the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria live from new york. on this first show of 2018 we'll take you on a tour of the world's hot spots starting with the unusual unrest in iran. will it spill over into a full-blown revolution? then a war of words between trump and kim over the size of their buttons. what's next with north korea?

also, the two state solution. is israel making it a virtual impossibility. and the united states withholds $1 billion from pakistan. will that nation finally get tough on terror? all that with top minds in foreign policy. finally war in the south china sea. how likely is it to happen in 2018? gps viewers looked into their crystal balls. i'll tell you what they, what you told us. but first here's my take. the most enlightening commentary on what is going on in iran was written 162 years ago. in his book on the french revolution, revolutions are not always brought about by a gra e

le -- decline from bad to worse. often bursts into rebellion the moment it begins to grow lighter. the regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor and experience teaches the most critical bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps to reform. why are these protests taking place in iran and not in say north korea? this is the question for us. deeply antagonistic relationship between washington and tehran makes it easy to forget that iran is more open than many other countries in the middle east. compare the status of women and minorities in saudi arabia and iran and you will find there's really no comparison. over the past two decades iran has consistently elected presidents who are opposed by the hard line establishment of that country. in 1997 it elected mahammad

hatami who now on house arrest. and then he was a rank outsider to the democracy that had run iran since 1979. he was a street smart politician with no credentials and deemed a threat to the hold on power. today it has another reformist president who has been twice elected the second time with a thumping majority. iran's hard line establish. has sought to under mine his agenda. some observers speculate the protests have been engineered by the hard liners who will use them to have a total end to reform. off the french regime, the abuses were not new but the light in which they were viewed was. more crime had existed in the

financial department at an earlier period but since then changes had taken place both in government and society which made them more keenly felt than before. similarly the economy has always been a dysfunctional mess, a toxic mixture of protectionism, socialism and corruption but in recent years people have had their hopes raised by the promises of reformers. the expectation that sanctions would be lifted and the knowledge of life outside iran. the protests were triggered by a series of economic reforms. the 2006 book the j curve argued some countries are stable because they're closed. north korea and belarus for example. while others are stable because they are open like the united states and japan. the former shield themselves from the winds of globalization and the latter are flexible enough to adapt to the forces. the most difficult period is when a country is moving from

being close to being open. if the regime is enlightened and strategic it might be able to reform enough to weather this rocky transition. but there are two other more likely paths. the chaos produces a return to repression or a collapse of the state. iran has the ingredients for a revolution. over half the population is under 30. large numbers of the youth are educated yet unemployed. almost 50 million iranians have smartphones with which they can learn about the world and reformers have consistently raised expectations but never been able to deliver on their promises. but the regime also has instruments of power, ideology, repression all of which it is ready to wield to stay in control. what appears most likely for iran is a period of instability in an already volatile middle east. for more go to cnn.com/fareed and reed my washington post column this week and let's get

started. ♪ >> iran's national police said the on going protests are now over. the disturbances have ended a spokesman declared but perhaps he was premature. when will the unrest really end? what is the end game? thomas edwin joins us on skype from tehran. here with me in new york is a top expert on iran, a senior fellow at the carnegie for peace. thomas, let me ask you first, can you tell us anything about the news that mahammad has been arrested and has been fuelling the protests and does that suggest there is a skism within

the regime? >> thank you fareed. look, there has been a report that he's been arrested and of course one of iran's stop generals, general jafari has implicitly accused president -- former president ajad of being involved in the protests. but i don't know if this points at the real involvement into this protest. of course there is skism in the regime. the protests have to do with the upcoming -- with the succession issue for supreme leader and also plays into the ongoing debate here between hard liners and performers and why is that so? because the president released a publicized part of a budget,

that gave out very sensitive information that insighted many people that said that religious institutes were getting lots of money from the upcoming government budget. at the same time, the first protest that kicked off this wildfire that spread across the country was according to many initiated by hard liners. there's a lot going on inside the establishment. >> it does strike me that it's fascinating that what seems to have fueled this as you say were r revealing how much money the military, hard liners, religious foundations were getting and of course, the cell phone revolution, where you have 48 million smartphones in iran. also something he pushed for faster internet speed. so you have the two things that were caused by openness rather than closeness.

what do you make of this skism within the regime? political scientists say that's a very, very tough moment when you have internal divisions. >> the islamic republic of iran has been shrinking. whether there will be skisms within iran security forces. we haven't seen it within revolutionary guards. you have a lot of people protesting because of the price of food. you have some people protesting because of lack of freedom. but we still haven't seen a critical mass of people protesting both. one of the reasons is because iran's regime, the one thing they do very well is repression and they're very good at decapitating any alternatives to themselves. labor leaders, intellectual leaders have been exiled and imprisoned. >> the key person remains the supreme leader of iran who is

now almost the longest serving leader, dictator in the world. a couple older than him. >> ayatollah is 77 years old. i think we're dealing with the psychology of 80 million people but also the psychology of one individual. in 1978, five months before the shaw of iran's government collapse, the ciass, what they didn't know was the shaw had advanced cancer and didn't have the mental or physical fitness and we didn't know about the fitness of ayatollah. that's only what we'll be able to tell in retrospect. >> if you look at when the regimes start to seem vulnerable, it really is more when they start opening up. >> uh-huh. >> yet, u.s. policy particularly

under the trump administration but in general is always to tighten the screws which tends to make the country more isolated, make it more nationalistic, make it more resilient, if you think about cuba where for 50 years we tried to do regime change. what is the right strategy when you watch this kind of openness? how would one encourage it and not re-enforce the hard liners? >> one of the paradoxes of iran is the worst elements of the iranian regime resemble north korea and the best want to be like south korea. it's a challenge for u.s. foreign policy because to prevent iran from becoming north korea requires political and economic isolation but to help iranian society become like south korea requires political and economic integration. requires a sophisticated u.s. approach which is difficult because the official slogan is death to america. invariably every american politician wants to oppose to the iranian regime and support

opponents of the iranian regime. >> thomas, what does the mood feel like in tehran? you have written about how much smaller these protests are than the green movement in 2009. why is that? what do iranians tell you particularly in tehran where you noted the protests are quite muted? >> yeah. well, look, a lot of people in tehran are middle class people seeking stability and security and proposing gradual change in the system. at the same time they see iran's outside enemies, president trump if you will, saudi arabia, the islamic state that are also threatening their existence. these people feel that any form of increased attention on the street might hurt them. what you get in tehran, the

place where 3 million people went on the streets in 2009 is people are saying i share a lot of the thanings that the protesters are saying but i'm afraid of violence and insaeblt. >> and you have the regime pointing out you would be playing in donald trump's hands. thank you both gentlemen. fascinating discussion. next, the koreas come together. the u.s. and pakistan ripped apart. the world worries about american leadership. we will talk about all that and more when we come back. any object. any surface.

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there's much to talk about in the world and we're going to do just that. we're going to start with north korea. at the beginning of the week we had the battle over whose nuclear button is bigger. wednesday the telephone hot line was reestablished after two years. at the end of the week the two koreas announced face-to-face talks to be held in two days and saturday trump said he would be willing to talk to kim on the phone under the right conditions. joining me now are jane harmon, the former congresswoman from california who is the director of the wilson center. she served in key roles on homeland security committees. richard hoss is the president of

council on foreign relations and the author of "the world in disarray." top foreign policy adviser to both bushes. he was last in government as director of policy planning under the second president bush. dan cena was the chief spokesman in the early months of the iraq war and senior adviser to both paul ryan and mitt romney. >> it seems to me is not one more trump tweet which has gone on but the north and south are moving towards some kind of possibly deal? >> well, it's a conversation about the olympics. let's understand it's a sports event in the next few weeks that will get world attention. what i like is it's an opening conversation to the right conversation. and the right conversation includes south korea, the united states, i would hope china, possibly russia which has been a major pro live rater to north

korea and others and that conversation is about how to reach a deal which has to be a freeze for a freeze before north korea becomes totally nuclear capable. >> freeze of north korea's arsenal in return for some steps that the u.s. and south korea would do. >> freeze of arsenal and further development. they haven't mastered the re-entry cycle for their missiles. >> that means the entire u.s. foreign policy would have to walk back from the declared goal which is the total denuclearization of north korea. at one level he's very flexible because he doesn't believe in anything but for him to walk back and to make a concession seems not in his character. >> well, there would be a way to say that denuclearization remains the ultimate goal but accept certain types of

arrangements whether it's a freeze on production of warheads and missiles. it's a bilateral dialogue between south korea and north korea. unlikely at the top of the south korean agenda will be north korean nuclear weapons and missiles. south korea has cared about the stability of the peninsula. i would feel better if they dropped it to a dialogue and get a seat at the table. the best way to defend america interest here. >> how much does it matter that in the midst of all this trump is doing these tweets? >> look, i think that the international community and different players around the world have become like discount these tweets. it's noise but they really deal with tillerson, mattis, pompeo, mcmaster. there's a discount factor applied to the tweets. >> doesn't his response to the book show that you can only

control him so much? >> absolutely. i also think there's a danger if the president starts to look irrelevant. more and more players around the world are saying we'll deal with his national security adviser and the president and his tweets doesn't matter. what happens when it does matter? what happens when the president lays down a line on the issue he wants to enforce and the world is saying it doesn't matter, just the president on twitter? >> it was trump who focused on north korea first which obama didn't. trump personally tweets or no tweets. i think he should be given credit for that and also for a focus on israel and palestine. if he can make a deal or be part of a deal on north korea which his pred sesers couldn't make we ought to salute him. >> you say in the new book the united states under trump now is the principle disrupter in the international system. that's a strong charge. >> it is a strong charge and has the virtue of being true.

look, you wrote an important book years ago about a post american world. the one thing neither you nor i imagined was the idea that would come about not because of the rise of china or because of american exhaustion. it came about because of choice. donald trump does not see many of the virtues or advantages in american world leadership, has pulled the united states out of any number of global arrangements, from the paris climate -- >> just attended the conference on migration, the only country in the world not to attend. >> tpp was a major decision in the third day of the administration. so this is an administration that is abdicated the traditional all american leadership role and there's no one else ready and able to fill those shoes, certainly not in ways sensitive to american interests. so this is a consequential presidency. don't get me wrong fareed. it is an expensive presidency all the same. >> isn't that the problem with these episodic problems with

dealing with north korea? is it going to work if the united states is genuinely pulling back? could it enforce a deal like that? >> i don't know. the prior deals the deal bill clinton made wasn't enforced and bush -- the u.s. doesn't seem to have anymore a global strategy and when you link north korea and iran and pakistan which we're going to talk about, the proliferation problems will require a global strategy. i agree with richard that we need to lead. we haven't been leading for a long time. i don't blame this all on president trump. at least he is calling attention or did first thing in his presidency to what is the most urgent proliferation problem. >> and he's gotten some things right from a policy standpoint. he got two resolutions through the u.n. security council. 15-0 votes. pretty extraordinary. the relationship between the white house and japan is very

strong. tokyo seems to be interested as it relates to north korea and the security threats with how the white house is handling it. so they have made -- they deserve some credit. i agree there's no sort of global comprehensive strategy but they -- doesn't mean they aren't getting some things right. and i think north korea they have gotten some things right. >> when we come back we're going to talk about something else that they might have gotten right on pakistan. the trump administration is playing tough announcing it will withhold almost all security. will that make pakistan's government finally stop giving safe havens to terrorists as president trump claims they do when we come back. secret visit. hallucinations and delusions. the unknown parts of living with parkinson's. what plots they unfold, but only in my mind. over 50% of people with parkinson's will experience hallucinations or delusions during the course of their disease. if your loved one is experiencing these symptoms,

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all right. now another topic. another trump tweet. this one came on monday and said the united states has foolishly given pakistan more than $33 billion in aid over the last 15 years and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit thinking of our leaders as fools. they have given a safe haven to terrorists. we hunted afghanistan with little help. no more. the administration announced it was withholding almost all security aid to the nuclear tip nation. will that stop pakistan from offering terrorists safe haven? joining me are jane, richard and dan. dan, you had to deal with this even in the iraq situation. pakistan seems to be a problem with no solution. you give them money, they help jihadis. you don't, they help jihaddies. >> they not only continue to

help jihadtys but start moving to china and you lose less influence inside the country in dealing with the government. there's a rational for doing what the administration has done and the rationale is always obvious. i feel like in this moment i spoke to someone from the white house over the weekend though about this issue and the rationale behind it and they said we are getting -- it wasn't a trump tweet. there was a policy process behind this and they are getting a reaction from the pakistani they think is positive, a wakeup call that could produce results. remains to be seen. >> i tried to do something in congress in 2009, i wanted to condition our aid on wrapping up the father of the pakistani nuclear bomb and -- >> sold the secrets to north korea. >> to north korea. and to libya. that was the bomb that was

intercepted and that's when kadafi went clean and his murder has persuaded kim jong-un that he should never abandon his nuclear ambitions and i don't think he ever will. we can just contain them hopefully. i think this is the right move. i understand there's a down side. some of the experts at the wilson center are warning about this, but i've been to the tribal areas where the network is headquartered. it's very close to the afghan border and have murdered our troops for years and made unstable efforts in afghanistan and i don't think this ever changes unless a sharp message is sent to the pakistani government. >> you had to deal with this. they cut off at one point -- there's only one access road, supply road into afghanistan for u.s. troops that comes through pakistan. there's another one but the russians shut that down. could they retaliate? >> sure. this would complicate our

ability to resupply forces in afghanistan and put us more in needing the russians. as you said correctly going into this, no matter what we have done with pakistan, we get screwed. i get that. i've been on both sides when i was in government. didn't it make sense to do this publicly? i would have done this quietly. what you're getting is the nationalists reaction that makes it difficult. every once in a while it's okay to do it diplomatically. it's not the worst thing that the united states could do with pakistan. secondly, this ought to be in donald trump's wheelhouse. what we want with the pakistan is not an alliance relationship. they're not allies. the idea they're considered a major ally for getting arms is nuts. but i would say we ought to have a transactional relationship with them. quietly say we will give you this piece of equipment in return for this. what we can never do with pakistan is assume or presume that they will do what we want down the road. every inch of the way this has

to be a transactional relationship. >> if you look at history, it has never been possible to destroy an insurgency when it has a safe haven across the border and that's what the afghan insurgecy has. a safe haven. >> do we think the paks did not know osama bin laden was there? >> it's a sign just how out of control pakistan is. >> jerusalem. you know israel very well. what happened -- what exactly happened? it seemed like the israeli right decided they were going to make it impossible for there to be any deal on jerusalem that the palestinians could accept and therefore, kind of locking in the idea that there is now no two state solution. >> the israeli parliament passed legislation that said if there's any change to the boundaries of the city of jerusalem, the context of a peace deal, that instead of -- right now the law

is there's going to be a changed. now it says it's got to be a super majority and raises the threshold for a deal that involves the future boundaries of jerusalem to get ratified. the law of course can be overturned by a simply majority. if there's a real deal that involves change boundaries to jerusalem, but if it were to happen and the prime minister were behind it, that means his party is in control of a coalition that they could get this law overturned. there's a lot of heat around this the. and a lot of concern. i think it's overstated. i do think though there is the white house is behind a lot of the moves. the administration is taking in support of what the israelis are taking. they want to send a message that the train is leaving the station. the history is moving past you and unless you come back to the

table without preconditions, more and more of these actions are going to be taken. >> will jared kushner's strategy work? you have got a minute. >> short answer is no. the longer answer is no. the real question is the one you put on the screen. is there still a two-state solution? time is running out. if the israel wants to be a secure jewish democracy it needs a two-state solution and right now the path it is on is a threat to the jewish project. >> a lot of palestinians saying why not a one-state solution. just give us voting rights in israel. >> i think that's a mistake and won't work and pushing palestine toward jordan is a nonstart ore. that will destabilize the monarchy. there is an opportunity right this might n this minute for the sunni states to confront shia expansion. that's part of the behavior we don't like. they are observing a nuclear deal and are not the spirit of

the agreement. not doing the right things in the neighborhood and this opportunity which i command jared kushner and jason greenblatt for trying to get this deal has failed or is failing. very disappointing. >> when we come back, i will ask these three veterans of the corridors of power in washington what they make of steve bannon's reported remarks about donald trump in which he said many things but among them he has lost it and the backlash against bannon when we come back. don't forget if you miss a show go to cnn.com/fareed for my pod cast. i just got my cashback match,

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"fire and fury." the most damning quotes are from steve bannon who said the president has lost it among many other things. >> bannon has been condemned by the trump establishment. what's been the reaction around the world. dan, you know and have worked with paul ryan. >> yeah. >> what do you make of this? >> i think the book -- i've read the book and the crowd source highlight from the journalists who are reading it intensively. i think it seems to me like it's basically a colorful compendium of an anecdotes that illustrate what we already knew about the president and how the white house functions. to the extent this has catalyzed a real break between the president and his architect of insurgen insurgency, steve bannon, i think is a big moment and that's

what will be most significant. if you look at the last year, sort of bookends, january of 2017, the president's inaugural address where he talked about american carnage, it was very dark. it was basically a bannon-esque speech and then a year later the year ended with a massive cut in corporate taxes by about a third. a big deregulation campaign. both of which had strong influence by paul ryan. you had judicial nominees swarming the courts in a strategy orchestrated by mitch mcconnell. mitt romney is running for the senate. this is not this bannon-esque insurgency and at the end of this year -- the beginning of this year we had bannon being completely cut from trump. what we're reminded of is you need experience, people, people with real knowledge on how to make government work if you want to have a revolution in government. donald trump doesn't have this. bannon is out. >> isn't it a sign that bannon has a point which is that trump came in as a populist and as dan

said, what has he done, he's repealed obamacare, cut the rate for the highest income earners, deregulated. where is this helping the pennsylvania coal miner again? >> i don't think it is helping that. there is a role for insurgence in both parties. people are dissatisfied with the way the traditional parties work and they both should change. there is a big role for a strong congress and we have been missing that, too. we may have a dysfunctional white house but we have a dysfunctional congress. bipartisanship is a dirty word. >> paul ryan is getting everything he wants. >> i don't think that tax bill is a popular bill. i think tax reform is a good idea. entitlement reform is a good idea. infrastructure building is a good idea done on a bipartisan basis. my only pitch is and i want to say this on this show, poor john mccain who has been a strong voice for national security and bipartisanship has a weaker voice than he did and i just want to say to captain john

mccain who has put the country and bipartisanship first we're going to miss you. >> you have been in white houses. have you ever seen anything like this? >> this is not exactly the jim baker white house if that's what you're getting at. or what it was under 41. 41 was probably the most organized organic white house. this is the least. let me say one thing about bannon. he may be gone. alienation but bannonism is doing pretty well. united states got out of the transpacific partnership. the relationship with nafta is in jeopardy. we are doing all sorts of attacks on the world trade organization. immigration policy is what it is. you look at the things and bannon must be going not bad for one year's work. this year you can have a major u.s./china trade confrontation. too soon to say. bannon and the president, the

wedge between them. i worry about what they have done. >> there are parts of bannonism being implemented but where the country has moved on issues like trade is not limited to bannon. hillary clinton came out for getting out of the tpp. this is a broader issue than just what's going on with the administration. i still believe that the president's most of his agenda is a conventional republican agenda and he's basically outsouthwe outsourced the implementation of that agenda to experience ryan and mcconnell. >> there's a quote which says in the book attributed to mitch mcconnell. the president will sign any piece of paper we put in front of him. >> he just wants wins. he just wants wins and points on the board. >> but let's put the country first. i know it's trite. let's try that. now that everything else seems to be in some tatter and american leadership is desper e desperately needed. the voices that come forward from this and put the country first are going to be the voices for leadership for america and

that's wonderful. >> the part that strikes me is wherever -- however you look at it, the one thing that seems consistent is there's very little voice for american engagement in the world. you know, on those issues where paul ryan i think feels strongly, he's decided he's not going to fight trump. trump's instincts are very narrow. the world is watching. you and i travel a lot. everybody is struck by the inward turn of -- the united states has both become isolationists but also unpredictable. >> also the example we're setting is not one the rest of the world respects in many cases. people are telling me this isn't the united states i thought i knew. this is something very different and we saw it at the u.n. the united states wanted to get the u.n. to go to criticize iran. your previous conversation here. and we were on our own. the europeans wanted no part of it. the russians said let's talk about black lives matter. what it shows to me is the shrinking voice of the united states. one, we're speaking less in many

ways. not speaking in discipline thanks to the tweets and the rest of the world is beginning to tune us out. we have moved into a world where others are deferring less to the wishes and the priorities of the united states. that means our interests will suffer and what the president misses is he wants to make america great again. he can't make america great again at home if the world is beginning to unravel. there's a contradiction. at the core of his moving away from our traditional world leadership world and that's at the end what could be his undoing. >> and how do you think this plays out, you know, with these -- do you think trump is now feeling more secure to implement his own ideas? you know, because some of these things are -- pakistan, while there's a policy, clearly you can tell it is almost personal frugs tra frustration. is will going to be more or less trump in 2018? >> i think the focus of the

white house and congressional leadership in 2018 is hanging on to majorities in the senate and house. if the republicans lose the majority in the house, which democrats are running about 12 points ahead of republicans for the house, if they lose control of the house you can see impeachment proceedings begin. it's the president and his team saying the congressional leadership, what do we need to do to hang on to majorities and the house republicans running on tax reform. very conventional. >> they'll move the policies to the center in order to get enough voters to keep them in office. it won't work to keep shrill extreme policies in place. the tax bill is going to be unpopular and have to do a fix to health care. not totally repeal it because that won't play in states like maine. >> economy is going up 3%, 4%. >> it's going to ultimately help them. >> thank you all very much. fascinating. next on gps this week it has

been frigid on the east coast. unseasonably cold throughout the rest of the united states. the president says that cold weather like this means we need global warming. i will explain why we might have too much global warming. back in a moment.

>> it wasn't just in new york. it brought an arctic chill to the lower 48. it was even snow in florida, the result of a so-called bomb cyclone pummelling the east coast. that suggests that this bitter cold may be in direct opposition to concerns about global warming. it's a question that does seem to concern a fair amount of people, not just the president

himself. if it is melting the icecaps, why in the world is it so bloody cold where i am. let's be clear. global warming is real. 16 of the 17 warmest years in the 136-year-old record have all occurred since 2001 with one exception. 1998. and even as we are freezing here, a lot of other places in the world are recording warmer than normal temperatures. to put some signs mind the current misery, you may have heard the polar vortex. you may have heard this name as meteorologists warn you to bundle up. it's the zone of frigid air that is at the arctic. the jet stream usually holds the frigid air in place. think of it like a dam. sometimes a change in pressure disrupts the jet stream, releasing icy arctic air

southward and it blasts us with frigid winder weather. is it hand om when this happens? some scientists say it's very much not random and it is in fact global warming that is responsible for pushing polar vortex on it for longer durations on it than it used to. over 40 years there has been a steady melting of arctic sea ice at a rate of 13% per decade. as the ice melts and the footprint of the polar icecap shrinks, more of the surface is exposed and thus more heat escapes into the atmosphere. the arctic is warming faster than any other part of the globe. the authors of a new study published by the american meteorological society correlated the ice melt overtime with more frequent polar vortex disruption. the dam bursts and thrusts cold

air down south to us. one of the study's authors told us he believes the episodes will continue and even become more frequent in the future. one more bit of bad news. as the cold air hits the lower 48, it displaces warmer air west and north during freezes of the east coast warmer than normal temperatures have been recorded in alaska where the perma frost is already melting and could be further accelerated in this kind of cold air, hot air. in short, we might be getting colder in many places precisely because overall we are definitely getting warmer. don't let the president convince you otherwise. next on gps, what do viewers think will happen in 2018. will bashar al a shad stilling leader next new year's eve?

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between china and another country this year. there is good news for at least one dictator. they say there is an 88% chance thattal assad will stay in power. here at home they predict the democrats will gain control in the mid-terms and about a 20% chance that republicans will retain power in both house that is good news for the democrat who is you believe have an 80% chance of taking back at least one chamber. there will be most questions open throughout the year and we will check back to see how you did. this week's book at week is bruce ri dell's saudi arabia in the united states since fdr. he was one of the top experts on the middle east in south asia. now he has written a fascinating

and highly intelligent books about one of the oddest geopolitical books in history. why it is so sad that the current administration won't use it. thanks to all of you for being part of my program. i will see you next week. par hello and thank you for joining us. breaking news, backlash as the fallout from the scathing tell all book about life inside the trump white house continues. former chief strategist steve bannon saying his comments in the book about donald trump jr. are inaccurate and bannon is expressing regret in not responding sooner, writing this. donald trump is both a patriot and a good man. he has been relentless