i will agree with that. and what we have is, we have somehow managed to get back to where we were before the soviet union fell katty, where it s real politic. i don t want to know all the things they do in their country. are they going to let the soviets put nuclear weapons there or not? now i look at assad on tv and i ask myself one simple defining question, does he want to blow up buildings in new york city and washington or not? i look at gadhafi, does he want to blow up of course he s gone now. we would look at saddam hussein and ask the same question. sometimes that was questionableably wanted to kill presidents. but this is how we re going to be fosted to look at leaders in the middle east from now on. sam stein said earlier that assad is the most rational player in the region. i don t think he s rational but he s not exporting. he s not exporting. in the end, at the moment that s the best deal we can have. the trouble with long term is it s not really a proposition for u
jo region. anything that he s doing against his people killing his people and doing things of that major, any kind of unrest there could promote terrorism here. that s the problem. you have to look at trying to focus on that region to make sure that these people are at least working together some kind of way to create some kind of stable democracy so it will not cause unrest to come here. that s the big piece. that s what george w. bush believed. i think obama believes the same thing. it didn t work out well for george w. bush. i believe obama believes the same thing. i think that s what he s practicing in a lot of instances in what we re seeing. i think he ss a ambush. he s not as ambitious but he s talking it speaking it. nobody here is saying that assad is a holiday. the guy has killed 200 people of his people, one of the most brutal people out there. but again, do you want assad or do you want isis? are the syrian people worse off under assad or worse off under isis i
the other way to do is to it cut a deal for three or four or ten years. is there still a possibility to have a good working relationship with iran? not if we bomb them. no i understand that. that s the end. if we strike a deal, a tough deal can we see over the next decade a closer relationship with washington and iran? the alternative is echt choo ally moving toward a war with them. you know at lo of iranians in this country. amazingly like dare i say like europeans. very modern. very educated. very modern. very western seeming. i think the thing i saw, katty, that really surprised me in 2009 during the rebellion, during the revolts when you actually had people in tehran gunned down in the streets by their government was the fact i looked on the screen night after night after night after night and said oh, my god, there is a red state iran and there is a blue state iran. and in tehran in the urban areas some of the most educated gifted people in the region. and always
who knows obama, i don t think he s ever willfully ignorant. i think you can certainly disagree with the policies. but the question is is there a strategy and you know we throw that word around strategy and it really means planning a year or two out, not just doing stuff. and there s no planning going on here for the whole region. unfortunately, katty, it seems very reactive. you have i wrote a column for politico this morning where we ve had two failed presidents i believe, as commanders in ef choos because you had one reacting to 9/11 overreacting. and then you had his successor, overreacting to his extremes to the bush/cheney extremes. this was opening paragraph. if anyone disagrees, this follows up with bob was saying
nuclear fuel of the of the country. with us now to talk about that and much more the former national security adviser for president carter dr. brzezinski. dr. brzezinski we have been in despair this morning talking about chaos all across the middle east, obviously there s a region that you ve dedicated much of your life to. how does a deal with iran on nuclear weapons play into the crises? if there is some movement on the iranian issue, the iranian nuclear issue, it will help somewhat to slow down the present eruption that s demanding so much of our attention insofar as middle east as a whole is concerned. it s not going to change things immediately, but it will make possible settling down of the problems. if there isn t, i think we re going to have a big huge mess on our hands with a lot of pressure on us to go to war against iran.