♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: tensions continue to escalate this week between president trump and his counterparts in north korea and iran. in his first speech before the general assembly last week, president trump threatened to destroy north korea and called iran a rogue nation. president trump: the united states has great strength and patience. but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy north korea. rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.

the iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of democracy. it has turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically the pleaded rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos. weekend, the the president called kim jong-un a madman and wrongly accused iran of firing missiles. ,oining me for nick burns professor of diplomacy at harvard's kennedy school. and michael morel, the most of the new podcast. i'm pleased to have both of them here. where are we in terms of diplomacy and contingent

planning? problem isamental the north koreans are a few months away, six to 12, from demonstrating the capability of putting a u.s. city at risk of nuclear attack. there are three pieces you have to have. one's nuclear weapons. the ability to get a nuclear yield out of explosion at 100%. we know they have that. they have demonstrated it. they have tested it. got that guaranteed. the second is the ability to deliver a payload the distance you want it to go. they have done a couple of tests that demonstrated the capability to put a missile as far east as chicago or detroit. we don't know 100% what the weight of the payload they tested was, so we don't know exactly how far it could deliver a nuclear weapon.

as far as chicago or detroit. we are not 100% how much the payload weight. that is a big determinant of how far it can go. check for sure on the weapon. close to a check on the missile. third piece is, can you make a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on a missile? the intelligence community thinks they can do that. the last piece is, can you make it all work? can you make all of the electronics work under the intense vibrations of takeoff and reentry and the heat and pressure? on that, we don't know where they are. the consensus be a is they are getting very close to that. they are demonstrating that capability. the president has said they will not allowed to achieve that capability. that is the fundamental problem we have. think, i thinki

diplomacy is the right approach. i think going pressure on them is the right approach. after 25 years of pressuring inm, i am not 100% sure, fact i am uncertain, that will stop him from ultimately demonstrating that capability. charlie: the language of the s, does it make you realize america is serious and angry about this? or does it make them more certain in their desire to do something that will hurt the united states? >> i think the language of the president over the last eight or nine days confuses them. what we need to do is go back to what we did so effectively in the cold war. strategic deterrence. he is a despicable leader. he is probably evil in many ways. but he is not a madman. we assume he is rational. what eisenhower would have done

at the podium last week, or reagan, or bill clinton, would have been to assess the following -- the united states is not going to be the aggressor. we will not attack north korea. but should they seek to attack, we will respond with overwhelming force. that is strategic deterrence. that is what secretary mattis is saying. it is with secretary tillerson is saying. it is what general dunford said this week in congressional testimony. it is what all of our experts are saying. but the president has come out with this bombastic language -- charlie: destroy your nation. >> it is too hot for the united nations. it was his friends. it almost makes kim jong-un to be the victim. i think with the president has been able to do with mattis and tillerson is move the chinese a little bit. we have got to practice strategic deterrence. we have to develop in their hub,

the south koreans and japanese, instead of what the president said about canceling free trade. let me say something positive about the trump administration. in the last week, they have announced two sets of sanctions. this week, sanctions against individual companies, some chinese, trading with the north koreans. this is what president bush or president obama did so effectively with the iranians. they increased the leverage and the pain. they raised the cost to the iranians and drove them to the negotiating table. sanctions piece is critical. if the chinese central bank is critical -- serious and instruct the other banks in china to shut down lending to north korea, that is the kind of pressure, but it is diplomatic. it is sanctions. it is not making ourselves into the aggressor. i think that is a tactical mistake. charlie: suppose you were advising president trump. chinese came to the administration and said we will

camee -- the north koreans to the administration and said will freeze development if you cease all hostile actions. would you take that deal? >> i would not immediately. i would open negotiations on some variation. but we probably cannot do right now is agree to a deal that says if the north koreans freeze their nuclear development in place, we will freeze all american military activities. what you want to do in a negotiation is drive up the economic pressure of sanctions, but you also want to have the military preparedness and strength. we have an alliance obligation to south korea and japan to defend them. some variation of that might buy a final -- be a final, messi compromise. but i don't think you agree to that at the beginning. >> they will not make that offer. they want the same kind of strength going into negotiation. kim jong-un wants to demonstrate the capability of being able to attack a u.s. city, and then he

will be happy to have a negotiation about where we go from here in this relationship. do have a feeling about the notion there is anything short of a full-scale attack we can do militarily, in terms of cyber, being able to shut them down from a power standpoint? >> just from with iran in the last decade, we have to use all instruments of american power to coerce him to the negotiating table. you have to have a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. there are 30 million south living below the tmz. americans and 35,000 american troops. the north koreans have a tremendous conventional capacity with artillery. you would have to assume in first days or weeks of the war,

maybe hundreds of thousands dead. that is not an exaggeration. that is why you see serious generalsecretary -- dunford, secretary mattis, going to the hill and speaking publicly saying diplomacy is the way we go. we get back to rhetoric. as the president keeps punching kim jong-un in this kind of eight-year-old taunting war going on, you listen to mattis in india this week, he has diplomacy eight or nine times in the paragraph. they are the calming influence. theylie: a key repeating -- keep repeating we do not want war with the north koreans. >> that is very important signal to the north koreans. >> the problem with the punching. one problem is he does fear, incorrectly, that the united states wants to get rid of him, his regime, and wants to reunite the north and south. he sees these weapons as the ultimate deterrence against us

doing that. when the president uses the kind of late which he is using, it reinforces in kim the reason why he wants to have these weapons. and this is a strange thing about north korea, they use the trail -- the trail like no other country i know, but are incredibly sensitive to it. one thing you hear from the north koreans all the time is when south korea says something not nice about kim jong-un, the north koreans get their backup. this language not only reinforces their policy but it is dangerous because it forces them into a corner. with toughlem rhetoric that plays to the president's pace is it introduces into the mind of kim jong-un and his advisors a doubt. are the americans in a defensive posture? will they only attack us if we attack them? could president trump be

serious? if he thinks we might attack them first, you have the risk of conflict. they put their troops on alert. we have american aircraft this week flying just outside the 12-mile airspace limit. i worry the rhetoric is destabilizing two strategic deterrence and deeply unwise. >> the chinese did something interesting three or four weeks ago during the hike of the -- height of the kim/trump rhetoric. if the unitedid states primitively attacks north korea, we will fight on the side of north korea. and then they turned around and said if north korea were to attack first, north korea is on its own. that was a message of deterrence to both of us. it was the chinese being the adults in the room. very interesting. united states of america used to be the adults in the room. charlie: is there some

back-channel communication going on now between somebody advising the north korean leader who speaks to the president? >> i don't know. i'm not in a position to know. charlie: would you expect that to be happening? >> i would hope so. if you do not have a diplomatic relationship with a government, you need to establish communication. i think secretary tillerson has been trying to do that. in the summer, he was saying if there is a pause in some of these nuclear and missile tests, maybe we can graduate to the next level. there has been a flurry of tests of the fridays. secretary tillerson and secretary mattis as adults. i think they are trying to move us toward negotiations. they understand this is a long-term struggle with north korea. we need to get to the negotiating table probably for a compromise that will be deeply unsatisfying to people who want to end the crisis. warif you can avoid a

and freeze the north koreans in place, that is not a bad outcome if you can get it. >> here is one of the things you have to worry about in a war scenario. when i described the three pieces they need to put a u.s. city at risk, i said we know about -- a lot about one. mostly about the other. and the one in the middle we don't know a lot about. at the end of the day, we don't really know what their capabilities are today. give kim jong-un fired an icbm with a nuclear weapon on it today, it might work. publiclyer is saying we have to assume, prudence requires in military planning and diplomatic thinking, you have to assume he might be able to attack us successfully today with a nuclear weapon. going to war today not only risks definite war with south korea, between north korea and

south korea, but maybe a nuclear strike on korea, maybe on japan, and maybe a nuclear strike on the united states of america. that is how serious this is. charlie: let me turn to iran. they also suffered some rhetorical assault from the president. he said not only was the deal and embarrassment but he called iran a corrupt regime and rogue nation. why is he doing that? why was that necessary? what was the point? up the problem and let my diplomatic friend solve it for us. there are two buckets. one is the iranian nuclear weapons program. the second is iranian misbehavior in the region. conducting terrorism, their support to terrorists, their support to insurgents, desire for regional influence, desire that israel be wiped off the face of the planet.

that whole set of issues. right? this first issue, i believe the nuclear deal has put that issue in a box for the next 10 to 15 years. it is not perfect, but it is pretty darn good because it has put them in a box for 10 to 15 years. as far as i know, the iranians are living up to almost the entirety of the agreement. there are a handful of small issues where they are not in compliance. but those are minor issues. the president had to make a decision about have -- how to handle the first one, and he also needs to make a decision on how to handle the second one. how do we disincentivize, the term the iranians from this misbehavior in the region? that is the second thing he has to decide that has to be done against the following backdrop which is the most interesting internal politics in iran in a

long time. there is a real struggle internally playing out publicly between the hardliners in my -- and what i call the centrists, many people would call them moderates. it is a fight, a struggle over whether iran will remain a revolutionary nation or going to be a normal nation. it was far publicly -- charlie: i asked the prime minister of iran. he said we want to be both. >> you can't be both. both cannot exist, coexist at the same time. this debate played out publicly on the debate stage between rouhani and his very conservative candidate for president. andian people voted spoke overwhelmingly they wanted to go in one direction. the question in trying to manage the nuclear issue, president has

to make a decision soon, and managing the regional misbehavior, how do you do that in a way that does not strengthen the hardliners and weaken the centrists? nick will speak to that. charlie: when you talk about supporting terrorism, the charge against iran is they are heavily involved against the saudis in yemen. that is one. go ahead. an itselfong -- ir conducts terrorism around the world against israeli and jewish targets and the targets of its neighbors. charlie: how does it do that? >> it has an apparatus -- charlie: what are they doing? assassinating -- >> the saudi ambassador in the united states several years ago. charlie: that was not carried out. it was interrupted. >> it was interrupted.

there was an attack in europe several years ago. iranians were involved in that. i think it is fair to say they are the only state in the world is still practices terrorism as a state practice. they provide support to terrorist groups, hezbollah, hamas, and others. hezbollah would not exist without the support he gets from iran. support to insurgents in the region trying to overthrow sunni rain,s in yemen, the saudi arabia,. their support for president assad is another issue. that is what i mean by regional misbehavior. >> i think president trump is right to try to push the iranians back on the big struggle for power in the middle east. president trump is wrong to try to wiggle out of the iran nuclear deal. why? there is a big shia/sunni struggle for power. charlie: we have taken sides and

said we support the saudi's who represent the sunnis. >> president trump was right to do that. charlie: why was he right? i thought president obama's tactic was different. i thought president obama's tactic was to try to recognize iran has a legitimate interest in the region and try to get the saudis to talk to them. the foreign minister said at this table we cannot get them to talk to us. isn't that what the president wanted to do, obama, he wanted the saudis to talk to the iranians? >> it is hard to do that when the iranians are launching military offenses through the hutu rebels in yemen trying to establish a line from tehran to damascus to lebanon. it is as if the great shia power of iran is punching a big hole in the sunni world challenging the power of the sunni state. this is an exit central --

existential issue for the gulf region and israel. israeli relations with these countries are the best ever because they have a common enemy. i think president trump has been right. despite my deep respect for president obama and support for him, i did not think he was effective on this. we have to be sending military aid and acting politically to isolate the iranians. charlie: we made a big deal with the saudis to sell them military equipment. >> we were right to do that. on the other hand, as you know, i was the point person on iran for the bush administration, we spent our time sanctioning the iranians. we never got to the negotiating table. i think it would be a great mistake for president trump to walk away from the nuclear deal. charlie: why shouldn't we be trying to have a better relationship with iran so you can push back wherever they are being adventurous, wherever there is behavior that does not

follow what you hope would come out of the nuclear deal? we thought the nuclear deal with lead to some betterment of relations because you could build on that. that has not happened. argue on the right will as soon as they release the sanctions, the money coming into turn told immediately support their misbehavior. >> i supported the nuclear deal, president obama's deal, because i thought if we could freeze them for 10 to 15 years, good for us. they get sanctions relief. we put restrictions on them. if we walk away from the deal, they get sanctions relief and all the restrictions are off so we lose big time. there are people more idealistic about the iranians who argued in 2015 for the deal saying it will change the behavior and middle east. we have seen nothing like that. some of them said that. we have seen nothing like that.

and they are a threat to israel and the arab partners we have had for generations. charlie: should we view them as a hostile power to american interests? therefore, anybody against iran is our friend? >> i agree with what it was saying --nick was saying. on the nuclear issue, they are in clients -- in compliance. stepping away from it would be a strategic mistake. it would split us from our allies. it would play to the hardliners. it would send them back to working on the nuclear program. it would create in a few months a nuclear crisis. we already have one with north korea. let's not start another one with iran. leave that alone. i agree we need to find places in the middle east where we can push back on what the iranians are doing to raise the cost to them, to determine.

charlie: what is an example of that where we can find a place to push back to deter the iranians? what policy would do that? >> we are doing it right now. as we speak, there are u.s. special forces on the ground in yemen that were put there by the trump administration to support the saudis. that is supporting our allies and pushing back on what the iranians are trying to achieve in yemen. that is a perfect example. we should be willing to do things like that to raise the cost. in order to not disrupt the weitical debate in iran, should do as much of this with our allies as we can. when we do it by ourselves, we become something the hardliners -- charlie: your argument is we need to band with the people who want to isolate iran. >> we banded together and isolated them on the nuclear issue. let's band together and isolate them on the regional issues.

charlie: so they hurt, and therefore may change the behavior. >> we have american special forces on the ground. it is a fluid situation where the eastern half of the country is up for grabs. we want to deny iran basic control of the syrian space given what that future would portend for the syrian people. charlie: "the new york times" had a piece on the front page in the past week. d in full control." >> he is stronger than he has been since the civil war began. province is under siege right now. the eastern part of the country is up for grabs. russians onh the facebook buying ads and arrange of other things, it is clear was

a policy of the russian government to disrupt the american democratic process. ppart from what happened with hacking. flex i think we've learned two important things in the last 72 hours. russianhat the propaganda in the united states went well beyond just the elections. deeper in u.s.ng society. they were playing in the black lives matter issue trying to divide americans on race. that is one thing we learned. the second thing we learned is they are still doing it today. today. within a few hours a president trump and the nfl's crowning --

other, theith each russians were trying to divide america on that issue. they have not stopped. they are still doing it today. charlie: how are they doing it? >> they have fake accounts. they are starting to be uncovered. they have fake accounts. robots,o use bots, computers sending out these toets, these facebook posts social media that gets their message across. >> nine months into his presidency, our president has not defended the country of these -- against these actions mike just described. any other president would have formed a bipartisan committee to investigate, and raise our defenses. it does get to the credibility of 2018 and 2020 elections. it goes beyond it. it is urgent. the fact that the president this

week denies there is a problem means congress needs to exercise its constitutional responsibility and take this matter into its own hands, as they did with the russia sanctions. charlie: hillary clinton on monday night on this program was rigorous in calling for a bipartisan investigating committee to get to the bottom of this. >> she is right. it has to happen. the executive and legislative have been testing since 1789 over who has power and foreign affairs. congress has to take it if the president is not going to exercise it. charlie: thank you both. we will be right back. stay with us. ♪

president trump was in new york this week for the opening of the united nations general assembly. in his speech, he focused on a new axis of evil. venezuela, iran, and north korea. he followed that up thursday announcing executive order strengthening halting north korea's nuclear program. joining me for reaction is the bbc chief international correspondent. i must say to her, as she will knows, she is my favorite international correspondent. it is great to have you here. >> it is great to be on your

program. it seems to be program everyone wants to be on, "charlie rose." charlie: talk about the role for you at the bbc as the chief international correspondent. are you on one plane after another from one hot spot to another? i always say it is an optical illusion that people see you every day in places on tv. i say it is not possible because i am not on tv every day. my role at the my role at the bbc is covering the main stories of the day. in the last six years it has often taken me to places like syria or iraq, the gaza strip. main stories of the , butre not historical often frontline coverage in these terrible and terrifying wars of our time.

charlie six years -- guest: we are now witnessing the most documented war ever. vietnam was the first televised war. everyone can watch the streaming on youtube. everything that happens in syria. and yet it seems to be a war of our time that all of the areitutions and great hours unable or unwilling to end this war. it stopped being about syria a long time ago. there are so many powers with so many interests. these are proxies. turkey is worried about the kurds, saudi arabia is worried about iran, america has played a

certain role, not the kind that it's arab allies would want, a ron is there defending its interests -- iran is there defending its interests, russia is there. everyone has something they want from syria. unfortunately if you drill down -- and i said from the beginning that the fate of one man, president assad, has mattered more than 22 million people -- here we are approaching the seventh year of what started as a peaceful uprising. president assad is still in power, and the opposition has lost any territorial foothold that could challenge president assad. charlie: they have to have credibility with the syrian people. guest: more than half of syria's prewar population is either displaced inside syria, dad, or a refugee abroad.

that is syria today. many fear that it has been an existential crisis to syria, that syria as they knew it no longer exists. syrians and you can see they don't want to say it. they want to believe that something called syria still exists. but when we are looking at now jordan have an influence in the south, turks have influence in the north, the russians and a rainy and -- russians and iranians having influence where president assad prevailed. there are definitely tensions pulling it apart. but there are people trying to pull it back together. i think there are many narratives about syrians not black and white. there's a kaleidoscope of interests. a kaleidoscope is correct because a kaleidoscope is constantly changing. the legions of death the i knownce of turkey --

you did quite a lot of reporting on that. look at the region. is it in anyone's interest that we have another country which totally collapses? i think the last few years, even saudi arabia would say we do not want the state to collapse in syria. it is not in our interests for president assad to precipitously go with them. they want to transition. i think what people would say, even though the west has now -- you know very well that foreign policy for countries has to be first about their domestic interests, so president obama and president trump have decided that the national interest is in the fight against the so-called islamic state.

the hard reality is that they are willing to put their aircraft into the sky to fight against the so-called islamic state, regarded as a threat to the world. they've accepted that president assad isn't about to go. he is not going to go voluntarily and is not going to be toppled military. right now the negotiators are not really going anywhere. even those who accept that say that if there is to be a future for syria, there has to be a change of leadership. that has to come from within syria itself. following the negotiations for the past few years, the syrian delegation has never indicated they are ready to go for a political transition. the words they use in damascus is "a government of national unity pickup -- unity." words, we are not giving you defense, interior,

finance. if you didn't defeat us on the battlefield, why can you defeat us on the negotiating table? i think what the u.n. envoy, what world powers, and i think even russia understands -- because russia and iran and china are the ones who are going to get the big contracts cut -- they don't want to go into nationbuilding. the eu foreign policy chief is saying we've got some money, but if you want this money, you have to engage in a political transition. president assad and his supporters by it? that's where the syrian crisis is now. charlie: there's another crisis between saudi arabia and iran. it is seen in syria to a degree. where does this battle between shia and sunni, between iran and and between saudi

mark --nd its allies allies? guest: it comes down to a battle of power between the main sunni and shia powers. charlie: when he was elected, president trump went to riyadh. and that side was reflected in his u.n. speech when he lashed out against iran. guest: right. his words, "the murderous regime of iran." i think most people would say it is not essentially a doctrinal fight, a religious fight. it is a political fight between saudi arabia and iran. they are vying for influence across the region. saudi arabia does feel threatened by what they see,

etepite it iranians' compl denial. even under sanctions, they became a power in iraq, and yemen. i think when you get down to it, it is about power. it is about access to the government, access to money, access to positions, access to determining the future course of a country. the saudis are trying to get more involved in iraq because they want to challenge iran on its spheres of influence. i think that is where you see this, because it is interesting. ,hen you speak to senior saudis they say the battle in syria is less about president assad. it is about iran. line,s the biggest fault

one of the biggest fault lines, possibly the biggest, now fracturing the middle east, versus the smaller one between qatar, saudi arabia, and the emirates. saudis athy don't the some point say, enough is enough, they are supporting people that are opposed to us and they are supporting terrorism? that's what they said about qatar. they said, we've got these 13 demands. turns out most of them boil down to not so much al jazeera and all those other things, but boiled down to some sense of please stop supporting revolutions against us and our allies. yes or no? what is at the heart of this? guest: again, i think it comes down to power. qatar, from its

inception, has been a maverick rogue nation. they punch above their weight. qatari, they the say we should be able to forge our own independent policy. we have big ambitions and we are very wealthy. they hosted the taliban of afghanistan. that wasn't really a maverick move. the united states wanted them to do that. they also gave refuge to hamas. the united states was also very aware of that. they also given refuge to radical clerics who go on al jazeera and condemn the monarchs in the gulf, condemn the saudis, so the saudis see it as a direct threat. in this battle there are rights and wrongs of both sides. charlie: how will it in? -- get end? guest: it will take a long time.

president has said, oh, this is easy. this is something i can do. the west and the europeans tend to think that it is a squabble. can you just get along? your political unity is being affected, your financial unity is being affected. they say it is much deeper. they feel threatened by qatar, but it is equally true -- take the one phrase president trump used time and time again in his speech and some ways , "sovereignty." qatar sees themselves as a sovereign nation. the saudis and egyptians and emirati don't like it. president trump got the emir of

qatar and the crown prince of saudi arabia to talk to each other. apparently the call didn't go that badly. but the way they played it out, it just set off sparks again because they then presented it as being different. charlie: thank you for coming. great to have you here. chief international correspondent for the bbc. back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

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