Anxiety over Iran to continue in 2012

WASHINGTON, Dec. 25 (UPI) -- International observers predicted Iran and North Korea would still be unpredictable in 2012 amid internal power maneuvering.

A panel of CBS correspondents said on "Face the Nation" Sunday that U.S. policy on North Korea was complicated by the serious lack of intelligence about the country and its new leader, Kim Jong Un.

As for Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was hanging on amid what correspondent Liz Palmer called "a huge power struggle" with the nation's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"And whenever the Iranian leadership is consumed with its own power struggle, it tends to act out and do something provocative to draw attention away, Palmer said, warning that testing of a nuclear weapon would certainly qualify as provocative.

Correspondent David Martin added that the world was largely united on the idea of containing Iran through sanctions; however, a key question was Israel and whether or not the Jewish state might attack Iran to head off the nuclear threat based on intelligence that might not necessarily be complete and accurate.

"When they look at Iran and its nuclear program, what they see is Adolf Hitler in 1939," said Martin. "If they don't do something about it, there's going to be another Holocaust."