Calling Iran's increasing provocations "major international piracy," former C.I.A. Director James Woolsey told Newsmax TV it will take years of being firm with Tehran to get it "to begin to behave like a decent state."
"The Iranians are, by everybody's consensus, the leading terrorist state in the world," Woolsey told Tuesday's "Newsmax Now."
"And they don't understand talk, they don't understand proposals for compromise, none of that is part of their world.
"They are ruthless dictators and tyrants, and we're going to have to be very firm with them – probably over a period of years – in order to get them to begin to behave like a decent state."
Iran's seizing of ships in the Middle East reminded former Amb. Woolsey of the historical impetus for the United States of America to create its Navy: the Barbary Pirates during President Thomas Jefferson's administration.
"Well, the Iranians have graduated . . . to major international piracy," Woolsey told guest host John Cardillo.
"What they are doing seizing at British and other ships is piracy of the sort we had to fight back at the beginning of the 19th century with the Barbary Pirates."
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