some credit here. plus the uncertainty. his bellicosity and uncertainty i think has rattled people not just on the peninsula but elsewhere in the region. but it isn t just him. president moon jae-in deserves a lot of credit. he was elected in part because of his platform of wanting to engage with the north. he got ahead of this administration when he invited north korean athletes to participate in the olympics. he s been driving a lot of this. and number two is kim jong-un. he s not his father. he s going to be able to come into these negotiations much more capable with his nuclear and ballistic missile program which makes him more credible at that table. he s also driving this and he would be foolish not to take advantage of the moment he finds himself in, both from his own capability and from having a south korean president across the border who is willing to talk and to engage. david, just a few months ago, president trump was trading these huge insults with kim jong-un on twitter
so i would loath to give trump credit for his bellicosity. how will the confidence serve him well in negotiations and how might it handicap him? it has gotten him here, so that is a plus. what is important in these situations is to know what you need to know and know what you don t know and this is not a real estate transaction. this is deadly serious business and very complex and so you want people around you and you want to rely on them who understand those complexities so you are not in service of making a deal agree to things that ultimately not enforceable, and bad for our nation security. one thing that i noticed today is when the discussion shifted to iran, you heard some of the same bellicose language that you
more seriously than in the past. so you think the bellicose rhetoric had an impact on the chinese, and the chinese then leaned on the north koreans but you don t think you discount that trump s rhetoric had an impact on kim himself? it might have but there s really no empirical evidence to prove that one way or another. it s obvious the trump administration would like to claim that kind of credit. it s just so hard to know why the north koreans make the decisions they do. we know from the past they respond to bellicosity with their own. they have sort of legendary for the rhetoric they employ. so surprised me a lot if it was that. rather the chinese have been very concerned about north korea s testing record. very concerned about chernobyl-style event from the north korean testing site which is now sort of in real trouble. a tunnel collapse there. and that coupled with donald trump talking about warfare and t rest of it probably pushed the chinese to lean on the koreans a lot.
not the anger and bellicosity that we ve heard from russian officials in recent days. more perhaps of toned down rhetoric. absolutely they re spinning it here as a victory for the missile systems in their eyes, their claims that they re able to shoot down the u.s., french, and british missiles flying at syria. all right. emir, iran s supreme leader we know has called the air strikes maker crimes. are you hearing anything there about movement or what s next in that regard? reporter: reporter: you re right. harsh words from here in iran, but that is to be expected. and there s nothing unusual about that, either. as you say, just harsh words for now, supreme leader ayatollah khomeini saying the u.s. will been benefit from the attacks the same way they don t benefit from going into iraq.
propose the military option with korea, iran as well, suggesting that the united states act preemptively. so in a case like syria where you have a clear chemical attack and a united states president willing to use military force to respond, that will be interesting to see if this dynamic of bellicosity goes to its full fruition. right. we re mentioning too for the fist time we saw president trump call out russia s vladimir putin by name for backing syria s president bashar al assad. what did you make of that suggest shift in how he deals with mr. putin? what might that signal do you think? it signals to me a form of exasperation perhaps. also this anger once again that i mentioned. the problem with the united states in the situation in syria is across the way, you have russia. so what happens when the american planes encurrenter russian planes? the problem is essentially what do you do in order to punish the