Second Big Context Point News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

President for policy at the international crisis group. thank you both for joining me. robert, let me begin with you in the point i was asking the ambassador about iran. just a couple weeks ago the u.s. was very clear. they want to stop iran's expansion across the region. just this week iranian forces i should say iranian backed forces inside iraq quickly hofd in on kirkuk and really pushed the iraqi central government against another u.s. ally the kurdish forces. are we seeing the exact opposite of what the u.s. administration wanted to do here? >> it's easier said than done. iran is very goo...

Bakss. you can talk about them as the men they were. you can talk about the mission they're on. you can do a lot of things but if you want to honor our quiet professional you don't do it with words or actions and that's what i hope we focus on this week. >> speaking of actions, ambassador williams let's get your perspective on what is happening right now in niger itself as we heard from the director, the country's dealing with boko haram in the east but this happened in the western part of the country. some are saying it belongs to a group that is affiliated with the islamic state. how serious...

Relate to that, in 2013 extremist took over the northern part of mali and the french had to go in there in a major operation, which is the u.s. assisted and then left troops behind, the u.s. did after that calmed down. it never really has gone away all together and the second big context point that relates to your question is, in the context of the progress we've made against the islamic state we have to remember that the islamic state, although it's losing his cal fate in syria and iraq had a global strategy. it had a central front in those two countries. it had a regional front in north afri...

I've worked on some issues there and i can tell you that is a very dangerous part of the world. so it could have been better intelligence but my point is this is one of the real hot beds of jihadism in the world. >> we'll get into that. i don't think a lot of americans even knew about that but tommy let me ask you this, there were questions about whether the soldiers were intentionally delayed in the village by people they may have at least needed to trust, tribal elders they work with in scoping that area out but not necessarily a major threat for them. from your experience, how often are spe...