(dramatic music) - Hello everyone and welcome to Amanpour and Company.

Here's what's coming up.

- Iran will not have nuclear.

What we blew it up, it's blown up.

The kingdom come.

- Is Iran out of the nuclear business for good?

Or could US and Israeli attacks drive the program underground?

Nuclear arms control expert Gary Seymour examines Iran's strategic options.

And, well, it's a fortress and I went in like a foreign correspondent, like a war correspondent, and did battle in this incredible fortress that's still impregnable.

Adventures in the Louvre.

Former New York Times Paris Bureau Chief Elaine Schelino takes me behind the scenes of the iconic museum.

From its famous glass pyramid to the coveted Mona Lisa, all explored in her new book.

Then-- - Suicide prevention is about people, not about politics.

- Hari Sreenivasan speaks to Mark Hanson about the Trump administration ending funding for a suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ+ youth.

(upbeat music) - Amanpour & Company is made possible by the Anderson Family Endowment, Jim Atwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poita Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism, the Family Foundation of Layla and Mickey Strauss, Mark J. Bleschner, the Philemon M. D'Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, the Peter G. Peterson and Joan Gantz Cooney Fund, Charles Rosenblum, and the partners of the program, Kou and Patricia Ewan, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

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Thank you.

- Welcome to the program, everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

The primary goal of Israeli and American attacks on Iran was to remove the country's quote, "existential nuclear threat."

The opposite effect, motivating the Islamic Republic to pull out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT and resume their nuclear program covertly.

In parliament, Iranian lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, that is the UN Atomic Energy Agency that monitors these things.

That would mean Iran halting inspections, reporting and oversight activities.

A final decision on the matter will be made by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran always insisted its nuclear program is peaceful.

In fact, in 1995, I was taken to the earliest reactor, the nuclear power plant in Bushehr on the Persian Gulf Coast.

Here's what I found back then.

Here it stands on the Persian Gulf, covered in idle cranes, buffeted by the wind and the sand, a symbol of one country's hopes and another's fears.

Fears the Iranian government clearly wants to quash by allowing the first TV crew an organised tour inside its unfinished nuclear power plant in Bushehr.

Iran is waiting for the Russians to install a light water reactor in this cavity, the heart of the building, and to provide other components needed to start up the plant.

The plant was started by the Germans in the 70s.

Work stopped after the Islamic Revolution.

And when the new regime decided to restart the project, intense US pressure kept the Germans away.

That and suspicions about Iran's intentions.

Iran says it just wants to see a return on its $10 billion investment.

We already spent this huge amount of money and we cannot get anything from it.

And we want to finish it to get electricity from it.

Iranians and Russians say this plant can't be used to develop weapons.

They say it requires different technology and scientific expertise.

But the US suspects Iran is pursuing a separate military programme and worries that the required expertise may come with the influx of Russians.

The Americans are totally wrong.

No, we don't have this ambitious and we don't want to have this idea.

The International Monitoring Agency says that as yet it's found no evidence to suggest Iran plans a nuclear military buildup.

Iran says it hopes within the next 20 years to have up to 20% of its electricity generated by nuclear energy.

And it could build between three and 10 more nuclear power plants.

Despite its huge oil and gas reserves, Iran says that like any other country, it has the right to develop alternative energy sources for the future.

That was then 30 years ago.

Today, President Trump says the other later nuclear facilities have been totally obliterated.

And at the NATO summit, he said US and Iranian negotiating teams would meet next week.

So what is ahead?

Gary Seymour served as White House Coordinator for Arms Control under President Obama and he's joining me now.

Gary Seymour, welcome to the programme.

You are a serious arms control expert.

You worked for the Obama administration and we want to know your insight into all of this.

First and foremost, you know there's a furious row between the administration and those who are claiming that initial intelligence found that it had only been set back a bit, the programme at Fordow, for instance.

That's initial intelligence.

And now Israel has said it's been taken off the table.

Iran has said its nuclear facilities have been badly damaged.

Can I ask you what you think is the best case scenario for what could have been achieved by bombing at Fordow?

Let's just take Fordow.

Well, I think Fordow is the biggest uncertainty.

For the other major facilities at Esfahan and Natanz and centrifuge production facilities, it appears that the damage was very, very severe.

In some cases, above ground, unprotected buildings have been completely destroyed.

At Fordow, most of which is underground, it's a little unclear exactly how much damage and whether or not the massive ordnance penetrator bombs the US dropped actually penetrated into the centrifuge hall.

I don't think we'll know until people dig out the tunnel entrances and actually try to go in there.

But in any event, I think it's unclear whether Iran would try to rebuild at Fordow, even if it is only partially damaged, because there's a risk that the US and Israel would simply attack it again.

So I'm not sure the question of exactly what percentage of the centrifuges had been destroyed.

I'm not sure it really matters very much in terms of Iran's capability to rebuild its program, except they might be able to salvage some of the centrifuges and auxiliary equipment if they decide in the future to build an enrichment plant someplace else, in secret, they hope.

Okay, so that is the question, isn't it?

The whole debate over how much of a facility was destroyed, clearly, potentially, I think, anyway, from what I've spoken to experts, and I'm listening to you now, it sort of obliterates the actual real problem and the real question, which we do not know.

Were they able to preserve and rescue and remove a certain number of centrifuges, if not all?

And crucially, were they able to remove a certain amount or all of the 400 or so kilograms of highly enriched uranium, the 60% that is so troublesome to the rest of the world?

And if so, could they decide to pursue a program and maybe even a weapon in secret?

What do you think?

- Well, certainly they could try.

I mean, Iran has the technical expertise.

They have bits and pieces of the centrifuge program left over.

And most importantly, as you said, they have a pretty large stockpile of enriched uranium, about 5,000 kilograms of low enriched uranium and about 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, which could be enriched further to 90%.

That was the level Iran planned to use in their nuclear weapon.

Iran could even try to make crude and bulky nuclear weapons from the 60% enriched uranium.

Couldn't be delivered by a missile or a military aircraft, but it might be delivered by a boat or a commercial airliner.

So all of that is possible.

I think the question is what Iran's will is and what their capacity or appetite for risk is.

Certainly the war has increased Iran's rationale for having nuclear weapons as a way to defend themselves and deter future attacks from the US and Israel.

But the war has also illustrated that Israel and even more important, the US, is prepared to use military force to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

So Iran has to calculate what is the danger that an effort to resume a nuclear weapons program or a program to produce nuclear weapons could result in an additional conflict.

And we just don't know the answer to that now.

I think we'll get a much better idea next week when US and Iranian negotiators are meeting and we'll see whether or not Iran reaffirms its commitment to the NPT, which would require them to allow IAEA inspectors to verify and monitor the location of this enriched uranium.

Some of it could be buried in tunnels at Isfahan, so it might take months to dig it out.

Some of it could have been moved before the US strike.

So it's really a little unclear at this point exactly what the status of that enriched uranium is.

- Okay, well, let me ask you, because you yourself wrote that Iran is unlikely to formally give up its right to enrichment.

The Supreme Leader has now come out and he has said it's a joke that Iran would surrender enrichment.

You just mentioned an option and we wait to see if they withdraw from the NPT, but they have actually in parliament anyway, and with one other levels called the, you know, one of the expert levels that they have in their system, have decided that they will suspend or end cooperation with the IAEA.

How bad is that?

What does that signal?

- I think if Iran withdraws from the NPT and stop cooperating with the IAEA, which would mean that we don't really know for sure where that enriched uranium is, I think it's quite likely that the war would resume.

Just as if Iran tries to build a secret enrichment plant and it's discovered, I think it's very likely that the war would resume.

So again, Iran has to calculate on one hand, its enhanced desire to have nuclear weapons for protection versus on the other hand, the risk that pursuing nuclear weapons will lead to a resumption of the conflict.

And I think an early indication will be what happens next week when US and Iranian negotiators meet, what does Iran agree to?

I agree that they won't give up the right to enrichment.

That's something too important to the regime, but they might commit to remain in the NPT and cooperate with the IAEA.

We'll have to wait and see.

- I wanna go back to a little bit of the history of the Iranian nuclear program.

As you know, in 1957, the US and Iran signed a nuclear cooperation agreement.

It was part of President Eisenhower's Atom for Peace program.

That also led to the IAEA.

The US shipped Iran a nuclear reactor in the late '60s.

Iran signed the NPT around the same time.

But Robert Einhorn, a former arms control official who you know well, said, "We gave Iran its starter kit.

"We weren't terribly concerned "about nuclear proliferation in those days, "so we were pretty promiscuous "about transferring nuclear technology.

"We got other countries started in the nuclear business."

So let's just go back to that.

Obviously, with the best intentions, they didn't expect there to be a rush towards weaponization.

Was that naive or did something go wrong?

- Well, what's interesting is that the US position toward Iran's nuclear program has actually been very consistent.

Going back to the Nix administration, we supported Iran acquiring nuclear technology for research and for nuclear power, for energy generation, but we opposed the Shah of Iran acquiring what's called fuel cycle, enrichment and reprocessing, which are technologies that have both civilian and military applications.

And that policy has actually continued after the revolution.

President Clinton, President Yeltsin reached an agreement that the US would not try to block the Bushehr nuclear power reactor that you featured in your really interesting piece.

And at the same time, Russia agreed to cancel plans to build an enrichment plant inside Iran.

And I think when the Russians backed out of that contract with Iran, the Iranians decided to build their own enrichment facility, ostensibly to produce fuel for nuclear power.

That was the start of the Natanz enrichment plant, which was then subsequently made public in 2002.

And which of course was recently attacked in this-- - Exactly.

And of course, I think most people in the business know that it was the Pakistani nuclear scientist who on the black market sold Iran its first centrifuges to enrich uranium and helped kickstart the fuel cycle situation in Iran.

But I wanna ask you this because look, John Kerry and all the others who negotiated the JCPOA, they believe that whatever happens, this has to be a diplomatic process.

It has to be negotiated.

It can't be bombed out of existence.

You can't bomb knowledge of all these scientists, et cetera.

And you, I think, have straddled both sides of it.

You are on the one hand, a member of a group that was very, very clear about opposing an Iran nuclear weapon like just about everybody else in the world.

But then you resigned from that because you thought the JCPOA was a good deal.

But then Trump pulled out of the JCPOA.

We're here because of that, right?

Of pulling out and the Iran's rush to enrich to 60%.

- Yeah, I think we're here because of two miscalculations.

The first was Trump's decision to withdraw from the JCPOA in 2018, which was an agreement that was working very well.

It was limited in terms of its time, but it gave the US and Iran a basis on which to try to negotiate further agreements.

So that was a grave miscalculation.

The second miscalculation was really on Iran's part.

President Biden had negotiated with the other parties to the JCPOA, an agreement to return to the agreement, to revive it.

And in the summer of 2022, the Iranians rejected that agreement.

Why, I'm not sure.

But the combination of the two, Trump leaving and then Iran refusing to restore the agreement, led to the situation where Iran was very rapidly accumulating 60% enriched uranium, which as we talked about poses a nuclear weapons threat.

And I think that's what triggered the conflict.

If Iran had observed more caution in their production of 60% enriched uranium, which they could have done unilaterally, I think we might not have had the basis on which this war took place.

- Indeed.

And unfortunately, according to some Biden officials, Iran was asking them an impossible question.

How can you guarantee that if Trump comes back, he won't again pull out?

So this is just a whole load of miscalculations by everybody and here we are.

Gary Seymour, thank you very much indeed for being with us.

- Thank you, Christiana.

- And now to Paris and uncovering the secrets of one of the most famous museums in the world.

Elaine Shalino made her name as a foreign correspondent, covering crises and revolution.

And she served as the New York Times Paris Bureau Chief for a while.

She's now turned her reporting skills onto the Louvre, exploring the iconic museum in ways you've never seen before like joining window washers on the glass pyramid and divulging why so many employees there have a love hate relationship with the Mona Lisa.

Her book is called "Adventures in the Louvre" and she joined me here in London to discuss her latest assignment.

Elaine Shalino, welcome.

- Thank you.

- "Adventures in the Louvre."

What made you want to write a book about the world's, yeah, biggest, best known museum?

Was it obvious?

- Well, it's a fortress and I went in like a foreign correspondent, like a war correspondent and did battle in this incredible fortress that's still impregnable and hopefully conquered it at least temporarily.

- You say impregnable, I was actually really astounded to hear about the amount of, I mean, it's a little bit like going to some kind of authoritarian dictatorship where you can't move from minders.

How many minders and why at a museum were you so closely supervised?

- Well, Christiane, you know minders as I know minders from the Middle East and I had a minder and she was responsible for setting up every single interview with a Louvre official.

In fact, there was even a classified Louvre document that said that I was not allowed to go anywhere in the Louvre except with my minder and that slowed me down probably about a year.

- Would your hackles up now?

It would drive me bananas.

- Well, what was terrible is she was a good minder.

She was really efficient and so she did her job and that made it difficult.

- Difficult?

- Well, yeah, but I found ways around it.

- What difficult?

I mean, what could you not do that you would rather done?

- Well, it just meant that I had to do every interview according to the Louvre rules and according to her schedule, but I found ways around it.

For example, one of the curators went to the same fish market as I did on the Rue des Martyrs so we would meet over fish and one important curator agreed to come to my apartment so we would look at all of the books on the Louvre and we would look at all of the works of art and paintings so that I could be prepared to go by myself and enter into this, as I say, a battlefield.

- And how difficult was it to navigate?

Because I know it's 400 rooms, it's massive.

Did you have to pick and choose what you focused on?

- No, I did everything.

I decided to treat it like a journalistic field and so I asked questions like, how do you wash the windows of the pyramid?

So I had to go up with the-- - That's the entrance, the famous I.M.P.A.

- Well, how do you wash these?

Or how do you go into the basement of the Louvre?

So I went with the sapres pompiers, who are the firefighters who live in the Louvre, into the bowels of the Louvre and we climbed up the side of the Louvre up to the roof.

Or I found out that, for example, there was a librarian in charge of all of the letters about the Mona Lisa and to the Mona Lisa.

So I went through every single letter about.

So it really was an investigative, but also on the ground reporting job.

- So we've done the process, now we're talking about the art and you bring up the Mona Lisa.

So I didn't know this, but it stands to reason that 80% of first-time Louvre visitors go specifically to see the Mona Lisa.

What was your experience covering that?

You'd obviously seen it before, but what was your relationship with the Mona Lisa and with the crowds around the Mona Lisa?

- Well, I was lucky because I got into the Louvre many times when no one else was there.

So I was able to see the Mona Lisa, just she and I bonded.

And after a while, you can appreciate just why she's so magical.

- 'Cause you didn't appreciate before?

- No, and I still don't like the fact that she's so important.

I mean, here she's a Florentine and she's in this room with Venetian painting.

She doesn't belong there, she really does belong, have to have her own space.

But we had to navigate, we had to have a relationship of confidence and trust.

- You and the Mona Lisa.

- Me and the Mona Lisa, yeah.

- And you were talking about letters, you found letters that had been written to her.

I just wanna quote from one of them.

There's a little American girl called Democracy wrote to the Mona Lisa saying, "Tell all your painting friends, hi, "do you think you're smiling in your picture?

"How does it feel to have no eyebrows?

"I know how famous and busy you are, "but can you please try to squeeze in some time "to write me back?"

Well, first of all, that is the most atrocious piece of spelling and grammar that I've ever seen.

- It gets worse than that, yes.

- Oh my gosh, I don't know how old this Democracy is, but sweet.

What other things did people ask the Mona Lisa?

- Are you so yellow because you suffer from jaundice?

- Or one of the questions that's asked is, is this really the Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo da Vinci or is it a fake because it would be too dangerous to put the real one there?

- Do you think that, 'cause you know now everybody does selfies wherever they go.

I mean, I was shocked that they allowed pictures near the Mona Lisa.

Apparently people barely look at it, they immediately whip out their cameras, turn their back to it.

So it's a very fleeting relationship.

- It's like love though, it's fleeting, but then once you've made the connection, you want to go back for more maybe.

- Tell us about the building itself.

It wasn't built as a museum.

We don't know why it's called Louvre.

I want to hear why you think it possibly is, but it was built as a fort to protect Paris in 1190.

- Yes, and then it was a palace that the kings tried to live in, but it was damp, it's on the sand.

So it's damp and flooded and humid and that's why Louis XIV escaped and built Versailles to get away.

It never really worked as a royal residence.

- But how many, I mean hundreds of years later it became a museum.

- During the French Revolution, yes.

And it became a people's museum.

It became a museum that everyone had access to and everybody could go to.

But it was never a museum and it was sort of like a building, huge building, 400 rooms.

It would take 18,000 steps to go to every single room.

It kind of was all pieced together over the centuries so nothing makes sense.

It's not at all like the Met, which was built as a museum.

- You talk about, I mean look, the Mona Lisa, as we know, the most famous painting there, but there's so much more.

I mean, you and I, we've been to Iran and Iraq and we've seen so much of the artwork there, but also that that has been brought to the Louvre.

And it is amazing what they have.

Tell me the story though, because you went to, I come up with it was in Iran, the town of Susa, which had all these beautiful, huge sculptures of Darius I.

- That was the sister empire.

But when we would go to Persepolis, the tour guides would say, if you really want to experience what it was like during this period of ancient Persian history, you've got to go to the Louvre.

And so I tell people, you can't go to Iran, but go to the Louvre and have a feel for what this wonderful empire was like.

- Did you feel a bit of nostalgia and a little bit of, I don't know, grief a little bit that so much of it had been taken out of its home country and put in a foreign museum?

- The French were brilliant diplomats and diplomatic negotiators, and they negotiated contracts with the Shahs over time to take all of this stuff out.

So nothing is ever gonna go back to Iran.

But it is sad to see some of these beautiful ceramics that still haven't even been put together, and you say, why are they here and not in Iran?

- And what did the French also do when they went on military campaigns?

They sent also art historians and curators, right?

- Yes, yes.

Napoleon in particular had a whole contingent of art experts who followed and took only good art, not the bad art, and brought it back.

- That's pretty amazing that that was a actual thought-out piece of conquering, with the cultural side.

- Yeah, the feeling was that France is the center of the universe, and France deserves the best art of the world.

- Of course, the great British Empire felt that it was the center of the universe, and I'm saying this because of the Parthenon marbles.

Here they call them the Elgin marbles, and as you know and everybody knows, there's a great big negotiation going on right now about returning them to their rightful place, which is Greece and the Acropolis.

But you found Parthenon marbles in the Louvre.

- Yes.

- But there's never been this kind of political conundrum over there.

Why not?

Or has there been?

- Well, it's a very different history about how the British got their bit, and they got a lot, where France just has a smaller part.

But it was fascinating for me to go into the Louvre and to be walking around, and all of a sudden, I see this frieze, and it's the Parthenon marbles, and I say, "What?

"How did the Parthenon marbles get here?"

And that's the kind of question that I ask throughout the whole book, is you walk into the Apollo Gallery, and you say, "Well, it's got crown jewels, "but how come it's got so few crown jewels?"

And then you realize that the Third Republic in the 19th century was so terrified that the monarchs were gonna come back that they had a grand auction and sold all the crown jewels at auction, and Charles Tiffany bought a third of them and sold them all to Americans.

So these are the stories-- - Tiffany of Tiffany.

- Tiffany's of Tiffany's, and Tiffany still has some crown jewels that they keep in a vault in New Jersey.

- So people never get to see them.

- I saw them, I touched them, I actually touched some of them.

- Really?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- That's amazing.

- But that's what we do, you know, that's what we do as reporters, and that's what is the excitement of tackling a project like the Louvre.

- What's your advice for people going there?

Because it is huge, and some people think that, oh, they've got 15 minutes, they can do a quick whiz around, and they can get in and out, but it's not like that.

- Well, I say to people, first, never go to the Louvre on an empty stomach and with a full bladder, because you think you're gonna, oh, I'm just gonna come from my Airbnb in Montmartre and go in, I'll grab something to eat, and then go to the toilet there.

No, because there's nothing good to eat in the Louvre, and there are very few toilets.

But I also tell visitors, choose your Louvre identity.

Decide what kind of a visitor are you.

Are you a marathoner, and you have to go see every single work of art in every single room, and I did find people who did that.

Are you a sprinter?

Do you just wanna go in and look at the big three, the Mona Lisa, the Victory of Samothrace, the Venus de Milo?

Are you a wanderer, a flaneur, and you just wanna get lost in the Louvre?

And once you allow yourself the joy and the freedom to look at it however you want, it makes it a lot easier.

- And do you get it now?

Do you get why the Louvre is so unbelievably magnetic and that everybody wants to go and see it?

- No.

- No, still no.

- No, I'm still discovering, and that's the, it's kind of like a lover who you can never truly discover.

And I don't think I could ever learn everything about the Louvre, but that's what makes it so much fun, is that I can go back and wander around and find some beautiful sculpture or some little tiny piece of jewelry, and it makes me happy.

- I just wanna revert to how you got your start, really, as an international correspondent.

And you happened to be in France for Newsweek, I think, and the revolution started to happen, and Khomeini was kicked out of Iraq and came to France.

And then you became the key reporter on Iran.

- Yes, but that was because I was the junior reporter.

I was the only woman in the junior reporter with a bureau at Newsweek magazine with four older men, and none of them wanted to trek out to Nuflila Chateau, a remote suburb.

- Which is where he was, right?

- Where he was, to pay homage and then to interview him.

But I did, dutifully, because I had no beat, really.

I was supposed to cover fashion and food and the soft stuff, and so that when it came time to go on an airplane with Ayatollah Khomeini back to Iran, Newsweek had the courage to put a woman on that plane.

And there were 140 journalists on that plane, and we really were the first hostages.

- First hostages?

- There was a plan to blow up the plane.

- Who was gonna blow it up?

- The Iranian Air Force had a plan to blow up the plane that they brought to Jimmy Carter, and Carter wanted to have nothing to do with it, but Brzezinski said, "You do it on your own," and it never happened.

- Now, talking of women, you have, it's La Grande Odelisk on your cover of your book, and you know that there is this radical feminist group called Guerrilla Girls, and they use that image and they, to protest the lack of female artists in the Met Museum, and we'll put a thing up, but it says, "Do women have to be naked "to get into the Met Museum?"

- Yes.

- What do you think of that?

- She's, that phrase, it's in the book.

- And you did it on purpose.

- Guerrilla Girls, I did.

- Is it your subversive guerrilla comment?

- It is, it is, and I thought it was important to put a tattoo on the back of a beautiful woman and to encourage readers to look at her in a different way, but I do evoke the Guerrilla Girls, and I do also say that women have been abused and abused in the Louvre, and there are very few women artists in a museum like the Louvre, for various reasons, but it's hard to find women, you can find them, and I have found them, women heroines and women, wonder women, and I found one in the ancient, the ancient Mesopotamia collection.

- Oh, good.

- Yeah, a real killer woman with the ruby eyes and a ruby navel, and I will wanna take her the next time I ever go to a work.

- Let me just ask you one last question.

You are always a reporter.

You might be writing about the Louvre, but you're in France at a time of real strain between your home country, the United States, your adopted country, France.

What is it like there, being an American today?

How do you sense where this political standoff, especially over the transatlantic alliance, is going to go?

- It's a really interesting question.

I think it's different from what it was like in the months before the American-led war in Iraq, where there was really a feeling of us against them, and the French really, really thought that the United States was targeting them with Freedom Fries, with Americans throwing, pouring French wine down the toilet.

This is different because it's not America against France.

It's America against the world, so the French themselves don't feel targeted.

They feel that it's made them closer to the rest of Europe.

It's made Macron, the French president, be much more engaged in Europe, and also think about challenging the United States, but with the Europeans behind him.

So it's, although there is a whole subtext that de Gaulle was right in terms of thinking that we have to have our own way in foreign policy and defense, we don't want to be in the military wing of NATO.

We have to do it ourselves, because the United States is not gonna save us.

- Really interesting.

Elaine Shalina, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Adventures in the Louvre.

- Thank you.

Now at home, the Trump administration recently announced that it would ax funding for a crucial suicide prevention hotline, citing that it encourages, quote, "radical gender ideology."

The Trevor Project calls this a devastating blow for its LGBTQ+ community, because the hotline has provided help to as many as 1.3 million young people since 2022.

Mark Henson is the Director of Federal Advocacy and Government Affairs at the organization, and he speaks to Hari Sreenivasan about the impact of this decision.

- Christiane, thanks.

Mark Henson, thanks so much for joining us.

For people who might not be familiar with how the crisis hotline 988 works, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ individuals, just kind of break it down for us.

- Sure, thank you for having me on to talk about this important issue.

The 988 Suicide and Crisis Prevention Hotline is a free, 24/7 national resource that launched about three years ago to support anyone who is in crisis.

The legislation that enabled this created the Easy to Remember 988 moniker, and it also set aside funding for two specific groups that have a higher risk of suicide than the general population.

So if one dials 988 and waits to be connected to the general line, they're connected to a center that is in their state who is able to help talk them through crisis and help give them support resources.

If they press one, they are connected to the Veterans Crisis Line because the veteran population has higher risk of suicide than the general civilian population because of the unique experiences they face.

Similarly, if someone presses three, they are connected to the LGBTQ+ Youth Specialized Services Hotline, where trained counselors who understand the drivers of suicidality for LGBTQ+ youth, based off their unique experiences, are able to provide tailored services.

- And when they get to, if they do press three, who are they speaking with?

Is it a group of different nonprofits that are trained in this?

Is it just one?

- The LGBTQ+ Youth Subnetwork is comprised of seven different nonprofits across the country that have handled so far 1.3 million contacts to this line in a little less than three years.

The Trevor Project that I work for, the nation's leading provider of suicide prevention services for LGBTQ+ youth, is proud to have piloted this nonprofit and handles the majority of the traffic.

But when folks do press that press three number, they're connected to one of hundreds of counselors across the United States who understands the experiences that they've gone through, the language that they often use to describe themselves and describe the pain that they've experienced and help them get through to live to see a better tomorrow.

- Can we just kind of put this in perspective here?

I think 1.3 million calls might be an abstract idea for people, but what kinds of calls are you getting on a daily basis?

I mean, even if you say 60,000 a month, that's hard to break down, but is that high?

Is that normal?

Is that average?

I mean, you know, tell me.

- Well, again, talking about cumulative volume, the demand has been rising.

In the month of February, which is the last month that we have data, there was about 60,000 calls per month.

That's about one every one and a half minutes from an LGBTQ+ youth in crisis in the United States seeking services.

And if you extrapolate that, you get hundreds of thousands of calls per year.

Demand continues to rise because of the acute mental health crisis in our country.

As far as the individual calls that come in, it really depends upon what the LGBTQ+ youth are facing.

Sometimes people need a little bit of help navigating how to come out to their families when they're identifying as LGBTQ+.

Sometimes if their families have rejected them, they're experiencing potential issues of homelessness or loneliness or family estrangement.

There are also times where even hearing upon anti-LGBTQ+ policies can really set folks on edge.

For example, our research has found that transgender youth, when faced with anti-LGBTQ+ policies within different states, could have an up to 72% increased chance for suicidality.

And there are, again, particular unique issues that LGBTQ+ youth face that our counselors are trained to understand, empathize, and again, help give them the mental health supports to live to see a better tomorrow.

- Okay, so part of why we're having this conversation now is really comes down to politics and budgets.

What is supposed to happen to this service that you've just described as of July 17th?

- That's right, as of July 17th, the Trump administration has said that they are going to end the LGBTQ+ Youth Specialized Services subnetwork.

They've indicated that with about three short weeks away, this critical program that has served over a million people with demand rising would no longer be available to have trained counselors there and supporting.

And to your point, there are lots of different policies and lots of different politics that people can disagree on, including some aspects of LGBTQ+ policy.

But we here at the Trevor Project believe suicide prevention is about people, not about politics.

Every independent Republican and Democrat that I know believes that we should set aside politics when it comes to saving young people's lives.

- What was the rationale for why this should be shut down?

Because technically the 988 line will still work, right?

And if I call, I will, if I'm a veteran, let's say, I will still be able to press one, but I won't be able to press three, correct?

- That is correct.

One of the rationales that have been expressed is that separating folks by identity drives polarization.

However, that doesn't recognize that suicide prevention is about risk, not about identity.

LGBTQ+ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide as their peers.

This is not because they are LGBTQ+, but because they experience stigma, bullying, loneliness, where specialized and tailored services are able to help support.

What's particularly ironic is the original legislation that created this line was signed by President Trump, unanimously passed the Senate, and had and has strong bipartisan support in Congress.

So this rationale that they're putting forward now goes against the understanding that they had when these services were put available and really undermines President Trump's legacy on mental health from his first term.

- Now, the administration released a statement in part that says everyone who contacts the 988 lifeline will continue to receive access to skilled, caring, culturally competent crisis counselors who can help with suicidal substance misuse or mental health crises or any other kind of emotional distress.

So help me understand, what is the cultural competency that the existing counselors, when you press three, have that might be missing in a few weeks?

- To be clear, as you said, 988 is not going away.

988 will still be available for mental health emergencies and suicide prevention to every American, including LGBTQ+ youth.

But as you said, with an LGBTQ+ youth dials into the regular number, the counselor may be well-intentioned, but what if they're unfamiliar with the coming out process?

What if they're unfamiliar with pronouns or accidentally misgender a youth that reaches out?

The counselors on the LGBTQ+ youth subnetwork are trained in the drivers of suicidality and the experiences that LGBTQ+ youth face, including family estrangement, isolation, and that helps them create a bond of empathy and trust with the LGBTQ+ youth.

Hari, as you might have experienced, if you have a bunch of positive experiences with a medical professional, but then you just have one really negative one, that makes it far less likely that you can seek support in the future, including and especially mental health support.

The LGBTQ+ youth population in the United States has a strong experience with rejection and with fear.

One other note, the Trevor Project's research has indicated that 84% of LGBTQ+ youth in the United States want to access mental health care, but only half of them were able to in the last year.

And the number one reason was fear, fear of not being understood, fear of having their problems minimized or rejected, fear of being outed to their parents, families, friends before they were ready.

And so, therefore, not having these LGBTQ+ counselors means those resources may not be available.

And suicide prevention is about minutes.

It's about tailoring specific services that can mean the difference between life and death.

I'd also reiterate that what message are LGBTQ+ youth who have used this service over a million so far receiving when their government says, "Nope, these proven bipartisan services are no longer available to you.

We know that they've worked, but we don't want to have them anymore."

That message in and of itself is damaging and, again, makes it less likely the LGBTQ+ youth would even reach out to seek support.

-A spokesperson for the HHS said that, "Look, this section has run out of congressionally directed funding.

Right now, we have all these silos.

The entire mission of 988 and crisis prevention is compromised if we can't do this."

Is that reasonable?

-I wouldn't say that's reasonable, and I wouldn't say that that's accurate.

There's significant flexibility right now to reallocate funding for these vital services that have proven that they have worked.

I'll also note that it's only LGBTQ+ youth services that are under threat.

In addition to continuing to provide veterans care, they're continuing to create a Spanish-language option, and there are other services, such as for the deaf and hard of hearing, to ensure accessibility.

It would be a relatively simple endeavor to reallocate funding to continue these services for another 2 1/2 months in this fiscal year and to have, at a relatively low cost, the ability to save tens of thousands of lives.

-Let's just say, for the sake of this conversation, that all the call volumes stay the same.

If you no longer have the option to press 3 and get to this subgroup of counselors, doesn't that make the existing group of counselors sort of more taxed, right?

I mean, unless you add more counselors for the general population, so to speak, this is going to mean longer hold times.

Is that reasonable?

-Yes, I would agree with that, and I'd say kind of two responses on that point.

Yes, there will be a segment of the 60,000 LGBTQ+ youth per month who do continue to use 988 and will be redirected to states.

That will, on a state basis, increase the numbers.

Now, the administration notes that funding is the same, but the administration just gave only four weeks for states to adjust headcounts to potentially hire and train counselors.

This is a very short period of time with, to my knowledge, little to no plan to account for the increase of volume at the state level is, again, a strong argument for keeping these services at minimum through the end of this fiscal year.

Further, I'd like to talk a little bit about the population of those 60,000 LGBTQ+ youth contacts who won't feel comfortable using 988 because of the anti-LGBTQ policies that this administration has put out and because this service has gone away.

What about that population?

Will they know to reach out to other services like the Trevor Project, which will continue operating its own crisis lifelines as it has for the last 27 years, and will that increase the work output and the pressure on our counselors?

Will they know about other resources, or will they just not reach out to any mental health lifeline when they are in crisis?

-You notice the letter T has been almost structurally removed from several of the government websites when it says LGBTQ+.

Now, a lot of places just says LGB.

Is that a significant difference?

-Yes, Hari.

The attempted erasure of transgender and non-binary people is a significant difference and once again sends a pretty awful message.

As you note, even in the release where they would end the suicide prevention lifeline, they chose to call it the LGB+ instead of the LGBTQ+ lifeline.

Transgender people will never be erased and can never be erased, and it sends a terrible message to an especially vulnerable population.

We here at the Trevor Project estimate that every year, 39% of LGBTQ+ youth seriously consider suicide.

That number escalates for the transgender and non-binary population, and all of our metrics indicate that they are at greater risk for suicidality than the general population.

So by actively attempting to erase transgender youth, even for suicide prevention, the administration is playing with fire and putting lives in danger.

-There's one rationale the administration has said that this is about dollars and cents, and then there's another vein here that I want to read a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget said, "The proposed budget wouldn't grant taxpayer money to a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by 'counselors' without consent or knowledge of their parents."

How do you respond to that?

-That is categorically untrue and, quite frankly, offensive.

LGBTQ+ youth reach out to this lifeline when they're in crisis and they need help, and our counselors listen to their concerns.

Our counselors try to help them stay alive for another day and empathize with them, understanding the particular drivers of suicidality -- the experiences they've had, the stigma that's been created.

Our counselors don't give medical referrals.

Our counselors don't practice politics.

They listen to LGBTQ+ young people, hear what they're saying, and help give them the tools to stay alive.

That rationale from the administration is offensive and, again, attempts to erase the experiences of transgender and non-binary youth and really, you know, sidelines LGBTQ+ youth across the board.

-Look, the Trevor Project has decided to kind of respond to these funding cuts with a petition.

Tell me a little bit about what you're asking for in the petition and what kind of response you've gotten.

-Absolutely.

Thank you, Hari.

And in response to this, the Trevor Project has worked with mental health groups, veterans groups, allies across the board to push back against this proposal to get the administration to change its mind and to have Congress step up and both push back at the administration and assert its priority of allocating spending to key programs.

Before I continue on the petition, Congress continues to have strong bipartisan support for these programs.

Multiple House Republicans and Senate Republicans have issued statements in support of these continued programming.

Many of them, along with all of their Democratic colleagues, have pushed for these services over the last five years.

We're just asking them to stand up and to make sure that they continue.

The Trevor Project particularly launched this petition calling on Congress and the administration to save these services, and there's been tremendous response across the country.

This past Tuesday, there were 17,000 folks who had responded to it.

As of today, there are more than double that.

The news of this program being shut down in four short weeks has mobilized people all across the country to tell Congress, fund these programs, to tell the administration, don't take away this lifeline for vulnerable LGBTQ+ youth.

And they shared their stories about how vital these services are and how they save lives, including their own.

-Mark Henson, Director of the Federal Advocacy and Government Affairs for the Trevor Project, thanks so much for joining us.

-Thank you.

-We have talked about some difficult topics in this conversation, including suicide, and if this is something that throws you into crisis, know that, one, you aren't alone, and, two, that there are places like 988 that will still take your calls, and, of course, you can find the Trevor Project online.

-And finally this week, we say farewell to a friend, a colleague, a fellow war correspondent, and a fighter to the very end.

Reporter Rod Nordlund has died at the age of 75 after a six-year battle with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

From Newsweek to The New York Times, from Bosnia to Afghanistan, he bore witness to some of the worst and the best of humanity, including the plight of a young Afghan couple whose courtship and escape from their homeland he chronicled in his book "The Lovers."

Last year, I spoke to Rod about his diagnosis with glioblastoma, which he wrote about in his final book, "Waiting for the Monsoon."

In this memoir, he reflects on how war reporting truly defines his life, so much so that he associated each of his children, Lorene, Johanna, and Jake, with different conflicts that he covered in the '90s and the 2000s.

In our last conversation, he told me how the disease had also brought with it some unexpected joy.

You have talked about you're living your second life, and you seem to have an incredibly optimistic view of what happened to you, and really what it gave you, where most people would probably be thinking, "Oh my God, this is the worst thing possible."

You have had a different engagement with your disease.

- Yeah.

I mean, I also, from time to time, thought, "Oh my God, this is horrible," but I managed to keep my spirits up, partly thanks to the devotion of my partner and to many great friends who have been there for me.

You know, when you have a disease like this, or become disabled, a lot of people just coast you.

They don't, they can't face it.

They don't want to have to face the reality of it.

And that can be very hurtful, but I was fortunate to have a large group of very close friends and a very devoted partner who have always been there for me.

- Because you have been a war correspondent, most of your professional life.

I want to ask you how this is different than what you experienced and the fear and the risk on the road, because you write, "Death was not alien to me.

"I had spent my career facing it down.

"I'd covered wars from Cambodia in 1978, "on through Iraq and Afghanistan, "and I'd seen my share of carnage."

Can you describe the difference between the danger of being a war correspondent and the danger of being, you know, felled with a terminal illness?

- Actually, there's a surprising number of similarities.

It's a very intense experience.

Covering war is a very intense experience, and dealing with a disease like this is quite intense.

Throughout it, I think I've felt like it was just another war, and I had to deal with it like I would any war.

- What do you want to get out of your remaining days, and what do you want the book to tell people?

- I hope that it'll help other people with similar diseases or disabilities, help them find a way to respond to it positively, and constructively, just judging from the comments that we've had so far.

I think a lot of people have taken it that way, which is wonderful.

- And all Rod's friends are bidding him farewell now.

That's it for our program tonight.

If you want to find out what's coming up every night, sign up for our newsletter at pbs.org/amanpour.

Thanks for watching, and goodbye from London.

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