u.n. sanctions are extremely important. that s why the sanctions that the congress of the united states put before the president and the president signed it, reluctantly, none the less did sign those sanctions, all of that is part of the process of getting to the negotiating tables, backing north korea away from its nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles. of course, we should expect, before the negotiations ever began, for north korea to say, no way. no how will we give them up. but that s why you sit down at the table, why you negotiate it from strength. quickly, final question, congressman. the washington post reporting that north korea already may have as many as 60 nuclear bombs in its arsenal. 60 nuclear bombs. have you heard that before? we ve heard numbers varying from that number downward. the actual number we don t know. the number of miniaturized weapons, we don t know that number either.
from the price of oil to president bashar. this time it seems a lot more serious. we have to take into consideration the proxy war they re having in syria, in iraq, in yemen, in bahrain. they see the political landscape here very differently to one another. the danger is as tensions between saudi arabia and iran get worse, the violence in these countries will probably escalate even further. the other complicating matter here is that iran and saudi arabia, the two major islamic power houses in the region, one shi a, one sunni have been sitting around the negotiating tables with world powers trying to bring an end to the violence in syria. this is going to infinitely complicate that matter, much more than it has before.
that s the only point, not let them get the nuke. telling saudi arabia tepidly but still endorsed the framework of the deal because they obviously don t want to say tehran with a nuke. to get back to the previous conversation though, doesn t it seem like a lot of this is just ka kabooki theater? yes. there are hard liners in america what are going to hate this deal. people negotiating this deal in some respects need that because they don t want to go back to the negotiating tables before june and say, you know what everybody loves this deal in my country. let s keep it as is because it will just incentivize the other side to demand more concessions. we re seeing noise from both parties in these negotiations and a lot left to do in regard to hammering out the details in june. bianna stay with us if you will. coming up next, you think that good fences would make safe airports but a new troubling a.p. investigation shows alarming trends when it s comes to the security of the natio
the teams. it doesn t speak to the speedy situation. a look at today, he expected later today to go to brussels to brief the british, french and germans about how the talks were going. you don t get a sense that we re in the final thoes of getting the framework. when he arrived, he was discussing syria. he said he would be willing to sit down and negotiate. reporter: on the surface, this sounds like a change of position. what we heard from the state department is to try to put this in context. it has been said there will not be a military solution in syria. this will take a degree of political negotiations. the issue is to get assad and his team back to the negotiating tables and back to the geneva
come to the table with anything even reasonable. i ll say it. i know it will be disastrous. i know it will doom our economy for years to come, but let s just go over the [ bleep ] cliff. fine. let s just go. just leave the negotiating tables and send us over the cliff. because you know why? at least for a few seconds, it will feel like we re flying. welcome back to morning joe. it is the top of the hour. look at that shot of new york city. beautiful. how beautiful. beautiful. glad we re here. good morning, everyone. all right. you want to be happy? take a look at washington. look at that shot, man. how can you not be happy? i just said, you showed a picture of gotham and the clouds, and i m glad we re here. look at this incredible cast of characters. steve rattner still with us along with mike barnicle in new york. joining us on set, republican senator from oklahoma, senator tom coburn who served in the bipartisan simpson-bowles commission two years ago.