Leon Panetta sits down with KION’s Scott Rates regarding the U.S.-Iran conflict

MONTEREY COUNTY, Calif. (KION-TV) -- KION's News Director Scott Rates sits down with retired Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to discuss the state of the world on the aftermath of U.S.'s announcement of bombing four Iranian nuclear facilities on June 21.

SCOTT: You've seen a lot, obviously, in your career... you've been there, you've done that. Looking at our situation right now, how close in your opinion, do you think we are now to a third World War? 

LEON: (Long pause)... you know it's hard to kind of jump to the conclusion that the chances for a World War have increased as a result of what's happened over these last 12 days. I think that in some ways -- if countries are wise enough to learn the lessons of what we've seen these last few days -- they'll understand that going forward it doesn't necessarily get you what you want, and that what you really have to do is to try to find ways to be able to negotiate agreements that will give countries economic security, but also give that region security from the threat of war. Unless we bring countries together to do that, what's gonna happen is we're going to continue to see what we just saw, which is a cycle of continuing war in the Middle East that essentially gets you nowhere. 

SCOTT: The so-called ceasefire, will it stick?

LEON: Well, it raises a lot of concerns about whether or not we have a an enforceable ceasefire. I think the president kind of indicated yesterday that it was all nailed down, but it was pretty clear that Israel and Iran still had problems with it. And, I think that's what got him offended this morning, is that both Israel and Iran continue to hit each other. Right now, it looks like the ceasefire may be in place but I think it's fair to say that this is very tenuous and we're not sure how long it's going to last.

SCOTT: There was an interesting interview with Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson not that long ago, and many politicians do this. They take money from foreign governments for their campaign. A couple questions about that; do you think, that A. That's ethical? And B. Should there be a law in place saying that no politicians can take foreign money for their campaign?

LEON: I don't think a politician in the United States of America should get any money from a foreign nation -- Israel, or anybody -- because, frankly, our founding fathers built this country on the basis that we would not be tied to foreign influence in the United States. They made that very clear and I believe that -- I think that we ought to clearly have a law that forbid any politician in this country from getting any money from any kind of foreign country or entity for that matter.