hello, everyone, and welcome to amanpour on pbs. hea here's what's coming up tonight. explosive allegations from bob woodward, revealing the trump administration with a tumultuous foreign policy. we dig down with the reknowned depp loid matt wendy sherman. she helped negotiate the iran nuclear deal trump tore up. her new book, not for the faint of heart, spells out why the art of diplomacy can be more important than the art of the deal. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> welcome to the program, everyone. i'm christiane amanpour in new

york. a deeply alarming portrait of the trump presidency has been painted by one of the world's most prominent political reporters. the acclaimed watergate journalist bob woodward depicts betrayal of white house aides even hiding papers from a volatile commander in chief in order to protect national security. it's just one sensational claim from his new book, fear: trump in the white house. under this administration, the art l deal is displacing the art of diplomacy according to long-time diplomat wendy sherman. the former u.s. under secretary of state was president obama's lead negotiator for the iran nuclear deal. president clinton's policy coordinator for north korea, and often the only woman in the room where it happens. her new book, not for the faint of heart, candidly takes us through her diplomatic resume showing a tough negotiator can also be a human one with courage and persistence. and ambassador sherman joins me now here in new york. welcome to the program.

>> great to be with you, kristen sze china. >> we're going to dig into your book and use your experience to ask you about these bombshell revelations. i want to know from you, do they sound like bombshell revelations to the point that aides have been removing paperwork, for instance, to try to prevent the president getting out of a trade deal with south korea? that's just one of them. >> indeed. these are echos of other books and other reporting we have heard about what the trump white house is like, what makes this a bombshell is the author. there is no one more credible than bob woodward in terms of making sure that he's got the right sources, that it's well documented, to the point as reviewers have said of being absently boring in its detail. i think what is very concerning is what you pointed out in your intro is what this says to countries around the world about the president of the united states and quite frankly it's very concerning and puts our national security at risk. >> it's interesting that this

book -- he's an american political reporter talking about an american white house. but it focuses mostly on foreign policy and national security policy. so the global impact of this presidency. we know, for instance, that just before the july nato summit, that john bolton, the national security advisor, essentially got the allies to sign on before president trump could get there and potentially up end it. from what you know about foreign leaders, world leaders who try to, i guess, factor in the trump factor, how are they dealing with this now? >> i think they're dealing with some difficulty. what has happened is the united states has isolated itself. the rest of the world is sort of marching on would you tell us. the fact that we've broken our major alliance with europe which you know extremely well is of great concern. whether it is iran or tariffs, we and europe are on opposite sides of issues and we are throwing europe into the arms of

russia and china. one of the things that i discuss in the book, not for the faint of heart, is how carefully one has to do this process, how much consultation goes on, how much gardening, as george schultz, the former secretary of state used to say, you have to do to make sure that you've built relationships so they're there for you during times of crisis as the world was with us for 9/11 which comes up next week. we are at a very dangerous place for our country. >> you are absolutely right. the anniversary of 9/11 comes up next week and you write sort of the overarching theme of your book is that we're sort of moving from the, at least in the united states, maybe around the world, from the era of the diplomat to the era of the autocrat. >> indeed. when you have autocrat, they only deal with what's in front of them. everything is quite transactional. no sense, no obligation of the future. and they have to sort of act like a child who sits in the restaurant and tries to color

through the puzzle maze. they don't see, as we discussed so often you and i, about the iran deal, the rubik's cube. there are multiplicity of pieces and every one has to lock exactly in place. so they look for simplicity when in fact the world is complexity. >> let's actually talk about that. we have the beautiful image of the rubik's cube. you used to bring that up regularly during the iran negotiations. let's back into that for a moment. we say president trump tore it up, the deal. however what he did was pull the united states up -- out, which may indeed result in it being torn up. but give us the rubik's cube nature of what you mean. i mean, it's hundreds of man and woman hours of negotiations. it's hundreds of pages of fine print. >> indeed, and it's hundreds of negotiations, not just the one that people most know about. so, i only jokingly say that i negotiated inside of the administration. i negotiated with congress. i negotiated with israel.

i negotiated with the gulf states. i negotiated with each one of the partners in the negotiation. great britain, france, germany, russia, china. i negotiated with any world nation that cared about the deal. and oh, yeah, occasionally i negotiated with iran. it is a very, very complex process to do it right. and although i was engaged in it for four years, the europeans had been engaged in such diplomacy for nearly a decade. this is hard detailed work. and i can't imagine that president trump has ever read the joint conference and plan of action. >> so, i'm going to get to the possible consequence of this thing absolutely collapsing because iran is now saying that, you know, europe has to do something to make it worth our while to stay in this deal. that's what iran is saying. iran, the supreme leader, is also personally calling out one of your main inter lock ors on this deal, on the iranian side who is the foreign minister. he's saying it was a mistake for

me to have even sent him to these negotiations. that's pretty -- that's pretty strong language. what do you think is going on at the heart of this deal? is it going to stay or is it going to crumble? >> i think it's very hard to keep it going because, come the beginning of november, the united states will reimpose its secondary economic sanctions which means anybody who does business with the central bank of iran can't do business with american banks. for large companies which have already left iran, the siemens, the allianses, pugeot. what they're trying to do is keep small and medium companies invested in iran. obviously russia and china don't much care about their relationships. china has certainly a coupled relationship with the united states, but it has its own financial resource soz it request find ways to invest, certainly to buy iranian oil. so we have a lot to go here. the president has now -- the

white house has said there is going to be u.n. security council meeting in -- during the u.n. general assembly during september 26 on iran. iran ostensibly will be invited so we'll see if we're going to have a tet a tet. >> president trump is going to take the podium there. do you think he's going to do it to berate or negotiate and cajole iran into the kind of deal he wants? >> i think what we've seen in all of his negotiations is both sides of that coin. so it sort of depends how he feels when he gets up in the morning, what he feels like tweeting. we saw him berate and warn kim jong-un of north korea we were going to have fire and fury, the next moment he's giving him a hug, signal to china they can back off the sanctions. what i think the president does not understand what i try to write about and not for the faint of heart, is not only the complexity of this, but what skill sets you need to do this kind of work and quite frankly that we need in our everyday

life. >> so, i'd like you to sort of detail that skill set, but one of the skills appears to be from president trump's view -- and actually, to be fair from president george w. bush's view, because this is not the first time a u.s. president has ripped up and withdrawn from a deal that you were involved in, that democratic presidents were involved in. george w. bush famously pulled out of the talks and negotiation with north korea back in the early 2000s, which led to the nuclear capability they have right now. president trump and at the time george w. bush believed that they were tough, that they could rip up these deals and make better ones. that isn't the case, is it? >> that is not the case. in fact, when people talk about soft power, really diplomacy is about being tough and smart. hillary clinton used to talk about smart power all the time. it's also tough power. you have to be ready to walk away. you have to be very clear about what you want and go for it.

but again, be ready to say no, not going to cross that line, not going to go down that road. i think the best negotiators are the ones who have clarity, persist, but also understand the stakes and that they have to work with others to get there. >> you do -- the subtitle of your book, and we have the book right here, is lessons in courage, power and persistence. does the courage sort of mean the courage to stand up and understand you have to negotiate with your enemies and negotiation is not a sign of weakness or not a sign of the opposite of courage? >> it absolutely means that it's not a sign of weakness. a lesson i learned from my parents who took a strong position on civil rights and cost them economically in terms of my dad's business is that courage comes with a cost. you know, we all just watched the funeral of john mccain. and whether you agreed with him or not, and there were many times i did not agree with him

and he didn't agree with me, he nonetheless had courage. he paid an enormous cost by saying, i won't leave the hanoi hilton early. i'm going to stay with my colleagues. and what we're seeing, whether it's the kavanagh hearings that are ongoing today, or whether the decisions the president has to make, you have to be willing to pay a cost sometimes, and i hope that the senate will understand the lesson that mccain tried to teach them. >> and indeed, you tweeted about mccain when he died. real courage comes with a cost. senator john mccain was always me for the love of our o the country. what worries you in the absence of that kind of courage? what worries you about the conduct of foreign policy right now? >> what worries me the most is that we have a president of the united states who has no understanding of the world, no understanding of how to conduct national security and foreign

policy. the people around him, whether it's the woodward book -- but certainly are echoed in the woodward book, that we have a president who is surrounded by people who try to keep him from doing terrible things, but may not be able to do so. and we have a senate at the moment that will not stand up to him because we are so focused on the immediate outcome of electoral politics. where we need to get in this country is a place where we listen to each other, hear each other. we have the courage to stand up for our values as the united states of america, not as democrats and republicans. but what makes this country the strongest on earth. what madelein albright taught me more than anything is that when you're sitting across the negotiating table, you're not wendy sherman, you're not a woman, you're not, in my case, an american jew. you're the the united states of america and that is a pretty extraordinary power. >> let's talk about the woman aspect of that skill set that you just delineating.

madelein albright famously once said there is a special place in hell reserved or should be for women who don't help other women. and you have talked about the -- being the rare woman often at the negotiating table, for the most part. but why it matters to have more women at the negotiating table? why do you think it matters to bring that dna into foreign policy negotiations, for instance? >> i think it matters because you also -- you always want to represent the full spectrum of who we are as people. and our experience as women is different than the experience of men. one of the things i urge in the epilogue of the book in the end of the book is everyone has an unexpected life because mine certainly has been -- i started out as a social worker in child welfare. i then went on to do electoral politics helping barbara mccull ski become the first woman in the democratic senate and now foreign policy. some of that was defined by my becoming a mother. some of that was decided and

defined by opportunities presenting themselves. i never anticipate it. and because of those experiences, i do think i bring an authenticity. there is a story at the beginning of this book about being at the end of this negotiation, very exhausted, knowing that my plans for then going to harvard as a fellow were going to be changed because we had extended the deal. and i lost it and found tears streaming down my face because somewhere along the line i discovered women weren't supposed to be angry, so i'd cry instead. and the iranian sitting across the table from me didn't know what to do with me and it turned out to be quite effective as a negotiating tactic, though, i wouldn't suggest anyone use tears as a negotiating tactic. what it did teach me is that when you bring your authentic self to the negotiating table, it is power of its own. >> you see, i was going to ask you because i read about that incident. and i thought oh, my gosh, what a terrible thing to happen,

especially to a woman, especially in negotiations with these people who believe they are the world's best and wiley negotiators. >> and all men, all men. >> so, how was it being in a very much all-men's society as the iranian society is? the patriarchy at large, how was it being a forceful american female diplomat? >> well, to their credit, once they understood that i was going to be strong, that i understood i was the united states of america, they took me on. i think the incident that i just recalled where, out of anger, tears started coming down my face, they were really -- didn't know what to do with me, and that was useful in itself. i think you use everything you can during a negotiation. there was a point at which i wanted to find common ground with the iranians. and their lead negotiator, abbas had a grandchild, so had i.

we shared photos. we were human. it didn't change our national interest. it didn't change our tough positions, but it did make us understand each other a little better. >> which is so vital, the idea of hearing the story of the other. i think many people certainly in some circles, a lot in the united states, it's always a zero-sum game. >> yes. >> in order for me to win you have to lose. there seems to be an idea that it's just weak to give -- to negotiate. but we've talked about that. >> indeed. you have to find some common ground with the people on the other side of the table and, in fact, even the people on our side of the table with the europeans, russians and the chinese. and at the same time you have to lead the other side with enough power to make the deal endure. so one of the things president obama understood, secretary kerry, secretary moniz and my entire team was we had to leave the iranians with enough power so rouhani could successfully implement the deal. >> and face. >> and face. indeed, and face.

very important in negotiations everywhere in the world. >> so as you see the fruit of your labor, it took years. let's not forget, from 2013 -- in fact, i'm going to play a little sound bite of what you said to me when this process started when we talked via satellite from geneva about the talks. let's just play that for a second. >> everyone at our round table understood that the stakes are high, and we have to do everything we can to reach a diplomatic solution. there are other options, but a diplomatic solution is the best option. >> so, the best option you were saying then and people have said it since, most around the world believe the iran nuclear deal, despite its flaws and shortcomings, was the best option to constrain a nuclear program. a nuclear weapons program you were worried about. so what now, if this deal collapses under the weight of the u.s. pulling out, what

happens? do we go back to threatening military force? what happens? >> well, it's an excellent question. it is totally unclear to me what the trump administration's strategy is. they, in part, pulled out because they said it didn't include all the nefarious and maligned behavior of iran in the region which i agree is nefarious and maligned. but i haven't seen a strategy to deal with that. nor have i seen a strategy to get iran back to the negotiating table or to punish iran in a way that would get it to change its behavior. one of the things we know about sanctions is sanctions create an incentive to get to the negotiating table but they don't stop bad behavior. when they started negotiating in 2000 they had 164 centrifuges. b by the time we finished negotiating, they had 19,000 centrifuges. >> a point the minister made over and over again. don't try to beat us into the

ground. meet us halfway and perhaps we can get this done. we don't know where this is going from here. but i want to ask you something that president trump constantly talks about and his supporters constantly talk about. how come we gave them $1.7 billion of our money to free these hostages who were hostages at the time, american hostage, they remain american citizens and other jewel nationals in the iranian jails right now. >> yes. >> what is the fact of that $1.7 billion that all went in bags to iran and was sort of like blackmail? >> that had nothing to do with the nuclear deal or getting the americans out of iran. what that was was we had frozen iranian assets all the way back to 1979 when iran took hostages for well over a year and probably cost jimmy carter his reelection. and more to the point was horrific for those 444 days for the people who were held.

but there had been ongoing negotiations at the haig about resolving those frozen assets. the united states was going to lose big time, and they came to an agreement on 1.7 billion, which they thought they could get done in a better way, coincident with implementing the iran deal and freeing the american hostages. so, it was iranian money -- >> it wasn't american taxpayer money. >> no, it wasn't american taxpayer money. we haven't given american taxpayer money. the reason some american cash was given was because we had a sanction against the u.s. dollar. so they couldn't get the dollars unless -- >> hopefully. >> hopefully. doubtful, but hopefully. >> when president trump, just before he had the summit in singapore with chairman kim jong-un of north korea, you told me at the time that you felt

north korea -- kim jong-un was in the driver's seat. fast forward all these months since the summit, president trump said we have no more nuclear problem with north korea, they're going to do this, that and the other, it seems they haven't. that trump himself has put the brakes on face to face negotiations. where are we with that? >> well, we're sort of where wrwe are with iran, without a policy, without a strategy. i supported the president doing the singapore summit. both the president and kim jong-un believe they're the only ones who decide anything. in kim jong-un's case that is true. in the case of the president of the united states, we have checks and balances but he doesn't believe that or cop to that in any way. maybe they could breakthrough in some way. only if there was a team, if there was a plan f there was a detailed way forward. clearly there wasn't any of that so the president got his photo op and really took all of the sanctions off, at least psychologically for enforcing them, because people saw him hug

literally kim jong-un. so now we're at a place where north korea actually never committed to denuclearization. they think it means american troops leaving the peninsula and us never having any nuclear weapons anywhere in the area. we mean they should get rid of their nuclear weapons and long range ballistic missiles. the president has appointed an a voice, but he needs a plan and unlike the case when i negotiated, i knew that president clinton and president obama would never pull the rug out from under me. i don't think steve can count on president trump operating the same way. >> you know, your book is one of a few that are coming out from president obama's officials and administer officials. some have said, trying to make sense of the world slightly more ordered with the orderly diplomacy and classic diplomacy

at a time when we're in a bit of disruptive and chaotic period, trying to make sense of where we are. former aide talks about how he split his pants in the oval office and had to back out and beat a hasty retreat before anybody could see it. you talk about slamming your nose into a glass door and breaking it. how did that come about? >> diplomacy is a risky business for all of us. secretary kerry who also has a book just out, broke his femur during this process. but i was rushing into our delegation room where we were holding the negotiations. and the glass door to that delegation room was usually open. this was about 11:00 at night and i was rushing to get to a secure phone. someone had closed the door. i don't know why. i slammed right into it. of course, when you -- you're a mom, so you know that when kids'

nose break or get slammed it bleeds a lot. so the guys who were around me, oh, call an ambulance. no, no, none of you are clearly moms. get me an ice pack. i did the call with secretary kerry. it turned out i had broken my nose in several places. i went to a doctor in vienna the next day. >> they did a great job. wonder what would have lpful. happened if one of your male colleagues had broken their nose. >> they would have been in the hospital for days. >> at the end as we wrap up, you talk about your upbringing, your parents civil rights. civil rights is also women's rights. what do you make of the huge historic number, unprecedented number of american women running for office in these 2018 elections? it's the first time there's been such a surge since 1992. >> right. i actually think it's fantastic. i was working at emily's list at

the time of the huge transformation in 1992. i was campaign manager, as i mentioned, for bar were mckulski when she became the first woman nominated in her own right. i think this is fantastic. and i have a young daughter who actually is a lawyer who works in immigration law and runs -- helps to run the clinic at boston university. and she is just beside herself that ayanna pressley has won. it's very exciting. >> in massachusetts. >> in massachusetts. >> up ending a ten-term 20-year congressional career. >> who was actually -- mike capuano was quite gracious last night in that loss, and i think he understands there is a generational change going forward. and, quite frankly, when we all spend days quite depressed about what's going on, i look at those young parkland students who are trying to register voters all over this country. i look at the women's march.

and i look at not only the women who are running in this election, but the diversity of people running this election and it gives me great hope and optimism for this country. >> ambassador wendy sherman, not for the faint of heart, thank you so much for joining us. we should mention you are getting your harvard dream. it's deferred but you're going to be there in the new year. >> i am. i'm very fortunate i'm going to be a professor of practicing public leadership and director for center of public leadership, succeeding david gurgen who i hope will continue to be a valued partner. >> fantastic. thank you so much for that. that is it for our program tonight. thank you for watching amanpour on pbs, and join us again tomorrow night. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> you're watching pbs.

katty: you're watching "beyond 100 days" on pbs. britain demands a meeting of the un security council after charging to russians with the salisbury poisonings. christian: officers almost certainly acting on orders from the kremlin. katty: of the say these images show the men came to britain in march with the engine of killing survey -- the intention of killing sergei skripal. executives admit they were too slow to act, but they say they are fixing the problem. >> if we don't find scalable solutions, we lose our business and we continue to threaten the original privilege and liberty we were given to