James Clapper: “I would just accept that, try to cap it -- try to stop the tests and then enter into some dialogue with them.”

Ties with Tehran offer some regional governments a means of staking an independent position on Iran, thereby mitigating its isolation while also attempting to extract Iranian financial aid and investment for economic and social projects.

I've gotten very concerned about it. There are Chinese, Russians and others so we traditionally thought about it as people coming from Central America, South and Central America. Well, it's much broader than that. So this is a serious…

I think the reason they were taken off the list was to provide an inducement or motivation for them to agree to some sort of ceasefire.

I think it has more to do with the psychology of Putin, and Russia. And he needs to assure his own people, Parliamentarians, he was talking to, and for that matter, himself, that Russia is still a great power.