 Hello, and welcome to NewsClick's International Roundup. I'm Prashant and this week we look at a series of historic developments that have happened both in the Korean Peninsula and West Asia. To speak with us on this issue, we have Praveer Prakash, the founding editor of NewsClick. So Praveer, we'll start with the Korean Peninsula. So yesterday the leaders of North Korea and South Korea met and it was a pretty historic moment both in terms of the visuals that we saw as well as a joint statement that came out. And there was a reference to denuclearization, there was a reference to reunification and all these are quite a lot of positive hopes for the future. So could you give us a brief background of the deal as well as what is likely to happen? I think the two significant parts of what you are calling as a historic moment and we don't of course know how far this will go or whether it will really rectify in what the presidents have said. I think the two important issues are the two presidents of North and South Korea and they call themselves differently as you know, Democratic people's Republic of Korea and Republic of Korea. So they have affirmed that the two Korean Koreas as it were will take charge of the reunification of the Korean nation and therefore they are really asserting that they will decide what's going to happen in the Korean peninsula. I think that's a very important decision that is the first time that the leadership of the process is being asserted by the two Koreas and it is not something they are saying well will be decided internationally with others and so on. So in that sense asserting in the current climate where the president of the United States Trump has been making various comments about nuking North Korea, sending them back to state, Stone Age, etc., etc. In this context these two presidents meeting and asserting that they are going to decide the future of Koreas I think is a very important assertion. The second point of course is that we have had in Korea as you know a long armistice which means there never has been a peace agreement which becomes or as it were is signed at the end of any of the wars or conflicts that we have seen. In 1953 what was decided, the 38th parallel is a temporary line of control. It's an LOC and there is only an armistice. It's a temporary succession of hostilities. It is not the declaration of peace. This is something North Korea has been asking repeatedly that we need a peace agreement which guarantees what we have guaranteed the sovereignty of North Korea and therefore it is something which should be part of the start of a peace process and not the end of one as it were. I think this again the two Koreas presidents have asserted that they are going to have they are going to lead the peace process though they have also said that either trilaterally or quadrilaterally they have also made both the United States and China as a part of the peace process because they know that there were four parties in the armistice itself in the Korean War itself and therefore without taking into consideration the United States and China a full peace process is not possible. It's also clear if you look at the map of the Koreas and you can see the American basis. You can see that North Korea has China and Russia as its neighbors. You have Japan on one side. You have also Okinawa the military base where the United States has station soldiers. You have Guam which is not that far away from the Koreas. If you say all of this you will realize that there is a larger geostrategic issue over here and I think therefore it is an admission of the realities if you will of the theater that both have accepted that yes there are other parties to the peace process which who need to come on board. I will say the denuclearization etc etc are the things which actually were the consequence of not having a peace. In fact the nuclear path that North Korea took was the realization that after particularly particularly Gaddafi gets killed that nuclear weapons are weapons which can for even weaker states provide a certain guarantee of survival against the conventional nuclear the conventional military power of the NATO particularly the United States. And I think therefore this is the lesson they drew and if there is lasting peace in the region then the logic of nuclear weapons and missiles become much less for North Korea. So one of the key factors is also that Kim Jong-un is expected to meet Donald Trump also in a couple of months. So considering what you mentioned about the geostrategic situation there and the kind of US deployment does the United States really have an incentive for taking this process forward or is it likely to end in a problematic or a stalemate again? I think this is an interesting issue because Trump can now claim victory okay whether it is or it is not is not really the issue but he can claim victory that's because of his threats this has happened. Now as we know Korea's have earlier also negotiated peace there was a sunshine policy which was there in place by two presidents which was abandoned really in 2008 and then we have these two presidents who went very conservative right wing very aggressive towards North Korea and then we again have the current president President Moon who is continuing really the sunshine policy. So you have the Korea's taking a certain role there is also the United States which as you said has always been in some sense a spoiler because though it did agree to certain things when the nuclear agreement was struck earlier that agreement was with respect to North Korea abandoning nuclear power production and also fissile material production. It was something which the North Koreans did keep to the letter of the agreement but the Americans never delivered even the letter of the agreement which was supply of diesel for the loss of the powers and power that the nuclear reactor was generating the fact that it really decommissioned that reactor and they're supposed to build power reactors which for six years and this agreement was in place nothing really happened on the ground all of this led to what the Americans claimed is a violation the spirit of the agreement they started uranium enrichment centrifuges which are not barred under the agreement. So then the Americans of course as John Bolton said we got the hammer to break the agreement so they took a hammer to the agreement using this as a pretext. So the question is Americans have never lived up to their commitments while they expect everybody else to do so and this is something we have seen across across the globe on every agreement that the US enters into. I think the issue really here is that irrespective what the United States done how much leverage do they have over South Korea. If South Korea says we want peace and this is the way to go what exactly can the United States do and I think that's an open question and what we are beginning to see is that those that instead of US being the sole global superpower determining the future of the future of every conflict whether there is peace there is war. I think more players are now inserting their right to their future and I think this in that sense is also now going to open up what can the regional players do. How they can bring about peace without really interference from the global hegemon or is it possible impossible for them to do so. I think this is an open question. Okay so moving on to another area and another deal that the United States was involved in. So recently President Emmanuel Macron visited Washington and had a discussion with Donald Trump and at that point they took a more hard line stance on Iran in the 2015 nuclear deal and they plan to impose more strict conditions on Iran if the deal were to continue including missile technology including again nuclear technology extending the deadlines which had been stated in the deal. So what are broadly the geostrategic reasons for taking a more hard line stance on Iran considering that the deal was more or less settled and everyone had agreed everyone was on board with it. Well let's put it this way the European Union was on board with agreement which was engineered essentially under President Obama's time and at the time itself Donald Trump said he thought it was a sellout and he would break the agreement. After becoming the president he has not broken the agreement but he has sort of put the ball on the Congress to see whether the agreement needs to be broken or not and it's possible for the Congress as well as Trump to provide for sanctions which go far beyond what was originally envisaged or which are which are going to be completely unilateral bringing in issues which are completely extraneous to the agreement. What they're trying to do is to get Iran to break the agreement by putting all these conditions on Iran and therefore making whatever the deliverable was on the side of the United States and the European Union those deliverables are therefore postponed or stopped because further conditions are being put and what does Iran do? So instead of breaking the agreement creating conditions which Iran then says I leave the agreement. I think that's the game that we have. Now how much Macron would play into this how much with the rest of the European Union follows the issue. For Iran therefore the question is are the better off if large sections of the European Union say we do not accept what the United States is doing we will not impose the sanctions. Then what does Iran do? Will the European Union or large sections of it irrespective of Macron and Theresa May who seem to have become Trump's camp followers as you saw in the Syrian strike also will the rest of the European Union play ball or not is really the big question and I think that's something we have to see. These threats have been developing since Trump took over. Now we have John Bolton in place who is always advocated breaking the agreement. We have Macron who seems to have become now shall we say United States or Trump's puppy for reasons which are not clear don't forget the France. France never joined the Iraq war so they did differentiate themselves from United States at that time and they have always tended to follow a relatively independent if you will foreign policy unlike the United Kingdom. Now that we have this three countries sort of going together it's really something we have to see what the rest of the European Union will do. So I'm not saying that the Iran agreement the nuclear deal is off. I think we'll have to see what exactly transpires what the other states will do and the big question in the region how far will the US England and France go to show up essentially Israel's interests which is really the issue because it's not the nuclear deal as we know Iran has completely adhered to the nuclear deal. The the missile capability they have built or they are building is far weaker than the missiles which have been given by US and United Kingdom and France to Saudi Arabia and what Israel has. So it's very clear it's really the regional strategic balance again which is what they are trying to play in by disarming missile technology from Iran. If missiles or longer range missiles of Iran are taken out and these missiles are not intercontinental missiles they are really missiles with a range to hit Israel. If that is taken out then what you're doing is establishing Saudi Arabia and Israel is a preeminent regional pass and Iran with 80 billion people are much larger in size than Israel and certainly much bigger both in capacity and in people from the population of Saudi Arabia. They're to set up much smaller countries as the preeminent pass are not going to be acceptable. So the fact that Iran's missile technology is the target now it's clear the issue is not about nuclear weapons nuclear deal. It's really about how to have military dominance of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the NATO powers over the region. And one of the targets is also of course the Iranian involvement of Iran in Syria also and when we look at Syria right now the OPCW is conducting further investigation into Douma where the alleged chemical attack took place. So has there been any further developments on that or any more evidence or anything that basically changes the game? I think it's increasingly clear that Assad had absolutely no reason to launch a chemical attack on Douma at a time when he was obviously winning and Douma was being evacuated by the shall we say the various forces over there which is a combination of Al Qaeda as well as ISIS. So there is that there is no incentive for him to use chemical weapons and they were bust out the next day or the day after that. Thank you Praveel. That's all the time we have for today. Keep watching NewsClick.