From our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. 2013 was a big year in foreign and domestic policy. Joining me now is tom friedman, friend of this program and a bestselling author. His book from beirut to jerusalem was updated to reflect changes in the region. He travels around the world. He most recently visited saudi arabia. The united arab china, and singapore. I am especially pleased to have him back at this table. At where we are, where we are going, and where we have been in the past year. Welcome. I apologize for my voice. Thats ok. Today i a column dont know whether secretary of state john kerry will succeed in his chosen priorities trying to , forge an israelipalestinian peace and a detente with iran that deprives it of a nuclear weapon. But i admire his restlessness, i admire the way he dares to fail. I admire his strategy trying to construct a diplomacy that makes impossible for israel, palestinians, and iran to continue avoiding their big existential choices. Continuing, tell me what the choices are and what you think john kerrys doing and what his is his strategy for doing it. My gut feeling is that it is just great to see a guy break all the rules, go through all the red lights and just say, i know i shouldnt be doing this because you all think it is impossible and i was one of those who probably said it was impossible. But i will try and i will bring Incredible Energy to it. And by the way, when you tell me you are too busy today, that is ok. I will sit in the lobby and i will wait to see you tomorrow. There is real relentlessness to the sky. Guy. Is one thentelling the details every day. Absolutely. He has really kept a tight ship and has done in a really smart way. He is basically lets go for the iran deal first. It is a choice. New york to be a big north korea or a persian china . Do you want to be a country that is powerful and feared because you are building a nuclear weapon, in which case you will be completely isolated, or do you want to get that no clear did that Nuclear Program to one where your neighbors are happier to live with and focus on empowering and unleashing your people to realize their full potential . We forget, because iran has been isolated for 30 years. This is a great civilization. We are talking persia here. And it has been completely suppressed. By saying to the iranians, we are ready to let you enrich up to your Actual Research and electrical needs, which are the minutes de minimus. Ready to do that, but not ready to allow you to become a Nuclear Weapons state. If you are ready to buy that deal, you can be a part of the Global Community again. That is a real choice. The israelis, you have three choices. You only get two. What a be a jewish state. You want to be democratic state. And you want a state with all the land of israel. You only get two out of you can three. Be jewish and democratic they dont get all of the land of israel. You can be democratic and in all of the land of israel, but you cant be jewish. And you can be in all the land of israel and jewish, but you cant be democratic. You have to choose. Which one do you want to be . What kerrys strategy is to go right at the security issue. Basically saying, you have legitimate security concerns. They have nonstate actors armed with missiles mixing among civilians on four borders, sinai, gaza, lebanon and syria. That is no joke. Kerry is saying lets take on that security need you have. We know people who are good at security, our own pentagon. You have former commander john allen who says come with me and lets take on this project. What would be as full proof of a security plan as you can put in place . The most important thing in dealing with israelis, if you want to be taken seriously you have to answer one question. Do you know what neighborhood im living in . I think john kerry is starting the conversation, saying, i know what neighborhood you are living with. I can designst as of a security plan. In order to say to you, if you go this way, i can change the balance between risk and opportunities. It is going to be a balance, but doing nothing is also a real risk. We see mounting Israeli Palestinian violence. We see groups like the American Studies Association joining the movement to delegitimize and isolate israel. Doing nothing kerry is trying to , say i will put the straight before you and i think the balance of risk and opportunities are here. And where the opportunities are greater. Do you believe those are the from those other places like , that theseamallah questions are finding some residents . Definitely. You see them wrestling with them. I saw an interview the other day with the Iranian Foreign minister. There has been some issue where we went after some companies that were appearing to violate the boycott. They went nuts. We are going to walk out, we are going to leave, this is a violation of the interim agreement. We have the same objectives. I always say about the iranians that you had to back. Context is everything. So why are the iranians at the table . They had an election a couple of months ago in which six men ran. Six men were allowed to run, only men of course. And these were their names. Black,ck, mr. Black, mr. Mr. Black, mr. Black, mr. Light black. One guy was just a little more moderate than the others. 50. 4 of iranians voted for mr. Light black. I am told the actual number was 54 . The regime was so freaked out they allowed him to just squeaked by. But they know what the real result was. Down below, there is a huge quest. All these iranians, half the country is under the age of 30, some huge number who never heard of the shah. But they have heard of twitter and facebook and the European Union and america, so the iranians are not at the table by accident. History works this way. In fairness to secretary clinton, she deserves a lot of credit for printing sanctions in place. It really got russia and china on board and president obama as well, that really turned. John kerry has had a different iran to work with. Absolutely. And, by the way, a different israel. Conditioned in different im not criticizing her, but i in april in beirut 1982. Israel invaded six weeks later. There is dumb luck and serendipity in all these things. Kerry came in with the right energy at the right time. And willing to take the risk. Because he is not thinking about running for some Political Office anywhere. This is his swan song. He really acts like a guy. You see the frenetic way he has traveled with a purpose. He acts like a guy who is saying i only have so much time. Im not going to waste a day. God bless him. Where does syria fit in all this . Lets go back. Thought. Maybe syria is at the point of exhaustion where the parties will be ready to come to the table. I lived through five to 10 years of the lebanese civil war. It lasted 14 years in total. In the end, how did the lebanese civil war end . In 1989, on one principle no victor, no vanquished. And the minorities needed to be overrepresented. To assure them. I said in the beginning syria , will only end with no victor, no vanquished. Willdea that the alawites defeat the islamist fundamentalists, that the fundamentalists will be the alawites, that is a fiction. To me, the question is when do all the parties basically say we are ready to step back. , formercrocker ambassador to iraq and syria, now says to reengage with assad. Even though we said he should leave. You dont necessarily have to withdraw that. You have to reengage because the circumstances are different and the nature the opposition are different. I think it is very good advice. And it goes back to no victor no vanquished. What assad has done is not just bad but despicable. The people he has killed, his own country, the way he has yeah in this neighborhood, it is hama rules. As i wrote a long time ago. They are tommy what hama rules are. Goes back to the city of hama in 1982 in beirut. He faced a challenge than from the islamic fundamentalists. Who tried to launch a revolve out of the town of hama, third or fourthlargest in syria. And he crushed them by leveling the town. I am not speaking metaphorically. I mean blowing up the buildings and steamrolling them. And those are the local rules. Hama rules are no rules at all. That is the way the regime plays. But its not like the other side are somehow representatives of virtue and madisonian principles. There are some decent people who really are democrats but they are not right now an empowered majority. And somehow, we have to get somebody to the table negotiating. My friend was sharing with me an idea that everyone should have to agree on three principles. Ceasefire, number one. Number two, you agree to a majority election. You have to agree to that. But you have to agree that everybody gets to come to the table. If you tried to construct a deal where you dont get to come but i get to come, it wont happen. Everybody that wants to come does everybody want to come to the table . It is not clear. This is where we have to have the russians involved, we need them to lean on assad. We need the saudis to lean on , andunni militias obviously we need to lean on everybody. I dont think they will come by themselves. But i think we are getting to that state of exhaustion. I hope so. And the russians can play a positive role. I am a huge believer to there ever since we talked about nato expansion, that there is no big problem in the world that we can solve without the help of russia. But look at russia and the ukraine. I would tell you that part of that goes to the nato expansion. That was the gift that kept on giving. What nato expansion basically said to the russians, we broke a promise to them, we push and nato right up to your borders. This is before prudent putin. It was humiliating to them. It was done under yeltsin. And putin represents the the backlash. He is addicted to this. He has discovered, running against america is like being in the tea party. It is as good as it gets. He has discovered such great domestic politics to run against america and the west, they want to keep us down, encroach on our borders. I am not a defender of putin. But at the same time, we cant do anything without him. He has a strategy from russia to play a role. People forget people forget the Russian Orthodox church plays a very Important Role in putins russia and his psyche. The christians of syria are predominantly orthodox, so you have a church there whispering in his year that assad is the protector of the christians. That is a factor. That we have ignored. You dont see that. But it is part of their thinking. This whole possibility of the enlargement of the shia versus sunni warfare exploding outside of syria. I say a couple of things. One is that we hoped when the lid came off with the arab spring that what we saw is something you and i have talked about, we saw people grabbing their freedom from the from the assad government, from the mid m ubarak government, from the gaddafi government. But they couldnt agree on freedom, too. This is in Isaiah Berlin idea. What do you want to be free to do . It turned out to be that some wanted to be free to be more islamist. Some wanted to be free to be more sectarian. And some wanted to be free to be more democratic. That is the problem. There was no agreement. , that is why that we have seen all these revolutions sort of stall. There was no consensus about what they wanted to be free to. And the people who made the war were not very good or interesting government. Especially in egypt. Exactly. And we have learned that lesson time and again. It is very difficult in these modern revolutions now where everyone is kind of equal to develop leadership. One of the teases i take away from this is how much leadership and the right kind of leadership in particular really matters. That is a Nelson Mandela point. That you need these popular movements to sweep away these regimes. But whether it is in business or politics, yes, the bottom is being empowered more. Which is great and it is exciting, but you still need a leader. You need someone to edit what is coming up, all of this innovation. In politics, you need someone who will edit and direct, someone who has a little elevation and can see where we are going, over the crowd. That has been the real struggle for all of the movements, from occupy wall street to tahrir square. The leaders matter. They are able say, trust me, to the people. Im going to take a chance. Trust me, i understand your reservations in and believe me. But lets surprise them. Lets show what we are capable of surprising. We are not going to be predictable. Or not even going to be like them. That is what is so missing in the israeli and palestinian politics, the element of surprise, that netanyahu would say, thene morning and palestinian president lives 45 minutes away. Im going to drive around sunday morning to his house. Or whatever. For the king of saudi arabia to say, i dont just have this peace plan, but come to riyadh. Imagine the shock to see their president fly in a plane to riyadh. And imagine the night is president of the United States finds that israel and saudi arabia and the emirates are on the same page in saying to him, we are not sure we can trust you. We are not sure which what you mean when you say the red line and if you will be there. A couple of things about that. That is telling us a big point, which was that, underneath the the sanctions, as long as they were in place, they were disguising a whole set of differences between the parties. America, israel, saudi arabia. For america, we actually are comfortable with an iran we are ready to tolerate an iran that can enrich Nuclear Material as long as we can prevent them from making a bomb. Why is that . Lord knows you and i talked about this. We tried for 10 years after 9 11 to control the middle east with our own boots on the ground. We have not been successful and we paid a huge price. Stabilize the area without being there ourselves. How do you do that . Balance the two biggest soon i and shiite sunny and shiite powers sunni and shiite powers. We need a relationship with iran. When we went into afghanistan, the iranians made a vital role in helping us to feed the taliban, the sunni fundamentalist militia that the iranians opposed. If you want to get out of afghanistan and have some stability there, you need them as well. So we have a need for our own relationship with iran for both those reasons. And remember, this is a great civilization, a multicultural, a multiethnic society, not unlike ours in terms of its ethnographic composition. It has its own wacky limited democracy that empowers women. This is a country that is a lot like us. You know who senses that the most . The gulf arabs. They sense that these guys they are their mortal enemies. Thats right. So we can live with a certain kind of iran. The israelis can live with a strong iran as long as it is not meddling around with hezbollah. For them, iran is persians and shiites. They dont want them to be strong at all. In saudi arabia, you get a cartoon image. Iran was like the big brother who 34 years ago walked out of the house and slammed the door. He took his bicycle. You took his tennis shoes. He took his bed. Iluted had an und relationship with uncle sam. Last month, knock knock. Hes back and they are just freaking out. Hes back. He wants his bicycle, his bed, his shoes, and his own relationship with uncle sam. And they are talking to each other. What they really sense and fear is that they like each other. So that is freaking them out. So the israelis have some interest around the nuclear thing. But i argue that even that serves to separate. Israelis would want nothing more if iran changes to have a natural relationship the relationship between jews in and persia is very deep and long. We know that in our own dna. So these guys sense all of that. My message to them when i was there just talking to her friends in the gulf and saudi arabia is, to try to fight this you have to build your own relationship. Do you want to spend the rest of your life replaying the shiite sunni fight from the seventh century . How is that going to work out for you . Do you think the iranians will be willing to do what do you asked them to do about hezbollah . If they let them go, it is all over for hezbollah. This is where the bazaar opens. I need your help in afghanistan. Maybe i will give you help on economic you need some going some boeing spare parts that you thought 30 years ago . The cool thing is it all plays together. That is was exciting. When you have a secretary of state ready to play. They had an interview with the senator who is from where this guy who is missing in iran is from. He said, so i called the Iranian Ambassador at the eu and said, u. N. And said, could you pass this message . Roll that back. By the way, i called the Iranian Ambassador. You bet the Iranian Ambassador took his call. Explained robert levinson. You know more than i do, i am afraid. My colleague john miller, former fbi, knows the family, has asked me when i interviewed iranian president s, ahmadinejad said he knew of him, knew what it was about. A lot of people in america did not know. That was a disclosure we just had. But they said, look, they suggested they had him. Then you had zarif saying, if we had him we would deliver him. The poor families. We would give him if we knew where he was. I dont understand either. If they did have him and they turned him over now, let him go home, boy, that would unlock a lot of goodwill for them. The thing about iran is that there are fails in side veils inside veils. You never know which veil youre in. Everybody is, should we trust them . In the same way that the israelis say why should we trust the palestinians. These are legitimate questions. And john kerry is trying to say i hear you. I will do as much as i can to build security and i will lay out this opportunity on the other side because you so have the arab peace initiative. You will have relations with every arab country and every islamic country. He is not coming to them and saying, no risk, nothing to worry about. Its not that your point is a bad point. Saying i understand. Build up the opportunity side and put them in a balance place. Smart strategy. You have been to china and you have been to singapore. Heres my question about china. If you talk to a sinologist, they tell you the consensus is china went through a phase called peaceful rise. And has gotten so big. They dont need to rise so peacefully anymore. That is one theory. Or we can have global demand. Exactly. I come in a little different. I think it is a frightened china more than a rising china. I think you are sitting where xi jinping is sitting, you are riding such a tiger. You now h