diplomat an defense official in his native country said quote, gone is the age of blood feuds. he portrayed his presidency as chance of new progress on nuclear issue. quote, i urge my counterparts meeting at the u.n. next week rouhani wrote seize the opportunity presented by iran s new election. i urge them to make the most of prudent mandate of prudent engagement that my people have given me and to respond to constructive dialogue. must see concrete action to back up the rhetoric. yesterday we welcome the release of 11 political prisoners which is a concrete action that we did welcome. so we hope that new iranian government will engage sub standively. reporter: iran denies it is building a nuclear bomb but western nations believe it is and the u.n. security council and the european union accordingly imposed ever tougher economic sanctions that hobbled iran s economy over last two years. to us, rouhani wrote, mastering the atomic fuel cycle and
yes. well, one of the chapters is on war across the world. there are other chapters on crime, on tribal warfare, on cruel practices, like burning heretics at the stake or executing 7-year-old girls for shoplifting, slavery, blood feuds, dueling debtors prisons, and another one on the decline of old-fashioned wars between two armies from two nations, which have almost disappeared off the face of the earth. the remaining wars are almost all civil wars. so violence has gone down on a lot of scales. everything from world wars down to the treatment of animals and children. people spank their children less. there are fewer the practice of lynching has been eliminated in the united states. it used to take place at the rate of 150 lynchings per year. the imprisonment of homosexuals has been eliminated in much of the world. so at many, many scales, violence seems to be in decline,
is an armed opposition that they have every right as a sovereign government to put down, an armed insurrection, as they see it, inside their country. they say it s incited by foreign fighters, incited by al qaeda, and they feel that they have every right to do it. their position, of course, and what they re also saying on top of that is this is a conspiracy by the international community to divide the country, and re-enter it as part of as sort of a colonial move, if you will, a throwback to the days before moammar gadhafi. and moammar gadhafi is using this to try and build support. and if there were any international air strikes here, or whatever action is taken, he will use that to try and build support for him, say this is an attack on the sovereignty of the country, and people here tell us, well, the tribes will come out in support of us and there will be a bloodbath because if there s tribal fighting, this will pitch people against each other, bloodlines will be broken, or rathe
according to the state department. so this is pretty dicey while they are still there. and as you said, at the beginning, our sources of information are so bad, it s not even clear why that ferry has not taken off. and in addition to all of these things we ve been discussing, you ve got a situation where the u.s. has very little leverage here, again, unlike in some of these other countries where we had actual leverage, whether it was in the form of foreign aid or other kind of inducements, carrots and sticks. here you re dealing with kind of a rogue nation. it is dangerous, it s volatile, and we don t have a lot of levers to pull. we ve got a man with reputed $32 billion in fortune. according to wikileaks, documents sent by the u.s. ambassador there over the last couple of years, a completely dysfunctional family of powerful sons, blood feuds among the sons, which could add to this chaos, as things involve. because one is the national security adviser. there you see saif. the other
something counterproductive in the way has our reaction produced a kind of has it embroiled us in, you kno places around the world? bin laden said once in one of his interviews, he said all we have to do is to send a few, a couple of jihadis to plas, ray the banner of al qaeda, and the american generals come running with their armies. well, he s right. i mean, 9/11 provided the opportunity to invade iraq, which had noing to do with al qaeda. and today we are engaging in d what i call blood feuds in pakistan and waziristan with a tribe in waziristan. and noin yemen apparently we re getting into a blood feud there. so this inability to define terrorism and islamic militancy is getting us into oor ne me after another. we are not out of iraq, and it s unlikely we will be completely out next year. we re putting a lot of pressure on islamabad by fighting in the