we can solve real problems and so in the iran case we were able to convince the government of russia china india as well as our closest allies to stick with us and we got to the g.c. . and some of russia's policies we were able to convince as you say germany and other european countries to suffer some real economic harm because they thought we had a plan i think the problem now is that the united states is proving that we cannot be trusted with this tool and so the chances of getting even our closest allies let alone a nontraditional partners like russia like china decide with us i think they're they're much much reduced i don't know if your heard this but chancellor merkel said the other day that your of can no longer rely on the united states in order to protect itself and i would argue that the more pressing. question right now is whether your of can really take it for granted that the united states will not lash out at europe economically do you think this rat of secondary sanctions is real do you think the united states good. full force against european countries if they

decide to continue trading with iran provided of course if iran is in compliance with the. so the threat of secondary sanctions is very rule real basically this idea that you know if you're a non us company you've got to choose do you want to do business with iran or do you want to do business with the united states and for most companies that's going to be an easy choice and for most companies the threat is sufficient the u.s. doesn't really have to do much in force mint in order to get a lot of big companies to say you know what this isn't worth the risk but european governments do have tools available to them to seek to counter the secondary sanctions threat and that's the question i think that's going to be on the table when europe negotiates with iran with russia with china with the remaining participants in the g c p a way to see if there's a way to salvage a sort of a round version of the g c p o s a and and if europe were to try to deploy those tools then you could be in a situation of some. confrontation government to government confrontation between

the u.s. and our allies but but we're still a little ways off from that at this point well mr bank we have to take a short break now but we'll be back in just a few moments stay tuned. for some officials do not. fully understand or don't know fully accept the principle of football being beyond politics that's a fundamental principle of the world for both. were granted some people may have opinions but it's their own opinions and doesn't influence opinions of many other football fans who are buying tickets every day in large volumes.

are. welcome back to worlds apart but jarrett blank form i.q. a state department called the nadir for ironically implementation it's a blank just before the break we talked about the european the reaction to trump's decision and let me ask you a few questions about russia as you may imagine many people in moscow are very very skeptical of all the speculations about trump's supposed collusion with the kremlin but given the where we are with the iranian nuclear issue trumps rebuke of both the american obligations and to your european allies don't you wish i had some leverage summer of poor with they said ministration well issue. on the collision question i'll just. we don't know whether or not laws what

specific laws might have been violated in the united states we don't know what president trump himself knew what is out in the public though obviously demonstrates that the trump campaign colluded with russian actors in a way that is deeply disturbing for for america i don't want to make you have this discussion about the russian collision but what is out in the public at this point of time is the indictment of thirteen russian nationals who tried to do something on social media who have horrible english whose posts have been viewed by you know in some cases zero people so i think you guys are blowing it out of proportion but anyway let's stick to the iran and the trump tower meeting and the payments to michael cohen's accounts i mean the question is not whether or not the efforts were successful i think the point is that the the public documentation shows the trump campaign tried but that as your question do i wish that russia had leverage over trump president trump i guess what i would say is this i remember

a time not so long ago when i was working on afghanistan pakistan iran in the obama administration that we were able to compartmentalise our agreements and disagreements with russia so there were some areas where we had a very serious disagreements and we confronted each other on those disagreements we were as i said occasional adversaries but where our national security interests overlapped for example in afghanistan for example on iran's nuclear program we retained the ability to work together and to achieve things and i do very much regret that the politics i think in both of our countries is pushing us away from the ability to be at least occasional partners i think that's not good for us it's not good for you it's not good for the world for the time being moscow has been very restrained in its reaction to trans announcement about the j.c.b. zero eight but short term russia is set to benefit from the increase in oil prices even though it's sad both before and now that they devalue street. sixty ability

more than short term material again now from my point of view the crime and we'll now have to think very carefully whether it wants to be proactive in its defense of the j.c.b. away or whether it just wants to go with the flow and a lot of the europeans have the initiative what would you personally like to see well i think you're right that both russia and china we've talked we've spoken a lot about the three european countries but both russia and china also have some decisions to make here as you say how active do you want to be in the defense of the g c p o a and how much potentially do you see the resumption of u.s. secondary sanctions as creating commercial opportunities for your firms in iran. you know what i would hope at least in the immediate term is that iran is clearly trying to make an effort to see if it's possible to salvage the deal foreign minister zarif is visiting moscow he's visiting beijing is in brussels it's hard to

know what those negotiations what those conversations will look like and whether in the end i would think that whatever emerges from them is a good idea but i do hope that all of the remaining participants in the g a will make a sincere effort to figure out if the deal can be salvaged now you've given a number of interviews lately in a week you essentially explain how unfair it is trumps criticism of president obama's dedication to the disappearing but i wonder if there was anything that the obama administration could have done to make it more difficult for its successor it's you bringing on the agreement you know when i was asked in twenty sixteen what happens if if donald trump wins the presidency will he tear up the deal my answer was always it is hard to imagine any president of the united states tearing up this deal if it's working if it's managing to constrain iran from developing a nuclear program and imposing all of these very strict inspections on iran. it and

i believed it and as problematic as the trump administration has been so far i still find myself surprised at every new bad decision they manage to make now in terms of the question of would it have been possible to make it more legally difficult for trump to pull out the answer is really no there's been a lot of talk in washington maybe referring to the idea that if this had been a treaty through the senate trump could not have pulled out that's not really legally the case previous presidents jimmy carter george w. bush have pulled out of treaties just on executive authority so even if you could imagine that the republicans would have seriously considered an obama proposed deal back in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen it would not have protected that deal from from it you also made a point in one of your articles when they disappear it was drafted it was primarily a bill to respond to possible iranian violations nobody could have. foreseen that. they need to guard against american noncompliance and i wonder what is the

implication of that because you you mentioned that they were a number of previous american presidents who essentially walked away from the previous deals but it seems to me that the message to the rest of the world here is that you can strike deals with the united states but they will only last as long as the current administration is in office well unfortunately i think that that's right i think that there is. the president terms decision is dangerous for in the iran situation it's dangerous for the region but it also does undermine the position of the united states in the world we are demonstrating that we cannot take yes for an answer and that makes it very very difficult to make credible deals with the united states with any future president of the united states who hopefully will be able to recover they'll be able to demonstrate that our political sense system has come to its senses but it's going to be difficult now you mentioned before that on a number of strategic and important issues the obama administration and the putin administration . the lack of very warm personal chemistry between the two leaders they were able

to find some degree of compromise they could work together but obviously i think in moscow at least there is a sense of missed opportunities what's interesting about donald trump is so far he has been finding it very hard to find the strategic over life if he's adversaries but he found one geopolitical soulmate and this is israel's prime minister benjamin netanyahu. do you think the two are working in concert or do you think that policies are planned mutually planned and coordinated or is israel just being a porch and a stick in following or perhaps orchestrating directing president presidents trying to leave so you know i think it's very difficult to work in concert with the trump administration because the trumpet ministration is so internally chaotic they don't have anything that resembles a normal policy process in the united states and so i'm

a little bit skeptical that anybody including prime minister netanyahu is really working in concert i think that this is more opportunistic you see where president trump sort of biases and guts gut feelings take him and then you see what you can do without and so you know i think prime minister netanyahu wants a more confrontational u.s. position toward iran he wasn't going to get that in syria because the president trump doesn't want a deeper investment in syria so he found a place where he might be able to rile up the trumpet ministration and increase the risk of confrontation now as you perhaps know it prime minister netanyahu has just visited. on sources here say that he's trying to advance a very interesting narrative he's suggesting that after trump's blog from the day scipio a threat emanating from iran is ever more pressing despite the fact that it was in fact israel which has been clamoring for the american administration to abandon

this deal do you think israel is poised to become even more proactive in quote unquote defending its security in other countries and the where can it lead all of us well for for a long time i've been trying to remind people to distinguish between prime minister netanyahu and israel prime minister netanyahu has spoken you know bitterly and angrily about the j.c. the israeli security establishment including now a string of two. chief of army staff have all made clear that the j c p a worked for israel by removing the existential threat that neuron in nuclear program would have been just making iran a threat but not next essential one so to some extent i think that present prime minister netanyahu is now in a phrase we use in english the dog who caught the car he got what his rhetoric wanted but he's right that this does pose real risks for israel the right response would be to try to find ways to deescalate the situation with iran on syria and

other issues i think as we've seen this week there's certainly a risk that netanyahu will take the other course and see this is an opportunity to escalate tension and see if he can draw the united states into a regional conflict that you know to be honest president trumps instincts in this case a right he'd like to avoid now the rainy and also wrote it in one of your articles now have a lot of things to consider the economic pressure the i would suggest a very provocative israelis behavior certainly emboldened by trump's moves also the considerations of domestic politics come into play here this multiplicity of challenges do you think it's likely to make iran more careful more cautious or on the contrary make it feel that it has nothing else to lose you know before it's a question i do want to say you know i heard you refer to israeli steps as provocative i would just say that everybody acting across that israel syria border is being provocative right now the iranians are being provocative the israelis as

well it's incumbent on everybody to try to lower the tell me mr blank let me let me get to this point because i don't think there is a moral equivalence here because iranians and the russians as much as you may hate that presence in syria of their own the invitation of the legitimate u.n. recognized government you may question the legitimacy of assad as the united states has done informally but you have never sought to revoke its membership in the united nations so your government also recognizes the legitimacy of this. syrian state at least at this point of time so suggesting that iranians flying over the syrian territory throwing throwing bombs on the syrian city syrian facilities is not provocative i think this is not a fair comparison so i didn't say it wasn't provocative i said that everybody was being provocative you keep bringing us back to these legal and moral questions i would just say i'm focused on i think an overarching moral question which is how do you avoid a war and the fact is that is israel does have real national security concerns

about what's going on in syria including the iranian presence and it's in everybody's deeper interest i believe to try to lower the temperature that to go back to your earlier question which is you know what does this mean in iran is that is iran going to be pushed into a corner or do they act more provocatively or are they on the defensive you know my guess is that we talked a little earlier about compartmentalization i think you're going to see some of that out of iran as well i think they're going to be areas where they try to be conciliatory toward europe and others and they're probably going to be areas where they try to where they they feel like they can or they need to be fairly provocative and again my hope is that everybody will take a step back from that and try to find ways to prevent an escalation which would be dangerous for all of us while mr blank i can certainly agree to that that we have to.