with the u.s. treasury department, they had already come up with the idea of expelling iran from the swift, which is the system that enables banks to do transactions with foreign banks. and he says this was an idea they were already talking about four years ago. so, we're good at it. we're good at sanctions. we're obviously not good at diplomacy and we don't want to go to war. >> anyone else? mike? >> sure. i think, in a sense, we are losing a state of confidence with iran, taking place in convert operations inside iran and short of every sanction short of war. the purpose of sanction sincere basically to get iran to talk. so, you can see the talks coming up as one way in which sanctions have succeeded, because the question with sanctions is they certainly are causing problems for iran. but the many main question is, are they sufficient to get iran to strike a deal with us on the nuclear program? so, i think the jury is still out on how this policy e

well-written of course this is also what happened in '07 when don't go there you rotten leader ehud olmerttold by the president of the united states, don't do this. don't attack the and he chose to go forward despite objections from his military leaders, his military intelligence and many more about the costs of potential risks, look what will happen, syrians, heartland of terrorism. yet the truth is if you sit down and you calculate the risks they're always myriad reasons not to do something. i agree with aaron. there are many, many reasons not to attack iran. the question is whether the reasons to outweigh the reasons not to. that is difficult calculus. maybe iranians know what they want to do and maybe the irrans -- iranians don't know what they want to do. i want to make between the wars of discretion and wars of choice and wars of necessity. all wars are wars of choice. the notion somehow if you're attacked you need to retaliate doesn't seem to me to be correct nor does it seem somehow the legitimacy of a conflict should only derive from an attack on your soil. if a leader is not resp

um, i was at a session with ehud olmert, the former prime minister of israel earlier this week, where he basically bragged that when he was prime minister and his talks with the u.s. treasury department, they'd already come up with the idea of expelling iran from what's called the swift which is the system that enables banks to do transactions with foreign banks. and he said this is an idea that they were already talking about four years ago. so, um, we're good at it. we're good at sanctions. we're, obviously, not good at diplomacy, and we don't want to go to war. [laughter] >> michael? >> i think in a sense we're definitely in a state of conflict with iran, and it's taking place with the sanctions, it's taking place through covert operations inside iran, it's taking place every pressure short of war. and not the defense sanctions, but the purpose of the sanctions is basically to get iran to talk. so you could see the talks that are coming up as one way in which sanctions have succeeded because the question with sanctions is they certainly are causing problems for iran. but the main q