Iran is "driven by religious fanaticism," which makes it "even harder to deal with them effectively," so until they make "fundamental changes," President Donald Trump should not meet with them, former CIA Director James Woolsey said Tuesday during an appearance on Newsmax TV.
"I think it'd be a big mistake for him to do that before we saw some fundamental changes in Iran's foreign policy," Woolsey said on "Newsmax Now."
"They are the No. 1 terrorist state in the world. They threaten our neighbors and even us all the time. And they are driven in part by a fanatic religious view that is not really common to some of the other tough states.
"It makes it even harder to deal with them effectively."
Woolsey, who served as CIA Director under former President Bill Clinton and resigned abruptly from Trump's transition team, also rejected the notion you need to keep your allies close and your rivals closer, especially in terms of Russia's potential invite to the next G-7 to be hosted by Trump.
"They don't have an economy worth a damn," Woolsey told Bachman. "They are in the business of grabbing neighbors and they're also in the business of theft. So, I think Russia should be kept where it belongs, below No. 10 in the world's economies.
"If they want to work on going back to the days of a couple of decades ago when it looked like they might be becoming a normal country, it'd be great. We could then work with them."
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