Return to Transcripts main page

Fareed Zakaria GPS

As U.S. Sanctions Bite, Iran Pushes the Limits; Is the Special U.S.-U.K. Relationship on the Rock?; The Massive Stakes in Israel's Upcoming Election; Indian Law on Gay Sex Discussed. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired July 14, 2019 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:25] FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria.

We'll start today's show with growing tensions between Iran and the West. Tankers and gunboats, sanctions and economic misery. Where is this all going? I'll talk to one of the deal's top negotiator, former secretary of energy, Ernest Moniz.

Then an undiplomatic response from President Trump --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATE: We're not big fans of that man.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: -- after diplomatic cables are leaked. The Darroch affair.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THERESA MAY, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: He has felt it necessary to leave his position as ambassador in Washington.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Whatever happened to the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom? I will ask Britain's former foreign secretary, David Miliband.

Also, American leaders have hailed Israel as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. Now, as an election fight heats up, some say it's a democracy on the brink. I will talk to Thomas Friedman who believes that the future of Israel itself is on the line.

But first, here's my take. The best illustration of the incoherence of the Trump administration's strategy toward Iran came last week in a White House press release. It read, "There is little doubt that even before the deal's existence, Iran was violating its terms." The White House has not subsequently explained how a country can violate the terms of a deal before that deal existed.

This is not the only example of incoherence. When Donald Tump announced last month that he had called off military strikes against Iran he said it was because he learned that an estimated 150 Iranians would have died. Instead, he further tightened economic sanctions against Iran. The sanctions being levied against Iran are having a massive and crippling effect on the country, says Jeffrey Sachs, an economist who had studied the effects of such measures. He notes, "Sanctions like these are known to cause a significant rise in mortality. Given the size of Iran's population, around 81 million, this is sure to be far larger than 150 deaths."

And keep in mind, the people who would have died in the military strikes likely would have been Iranian soldiers. Those who are now dying because of sanctions are newborn babies, mothers, the elderly, and sick.

The Trump administration has created a humanitarian crisis in Iran and a geopolitical crisis in the Middle East with no strategy to resolve either. The Iran pact had forced Tehran to commit, that it would never develop nuclear weapons, ship away 98 percent of its enriched uranium, destroy its plutonium reactors, and agreed to limits and intrusive inspections for between 10 and 25 years.

The international inspectors confirmed that Iran was adhering to the deal. By withdrawing from the pact, the Trump administration has allowed Iran to start moving away from those limits. For example, Tehran had agreed that it would only develop 300 kilograms of low enriched uranium until 2030. Last week, Iran exceeded that limit, justifying its move by pointing out that the United States had itself abrogated the pact.

U.S. actions toward Iran have also created a rift within the Western alliance. The Europeans are in open revolt against Washington's unilateralism and have even made efforts to establish an alternative payment mechanism to the dollar for trade with Iran.

As the noose tightens around Iran, it has been reacting with incremental actions by its own military or more often by associated militias from Yemen to the Persian Gulf. Each of these actions then produces a reaction from the United States or Saudi Arabia. In other words, Trump has sharply ratcheted up regional tensions with no good plan to resolve them.

The Trump administration is hoping for capitulation from the Iranians in which they will return to the negotiating table and accept a deal far more onerous than the one they signed in 2015. It's possible this will happen but far more likely that this regional cold war gets worse and worse.

[10:05:05] Even if there were some kind of temporary Iranian concessions born out of desperation, they will surely not last. Wounded embittered powers always find a way to return with a vengeance.

The Trump administration seems to forget that the Iranian civilization has been a major player in the Middle East for thousands of years. It has a strong tradition of nationalism and statecraft, and a history of resisting foreign domination. The path to stability in the Middle East does not lie in strangling

Iran. That would only sow the seeds of resentment and revanchism, creating a more unstable region and one in which the United States will find itself mired for decades. Alas, this is the path on which we find ourselves moving.

For more go to CNN.com/fareed and read my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started.

Let's keep talking about Iran and the future of the nuclear deal with one of America's top negotiators of that deal. Ernest Moniz was brought into the talks because he was the energy secretary at the time and a nuclear physicist, once head of MIT's Physics Department.

Secretary Moniz, pleasure to have you on.

ERNEST MONIZ, FORMER U.S. ENERGY SECRETARY: Thanks, Fareed. Pleasure to be back.

ZAKARIA: It seems to me that the Iranians are engaging in kind of almost staged violations of the deal, not even violations. They're sort of abrogating in ways that they are signaling that are sort of -- they claim permitted under the deal. What is the goal of these small steps that they are taking?

MONIZ: I think it's very much as you say. They certainly are not showing any evidence and do not want to project that they are going after a nuclear weapon. But what they are saying is that they are not getting the benefits of the agreement after the United States pulled out. And then really ramped up what I will call secondary sanctions dramatically, cut off their oil revenues. And so they are making a signal very, very clearly.

I would say especially to the Europeans that they need some solution to their -- to the economic benefits that they are being deprived of and they will continue to ratchet up without causing, in some sense, a panic that they are pursuing a nuclear weapon but making the case quite clearly that something needs to be done.

I might add, I think it is very important to remember that the agreement, the JCPOA, has built into it a minimum of one year for Iran to assemble the material for a nuclear weapon no matter what they do. If they go full-out, even make no attempt to disguise it, it would still take them a year. So, again, we have to put these, so far, small violations in a technical sense in perspective without diminishing the fact that they are, in fact, violations of some of the key parameters of the agreement.

ZAKARIA: The big deal would be if they were to get rid of the inspectors and the cameras. Because the deal has this very intrusive inspection process. Dozens of inspectors at every site from the uranium mines to the labs, to the production facilities. Is there any sign that they're trying to dismantle that inspection regime?

MONIZ: Well, so far not. Fareed, I think you have hit the nail on the head. Frankly, it's not emphasized enough that, in my view -- I have said this many times -- the most important part of the agreement is, in fact, the verification measures that are unique to Iran, much tougher than any other country is subject to. First of all, that's an indication that we actually had a broad spectrum of major powers, the United States, the European countries, Russia and China, all taking note of the fact that Iran did have a structured nuclear weapons program through 2003. And, therefore, the agreement is not built upon trust. The agreement is built upon, as you say, very intrusive and very unique inspection measures.

ZAKARIA: The Trump administration seems to be hoping that all this pressure will bring the Iranians back to the negotiating table and negotiate an even tougher deal. Longer time periods, include ballistic missiles, et cetera. You spent a long time negotiating with the Iranians. What is the likely prospect of that?

[10:10:01] MONIZ: I think right now it's not very likely, unless there is a much more creative proposal that provides benefits on both sides. And one reason of it is quite frankly, look, we all know the supreme leader obviously approved the agreement. But in doing so, he was consistently saying publicly, you know, you really can't trust the Americans. Well, the U.S. pulled out. And that certainly did nothing but reinforce his argument.

It's going to be very, very hard, I think, for these two leaders to come back together with a serious negotiation. We hope that that can happen. But the conditions are certainly not ideal, to put it mildly.

ZAKARIA: So the Trump administration, as you say, has ratcheted up the pressure tremendously. The Iranians are responding in various ways. Does it worry you that this kind of escalation spiral without a clear, you know, exit strategy, without a clear ramp that people can take, could lead to miscalculations?

MONIZ: Absolutely. I am, frankly, terrified of that possibility. I do believe that ultimately both the Iranian government and our administration and our military do not want a major military confrontation. But as you say, once you start getting into tit-for- tat and the tits and the tats are in fact often asymmetric, like it could be a military strike versus cyber responses versus across the Middle East activities by Iranians proxies against American assets and American personnel, this has every possibility of going out of control.

ZAKARIA: Ernest Moniz, always a pleasure to have you on.

MONIZ: Thank you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, the future of America's special relationship with the United Kingdom after Trump's twitter tirade against the British ambassador and prime minister. What is the future of Brexit? I will talk to the former British Foreign secretary, David Miliband, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:15:53] ZAKARIA: By some accounts, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt walked in on Winston Churchill in the White House fresh out of the bath and stark naked, Churchill uttered these words. "The prime minister of Great Britain has nothing to conceal from the president of the United States." And that statement to many encapsulates Washington's long special relationship with Westminster.

The friendship has been shaken in recent years but this week saw a new low in the aftermath of British Ambassador Kim Darroch's Trump's cables being leaked. In them he was frank about what he was seeing and hearing, calling the administration inept, among other things. Trump responded angrily and nastily not just toward the ambassador but the prime minister as well.

Joining me now is David Miliband, the United Kingdom's former Foreign secretary.

David, you knew Kim Darroch.

DAVID MILIBAND, FORMER UNITED KINGDOM FOREIGN SECRETARY: I still know him. He's alive and well, I'm pleased to say.

ZAKARIA: What did you think of -- what did you think of him as -- when you dealt with him professionally?

MILIBAND: Well, he was an outstanding ambassador. I mean, the president called him pompous and stupid. And those are the last words that you would use for Kim Darroch. He was a worldly man. He is a worldly man. He was very insightful about America having talked to him during his time here. He made a point of knowing the Washington game but also getting out into the country. And so he wasn't completely surprised by the victory of President Trump. He's a very astute watcher of the American scene.

And I think we now have a really unprecedented situation. The last time the United States government asked an ambassador to leave was in 1856. So this really is a low -- you called it a low point. And I think you're right because it's now a relationship with a lot of contempt on all sides.

ZAKARIA: You know, what's striking about this is everybody understands that ambassadors are required to be frank and it helps, you know, each country. For Donald Trump this seems to be -- you know, it's personal. That he feels the personal insult. Do you think that -- you know, this seems more so than with any previous administration, you dealt with a lot of countries -- the degree to which Trump personalizes everything?

MILIBAND: Yes. There were the two worrying things about it. One, why does the president really care? Has he got bigger things to worry about than the ambassador to the U.K. and the cable from two years ago? But secondly, it's the sense that everything is a battle. And actually, the Darroch relationship with the administration was one that had breadth and depth. And I think that there's a Brexit angle to this as well.

Britain has put itself outside the European community of nations, the European structure. That leaves Britain peculiarly vulnerable in the global village. And obviously I think President Trump smells some weakness there. This is ironic because the great claim of the Brexit here was to throw off the European chains and march around the world doing trade deals.

What I think is becoming clear is that Britain is more like a cork bobbing on the open sea if it goes ahead with Brexit. The no-deal Brexit. So there's a Brexit angle as well as a bilateral angle to it.

ZAKARIA: Speaking of which, Boris Johnson, the thing that precipitated Sir Kim's resignation seems to have been that the likely incoming prime minister refused to support him. All the others did, the prime minister, the foreign minister. Do you think that was a mistake? Should Boris Johnson --

MILIBAND: Yes. It was utterly spineless on Boris Johnson's part. The idea that you can't defend your own ambassador and not even understand that it's the most basic thing to do. That if a country can't choose its ambassadors to a country, then it really is in a low point.

Now Boris Johnson may be known to some of your viewers. He was a former mayor of London, he's a member of parliament since then. He is the putative next prime minister. All the polls suggest he's going to win the conservative leadership contest. But the irony is he's got there by hiding most of his views. It's quite hard to track him down. The journalists haven't been able to pin him down.

[10:20:00] And what he's foisting everything on is the defense of the idea that Britain should hold open a no-deal Brexit from the European Union. In other words, after three years of negotiations, say, we're not going to get a deal and we're going to take the consequences. And that really is dangerous.

ZAKARIA: Because it's so dangerous, a lot of people think there might be -- this actually opens up or widens the possibility of a second referendum or a parliamentary election that is essentially a referendum. And I was in London a couple of weeks ago. Lots of people still hope that in such a circumstance you would go back to London and --

MILIBAND: Well, I'd certainly want to. I certainly want to -- I do campaign and I would campaign for a second -- in a second referendum. And I campaigned for one. Look, in a way it slightly embarrasses for me yet again to explain to your viewers why Britain is in a terrible mess. But we are in a terrible mess. The wrecking ball of Britain's constitution, never mind its economy that's represented by Brexit, is really severe.

Where we are today is that there is a rising chance of a no-deal Brexit. It would be lunacy, I think, to go ahead with it. But nonetheless, that is the demand of the Brexiteers. Bizarrely, although Theresa May is politically dead, her Brexit deal is not dead. Lots of people are talking about Boris Johnson applying some lipstick to this withdrawal deal and then trying to sell it to the Brexiteers. But the second referendum is not dead. Three years on from the Brexit referendum, it's clear that the

promises of the Brexiteers carry no water at all. The Brexit that they promised is not available. And that's why people and me are saying the British deserve the chance to decide whether they want to go ahead with this breach with our European neighbors.

ZAKARIA: We will keep watching and perhaps hope to see you in London one of these days soon.

David Miliband, pleasure.

MILIBAND: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, Tom Friedman says the future of Israel is on the line in its upcoming elections. I'll ask him to explain why, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:25:40] ZAKARIA: "If you care about Israel, pay attention, because the country you admire is on the line." That powerful sentence was in the opening paragraph of Tom Friedman's "New York Times" column this week.

So how is Israel on the line?

Tom Friedman joins me now. His most recent book is "Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in an Age of Accelerations."

Tom. pleasure to have you on.

TOM FRIEDMAN, COLUMNIST, NEW YORK TIMES: Great to be with you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: You argue that this is not really just about our differences in policy, you know, attitudes even towards the Palestinians or the West Bank. This is about the future of Israel's democracy if Benjamin Netanyahu gets re-elected. Explain what you mean.

FRIEDMAN: Well, Fareed, you are -- there are two things that are intersecting here. One is that Netanyahu was basically charged with fraud and breach of trust by Israel's attorney general, an attorney general he nominated. And so that is a very serious charge. Netanyahu could be going to jail. That's on one track. On the other track, Israel had an election in April. And before that election, a lot of Israelis suspected that Netanyahu, if he won, was going to build a coalition and the conditions of joining that coalition would be that the members agree that once they get their majority in the Israeli parliament, they will pass a law that says a sitting prime minister cannot be indicted.

And when the Israeli Supreme Court would strike that law down as illegal, they would then pass another law that would say the Knesset is making the Supreme Court subservient to its will. It would in effect turn Israel into a Jewish banana republic. In the end, though, what happens was the parties, the only parties who would kind of go for that banana republic deal, were right-wing, zealot religious parties and ultraorthodox parties.

They had Netanyahu over a barrel. He was going to go to jail so they could raise their demands. What were their demands? They want annexation of the West Bank, basically. So, in the end, Netanyahu actually couldn't strike a deal because he lost many other potential allies who didn't want to go along with his banana republic solution.

Now we have another election coming September 17th. This time everyone knows now what Netanyahu is up to. If Israel were to elect Netanyahu and he were to put together a government that basically traded some form of creeping annexation in the West Bank to save the prime minister from criminal charges, every friend of Israel in the world, Jewish and non-Jewish would have to make an ethical choice. Are you ready to continue to support an Israel that has turned into a Jewish banana republic?

And I tell you, Fareed, that question will rip apart every synagogue, every Jewish institution, every friendly forum toward Israel on any college campus around the world. Something very big is at stake here. This election is not a rerun of the last election. This election is about the core issues of Israel's identity as a Jewish democracy.

ZAKARIA: What you're describing in terms of the proposal, you know, is part of what would seem like a disturbing trend, the kind of lawyer describing this is the kind of thing Erdogan has tried to do in Turkey. This is the kind of thing Viktor Orban has tried to do in Hungary when he celebrated the idea of being not a liberal democracy but an illiberal democracy.

FRIEDMAN: Exactly. And you wrote the book on that, Fareed. And it's extremely important, this global trend where you have these majoritarian leaders, they get in power. And then what they do once they're in power is they attack all the independent institutions that can curb their power. The courts, the media, and civil society institutions. And Netanyahu is going down that in a textbook way.

It's extremely dangerous. And unfortunately our administration, the Trump administration, has been willing to be a willing accomplice to this trend.

[10:30:00]

ZAKARIA: What does the landscape now look like with Ehud Barak, the former prime minister, jumping in? Does that -- does that change things much?

FRIEDMAN: It changes them in this sense, Fareed. In the last election there was a conspiracy of silence between the main center- left party led by Benny Gantz called Blue and White and Netanyahu's party. Netanyahu's party didn't want to talk about their creeping annexation in the West Bank and Blue and White didn't want to talk about it, either, because they thought it would alienate voters. They want to just focus on Bibi's corruption. Enter Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister, now 77 years old

and the one titan of Israeli politics who Netanyahu is really afraid of. They're really peers. And he has come in and basically put everything on the table that I've just described. He said, "No, no, we've got to talk about -- he's called his party the Democracy Party. People have to understand that Israel's democracy is at stake here, and the threat we are talking about is every bit the equal of the threat of Iranian nuclear weapon.

I think one shouldn't focus on Barak. The question is, can whatever party he forms, Fareed, help catalyze the whole center-left in Israel, particularly the Labor Party, Meretz, which is -- which is a more left party, and maybe a new Barak party, into a hard core that will get every left-of-center vote, then align with Blue and White to get every center vote, enough that they can put together a coalition, or even a national unity government, where maybe part of Likud breaks off, joins with the center and the center-left. Because they say "We do not want to be a Jewish banana republic." Something so big is at stake in this election, Fareed. This is about the core identity of Israel as a Jewish democracy.

ZAKARIA: Tom Friedman, pleasure to have you on.

FRIEDMAN: Thank you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on "GPS," you may recycle, drive an electric car, have solar panels on your house. That won't make much difference unless Asia acts in a big way to combat climate change as well. A plan to make that happen, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: And now for our "What in the World" segment. On President Trump's recent visit to the United Kingdom, Piers Morgan asked him about what is probably the most glaring challenge of the century, the climate crisis.

Trump said, falsely, that the United States has among the cleanest climates in the world, before basically denigrating other countries.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP: China, India, Russia, many other nations -- they have not very good air, not very good water, in the sense of pollution and cleanliness.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Donald Trump is pointing to a real problem here. If we don't tackle carbon emissions from Asia, the West's actions will not make much difference. That region, led by China, emits more carbon dioxide than any other in the world.

The reason is coal. About two-thirds of China and three-quarters of India's electricity was generated from coal in 2016, according to the International Energy Agency. And as The Washington Post notes, emissions could soar as poorer Asian countries continue to industrialize. Yet many climate proposals, including the Green New Deal, focus on the West, ignoring this "inconvenient truth".

Now, poor countries won't be able to turn away from fossil fuels unless rich countries help them get access to cleaner, often more expensive forms of energy. Leaders have known this for some time, but they have never quite figured out how to act on it.

Well, the Harvard economist Ken Rogoff offers a big idea, a world carbon bank. Rogoff said in an interview to "GPS" that it could be modeled on the World Bank, with a permanent secretariat and technical staff. There would be a lot of details to hammer out, but it could help poorer countries wean themselves off fossil fuels by funding new technologies and green projects.

It would be funded like the World Bank, like he said, through bonds backed by rich countries. It could even be partially funded through a carbon tax on rich countries. A world carbon bank would solve many problems. For one, climate financing is fragmented. There are dozens of funds set up across the world and within specific regions that pump money into everything from reforestation in Honduras to preparing homes for floods in Bangladesh.

But according to the World Resources Institute, the missions of these funds often overlap, creating confusion for donors about where to invest and countries about where to apply for aid. Then there's the fact that corruption and fraud plague climate finance. A larger, more robust and focused agency could potentially involve more stringent oversight of funds.

But the biggest argument for a world carbon bank is the scale of the climate crisis. Current efforts are just too small. Countries have pledged more than $10 billion to the U.N.'s Green Climate Fund, which is the largest of its kind. And only half of that money has actually been allocated to projects.

And in 2017, Trump canceled $2 billion pledged by the U.S., saying such funds were, quote, "raided from America's budget for the war on terrorism."

With or without the U.S. pledge, the money available to funds like these pales in comparison to the need. According to Rogoff, any significant start towards an energy transition in poor countries could cost at least $1 trillion a year.

These figures are daunting, but advanced nations should not look away. After all, 75 years ago this month, world leaders convened at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to sign an agreement that created the World Bank and the IMF. Those decisions changed the world. If ever a cause needed such collaboration and vision again, it is the climate crisis.

Up next, much of the world just got done celebrating pride month. But almost 70 nations still criminalize same-sex relations. I will talk to the two lawyers who fought against such a law in India and won.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ZAKARIA: Section 377 of India's penal code made gay sex illegal and imposed a potential penalty of life imprisonment. A year ago, my next guests were the chief lawyers arguing against that law in India's supreme court. Weeks later, it was struck down. India's chief justice said in his statement, "Criminalizing carnal intercourse is irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary."

Section 377 had been on the books since 1861, a relic of India's British-colonial era. Similar laws still exist in many countries, some former colonies, others not. Indeed, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association says almost 70 countries have laws that punish same-sex relations.

Lawyers Menaka Guruswamy and Arundhati Katju, congratulations on your victory in India, and welcome to the show.

(UNKNOWN): Thank you.

(UNKNOWN): Thank you for having us.

ZAKARIA: So to me what's even more striking is 2013, the same Indian supreme court had upheld the sodomy laws. How did you get the same court to reverse itself?

GURUSWAMY: Right. So I think 2013 was, as you can well imagine, extremely difficult. It's one thing to have an old colonial era sodomy law. It's another thing to have that law being upheld by your court in contemporary times.

But there was a point in those hearings -- it was a month-long hearing, Fareed -- there was a point in those hearings where the senior judge says -- looks at the law officer and says, "Well, do you know any homosexuals?"

And the law officer laughs, chuckles aloud, and said, "No, my lord, I'm not that modern."

And for all of us, I think it was very clear at that point that we were going to lose because the judge had no imagination of who is a gay Indian.

I think, from there on, we decided that we would never again let LGBT Indians be invisible in any courtroom, starting with that one, that courtroom. So when we went back to court in 2016, we took real-life LGBT Indians, who are just like everyone else.

ZAKARIA: And you chose the cases -- you know, you chose the case and the -- the litigants carefully, right?

KATJU: Well, you know, in -- in 2014 and '15 and '16, when we were putting this case together, LGBT people were not exactly falling over themselves to say that they were criminals with the Supreme Court that had just upheld the law in 2013. So these were the people who agreed to come forward. You know, it wasn't like we had a wide pool of people wanting to put their names to this. So I think those first five petitioners, it was really an act of

bravery and courage on their part because they agreed to do this on the back of a loss and, you know, on the back of a supreme court having just said that LGBT people would be criminalized and could be prosecuted under 377.

ZAKARIA: There was a classical dancer, right?

KATJU: That's right.

GURUSWAMY: So Navtej Singh Johar, who this case is named for, the lead petitioner in the 2016 petition, is a classical Indian dancer. I mean, he is as quintessentially Indian as you can be, a Sikh Indian, who's a Bharatanatyam dancer.

ZAKARIA: Bharatanatyam is like the most -- it would be like doing classical music here?

GURUSWAMY: Yeah, the most classic of all dancers -- so really just, kind of, speaks so much to who is queer in India and what is being Indian.

ZAKARIA: Kenya just recently ruled in favor, effectively, of the sodomy laws that you were able to get overturned...

KATJU: That's right.

ZAKARIA: ... in India. Botswana, on the other hand, went the Indian way, in fact citing your court decision.

KATJU: Right.

ZAKARIA: What do you think? Do you -- do you have hope that this -- this movement is going to keep building?

KATJU: I -- I do. And I think the -- you know, the Indian supreme court judgment is -- plays a big part of that. Because many of these former colonies have sodomy laws because of our shared history of British colonialism. And I think, after the supreme court judgment came, you've seen, you know, activists in Malaysia and Sri Lanka now looking at how they can use this judgment to overturn their own laws. Singapore, there have been challenges filed about a year ago now. So there is definitely this movement.

And I think it makes a difference when you have, you know, a court in the global south that relies on its own constitution, that looks to its own jurisprudence. And it makes a difference within constitutional courts around the world that they're not just looking to courts from the West and, you know, America, Canada, the U.K., but also looking to India.

ZAKARIA: I'd ask you about the human impact of this decision. But in a sense, it's -- it's personal. Because you guys are not just -- you didn't just argue the case together.

GURUSWAMY: Yeah. ZAKARIA: You're also a couple yourselves?

GURUSWAMY: Sure. You know...

KATJU: That's right.

(LAUGHTER)

GURUSWAMY: I mean, that's right.

You know, the loss in 2013 was, you know, a loss as lawyers. It was a loss as citizens. It was a personal loss. And it's not nice to be a criminal who has to go back to court as a lawyer to argue other cases. It is a deeply personal loss.

I think, for queer folks in all these post-colonial countries, I think our governments have to have a sense that these are not our laws; these were never our cultures; and why have we not been more proactive in bringing forth law reform and expanding freedom?

Surely, surely independence and decolonization must mean that.

ZAKARIA: What did it mean to you personally?

KATJU: It was very difficult. We had a court where we practiced where, you know, we were both lawyers at the supreme court. And this court had just said that gay people were second-class citizens.

GURUSWAMY: We really felt that, you know, this law had to be overturned.

KATJU: Yeah.

ZAKARIA: How did you celebrate when it actually happened, when it did get overturned?

KATJU: Oh, you know, one of the things that meant the most to me was that my parents came to court the day the judgment was pronounced.

GURUSWAMY: Yeah.

KATJU: So, you know, we met them the evening before. And my mom had been wanting to come to court for a long time just to, kind of, see us in action. And then they were there. And it really means a lot. Because Justice Indu Malhotra also says in her judgment that "History owes an apology to LGBT people and their families."

So I think, you know, one of the most meaningful things for me was that we were all together after the judgment came out.

GURUSWAMY: Yeah.

ZAKARIA: Well, congratulations.

GURUSWAMY: Thank you, Fareed.

KATJU: Thank you so much.

GURUSWAMY: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: And we will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Following the American women's soccer team's victory over the Netherlands in the World Cup last Sunday, the stadium erupted in an unusual chant.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWD: Equal pay! Equal pay! Equal pay!

ZAKARIA (voice over): Days later, crowds joined the team in chanting "Equal pay" at the celebratory ticker-tape parade on the streets of New York City. The crowds were expressing support for members of the women's team who filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation citing gender discrimination.

The suit alleges, among other things, that the federation discriminates by paying female players less than their male counterparts.

It brings me to my question. According to the World Economic Forum's global gender gap index, which of the following countries has achieved gender parity: Iceland, Norway, Sweden or none of the above?

Stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer.

My book of the week is "Leadership" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. For those of you who enjoyed watching her last week, the eminent historian has more insights about leadership drawn from studying four of the greats, Abraham Lincoln, the two Roosevelts and Lyndon Johnson. She tells great stories and offers deep insights.

The answer to my "GPS" challenge this week is D. According to the World Economic Forum's 2018 global gender gap index, no countries have achieved gender parity as they define it. The report measures gender equality across four pillars, economic opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment and health and survival.

The top seven countries in the rankings, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Nicaragua, Rwanda and New Zealand, have closed at least 80 percent of their gender gaps. Overall, the report notes, with current trends, it will take 202 years to achieve economic gender parity around the world.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

[11:00:00]