Kerry prepares to meet with Syrian rebels

>>> secretary of state, john kerry arrived in rome where tomorrow he and syrian opposition leaders are going to announce a u.s. policy that will have direct aid. jeffrey is a correspondent for the magazine. he joins me now. we are talking aid for rebel groups . it's non-lethal aid. it went just be humanitarian. more communications gear, could be body armor .

>> it's body armor , not armor.

>> what they are talking about doing, what kerry is saying he's going to try to do is change the call callus. assad seems to have his own reality base. he's reigning skuds down. it's horrified the west, everyone except perhaps russia.

>> most military experts agree if the west wanted to help, they would impose a no-fly zone, not allow syrian helicopters to bomb.

>> the white house isn't there yet.

>> the president is defiantly not there. he seems to see syria -- he might not be wrong. he sees it as insoluble. you can't solve it. the american public is not interested. you see this in poll after poll. they are not interested in getting deeper into it than we already are. there's no pressure on the administration except from the syrian rebels to do anything.

>> and from john mccain and former senator kerry . and others. he wasn't as forward leaning as mccain and others. in the senate we are arguing we had to rethink this. hillary clinton and leon panetta and chairman dempsey and others argued and the president rejected it.

>> that's the governoring reality. john kerry wants to do x, y and z but he works for the president now. i don't think you are going to see that much different. you are going to see the seron rebels getting something from america where they used to get nothing. it's not necessarily going to change the calculus.

>> it's going to be more money and through non-governmental organizations.

>> the other interesting question is, is it too late to affect the make up of the opposition? the islamists, the al qaeda affiliated groups have been getting lot of weapons through turkey, through saudi arabia . they are very powerful in that coalition. we spent two years not supporting the sort of people we would like to see take over syria. so, it might be too late on that front as well.

>> we saw the opposition leaders know they have a lot of leverage. they said they weren't going to show up. kerry called them and said show up, i'll have something for you. it's something tangible. not as much as they want. the other big story is iran . they agreed to technical talks. as you follow this very closely, israeli leader benjamin netanyahu said we have to think military sanctions. what does he mean?

>> it's a linguistic trick. he talked about being in a red zone , not crossing a red line , but being in a red zone . what he's doing is preparing president obama for the thing that netanyahu is going to ask the president when he visits israel.

>> what is that?

>> he's going to say to him, okay, you say you are against containment, you are stopping iran . we know iran is getting this much closer. may and june looks like a good time for you to take some sort of action. netanyahu is going to steer in that direction. obama is going to say, as he said before, give me time. i have this but give me time.

>> the american intelligence analysis of what happened with the u.n. inspections is there is more time.

>> on the other hand, they are moving centrifuges into place where they could move the pile to move quickly toward a bond. there's contradictory things. the u.s. has capabilities to deal with this very late stage in the game. again, we are back to where we were last year. it's going to be obama trying to convince netanyahu not to do anything because the united states has it.

>> the new secretary of state feeling his way in terms of the relationship.

>> a newer secretary of defense who is going to be