[Rosemary Church, Cnn Anchor:] A rare olive branch from North Korea, Kim Jong-un reopens a hotline with South Korea amid taunts from the U.S. President on Twitter. But North Korea wasn't President Trumps only target, now the U.S. is threatening to also cut funding to the Palestinian authority. And later, it's one story determined not to become last year's news. We have more on a new initiative taking on sexual harassment in Hollywood and beyond. Hello and welcome to your viewers joining us from all around the world. I'm Rosemary Church and this is CNN Newsroom. And we begin with a major diplomatic breakthrough between North and South Korea. For the first time in almost two years a special direct hotline connecting the two countries just reopened and North Korea called the South. North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, gave an order to open the phone line because he wants to talk about sending his athletes to the Olympic Games next month, but even as Pyongyang and Seoul make these moves toward talks, Mr. Kim and the U.S. President remain combative. During his New Year's address, Mr. Kim said, the U.S. was within range of his weapons and the nuclear button is always on his desk. President Donald Trump responded with a taunt saying this, I too have nuclear button, but it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his and my button works. The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. says Washington has a firm condition for diplomacy.
[Nikki Haley, U.s. Ambassador To The U.n:] North Korea can talk with anyone they want, but the U.S. is not going to recognize it or acknowledge it until they agree to ban the nuclear weapons that they have.
[Church:] Well joining us now is CNN Military Analyst, Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona, in California and Paula Hancocks in Seoul. Greetings to you both. Paula, let's start with you, what is the latest on these upcoming talks between North and South Korea and what has been the reaction to President Trump bragging on Twitter that his nuclear button is bigger than Kim Jong-uns?
[Paula Hancocks, Cnn Correspondent:] Well to your first question, Rosemary, just a half an hour ago that communication hotline was reopened at Panmunjom, the Truce Village in the demilitarized zone. It hasn't been answered since February 2016 according to South Korean officials, but South Korea has been phoning 9 a.m., 4 p.m., every single day since that point to see if North Korea would answer. But today, North Korea actually made the first phone call, 3:30 p.m. local time here in Seoul. They made sure the communications were correct and then they started their discussions. Now we don't have any information at this point as to what they were talking about, whether or not they agreeing to that suggestion from South Korea that January 9th, next Tuesday, should be the time that they actually start those high level talks at the DMZ. South Koreans saying they have to be soon, they have to be high level because there's only a month to go before the winter Olympics. But, we've heard some very positive sounds from both sides. The North Koreans though the television on a North Korean official saying that Kim Jong-un did welcome the response from the South Korean president. South Korean's President, Moon Jae-in, is saying he welcomes the idea of talks and he also went on to say that he thought that it could go onto nuclear talks as well. But at this point North Korea just wants to talk about the Olympics.
[Church:] And of course the reaction to those words from President Trump?
[Hancocks:] There has been no official reaction. You can imagine the scratching of the heads and the conversations and corridors of power in North and South Korea as that tweet came out. I think there's been those kinds of questions and discussions all around the world, but there has no official response from either side and quite often we don't see a response from South Korea. They're an ally of the United States, they don't want to be saying anything that's seen as criticizing the U.S. President, but I can't image that they thought that tweet was helpful.
[Church:] Indeed. Paula Hancocks, bringing us up to date on the situation there from Seoul in South Korea just after 4 p.m. Many thanks to you. So, let's bring in Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona now for some analysis and Colonel, when you read that tweet from the U.S. President about his nuclear button being bigger than Kim Jong-un's, what did you think and what impact could that sort of language have on the outcome of rising tensions between the United States and North Korea?
[Rick Francona, Cnn Military Analyst:] Well I think a lot of this was to be expected. First you had Kim Jong-un making his statement. He included he started off his statement with his threats toward the United States, then he went on to make this conciliatory gesture towards the South. I think this was very well played by the North Koreans and I think this might be trying to drive a wedge, a small wedge, between the United States and South Korea. If you look at what happened, he tried to provoke the U.S. President and guess what, it worked. And so you see Trump respond with this knee jerk reaction. Now preferably he wouldn't have said it, but I think we may be reading too much into this. I don't think we're going to war over this and I don't think it's really going to upset what's happening. The North Koreans and the South Koreans look like they're on a path towards some talks. This is a good thing. The participation in the Olympics could be a good think. So, I'm not going to put too much into this bluster, because we see this bluster every year from the North Koreans, we just don't see a response from the United States like this every year.
[Church:] Yes, let's talk about the opening of that hotline, because the U.S. is, of course, dismissing upcoming talks between North and South Korea initiated by Kim Jong-un which is highly unusual, calling them nothing more than a band aid and the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, says the U.S. won't take any talk seriously if they don't ban all nuclear weapons in North Korea. Now, if and when these talks do take place, it's more than likely that they're just going to be talking about North Korea being included in the Winter Olympic Games, but from what you've been saying it sounds like you see it as a positive move that talks are starting at all, but there's an effort here, presumably, for North Korea to freeze out the United States. Do you see that as a strategy on the part of the north?
[Francona:] I do and I think that's what the North Korean's would prefer. They want to have bilateral talks with South Korea and they want South Korea to recognize that they're a nuclear power. They know that United States is not going to sit down at the table with them as long as they insist that they're going to be a nuclear armed nation and I don't see that changing. I see the United States position and North Korean position diametrically oppose. I see neither side willing to give on that. So the only way we're going to have talks is if we start with North Korea and South Korea and given the stakes here, any talking is good.
[Church:] Yes, and I did want to ask you or more less going back to the tweet that we read out from President Trump, what would you see as the endgame of challenging the power of Kim Jong-un? Is it Mr. Trump using a language that Kim Jong-un understands and some people have suggested that that actually is helpful or could be helpful, or could it push tensions into dangerous territory here?
[Francona:] Well he's running risk when he does this. I mean I understand what he's doing. He's saying, yes you don't even know that you have a capability that works. They have not tested it. I think the latest intelligence assessment that I've been able to glean was that they do not have a reentry vehicle yet. So, they really don't have a capability that he's threatening to use. And I think the President wanted to put him in place and saying, yes you're still the little kid on the block and we're the big gorillas. So, let's just knock this off. I don't know I think he runs a big risk doing that because antagonizing a guy with his finger on a nuclear weapon isn't really a good idea.
[Chuch:] Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona, thank you for joining us and thank you for your analysis, we always appreciate it. And you can add the Palestinians to the list of people President Trump is blasting on Twitter early in 2018. He is threatening to withhold future payments to the tweeting this, we pay the Palestinians hundreds of millions of dollars a year and get no appreciation or respect. With the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them? Here is Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
[Haley:] The Palestinians now have to show their will that they want to come to the table. As of now they're not coming to the table but they ask for aide. We're not giving the aide, we're going to make sure that they come to the table and we want to move forward with the peace process.
[Chuch:] We turn to Iran where demonstrators are planning to march Wednesday in support of the countries regime.
[Church:] And these are some of the anti-government protestors clashing with riot police Tuesday, was the sixth straight day of protest against Iran's leaders. The protestors are fed up with Iran's stagnant economy, high unemployment, especially among young people and perceived corruption. But Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, is blaming outside enemies for the unrest. Well the U.S. calls that allegation nonsense. Mohammad Marandi is a professor at the University of Tehran and joins us now live from the Iranian capital. Thank you so much for being with us.
[Mohammad Marandi, Professor At University Of Tehran:] Thanks for having me.
[Church:] Now, the protests were apparently quieted Tuesday and we're expecting see pro-government demonstrations on Wednesday, what does that signal to you? An end to the anti-government protests or a pause in those demonstrations do you think?
[Marandi:] Well, I think we have to make a distinction between protests and riots. What we've had over the last few months in Tehran and in other cities, have been peaceful protests. For example, we have regular protests in front of parliament over different issues, but more recently since a couple of financial institutions have collapsed and a lot of people have lost their money, there have been protests where people have been demanding that the government resolve the problem for them and return their help them get their money back. But what happened was that rioters began to hijack the protests and these rioters have been guided from abroad. The people who are using social media apps to very openly instigate violence; they've been teaching people how to make Molotov cocktails and other bombs, and they've been telling them to attack police stations; these are people who are based in Europe and the United States, it's very clear who they are. One such group is the Mujahidin the terrorist organization, which in the 1980's assassinated many people in my city in Tehran.
[Church:] Sir, I wonder if I could just interrupt you. What evidence do you have of that outside influence?
[Marandi:] Well the very fact that the majority Nadil terrorist organization is involved in this and they are they have offices their central is in Paris. In the 1980's, as I was saying, they assassinated hundreds of people in Iran and they blew up many bombs in cities throughout the country. Very near my home, a family of four Armenians was killed because of one of their bomb attacks. And they then went to Iraq fought with Saddam Hussein against Iran, basically betraying their own country and they have offices across Europe and North America, in Berlin and Paris. And if we had such a group in Iran that was carrying out attacks in Europe, I think that the reaction would have been very different from those countries. So -
[Church:] And where are you getting that information from?
[Marandi:] They are openly making statements on-line for people to carry out attacks on police stations. And as I said groups using social media apps in Persian. These are very well known groups that people are members of; I monitor, I a member of these groups because I want to see what they are saying. So it's no secret.
[Church:] Now Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Tuesday blamed Iran's enemies for stirring up unrest in the country you referred to it there, but some might say that President Trump's Tweet on January 1st was doing just that when he said this was a time for change in Iran. Are protesters being emboldened by U.S. support for anti-government protests in any where or are they motivated? The protesters you talk about, not the rioters, of course, are they motivated entirely by domestic factors? When they talk about economic issues that are a concern certainly to younger people trying to get work?
[Marandi:] That's a very good point actually. Those who are protesting, no they're not motivated by Trump. Actually people like Trump and the rioters both cause them to stop protesting because they don't want to be associated with either Trump or the rioters. So Trump has, as usual, he does no service to anyone. People in Iran have no respect for Trump because in the United States, he supports direct or indirect racist groups. In Charlottesville he played a very negative role; when African-Americans
[Church:] We appear to have lost our signal there, Mohammad Marandi joining us from Tehran, many thanks to you. The U.S. wants the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency session on Iran. Let's get more now from CNN's Fred Pleitgen in Berlin. He has reported from Iran numerous times and Fred the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has called on the international community to speak out on the Iran protests. She says the U.S. will seek emergency U.N. talks on the situation. What are European leaders saying about the situation in Iran and how far might they go?
[Frederik Pleitgen, Cnn Senior International Correspondent:] Well I think they're going a lot less far than the U.S. administration is at this point. You have Nikki Haley obviously speaking out; you have President Trump speaking out and supporting in support of the protesters in various Tweets that he's launched over the past 24 to 36 hours. European leaders, they don't necessarily take a different view, but they are very different in the way that they convey those views. You have Frederica Mogherini who's obviously the foreign policy chief of the European Union and she's a big, big backer of the nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers so she's been calling on all sides to tone things down but she's also calling on the rights to free assembly to be respected in Iran and that's really something that we're seeing from various European leaders. Leah Rhiman in Germany, you have Zeck Margobriall, the foreign minister who also called on all sides to show restraint, but also said that freedom of assembly and freedom of speech must be respected. And then there was a phone call between the French President Macron and the President of Iran Hassan Rouhani, where Rouhani called on Macron to stop some of the groups that Professor Marandi was just talking about from operating in France. It's unclear whether or not that's something that's going to happen, at the same time Mr. Macron also called on the Iranians to respect free speech and free assembly and also said that they were going to postpone a visit by the defense minister of France, which was supposed to take place next week to Iran. So certainly this is having a bit of an effect, but at the same time the European leaders really have a different style of rhetoric than the Americans at this point Rosemary.
[Church:] All right many thanks to our Fred Pleitgen joining us there live from Berlin where it is 8:15 in the morning; we appreciate your live report. Let's take a very short break here, but still to come, President Trump tries his thumbs at Twitter diplomacy his latest swipes at Iran, Pakistan and North Korea, plus he saved a few jabs for his favorite target of late, the Department of Justice, we'll have more on that when we return.