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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Interview with Hillary Clinton; Interview With U.N. Secretary- General Antonio Guterres; Interview With Former Mossad Director Yossi Cohen. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired September 21, 2025 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:42]

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, coming to you from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, political violence in America, Gaza, Ukraine. We have a wide ranging conversation with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Keren Yarhi-Milo.

HILARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: We have a violence problem in our country.

ZAKARIA: Together, they edited an incisive new book, "Inside the Situation Room."

Then world leaders will descend on New York City this week for the United Nations General Assembly. Some will not be there this year because they were refused visas by the Trump administration. And when President Trump speaks at the U.N. on Tuesday, he'll be talking to an organization from which he just moved to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of funding.

I went to the U.N. to talk to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Finally, how might the war in Gaza end? I'll talk to Yossi Cohen, the former director of Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence agency.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

Watching the intense, polarized debates about everything these days from the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination to Jimmy Kimmel's suspension, I've been thinking about the very different atmosphere in Washington when I started my professional life.

It was 1986, the peak of the Reagan years, and I was a lowly reporter- researcher at the "New Republic," then the hottest political magazine in the country. The "New Republic" was left of center, but some of its most prominent writers, Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, Andrew Sullivan, were staunchly conservative. Every week at every editorial meeting, they disagreed ferociously. And yet amicably. They were no different from President Reagan, who would lash out against the Democrats and then invite House Speaker Tip O'Neill over to the White House for a drink.

That Washington seems unrecognizable today.

What explains how we have come from there to here? In looking at the poisonous aftermath of Charlie Kirk's horrific assassination, many have cited a variety of statistics. Vice president J.D. Vance claimed that more people on the left these days condone political violence than on the right, which seems broadly correct in the Trump era, though it does depend on how pollsters ask the question.

It's also true, however, that in recent years there have been many more acts of violence committed by right-wingers than left-wingers. Three separate studies point to this trend, including one by the right of center Cato Institute. Another Justice Department study did as well, but the DOJ has now deleted it from its Web site. But the most telling statistic comes from a 2020 survey, which asks Republicans and Democrats to estimate the support for political violence of the other party.

Members of each party estimated that the support for political violence from the other party was four times higher than it actually was. For example, Democrats' support for political violence was about 10 on 100 point scale, but Republicans estimated it to be about 40, and vice versa. Scholars call this effective polarization, meaning not disagreeing on the issues, but rather thinking that your opponents are bad.

Why has this grown so mightily over the years? When I think back on my "New Republic" days, I recall that the big debates at the time usually involved two issues -- economics, how much to tax and spend, and the Soviet threat, how best to counter it. While the disagreements on these issues were often huge, there were many ways to compromise. If one side wanted to spend 100 billion and the other zero, well, there's a number between those two.

Even on foreign policy, Republican hawks like Nixon and Reagan had found themselves softening their stances and negotiating with the Soviet Union.

[10:05:00]

As these issues faded, the Soviet Union collapsed and parties nowadays follow pretty similar borrow and spend policies. New ones emerged that are more cultural and social, often linked to religion. On issues like abortion, gay rights, immigration, assimilation, it might seem harder to find easy compromises. How do you split the difference on a question of core values?

Ezra Klein has noted that decades ago, the two parties used to be ideological big tent parties that encompassed a variety of views. There were pro-life and pro-choice Democrats, and there were supporters of deportations and amnesty among Republicans. The parties have now sorted themselves into ideologically consistent groups, and so the divides get weaponized, further reducing any incentive to find common ground. Each party needs to see the other as not just misguided, but evil.

The truth is that liberal democracy is founded on the faith that we can find ways to compromise on almost anything. We must, even on these hot button cultural topics. And in fact, behind the screaming voices in Washington and on social media, Americans are quietly finding these compromises on a variety of issues.

Abortion is now a matter left to the states and laws and standards vary across the country, reflecting the democratic will in each state. Where people disagree, they can try to get laws tightened or loosened through a democratic process. Gay rights have been accepted more broadly, even on the right, where they were once totally taboo.

On immigration, there's now a broader consensus that the asylum policy has failed and needs to be reworked. And yet, much of the public clearly disapproves of brutal and cruel deportations of people who have been law-abiding, taxpaying workers in the country for decades.

This is a country of 340 million people who have differing views on many, many things. We have to find a way to accept partial victories, half measures and brokered compromises. No one in Washington dares say this for fear that they will be lambasted by their base and by the vigilantes on social media. But perhaps it is a mark of some small progress that day by day, in state after state, in small ways, we are actually doing it.

Go to CNN.com/Fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week, and let's get started.

With all that's going on in America and the world, I want to get right to my first guest. I am joined by the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her first TV interview since the reelection of Donald Trump. Alongside her is Keren Yarhi-Milo, dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. Together, they have edited an important new book, "Inside the Situation Room: The Theory and Practice of Crisis Decision Making."

Thank you both so much for coming.

HILARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Thank you for having us.

ZAKARIA: Secretary Clinton, I got to ask you, top of the news. The president, the vice president, many others, Stephen Miller in the White House say that in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, which was brutal and reprehensible, they are going to try to root out what they describe as a kind of network of left-wing institutions that in some way have made this happen or encouraged this kind of political violence. What is your reaction to that?

CLINTON: Well, I think this is right out of the authoritarian playbook. They're taking a terrible crime, this awful murder of this young man, and they are trying to use it along with others of their rationales to go after their political opponents. And it's very troubling because, of course, if you have an assassination such as what we all saw, it is a horrible experience. And it had to be very traumatizing, not just for his family and friends, but for his colleagues, people literally all the way up to the president.

We have a violence problem in our country, and it's in general and also now, sadly political, as we saw with the murders and the wounding of Democratic officials in Minnesota, the arson attempt, and the attempt to harm Governor Shapiro. I mean, there's unfortunately a long list.

[10:10:02]

And at that time, leadership should try to bring people together, but instead, we're seeing more of the divisiveness. You know, this really goes back to, I think, the theory of the case as to how Donald Trump won the presidency. It was us versus them from the very moment he came down, you know, the escalator in 2016, and that campaign. And when he gave his inaugural and talked about carnage in the street, and there were so many people who were viewed as his enemies, and those that he needed to somehow repress and put down.

And it's a very dangerous turn in our politics. What we're hearing now from the White House and their supporters that this may, you know, lead to even further political action, legal action, prosecutorial action, intimidation of all kinds.

ZAKARIA: You haven't done a TV interview since Trump was inaugurated. What do you think is the difference, the most important difference between Trump 2.0 and Trump 1.0?

CLINTON: This time, you know, all of the forces that supported him as their avatar for turning back the clock on many of the advances we've made in our country were prepared. I mean, Project 2025 being, you know, one example, but also personnel choices. We're only going to have people who salute, do whatever you tell them to do, who are going to tell you what to do, because it will appeal to you. And so he's now surrounded by people that are basically his acolytes or his enablers. And if you don't have a process for making decisions and have different voices in the room you're not going to get the best decisions.

ZAKARIA: So what Trump would say, I think, is, well, look, you know, I didn't listen to the experts and I did the Abraham Accords between Israel and the -- and the Gulf Arabs.

KEREN YARHI-MILO, CO-EDITOR, "INSIDE THE SITUATION ROOM": Right.

ZAKARIA: What's the -- what's response to people like him or Benjamin Netanyahu who say, look, I trust my gut. I trust my instincts. I don't want all this process?

YARHI-MILO: Yes. So I think, look, it is fair to say that sometimes that this approach could give you short-term benefits. And we will see what happens with the Abraham Accord. And that's obviously very much on the table right now. But at the same time, we have to remember that what served the United States well throughout the Cold War and the post-Cold War is the idea that the United States is a credible partner, that there is credibility, that there is consistency, that that is the through line.

And no matter which president, no matter which administration, we are here to, the United States is here, if there is a threat to follow up on that, if there is an assurance or an agreement to stick with it and to be a reliable and credible ally. What we see with this personalization and very much you see volatility and volatility when it replaces credibility. That is not a recipe for stability in the long term.

We have much more to gain from the -- from the structure of the international order and the chessboard today is very different from the one that he had back in 2016. So we need a strategy that will serve the United States. If you talk about coercive diplomacy, we need credible threats, and we need that to be paired with credible assurances.

ZAKARIA: Do you think the Democrats are doing well in pushing back against Trump?

CLINTON: I think that you have to ask that question in a -- in a way that looks at everything Trump is trying to do to prevent a free, fair election in 2026. So it's like when Trump in 2020 called the governor of Georgia and said, find me 11,000 more votes, he called the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, and said, find me five more congressional seats.

The Democrats didn't roll over and play dead. Gavin Newsom stepped up and said, we're going to match that. Now Trump is looking for more states to gerrymander in the middle of the 10-year term between Census data and, you know, now Democratic governors are trying to figure out what to do about that.

You've got, you know, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries trying to figure out what they can get out of this shutdown debate. Maybe they can't get anything. Maybe, though, they can try to, you know, save the health care costs from skyrocketing for people who are on the Affordable Care Act or Medicaid.

[10:15:01]

It isn't as, frankly, attractive, sexy to, you know, be following the day-to-day efforts that Democrats are engaged in, both at the state level and the federal level, to be in a position to fight back. But there is a lot of work that is setting us up, and we have to keep parrying and pushing back at everything the Republicans are doing to basically rig the game against Democrats.

ZAKARIA: We'll be back with Hillary Clinton and Keren Yarhi-Milo in a moment. Their new book analyzes how leaders make decisions during crises. I'll ask them how that shows up in the real world in, for example, the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:20:09] ZAKARIA: And we are back with the former secretary of state, Hilary Rodham Clinton, and Keren Yarhi-Milo, dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, co-editors of a new book, "Inside the Situation Room."

The book deals a lot with leadership, with leaders' psychologies, with the role of emotion, with the role of, you know, how you -- do you have empathy, and so I want to try and distill some of those thoughts. We're looking at two leaders in particular who are currently in negotiations, sort of, Donald Trump and Putin. So when you look at that Alaska summit, what do you think went right and what do you think went wrong?

CLINTON: Well, I think it was a failure. Did it have to be failure? That's a question that's worth asking. My understanding is that the lead-up to it was having a conversation with Steve Witkoff, President Trump's envoy to everything apparently, had with Putin that was misunderstood in terms of what Putin was willing to agree to. But based on that misunderstanding, I think there was an impulsive decision without a lot of due diligence and thinking strategically that, you know, because President Trump places an inordinate value on face-to-face diplomacy and thinking that he personally can bend leaders to his will, make peace agreements in conflicts.

It was a decision that he made that would lead to an invitation to Putin to come to our country, to Alaska, to have a meeting with the hope in, I guess, the Trump-White House's view of coming to some ceasefire and then some process to lead to an end to the hostilities with Ukraine. And obviously they were, I believe, played by Putin. I mean, Putin got what he wanted. He's an indicted war criminal for his kidnaping of Ukrainian children and other atrocities during his invasion of Ukraine.

He got to come to the United States. He was treated with all the respect that he thought appropriate. And now, of course, we have the continuing, terrible conflict going on in Ukraine that has even been in many ways exacerbated by the attacks on Kyiv with, you know, dozens and dozens of drones. So it was a failure on every count.

ZAKARIA: Why do you think Trump doesn't put pressure on Putin?

CLINTON: My personal view is that Trump actually relates to the kind of absolute power that Putin has. He believes the world should be divided into spheres of influence with the tough guys like him and, you know, others controlling, you know, parts of the world, being able to do pretty much what they want. He's clearly on a path of autocracy in our own country that in some ways reflects his envy of leaders of other countries who can do whatever they choose to do.

I think it's very much about his personality. And that's why this book that we wrote, which is based on the academic research of which, you know, Keren is an expert about how leaders matter, what the personality traits are that are really driving decision-making, is so important right now because we look at somebody like Trump and I think even in our own country and certainly around the world, there's been a sense of confusion, disbelief. What is he doing? Why does he do what he does? And we want people to

have a very clear view about what we know influences leaders and why certain leaders act the way they do. And that, of course, includes Putin. It includes Trump and others.

ZAKARIA: Keren, you've written a lot about this, "Foreign Affairs" articles. When you look at this dynamic, what do you think is the key to understanding somebody like Trump or somebody like Putin?

YARHI-MILO: So first of all, I would say we have to think about the human element when we talk about world politics. And within that, we see this in the face-to-face diplomacy. And here it's not an aberration. We've seen many leaders in the past, from Reagan to the meeting in Vienna between Khrushchev and Kennedy, where those face-to- face interactions tell leaders they think a lot about the intentions of the other side.

And they trust those impressions even more than what the intelligence are telling them about the man sitting in front of them.

[10:25:07]

Khrushchev coming out of the meeting with Kennedy and says he's young, he's not experienced, I can test him. And then you have a few months later the Cuban missile crisis. On the flip side, you have cases like Reagan and Gorbachev, where the intelligence community was telling Reagan this is another Soviet leader, is not different from the others. This is deception. And Reagan comes out and he says, I trust him. He's different. And he basically brushes aside the intelligence.

So we see variation. But what do we see with Trump is over personalization of foreign policy to the extent that it's not serving a strategy that -- or in the name of U.S. interests. There's a lot of volatility that comes in overreliance on those face-to-face interactions. And on Monday they're great and we see progress. And on Thursday the emotion is different. And we see this not just with Putin.

ZAKARIA: Secretary Clinton, Dean Yarhi-Milo, thank you so much.

YARHI-MILO: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: This is terrific. And it's a really substantive, fascinating book. Thank you.

CLINTON: Thank you so much.

YARHI-MILO: Thank you so much, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I'll speak with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about the Trump administration's moves to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in un funding and what that means for global peacekeeping and humanitarian work.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:30:53]

ZAKARIA: For nearly 80 years, the United States has been the U.N.'s largest funder and a key partner in many of its peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. But now that pivotal U.S. role is at risk after the Trump administration this year moved to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in support. For more on what this means for the U.N.'s future, I sat down with its secretary-general, Antonio Guterres.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Mr. Secretary-General, welcome.

ANTONIO GUTERRES, U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL: It's a great pleasure to be with you again.

ZAKARIA: So, tell me, this session of the general assembly, you have a situation where some countries do not seem to have received visas for some of their delegates. So, it's still a little murky. The United States is threatening to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.

The part about the budget cuts that probably have a very clear impact is the reduction in the budget for peacekeeping operations. First, explain to us what are these operations and what would be the effect of American cuts?

GUTERRES: We have operations in Central African Republic, in South Sudan, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Lebanon, in Cyprus, in many parts of the world. And many of these operations have an important role in the protection of civilians because, unfortunately, we have peacekeeping operations where there is no peace to keep.

And so, obviously a drastic reduction of peacekeeping operations will have a very negative impact in countries that are still in an effective conflict situation. What was announced was the rescission of the of the peacekeeping contribution.

ZAKARIA: Fifty percent cut.

GUTERRES: The rescission of 50 percent. And there are no guarantees in relation to the other 50 percent. In any case, as the U.S. has already 1.5 billion in arrears from the past, this means that we will have to take some drastic decisions, reducing in a very clear way several of the missions, most of them. And this will have inevitably consequences in relation to the populations those peacekeepers were protecting.

ZAKARIA: There is a U.N. report out that says that what is going on in Gaza is a genocide. Do you agree with that report?

GUTERRES: I think the report is a very serious document that needs to be seen with particular attention. It's not in the functions of the secretary-general to do the legal determination of genocide. That, of course, depends on the adequate judicial institutions. And there are no resolutions of the general assembly or the Security Council about that. But I think the name is not the most important. The most important is reality. And the reality is that we are having a horrendous situation in Gaza. The level of death and destruction in Gaza is nothing compared -- has no comparison with anything else that I've seen since I am secretary- general. And, obviously, condemning -- is we condemn the terror acts of Hamas that are intolerable. I think that they cannot justify a collective punishment of the Palestinian people, together with the creeping annexation we are witnessing in the West Bank and trying to avoid the possibility of a two-state solution that, in my opinion, is the only thing that can guarantee peace in the Middle East and avoid radicalization in many other parts of the world.

ZAKARIA: The hardest problems for the United Nations, it seems to me, in terms of having any effect on peace, are places where a -- one of the veto powers, one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, has an interest. And in the case of Ukraine, you have one of the five permanent members actually waging that war, actually engaging in that aggression. Can you honestly describe what is happening there as it is, which is Russian aggression against Ukraine?

[10:35:05]

GUTERRES: But it is obvious that we are witnessing a situation in which Russia invaded Ukraine, and we are witnessing a situation in which we need to have an immediate ceasefire and we need to have, with that ceasefire, the way for a sustainable peace, but a sustainable peace that respects the charter, international law, and also respects the resolutions of the general assembly, including, naturally, the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

ZAKARIA: So, Russia cannot acquire those territories that it has taken by force --

GUTERRES: I believe that taken by force territories today is illegal, is against international law.

ZAKARIA: But, look, you're a -- you've been a very canny politician in your years. You were prime minister of Portugal. You know that Putin is not going to stop the war if he doesn't get to keep those territories.

How do you make this appeal to him? How do you think he's going to stop if he's told, oh, you have to give back those territories, including Crimea?

GUTERRES: Well, one thing is the law. The other thing are realities on the ground. And I can admit, realities on the ground are difficult, but we should never give up in relation to affirming the law.

I'll give you an example, East Timor. For decades, East Timor was occupied by Indonesia after something that the Portuguese did wrong, which was to leave after our revolution and everybody said, this is something that would never change.

The truth is, East Timor is today an independent country. And I'm proud to have played some role on that. Never give up in defending the things that you believe in, international law, the charter, the respect for territorial integrity of states is a fundamental base for a world to be peaceful and for a world in which countries can live together.

ZAKARIA: On that moral high note, Mr. Secretary-General, thank you so much.

GUTERRES: Thank you very much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I asked the former director of Mossad, Yossi Cohen, why Israel is destroying Gaza City.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:42:11]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Israel intensified its assault on Gaza with a new ground offensive in Gaza City this week. What does this mean for the potential to end the war?

Joining me now to discuss all this is the former director of Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence agency, Yossi Cohen. He has a new book out, "The Sword of Freedom: Israel, Mossad, and the Secret War." Welcome, Yossi.

YOSSI COHEN, FORMER MOSSAD DIRECTOR: Thank you very much for having me, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: First, I got to tell you, it's an amazing book. I can't believe you were able to say as much as you say about some of these extraordinary operations that Israeli intelligence does. But before we get to that, I got to ask you, explain to us what is the strategic rationale at this point of this war of going into Gaza City, because so many senior intelligence, senior military people, former prime ministers feel this is -- just feels like a relentless pounding for a kind of pyrrhic victory. Maybe there's, you know, the last 100 Hamas fighters. What do you think is the strategy here?

COHEN: Well, I think that there is an important strategy behind when we see that there is a kind of an equation that actually was yet not been solved. And this is the hostages from one hand and the war against Hamas from the other hand.

So, this is something that has to be eventually explained, because the end of the war is in the hands today of Hamas. If we had concluded with the help of the American administration, I know that Marco Rubio was there in in Doha mainly to discuss, I believe, the hostages future deals. And I know that delegations from the state of Israel are still going on trying to conduct this kind of an important thing that will conclude the deal for the hostages release. If this has happened, I think that that would have been easily the end of the war.

ZAKARIA: If you want to get the hostages out, you have to engage in diplomacy and you have to engage in diplomacy with Hamas because they're the ones who have the hostages.

COHEN: This is what we do, and I believe we don't do it directly.

ZAKARIA: Yes, but at the same time, if Bibi Netanyahu is saying, I won't stop until I've destroyed every last Hamas fighter, who will you negotiate with?

COHEN: So, to defeat Hamas, I mean, until the very last terrorist does -- it correctly said, Fareed, probably something very hard to do, something very hard to accomplish. What we are doing, to my understanding, which I'm not holding yet, the full intelligence picture anymore, unfortunately. That we are forcing Hamas terrorists inside Gaza to go out, OK, either to surrender or to leave Gaza Strip, or they will have to be defeated. To my understanding, at the same time, we do conduct, but not directly because we do not speak directly to Hamas or to any other terror organization.

[10:45:04]

But we do it with the help of American administration and, of course, the Qataris. Hoping for a deal. To my understanding and wish, if a conclusive deal will be eventually agreed in between Hamas and the state of Israel, even indirectly, this will resign. This will eventually put an end to the war in between us.

ZAKARIA: Let me ask you, though, you talked about not just as a -- as an important intelligence figure in Israel, but as a potential politician. There are people who are trying to recruit you to run, you know, maybe as prime minister, as deputy prime minister. Are you interested in that?

COHEN: Not now.

ZAKARIA: If you were, would you have a very different strategy than Bibi Netanyahu?

COHEN: I think so. I think that what the Israelis need dramatically these days is different than what we need in the past. I think that the people of Israel are moving to different directions. Definitely after October 7th, the pure split that we had in the past, in which are you in favor of a Palestinian state? Are you against the Palestinian state? That was the story.

It is not the story right now. The story is about unity, about how do you unify, again, the people of Israel under one umbrella. And I think this kind of concept, this is something that I would love and I would appreciate presenting to the people of Israel. And this is the leadership that we're looking for.

To my understanding we don't have any kind of a vivid electoral time or election time in Israel right now. So, it will have to wait. And my decision right now is not to go into the Israeli politics.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I asked Yossi Cohen, former director of Mossad, whether the current regime in Iran can survive. We'll be back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:51:37]

ZAKARIA: The Israeli intelligence community has had many remarkably successful operations against its enemies in recent years. With my guest, former Mossad director Yossi Cohen, I want to understand what drives those successes.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: I want to ask you, what we saw with the major operation in Hezbollah, with the precision strikes in Iran, the ability to get at Ismail Haniyeh when he was at the guest house of the supreme leader --

COHEN: In Tehran.

ZAKARIA: -- in Tehran. How much of this is old fashioned human intelligence and how much is this is new technology that has made it possible for? Because Israel is this high tech, you know, superpower. How much of that has been the game changer?

COHEN: It is a combination of both. I think --

ZAKARIA: That give me a give me -- give me --

COHEN: But it is -- it is true because I'll tell you why. First, I mean, I think that the Mossad, not like others, not like other intelligence organizations, which I worked with, I mean, generally speaking, around the world, I mean, the -- whatever other organization, don't want to specify, any organizational names on that. We have never abandoned the as you said. I mean, the old human intelligence.

I truly believe until today and that this is what I did, that was my profession. That human intelligence is the most penetrative element that you can ever get. Combination or to combine human intelligence with technology is even more lethal than ever. Because if you have someone from within and he is now your source and he was completely recruited and fully understand what you need and imagine that he is working with the chief of staff of a given whatever leader or military commander or revolutionary guards supervisor the doors that could be opened and the lethality of the elements that you can use based on him and the technology are much greater than either him alone or the technology alone. And I think that the smart thing that Mossad did, and still doing is to make this kind of combination.

ZAKARIA: So, given your perspective on Iran, and you must have agents working in Iran, you must have informers. Otherwise, you couldn't have gotten that information do you -- as you know, there are two schools of thought essentially on Iran. One is that the regime is very fragile, that if you attack it, you will be able to destabilize it, topple it.

The other one is these guys are tough guys. They came in through a revolution. They're pretty -- they're hardline. They also provide a lot of patronage. They're pretty stable. Which view do you veer toward?

COHEN: I mean, I see along with the -- a long time, I mean, with our experience. And we have tried to affect or to be very effective in our trainings, I mean, to have a regime change.

Truly, we believe that the regime change is so much needed not only for the sake of the world, but for the sake of these Iranians that are countering from within the Iranian society, the regime. They're not religious enough, or they may be religious, but they don't like -- they don't like the regime to be kind of a dictatorship. I mean, running their life anymore. On the other hand --

ZAKARIA: But you've never succeeded?

COHEN: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It is super hard to succeed. And this is the other hand, because on the other side of that equation, I mean, there are the regime itself and its allies, like the revolutionary guards and the Basij and huge powers in the police and the secret police and there are huge powers working inside Iran against its own citizens.

[10:55:09]

So, it is fragile. And that's why the Iranian regime is pouring even more efforts and more aggression against its own people to make sure that they will be a stronger regime than ever.

I mean, on June 22nd, when I gave an interview to the channel 12 in Israel, they said, what do you think? I mean, why should -- what should we do now? I mean, after a very successful attack, combined attack, Israeli and American one to follow by the B-2. And thank you very much for doing it. And I said, I believe that we should go all the way down. We should go ahead and take the regime down right now. I mean, this is -- that was probably the weakest point of the Iranian regime since the 70s.

ZAKARIA: Ten years from now, will this regime still be in place?

COHEN: I hope not.

ZAKARIA: But as a prediction?

COHEN: As a prediction, they will not be there.

ZAKARIA: Wow. Yossi Cohen, pleasure. And as I said, the book is full --

COHEN: Thank you very much.

ZAKARIA: -- of really interesting stuff.

COHEN: Thank you very much. Pleasure being here.

(END VIDEOTAPE) ZAKARIA: And thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)