James Clapper: “I don't think anyone harbors any illusions about these five Taliban members and what they might do if they were…”

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…

No, I don't. The Chinese setup is that there is a Polit bureau member who is the overseer -- the senior overseer on behalf of the Polit bureau for the entirety of the Intelligence and Security apparatus of China.

I think this reflects Russian insecurity. And it's almost like, Putin needs a rhetorical security blanket, of making threats, like this.