a decision as early as next week thousands of people have been demonstrating on the streets of honduras following a disputed presidential election the electoral commission is yet to declare a winner those were the headlines i'll be back with more news in thirty minutes here on al-jazeera next it's up front do stay with us. if a piece of machinery goes wrong is there a chain of litigation through which we can bring an ecosystem to bear getting to the heart of the matter i don't think we need of the some of my. hear their story on how dizzy. this time. benjamin netanyahu calls it a very bad deal donald trump says it's the worst both leaders would love to tear up the iran nuclear agreement but will doing so lead to a new war in the middle east that's our debate but first i'll talk to the former president joyce banda about corruption and democracy in africa. to expand the thanks for joining me on up front in july of this year police secured an arrest warrant against you over alleged abuse of office and money laundering offenses as part of the estimated two hundred fifty million dollar corruption scandal known as cash which are up to twenty thirteen when you were president it's been over three years since you left office and left the country do you plan to return to malawi to try and clear your name. i intend to plan to return to malawi but maybe let me get back to your question there was no warrant of arrest that was issued by the malawi police it was a press release announcing that they were hard in our interest up until now that was in july up until now there is no warrant of arrest what happened that day i was on my way home i had completed my fellowship at the woodrow wilson center and i formed malawi on the thirty first of july at eleven o'clock in the morning that i would be returning to malawi under speaking to the chief of staff of the state of the office of the president cabinet the same day five hours later there was an announcement that there would be one and of honest up until now they weren't overused has not been issued ok so no war interest there's no announcement of our interest but also lots of allegations from former colleagues of yours who have accused you of being involved including former colleagues of yours who are now behind bars convicted they are saying that you were involved you know that you heard them say yes what you said and i don't want and i can give you every day that when i was in office two years i came in to complete the two years of the former president and the first three it's was the genesis of the corruption of the two years that i stayed in office there is now a forensic audit supported and funded by the german government that shows that five hundred seventy seven billion or stolen in the thirstiest when i came in for my two years i asked and i was a little by the european union and by certain that they interrogated the financial management system was being abused and on the seventh of september twenty eighth eighteen i made an announcement to the nation that i had been elected and i would be taking action during that period is the period that i arrested seventy two people and i asked the british government to fun. and i want you to tell me how many presidents in africa will conduct a forensic audit in their government during their time and that would be to report by the better to the audit firm is a public document on line and in that document vindicated me it was a year after then six months after the release of that report after i left office that it was created in malawi that they were now pressurizing those that we had convicted and were already serving sentences so these people who are members of your party members of government you're saying the pressure or they're lying they were pressured and the evidence but not only that you must know that they were arrested being twenty thirty in november. and we spent a year and we had elections and i left office and six months after that they report that big a deal it was all featured at least it was after that report was released then they started mentioning my name to be clear for the sake of our viewers want you around the world what kind of evidence are you talking about that you say you have evidence i have i have evidence that people will swear under oath that we are approached also to implicate and you know about are we with you you're planning to return to malawi yes this is i mean that over the last. i don't have to clear my name because malawians know what i did and my conscience is very clear today your a very well known very respected activist and speaker on development you gave a lecture in september last year for example entitled moral leadership the prerequisite for economic growth development and peace of africa wouldn't help your cause and your credibility to speak on these important subjects as you do if you were able to completely put all of these allegations to bed i mean clearing your name but to completely end any cloud that surrounds on the subject surely you agree it's not easy when you fight corruption that is why my position is that going forward does africa those not stick their neck out to say i am going to fight corruption and the conduct of what is it in their government during their time like i did it must be encouraged and supported because you fight for a strong people and they fight you back and this minute that don't want to you and so at the end of the day for me it doesn't matter what i know is i don't need anybody to party on the back i know what i did and there are a lot of people that know what i did and that i will continue for as long as i live ok to raise my voice again a score of let me ask you this many commentators say that cash was not only behind your loss in the twenty fourteen presidential election to peter moore to recur to the current president but that you also tried to an older election you did try to meld that election and people's it was because you were worried you knew that we to reckon with. throw these charges at you that's why you tried. the the electoral commission in malawi announced that there had been fraud and that they are going to ask to seek for the counting and i see if that is the the kids then i think malawians disease. of their choice i am calling for iran but i am not a kind of the even if there were had been a run i was not going to run going to run again no that is not up to me i cannot of course it is soft money and also not ruling it out you might run again if they want me to run again not run again but it's not a priority for me it doesn't matter. i believe that you and your city your people you don't have to be into that house you can serve your people at any level at any rate let's talk about the economy and poverty issues you've made a lot of contributions on since leaving office for the club to madrid and others when you came to power in twenty twelve you inherited a shock to the economy no doubt about one of your first moves as president was tech cept the i.m.f. led recovery measures that your predecessor had resisted which included a forty nine percent devaluation of the malawian currency a measure that many experts say hit the poorest malawians hardest there was a skyrocketing skyrocketing in the price of basic commodities by as much as fifty percent there was panic buying those protests on the streets looking back do you regret buying into the i.m.f. treatment plan. you know i don't think you're being fair to malawians the truth of the matter is that i had to make very hard decisions do we devalue the question by forty nine percent do we get back on course we thought and we have their economy had grown by one point eight percent so define a company as well but it is not that five percent there was money for only one week two million people had no food six hundred seventy five women who are dying giving birth so therefore for me do i take these hard decisions there's one lesson that i lent is that when you're a leader you must be all inclusive i organized what i would do the national dialogue when the economy under there we picked only five six us because i had only two years to go even though it kicks you have to listen to what the people do say but also as a leader engage the people i have learned as a leader that when you engage the people those stand with you and by and by you what you should be looking on is then what was this tuition or they call me when i existed and what is this tuition with the economy today because we had grown by over thirty six percent from one point eight when i came when there were no lights there was no more doubt when i left we had water and it's all the time and we over . produced our food by one million metric tons. companies well put it in a different business don't look good you're proud of your economic research i will go out of the air force that i made and since leaving office you've dedicated yourself not only to women and minority rights initiative but to development work to the club of madrid to advancing democracy you've argued that while africa really needs is not aid but trade but you've also had firsthand experience is present in malawi of edelman always the country's very a dependent country at what point would you be able to say that africa has outgrown a country that malawi have outgrown and do you know. in two thousand and one i mean in malawi see my always losing fifty percent of its aid through mismanagement and corruption in two thousand and six that same minister said that and was sacked in my opinion malawi gets forty percent of its budget of support from it if we served thirty percent from corruption. all we would want to find is ten percent maui is not poor and this song let me speak in general about africa africa is not poor we are reaching the sources so what do we need to do in my opinion is to set our priorities right is to sit down and say wow how can we best use our natural resources for the benefit of our people so if i have a dream that one day we shall have dime was for cash gold for poor households that a country that is rich in diamonds we were these into their house for households for a thousand dollars a year so all the girls in that school and boys go to school all enjoy so my opinion in my opinion africa can move forward without eight if they can just sit their priorities right not that it is not important but to troops like where we are going we don't have a choice but what we must do is to see what is it that we could do ourselves to to lift ourselves out of this difficult situation to respond thank you for joining me from. donald trump's reckless war of words with kim jong un has many around the world worried about nuclear war but trump all by himself candy the truth might surprise you up from producer ryan kohls has this week's reality check. at the end i use a good night's sleep so it would be nice i think there's some sort of check on donald trump authority to launch nuclear weapons but here's a wake up call if the us president wants to start a nuclear war all by himself nobody can stop it he has the sole authority to launch the united states nuclear arsenal that's hundreds of nukes ready to fly within just five minutes of. yes launch officers working pairs. known to the launch new except of course if you think there are other checks and balances you're not alone when asked in a poll forty four percent of americans said they think trump needs to ask congress . before launching a new now a few u.s. lawmakers who are worried about trump's rhetoric have sponsored legislation that would require congressional approval for a preemptive nuclear strike but that bill is stalled in congress and even if it did move through trump probably wouldn't sign a bill taking a stand on nuclear toys away thirty two percent of americans also think trump needs to confer with military advisors or cabinet officials but if you want to launch an atomic weapon not even a secretary of defense can do anything about it as william perry once remarked nobody has the right to countermand that decision when former u.s. president richard nixon was nearing the end of his presidency his advisors started to get worried he might start a nuclear war president nixon was depressed drinking heavily and frightening members of congress with odd comments about nukes even though nixon worried u.s. officials in the past nothing was done about it in fact the u.s. arsenal is set up this way on purpose the u.s. wanted to adversaries to know that if the president orders a strike that order will be followed quickly and without question it's what they call deterrence the idea that if your nuclear threat is credible and scary enough your adversaries won't test you and you won't have to use it. best not make it what rested. they will be met with five fury. like the world has never seen and since trump has sole launch authority other nations watch his behavior closely nearly the people who set up the system made some big assumptions that the u.s. president would be a sound mind and careful with his words and tweets with. while the iran nuclear deal was hailed as a triumph of diplomacy by supporters around the world israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu called it a very bad deal and double trouble called it the worst deal ever the us president recently decided to officially decertify what's formerly known as the jane c.p.o. a the joint comprehensive plan of a. action between iran and six other countries so as that historic deal hangs in the balance in the u.s. will the other five signatories follow trump's lead and what the deals unraveling lead to a new war in the region joining me to discuss this are trita parsi founder and president of the national iranian american council and author of the new book losing an enemy obama iran and the triumph of diplomacy and from los angeles danny aiello on former israeli deputy foreign minister and former israeli ambassador to the u.s. thank you both for joining me in the arena danny let me start with you you've been a staunch critic of both iran and the iran nuclear deal the way you welcomed president trumps decision to decertify the deal in october because as you said at the time it creates an opportunity to fix it what is it about the deal that you think needs fixing i think that the. legs into major things first of all it does not include iran's terrorism support of terrorism throughout the region trying actually to subvert and in many many ways to disrupt everything that goes in the region and the second thing is the. missiles that they continue to test the with the corporation that they have with north korea and we know north korea just this week have launched the most powerful ballistic missiles so far this creates a very very dangerous situation so i would say to sum it up we're all dependent right now because of this agreement on the goodwill of the and before i respond to that just to be clear for the sake of our viewers because you criticising parts of the deal and you're saying the deal itself is a lot of work are you saying that the deal needs to be amended or are you saying it needs to be scrapped. well i think realistically i don't see it being scrapped we have to remember that it has six parties. because of iran so it's not just the united states it will be very very hard to bring the europeans on board let alone russia and china but definitely i think we can do some things i think it's also the interest of all the other parties as well trita parsi adani says that you cannot do you kind of a deal that works that depends on the goodwill of the iranian government a lot of people listening to even if they don't support the israeli line in the middle east will say that's a very fair point how do you have a deal that's based on the goodwill of iran's government because you don't have a deal that is based on the goodwill of the iranian government you have a deal that has put on iran the most intrusive inspections in limitations that ever has been achieved fortunately thus far nine i reports have made it very clear that iranians are living up to every aspect of the deal and the i.e. has the access that they need it is not based on their goodwill i think it's important to understand if the united states through congress right now tries to change to deal with even if it's an attractive change from the u.s. or from the israeli perspective it is a violation of the deal if a single country goes in and just tries to change the terms of this deal so if one is concerned about not scrapping the deal it makes me very curious why are we then doing things that would ensure that the deal would get scrapped well i would say unfortunate the situation is not as sanguine as. describes because military installations are exempt and in any case a specter is have to give enough time they cannot do just random and surprised. checks so the iranians employee employer time to disguise whatever they do also we don't know what we don't know. from the israeli perspective there's been a history. of making demands that are simply completely unrealistic your saying is israel makes unrealistic demands on the inspections front what about the ballistic missiles that dani mentioned every thousand but that's not just the israelis ki-moon when he was secretary general said he was concerned iran's missile launches were not consistent with the constructive spirit of the nuclear deal the french the british the germans have all made noises about the fact they're not happy that iran keeps firing these but test firing these ballistic missiles that's not exactly helpful or conducive to really not helpful but at the same time you have to understand that security doesn't go one way the saudis right now are outspending iran with a factor of five to six on military spending you cannot expect iran to not have any defenses what we can do however is to learn from the diplomatic experience that we've had here there's only one example in the last thirty seven years and which we have seen the west being able to change dramatically one of iran's core policies and that's through these negotiations and what the change happened in the nuclear deal so everything else has failed so if we want to address stability stick missile issue that i agree with you many countries have concerns where there is a path forward of the path is through diplomacy so we could have additional negotiations to address those issues but that's not what we're doing right now we're trying to scrap the i want to come back to the diplomatic angle and whether you know you know this option of you know are we heading towards a new conflict before i get to that point don't you have to ask you i mean there's no point saying you know the iranians don't allow inspections the iranians aren't transparent israel actually has nuclear weapons and doesn't allow anyone to come and inspect its nuclear facilities is that a bit hypocritical for your country to be leading the charge against iran's nuclear weapons program as it is now. well marty that's a good question but but not really first of all you know. that's a long tradition and policy has not changed that israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the middle east so why are. next to that israel is a democracy with checks and balances and also israel is the only country in the world that its existence is has been threatened when the ayatollah has threatened to erase israel or when saddam hussein at the time did or many other is whether it's hizbullah. i understand the israeli defensive posture i'm not questioning that i'm simply asking a simple question the u.n. resolution for seven for example calls upon israel to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the i.a.e.a. iran is having intrusive inspections of street to point out you say you want even more intrusive measure i'm saying why not level the playing field and say you know what i'll set a good example to iran and say we're going to allow all the inspectors from the eye to come into our nuclear facilities where we have actual nukes not i but that it will use actual and well i would say because from ality i would say in the legal arguments is on our side israel has never signed then we are not a party to the nonproliferation. n.p.a. and iran is so iran is subject to the to the inspections and to the regulations of the n.p.t. what we have seen that actually while it was a member of n.p.t. they cheated and broken every and violated every commitment that they had israel does not have any commitments or obligations and simply this is the core of our national security policy because of the situation we are in. is rather than the same legal obligations iran does well precisely because israel is outside of the n.p.t. it makes it very difficult for israel to. this size the i.a.e.a. and their inspections of iran and what iran is doing would you essentially are saying is that the rest of the region is at the mercy of the goodwill of the israeli government the same argument that you falsely used against iran there's not a single report by the i.a.e.a. pointing out that israel's nuclear program is peaceful so the fact that the iranians have now signed this agreement is in allowing all of these inspections inside of their program is really putting israel in a very very uncomfortable position in which the hypocrisy of its policy is becoming very very clear to me yet while i would say that there is no way to put there to to have any moral equivalency between iran and israel also by the way israel has never threaten any of its neighbors or any other country israel has been alive trying i'll get another one in sixty years now but on the other hand we have the iranian ayatollah's as we know that they have been cheating we know that they are subverting and actually supporting terror throughout the region and they are israel has nuclear weapons doesn't it everyone in the world knows israel has nuclear weapons. well i can only repeat we're a long tradition the statement that we will never be the first to introduce nuclear weapons take that as a you know lisa let me just ask you this and a lot of the israeli officials you'll hear criticizing the deal you could be the one who's leading your position could be the one that leads to more death and more war because getting rid of the deal leads inevitably to a new war in the middle east in which iranians die israelis potentially die americans die etc what's your response to that when i look in history there and without exception when you have a tyrant dictatorial and very very aggressive regime ideologically aggressive regime is the iranians if you must decide. on a war or a lead them getting more strength i think the. first option is the former is much better had hitler been stopped in the early thirty's or the meat thirty's maybe the lives of sixteen million people would have been saved this is the same sheet situation right now and i can i would have another question maybe for trita. for them because you are essentially saying that as long as iran is ruled by this government you cannot do anything else but actually cut down their power which essentially means going to war that is the argument you're presenting. i would i would ask why would iran why were they so adamant about not including the limitation to their ballistic missile tests if understand that by continuing their ballistic testing by continuing trying to topple every regime which is not in their liking whether it's in the saudi arabia or any other sunni country then they would be under severe sanctions again i believe there would be a pressure also from the population who has suffered a lot under the sections too to have the government changes course is that the problem trita that when danny says these things about the iranian government lot of populations journalist politicians here and say yes that's true that is part of the problem that we've done this deal with a regime we don't like with a government we don't like which is clearly committing all sorts of human rights abuses which aren't covered by the deal which is supporting a pretty vicious and violent government in syria and destabilizing that part of the world in their eyes and that's what's undermining trusters own it comes to your human rights you're absolutely right this is a government that is engaged in tremendous human rights violations right now but the population in iran supported this deal overwhelmingly and you can't make the argument that all of this was a deal with the ayatollah as the population was fully backing this deal they were dancing in the streets when the deal was struck they wanted this because they want to break out of their isolation they want to have better relations with the west they want to be able to connect and they can't as long as hardliners in israel and in iran and saudi arabia are pushing things towards a confrontation that further isolates the population and further increases the repression that they're facing but if the argument is you cannot make a deal with this government because it's a bad government then you're only going to end up making deals with governments you like will governments you like you probably don't have any problems with to begin with so what is the purpose of diplomacy there how worried should we be in your view about a new war with iran in the middle east in the coming years i'm very worried that the trajectory. three of things is going in that direction and that the measures that are being argued here as fixing the deal will end up whether intended or not to kill the deal and once we have no deal we're back to the situation that existed in two thousand and thirteen and which everything is pointing towards either acquiescing to iran's nuclear program or going to work done a last word my last word is it all depends on the international community if we show a strong hand against the iranians just as they were in i think it twenty thirteen was a real real missed opportunity because the iranians were begging for a deal and if we had a i mean the p five plus one had a firmer position we could have gotten a much much better deal and it's not too late still to do to fix it we'll have to leave it. alone trita parsi thank you both for joining me in the arena that's our show up front will be back next week. in syria citizens are collecting evidence. reveal has a lot of crimes committed against civilians who've moved out of syria now about six hundred thousand pages of material so that one day they can bring the outside regime to justice it puts a human face on the charges it's a dead human face but it's a human face syria witnesses for the prosecution at this time on al-jazeera. without his ears eyes and ears on the ground in southern africa identifying the crucially important stories for the body is that incredibly to others. yemen's ousted president asked iraq to help in fighting between its full says and the former allies the huge the rebels.

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