What is Jimmy Carter's biggest regret?
Since he left the White House in 1981, former President Jimmy Carter has not been shy about wading into contentious political battles - sometimes to the chagrin of his successors.
That reputation for candor was on full display during a press conference convened Thursday to discuss his cancer diagnosis, as Mr. Carter weighed in on his own political history and some other global issues.
Carter, 90, announced Thursday he was diagnosed with melanoma and the cancer has spread to his liver and brain. He said he would begin treatment for the disease immediately. He had surgery earlier this month to remove a mass in his liver.
Doctors "found that there were four spots of melanoma on my brain ... they are very small spots, about two millimeters," Carter said. "I'll get my first radiation treatment for the melanoma in my brain this afternoon."
Asked whether he has any regrets, as he looks back on his career, Carter admitted he's second-guessed his response to the Iranian hostage crisis, in which 52 Americans were held captive by Iranian revolutionaries for 444 days between 1979 and 1981. The incident was blamed, in part, for Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.
"I wish I had sent one more helicopter to get the hostages, and we would have rescued them, and I would have been reelected," he said.
Carter also discussed the state of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations - a cause he advanced as president by brokering the 1977 Camp David accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt, its largest Arab neighbor.
"Right now, I think the prospects are more dismal than any time I remember in the last 50 years," he said. "The whole process is practically dormant. The government of Israel has no desire for a two-state solution, which is the policy of all the other nations in the world. And the United States has practically no influence, compared to past years, in either Israel or Palestine. So I feel very discouraged about it, but that would be my number one foreign policy hope."
Carter's post-presidential life has been notable not only for its philanthropic achievements, which he's pursued through the Carter Center in Atlanta, but also for Carter's continued involvement in foreign flash-points, from North Korea to Iraq to the Balkans.
His involvement has sometimes come at the behest of the current occupant of the Oval Office, but that hasn't always been the case. And Carter seemed to nod Thursday at the consternation he's occasionally provoked in presidential administrations since he left office, when he said he'd received a phone call from the secretary of state's office wishing him a safe recovery from cancer.
"First time they've called me in a long time," he joked, prompting some knowing laughter from those in the room.