Political progress will only take place if sufficient security exists.

Iran, as we have already discussed, has carried out very, very harmful activities inside Iraq. Funding, trainings, arming and, in some cases, even directing the activities of the special groups associated with the Jaish al-Mahdi and the Sadr Militia.

ISIS is on its way to defeat but terrorism threat persists.

Afghanistan has other enormous challenges as well, including a political system that is still very much developing, although there has been some progress in the past several years.

I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.

We obviously don't want to cause problems for the Afghan government, President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan people. In fact, we want them to support our efforts on their behalf and not see us as unwelcome occupiers.

Over the last few years they have done a superb job in their fight against al-Qaida. As you may recall, our embassy in Jedda (in Saudi Arabia) was overrun some four years ago and a number of foreign workers went home because of violence against them.