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Rebels Storm Presidential Palace in Yemen; Stabbing Spree on Tel Aviv Bus; Paris Terrorist May Have Scoped Out Other Targets; Obama Pushes for Middle Class Programs

Aired January 21, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The President of the United States.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The shadow of crisis has passed, and the state of the union is strong.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's time to move on beyond President Barack Obama.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wish I had better news for you. All is not well in America.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Americans have been hurting.

OBAMA: I have no more campaign to run. I know because I won both of them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This morning, Yemen under siege.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It may be the most volatile situation on the face of the planet.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We apologize for the error.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We apologize for the error.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The mayor of Paris plans to sue Fox News.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fox News has been embarrassed, humiliated. It's a joke.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: This is your NEW DAY, Wednesday, January 21st, 6:00 in the east, almost -- strong, that's the state of the union, President Obama says, declaring an end to the economic crisis and focusing on the middle class. The president is also vowing to hunt down terrorists, a nod to all that's going on around the world.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We'll have the highs and lows of the president's speech in a moment. First, breaking news in the war on terror, Yemen, the worst fears of the west seem closer at this hour, rebels have stormed the presidential palace, attempting a coup against this critical American ally. This as the U.S. Navy positions two ships in the red sea, ready to evacuate all U.S. embassy personnel. Our team coverage begins with CNN's senior International correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh. He is the only western TV journalist in Yemen.

What do we know at this hour, Nick?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: With power vacuums that made Washington's policy makers most nervous; and this morning, we have awoken to an absolute void at the heart of government.

The president, yes, well, he's still called the president by the leader of the Houthi rebels, last night in a lengthy speech. But he's still in his residence. And his presidential bodyguard, we understand, according to a senior Houthi commander, have left him. And it is, instead, Houthi gunmen who say they are protecting him inside his house.

Is he still the president? Do the Houthis want to claim that title for one of their own? That has to be worked out today, but a real sense of a vacuum here inside Sana'a. That is vital, though, for the U.S., because any sense of chaos here simply makes life easier for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

There's a sense of fear, too, about the U.S. diplomats, one of their cars shot up two days ago now. They are still here, but the U.S. military on standby to pull them out of here.

And the real question, of course, being how does the rest of the country react? We are hearing rumblings from the pro-government south that they feel they're deeply concerned by the Houthis' power grab inside the capital. Quite where this leads in the hours ahead will massively affect the future of one of America's key counterterror allies.

CAMEROTA: Thanks, Nick. We will monitor that situation all morning.

More breaking news now. Police in Israel investigating a terror attack in Tel Aviv this morning. Authorities say a Palestinian man stabbed several people on a bus, many of them suffering serious injuries. Global affairs correspondent Elise Labatt joins us from Jerusalem with the latest.

What do we know, Elise?

ELISE LABATT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, it happened just as rush hour was starting. Soldiers, women, children, all on that bus. Now nine people stabbed, four seriously wounded. Others have a range of injuries, from light to moderate.

Police shot the attacker in the leg after he got off the bus, trying to make his escape. They arrested him, interrogated him; he's now in custody in the hospital. Police say this 23-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank city of Tulkarem, arrived in Tel Aviv this morning, got on the bus at the central bus station. Two stations later he took out that knife and began stabbing people.

Police forces, they searched the area. They haven't found any other suspects connected to the attack. Naturally, though, Tel Aviv on high alert, as is Jerusalem. No indication any terrorist group is involved. It does seem like we're talking about a so-called lone-wolf attack. Still, Hamas has praised the attack, and Prime Minister Netanyahu is saying it's those type of attacks that come from incitement against Israel by the Palestinians, the kind of anti- Semitism you also saw in Paris and around the world -- Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Elise Labatt, thank you.

Meanwhile, one of the Paris terrorists and his wife may have been looking for possible targets for several months. Brand-new surveillance video obtained exclusively by CNN reportedly shows the pair walking by a Jewish institution in Paris last year before the deadly attack on the kosher grocery store, this as we learn more about four men who are in custody connected to the attack.

Let's get right to senior international correspondent Nic Robertson, live from Paris -- Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Michaela, we're learning new details from the prime minister about the scale and scope of the terror problem here in France. He says 3,000 people in the country have jihadist ties and need monitoring, need the intelligence services to watch them. He says that radicalization is on the increase. t continues to grow. He said those with ties to radical elements in Iraq and Syria have jumped up 130 percent over last year.

And he has been laying out what he is going to do about it, how France is going to tackle their terror problem. He says the government will be spending close to $500 million on things like de-radicalization, better intelligence gathering overseas. Three hundred million dollars will be allocated to the interior ministry over the next three years alone. They're going to create over 2,600 new jobs to combat the threat. They're going to appoint 50 -- another 50 imams to go into prisons here, where there's a massive radicalization problem. They'll join the other 182 imams working on de-radicalization. The problem in the prisons here, a big and growing one, as well.

These are just some of the highlights of what the government is planning. And an interesting development from the prosecutor in the details about Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who went into the kosher supermarket. The four people being held by the government do not appear to be Muslims. Three of them with a criminal track record involved in the buying of a getaway car that was used, or the car that got them to the supermarket, and involved in the buying of the weapons.

A worrying trend here, the nexus between criminal elements and terrorists here -- Chris.

CUOMO: You don't have to be a Muslim to want to sell guns to people. That's for sure. Nic Robertson, thank you for the reporting. So the president, optimistic, defiant when making a pitch for the

middle class during last night's State of the Union address, even taking a few shots at the new Republican-controlled Congress.

Let's bring in White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski.

Michelle, certainly a tale of two parties, if not two cities, on display in a big way last night.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right, right, right. And you know this was the State of the Union address that the president has been wanting to make. He was fired up during parts of it, and he also broke with tradition in the sense that this wasn't a string of proposals we haven't heard about before. But he made the case for what he's already unveiled, and for working with Congress, within limits, of course.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Speaker! The president of the United States!

KOSINSKI (voice-over): President Obama strode into what some call hostile territory, the now-Republican-controlled Congress, but he even got a kiss from Michelle Bachmann.

This was intended to be a different type of State of the Union.

OBAMA: Tonight, we turn the page.

The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong.

KOSINSKI: His first standing ovation was for saluting American troops. Another big one on the economy.

OBAMA: Over the past five years our businesses have created more than 11 million new jobs.

KOSINSKI: This speech was less a laundry list of new things to try over the year, and more a determined philosophical case for those goals: immigration reform, free junior college, the president's tax proposal that the Republicans oppose, to take a bigger chunk from wealthy Americans and benefit the middle class.

OBAMA: If you truly believe you can work full time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it. If not, vote to give millions of the hardest working people in America a raise.

KOSINSKI: The president's urging to make affordable child care a national priority got a few women on the Republican side standing.

On foreign policy, a vow to fight terror.

OBAMA: We will continue to hunt down terrorists and dismantle their networks.

KOSINSKI: Members of Congress clutching pencils in solidarity with French cartoonists for free speech.

And this poignant moment in the president's argument for lifting the Cuba trade embargo.

OBAMA: And after years in prison, we are overjoyed that Alan Gross is back where he belongs. Welcome home, Alan. We're glad you're here.

KOSINSKI: President Obama reiterated his veto threats but also spoke for crafting a better politics in America.

OBAMA: Imagine if we broke out of these tired old patterns. The better politics is one where we debate without demonizing each other.

KOSINSKI: And politics made for an unintentionally funny wrapping up.

OBAMA: I have no more campaigns to run. My only agenda...

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: I know, because I won both of them.

(LAUGHTER)

KOSINSKI: In the Republican response, freshman senator and war veteran, Joni Ernst.

SEN. JONI ERNST (R), IOWA: Americans have been hurting, but when we demanded solutions too often, Washington responded with the same stale mindset that led to failed policies like Obamacare.

KOSINSKI: Pledging that Republicans heard the message Americans sent in the mid-term elections and will pass what she called serious ideas for the economy.

OBAMA: Let's begin this new chapter together, and let's start the work right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOSINSKI: There was one new thing we heard in that speech last night. Something called the precision medicine initiative that would look for cures for cancer, diabetes and other diseases.

The question has been for all of these things, "Mr. President, how you plan on funding them?" At least the things that can be done without Congress having to approve them. We know that the president plans to present his budget within the next few weeks -- Alisyn and Chris.

CAMEROTA: All right, Michelle. Thanks so much.

Let's get into all of that and those questions. We want to bring in John Avlon and Margaret Hoover. John is a CNN political analyst and editor in chief of "The Daily Beast." Margaret is a CNN political commentator, Republican consultant and a Sirius XM host.

Guys, great to have you... JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: ... here for our post-game wrap-up.

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Here we go.

CAMEROTA: OK. Highs and lows for you, John?

AVLON: The highs were a lot of the ad libs, because you got that level of authenticity. Even when he pushed back on kind of the sarcastic claps he got about not being able to run again. And a pretty surging end.

I think the lows were when he talked about bipartisanship, but the proposals didn't add up.

And I thought the Joni Ernst GOP response was stale. Not Bobby Jindal, kind of pageboy bad, but one not...

CAMEROTA: Meaning her delivery?

AVLON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Margaret.

HOOVER: I think the low is the total lack of really acknowledging that he's facing the largest Republican majority since 1920. I mean, he made absolutely no sort of acknowledgement that all of the proposals he was suggesting have absolutely zero chance of passing.

So it was incredibly defiant, and that's a low. That is not in the gesture and the ethos of actually being able to get something done in the next two years.

I think a high was at the end. There really was this moment of authenticity, this realization that "I haven't gotten things done. I said I would change Washington." And there was this brief moment where I felt like everybody leaned in to see if he would maybe take some responsibility for that. And he did a little bit. But then he went on to just laugh off his two wins and say, you know, "You guys may be saying I don't have to run again, but I'm not going to run again and I won both times."

So I think that moment almost encapsulated...

CUOMO: Right.

HOOVER: ... the problem and that dynamic between this president and this Congress.

CUOMO: Right. The problem is that the very people in control of the problem are the Republicans, and they're also the ones who created the dynamic that now they have to show that they want to undo.

HOOVER: You can't just blame one party. It takes two to tango, Chris Cuomo. CUOMO: Yes, you know what, though?

HOOVER: You can't do that. You're a leader in Congress...

CUOMO: This morning I am and here's why. I didn't used to blame one party, because they weren't in control. But now they are. And control...

HOOVER: Well, they haven't even started. They just began.

CUOMO: Control -- look, they started before they came into office. They're there now, and you heard the response from Joni Ernst last night.

HOOVER: Guess what started before they came into office? It started with executive actions.

CUOMO: You were proud of what you heard from Joni Ernst?

HOOVER: I think she did a really formidable job...

CUOMO: Yes?

HOOVER: ... in the sense that she -- she checked the box. She did what she needed to do. She presented the Republican vision.

CUOMO: That's the Republican vision, what we heard from Joni Ernst last night? You're confident in that? I just want to hear it.

HOOVER: Yes. Here's what she talked about. She talked about the suffering that the middle class is going through, that the middle class hasn't grown over the last ten years. That what -- we need new policies and a new policy approach to addressing these -- the crunch in the middle class. I mean, that's what she talked about.

She also talked about the need for more robust and leaderly foreign policy.

AVLON: Yes, but there's a problem...

HOOVER: I think what you don't like is her delivery.

AVLON: That is true and her...

CUOMO: It's just a list of negatives, with absolutely no promise of delivering on the negatives.

(CROSSTALK)

AVLON: No, no, no, no. The underlying issue is let's go beyond the delivery. The problem is persistent, which is expressing concern for the middle class, but then proposing absolutely no specific policies that are signature Republican to deal with it. It's not enough to simply express concern and say, "Oh, we're going to put forward serious policies later." You've got to put something forward specific. This speech will be known, if it is known, as Obama trying to reframe

his economic legacy as middle-class economics. There's the big spin the White House wants to put on this.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

AVLON: At least there's some degree of specifics, both past and future.

HOOVER: What's not specific about passing Keystone? About reforming Obamacare? About changing corporate...

AVLON: It has nothing to do with middle-class ultimately.

HOOVER: Really? You and I are going to argue about that.

AVLON: Yes, indeed.

HOOVER: Actually Republicans believe that, if you change the corporate tax code, you will impact the middle class, if you reform Obamacare.

AVLON: Trickle down? That's a good example -- that's a good example, though, of things that actually, this president agrees with Republicans in Congress. If they could agree on details like loopholes, which Ernst referred to, but didn't deal with. There are areas, trade agreements that they can get done. Where the president's in opposition to the liberal base of his own party.

Marco Rubio called into the Hamby (ph) cast last night and made a case for some issues of common ground involving college tuition and childcare tax credits. Hard to say.

CAMEROTA: Yes. But John, I want to push back on you in terms of the specifics. It's what Michelle Kosinski said, which is they didn't think that the president offered enough specifics on how to get it done. How will he fund the middle-class tax relief that he's talking about, without hiking taxes on the wealthy, which Republicans say they don't want to do?

AVLON: He's proposed hiking taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.

HOOVER: It will not pass the Congress.

CUOMO: That's the problem, though. See, that's why -- you want to use the word "blame." I think it's a bad word, and here's why.

The game is played. It shouldn't be played, but it is. They're in control of the game. Your party is in control. What gets done is up to them.

HOOVER: That's exactly right.

CUOMO: Just saying, "This won't happen," all that will lead to is more stalemate. You know it; I know it.

HOOVER: No. The problem -- it's not that anything won't happen. I'm not saying because you have a Republican Congress, nothing is going to happen.

What I'm saying is the president's policy solutions from last night, which are basically middle -- mid-century, 20th Century modern American liberal solutions.

CUOMO: That's what he is.

HOOVER: Suffering and ills in the American society can be fixed by government spending. That is not going to pass the largest Republican majority since 1920.

CAMEROTA: OK. So John...

AVLON: I don't know that I agree. First of all, earned income tax credit is not a mid-20th-century...

HOOVER: Paying for college tuition. Paying for these new -- these new programs.

AVLON: One of the things the president is trying to address, and not just rhetorically, is the issue of income inequality and a middle class that seems stagnated. And that's an issue that we should all take seriously.

What I want to hear is more Republican specifics on how to address it. Let's just set the table for real for one second. You've got a Republican Congress. You've got a Democratic president whose poll numbers are rocketing us because the economy is rocketing up, so he's in a stronger position than he was.

CUOMO: Which the Republicans deny, by the way. You listen to the Republicans, they say the economy stinks.

AVLON: But -- well, which is -- everybody gets their own opinion, not their own facts.

Here's the other situation, is the president has to actually deal with the Republican Congress, no just pretend like the mid-terms didn't happen.

And so maybe this comes together in the budget. Maybe this is the president saying, "Look, I'm not going to negotiate myself out of the gate. I'm going to set forth a liberal vision, and then Republicans and I will meet in the middle."

But that's got to happen for either of them to have a legacy for the last two years of this presidency.

CAMEROTA: Let's show you the poll that was taken...

AVLON: All right.

CAMEROTA: ... right after the president spoke. This is a new CNN/ORC poll. This is of speech watchers. Fifty-one percent found the speech very positive; 30 percent found it somewhat positive; 18 percent found it negative. So 81 percent. CUOMO: Now what's the big check on that poll?

CAMEROTA: Right. The check on the poll is that speech watchers -- it's a self-selecting poll.

HOOVER: Right.

CAMEROTA: Speech watchers are generally Democratic. If you want to hear what Barack Obama has to say, you're a Democrat, and you tune into the State of the Union. So it's not reflective of 50 percent Republicans. But still, 81 percent is a pretty high number, given even that.

AVLON: That's a landslide.

HOOVER: Yes. Look, there were attempts at, you know, oratory that did feel sort of positive and uplifting at times. And you're -- I defer to your point. You made my point exactly. The people who wanted to see that speech and were going to like it, watched.

AVLON: But as a former speechwriter, I've got to give a shout-out. Because what was really interesting was the speech was a lot looser in tone. There were really unusually casual lines. They were young and in love in America, which is the best -- the best -- it doesn't get any better than that. A lot of really casual lines and rhetoric that was kind of stripped down for him. And I thought it was actually pretty effective.

He was doing a lot of ad libs. He was a president in command last night in terms of his delivery.

CUOMO: Right.

AVLON: And the tone was different. Not so high-falluting.

CUOMO: I thought he was solid. It's a hard speech. I've watched them given my whole life on the state level and the federal level. They're not exciting speeches. He is in a position right now where it's more philosophy than policy. It just is. Because the other party is in control, and they don't want to do anything that he will have his name on, for good or bad reason.

But here's the caveat. He was optimistic last night. Leaders have a duty to inspire the people. Not be Pollyannaish, although I think that word is abused. I thought Pollyanna was OK.

But the Republicans must do that now. You can't look at the economy and say the economy stinks. You can't do that. You can say wages aren't growing. But they have a mandate now to be -- the point is to be leaders, be positive. Not everything can be bad.

HOOVER: You are absolutely right, Chris. It is their job to now pass legislation that they think is going to address the middle class. They need to pass trade bills, they need to pass some kind of tax reform. And by the way, these are all things the president has said he is willing to sign and work with them on. So go for it, Republicans. Set the table for 2016 and actually do

something proactive.

AVLON: And positive.

HOOVER: And then let's see what happens.

CAMEROTA: On that rose-colored note, John, Margaret, thanks so much, guys. Great to see you. Let us know what you think of the president's speech. You can tweet us, @NewDay or you can go to Facebook.com/NewDay. We'd love to hear your thoughts.

CUOMO: Coming up on NEW DAY, we're going to test the players in what we said should not be a game. But you've got senators Angus King. You've got Thom Tillis. You have the White House senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett. You have Congressman Keith Ellison. Both sides represented. What are they going to do to make your life better? That's the true measure of their success -- Mick.

PEREIRA: Want to turn now to the intensifying battles in the eastern Ukraine. The country's prime minister claims that Russian troops crossed the border to join the fight with separatist rebels against Ukraine's defense forces. Russia calls the allegation, quote, "complete rubbish." Ukraine is enduring some of the worst fighting between government troops and pro-Russian separatists since last summer.

A doctor shot at a Boston hospital has died. Police say 44-year-old Michael Davidson was targeted by a lone gunman who walked into Brigham and Women's Hospital on Tuesday, asked for the doctor, and shot him twice. The shooter -- identified as a 55-year-old male, he then killed himself. There are reports that the gunman's late mother was one of Davidson's former patients.

CUOMO: Deflate-gate, here are the facts. ESPN reports 11 out of 12 footballs used by the New England Patriots in Sunday's AFC championship game underinflated by two pounds per square inch. Fifteen percent less air than required.

What does a softer football do? The obvious: makes it easier to grip, especially in the cold and rainy conditions which plagued the game.

Oh, funny you should say that. Please, come back to me. What you just saw was a huge lineman catch a ball that was a quick pass with big taped hands. That's not easy. I happen to have two football in my lap.

CAMEROTA: I see that.

CUOMO: Here is a regularly inflated one.

CAMEROTA: OK.

CUOMO: It is very hard. This is a less inflated one. Now, I've exaggerated it.

CAMEROTA: Even I can deal with this one.

CUOMO: I've exaggerated it, in part because I don't like the Patriots. But also to make a point. That a softer ball could make a difference.

PEREIRA: Doesn't the league supply these?

CUOMO: The league does not. The teams do. That is a very good question.

PEREIRA: Why not? It's like the MLB. Doesn't the ump have the ball?

CUOMO: The MLB has the ump. Maybe the league should control the games if the teams cannot control themselves.

CAMEROTA: OK. So is the bottom line that they cheated?

CUOMO: The bottom line is, the balls were less deflated. You would have to prove intent. And I will give one nod to the Patriots, and again, I'm not a Patriots fan. I'm a Jets fan. They ran all over the Colts. As John Berman said, they could have won with balls made out of marshmallow fluff.

PEREIRA: Deflated balls or not.

CAMEROTA: If they cheated, I mean, doesn't that...?

CUOMO: There's a solid case to be made they should be disqualified from the Super Bowl and the Jets should be put in, in their stead.

CAMEROTA: All right. We have much more on all of this coming up in our "Bleacher Report."

Meanwhile, back to our top story. There is a coup underway in a key American ally. Yemen's presidential palace overtaken by rebels, how dangerous is this to U.S. security?

CUOMO: The CEO of AirAsia speaking out to CNN for the first time since the crash of Flight 8501. He's going to tell you about the moment he learned about the crash. It is a powerful interview, and it's ahead for you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Yemen is in crisis, and that is not good any way you look at it. They're a key American ally in the Middle East. And right now a group of Shiite rebels is on the verge of pulling off a -- really, we can't call it a coup yet, because we don't know who's in charge. But they are taking control of the situation.

Right now, surrounding the presidential palace, we believe that they have totally overtaken it.

Now, what is Yemen to us? Well, it's the home of the al Qaeda affiliate known as AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but it's also just the nexus of all the problems we're dealing with in the Middle East.

So let's bring in Bobby Ghosh right now. He understands the situation very well. He's a CNN global affairs analyst. He's the managing editor of "Quartz." You've been to Yemen. You know the cultural dynamic there. And it is easy for us to say, "Iraq, Afghanistan, I get it, I get it. Yemen, do I care?" Yes, you should care; why?

BOBBY GHOSH, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, you should care because the beasts that are being, the monsters that are being unleashed in Yemen are going to come out, and have already in some cases, come out and hurt all of us. And taken a bite out of all of us, most recently in Paris.

Yemen, as you pointed out, is home to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, probably the most dangerous franchise of al Qaeda anywhere in the world. It's a deeply, deeply poor country. The poorest by far in the Arab world, one of the poorest in the world at large.

CUOMO: The government...

GHOSH: A very corrupt government, a very weak government. The south and east of the country is a sort of playing ground for al Qaeda. The north, where these Shiite rebels have emerged from, is very close to Saudi Arabia. These rubbles are called the Houthis. They're named after their leader. Because they are Shiite, you now have a Shiite with a Sunni dimension.

CUOMO: Who's paying for the Shiites? The Houthis? Who's funding them?

GHOSH: The Iranians are.

CUOMO: So you have al Qaeda. You have Iran. You have all these forces at play in this one place.

GHOSH: In this one place. It's Murphy's law, writ large over a piece of territory. Everything that can go wrong is going wrong. And it has enormous consequences, not only for the Arab world, but for the rest of the world.

CUOMO: Let's talk about the consequences. Because last night the president was saying his commitment to going and finding terrorists and killing -- but not a lot of talk about Yemen. And probably because it was too in the weeds, he thought, for this particular speech. But is this place really what should be the focus right now?

GHOSH: Well, it's hard to pick one place to focus on. There's just so much going on around the world. But yes, this certainly deserves a lot more attention than it's been getting.

The policy so far with Yemen is to use drones, use cruise missiles and some amount of local armed forces to go after AQAP. And for a while, it seemed to be working. AQAP took some territory. They were pushed back. They were -- they were cornered, basically.

But nobody saw, certainly nobody in Washington saw the Houthis advance this much. And the Iranians backed them so much.

And if Iran is getting involved, you know that Saudi Arabia will push back. Because those two countries, Sunni and Shia, have enormous hatred for each other and are trying to play a sort of bizarre game of chess against each other all over the Arab world.

CUOMO: Yemen is also one of the sovereigns that had been very active in the fight against al Qaeda. The irony is they're being overtaken within their own walls. But they were allowing the U.S., they were cooperating with the U.S. President Obama referred to Yemen as a success. Now what?

GHOSH: Well, clearly the policy of simply using drones and cruise missiles is not enough, and focusing only on fighting al Qaeda is not enough. You have to figure out ways to make sure Yemen has a better government. You have to make sure that the Yemeni democratic process can...

CUOMO: By the way, how do we do that? They're being -- their military is being overrun by the Houthis. If they have control of the presidential palace -- and we hear it's surrounded by Houthi guards; that's a good indication -- what does the president have to do? Who comes in and cleans it up?

GHOSH: Well, right now, we have to wait for the dust to settle to see who's in charge before we can make any...

CUOMO: If it's the Houthis, can we be friends with them? Can the U.S. be friends with them? Can the west be friends with them?

GHOSH: Probably not, because they're so heavily tied to Iran. They're not going to see the west as a natural ally. But, if they're going to run the country, they going to need help from somewhere. Iran is not currently in a position to give them -- it's one thing to support an insurgency. To support an entire country, to running an economy? That's not something that Iran, given its current situation, can do. So they are going to need the international community. Whether it's the United Nations, whether it's the Arab League, whether it's the Gulf GCC, the Gulf countries. If the U.S. cannot intervene directly, then there are many proxies through which we can begin a conversation.

CUOMO: Now, that exact same model applies to another situation that is being ignored because of what we're dealing with everywhere else: Ukraine. It's happening again. The word from the ground is it's as intense, if not more, than ever. Donetsk, the eastern part of Ukraine, is supposedly under siege, they believe by Russian forces.

GHOSH: Well, Vladimir Putin has looked the west in the eye, has looked the sanctions in the eye and said, "I don't care." He's put all his chips into this thing, and he's dragging his country down economically. The ruble is, is in sort of freefall. But he's absolutely determined. The sanctions are not stopping him.

CUOMO: But to do what? Worst-case scenario, what does he pull off here? GHOSH: He wants complete control of Ukraine, politically if not

territorially. And he will take enough control of the east so that keeps the government in the center of Ukrainian Kiev, unstable. He doesn't want a stable Ukraine that then moves to the European Union, whether as a direct member or under the shelter of the European Union. He's determined that Ukraine should be a -- an example to be set to all the countries that are formerly members of the United -- the USSR, that don't you think that just because the USSR is broken that you don't have to bow to Moscow.

CUOMO: That's a great concern, is the domino theory.

GHOSH: That's right. Moscow is still in charge here, and whether we control you directly or indirectly, you have to bow to us. That's the Putin doctrine.

CUOMO: All right. Bobby Ghosh, thank you very much, as always, for the perspective -- Mick.