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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Obama Delivers Crucial Iran Nuke Deal Pitch; Analysis Of Obama's Address on Iranian Nuclear Deal. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired August 05, 2015 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00] BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Neither the Iranian government, or the Iranian opposition, or the Iranian people would agree to what they would view as a total surrender of their sovereignty.

Moreover, our closest allies in Europe or in Asia, much less China or Russia, certainly are not going to enforce existing sanctions for another five, 10, 15 years according to the dictates of the U.S. Congress because their willingness to support sanctions in the first place was based on Iran ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. It was not based on the belief that Iran cannot have peaceful nuclear power, and it certainly wasn't based on a desire for regime change in Iran.

As a result, those who say we can just walk away from this deal and maintain sanctions are selling a fantasy. Instead of strengthening our position, as some have suggested, Congress' rejection would almost certainly result in multi-lateral sanctions unraveling.

If, as has also been suggested, we tried to maintain unilateral sanctions, beefen them up, we would be standing alone. We cannot dictate the foreign, economic and energy policies of every major power in the world. In order to even try to do that, we would have to sanction, for example, some of the world's largest banks. We'd have to cut off countries like China from the American financial system. And since they happen to be major purchasers of our debt, such actions could trigger severe disruptions in our own economy, and, by way, raise questions internationally about the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency. That's part of the reason why many of the previous unilateral sanctions were waived.

What's more likely to happen should Congress reject this deal is that Iran would end up with some form of sanctions relief without having to accept any of the constraints or inspections required by this deal. So in that sense, the critics are right. Walk away from this agreement, and you will get a better deal -- for Iran.

(APPLAUSE)

Now because more sanctions won't produce the results that the critics want, we have to be honest. Congressional rejection of this deal leaves any U.S. administration that is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with one option, another war in the Middle East. I say this not to be provocative, I am stating a fact. Without this deal, Iran will be in a position, however tough our rhetoric may be, to steadily advance its capabilities. Its breakout time, which is already fairly small, could shrink to near zero. Does anyone really doubt that the same voices now raised against this deal will be demanding that whoever is president bomb those nuclear facilities? And as someone who does firmly believe that Iran must not get a nuclear weapon and who has wrestled with this issue since the beginning of my presidency, I can tell you that alternatives to military actions will have been exhausted once we reject a hard-won diplomatic solution that the world almost unanimously supports.

So let's not mince words. The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.

OBAMA: And here's the irony. As I said before, military action would be far less effective than this deal in preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

[12:35:03] That's not just my supposition. Every estimate, including those from Israeli analysts, suggest military action would only set back Iran's program by a few years at best, which is a fraction of the limitations imposed by this deal.

It would likely guarantee that inspectors are kicked out of Iran. It is probable that it would drive Iran's program deeper underground. It would certainly destroy the international unity that we have spent so many years building.

Now, there are some of opponents -- I have to give them credit. They're opponents of this deal who accept the choice of war. In fact, they argue that surgical strikes against Iran's facilities will be quick and painless.

But if we've learned anything from the last decade, it's that wars in general and wars in the Middle East in particular are anything but simple.

(APPLAUSE)

The only certainty in war is human suffering, uncertain costs, unintended consequences.

We can also be sure that the Americans who bear the heaviest burden are the less-than-1 percent of us, the outstanding men and women who serve in uniform, and not those of us who send them to war.

As commander-in-chief, I have not shied away from using force when necessary. I have ordered tens of thousands of young Americans into combat. I have sat by their bedside sometimes when they come home.

I've ordered military action in seven countries. There are times when force is necessary, and if Iran does not abide by this deal, it's possible that we don't have an alternative.

But how can we, in good conscience, justify war before we've tested a diplomatic agreement that achieves our objectives, that has been agreed to by Iran, that is supported by the rest of the world and that preserves our option if the deal falls short? How could we justify that to our troops? How could we justify that to the world or to future generations? In the end, that should be a lesson that we've learned from over a decade of war. On the front end, ask tough questions, subject our own assumptions to evidence and analysis, resist the conventional wisdom and the drumbeat of war, worry less about being labeled weak, worry more about getting it right.

I recognize that resorting to force may be tempting in the face of the rhetoric and behavior that emanates from parts of Iran. It is offensive. It is incendiary. We do take it seriously.

But superpowers should not act impulsively in response to taunts or even provocations that can be addressed short of war. Just because Iranian hardliners chant "Death to America" does not mean that that's what all Iranians believe. In fact, it's those...

(APPLAUSE)

In fact, it's those hardliners who are most comfortable with the status quo. It's those hardliners chanting "Death to America" who have been most opposed to the deal. They're making common cause with the Republican Caucus.

(APPLAUSE)

The majority of the Iranian people have powerful incentives to urge their government to move in a different, less provocative direction, incentives that are strengthened by this deal. We should offer them that chance. We should give them the opportunity.

[12:40:03] OBAMA: It's not guaranteed to succeed. But if they take it, that would be good for Iran. It would be good for the United States. It would be good for a region that has known too much conflict. It would be good for the world.

And if Iran does not move in that direction, if Iran violates this deal, we will have ample ability to respond. You know, the agreements pursued by Kennedy and Reagan with the Soviet Union. Those agreements and treaties involved America accepting significant constraints on our arsenal. As such, they were riskier.

This agreement involves no such constraints. The defense budget of the United States is more than $600 billion. To repeat, Iran's is about $15 billion. Our military remains the ultimate backstop to any security agreement that we make. I have stated that Iran will never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon, and have done what is necessary to make sure our military options are real. And I have no doubt that any president who follows me will take the same position.

So, let me sum up here. When we carefully examine the arguments against this deal, none stand up to scrutiny. That may be why the rhetoric on the other side is so strident. I suppose some of it can be ascribed to knee-jerk partisanship that has become all too familiar, rhetoric that renders every decision made to be a disaster, a surrender. You're aiding terrorists; you're endangering freedom. On the other hand, I do think it is important to a knowledge another

more understandable motivation behind the opposition to this deal, or at least skepticism to this deal. And that is a sincere affinity for our friend and ally Israel. An affinity that, as someone who has been a stalwart friend to Israel throughout my career, I deeply share.

When the Israeli government is opposed to something, people in the United States take notice; and they should. No one can blame Israelis for having a deep skepticism about any dealings with the government like Iran's, which includes leaders who deny the Holocaust, embrace an ideology of anti-Semitism, facilitate the flow of rockets that are arrayed on Israel's borders. Are pointed at Tel Aviv.

In such a dangerous neighbor Israel has to be vigilant, and it rightly insists it cannot depend on any other country, even it's great friend the United States, for its own security.

So, we have to take seriously concerns in Israel. But the fact is, partly due to American military and intelligence assistance, which my administration has provided at unprecedented levels, Israel can defend itself against any conventional danger, whether from Iran directly or from its proxies. On the other hand, a nuclear-armed Iran changes that equation.

And that's why this deal must be judged by what it achieves on the central goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. This deal does exactly that. I say this as someone who is done more than any other president to strengthen Israel's security. And I have made clear to the Israeli government that we are prepared to discuss how we can deepen that cooperation even further. Already, we have held talks with Israel on concluding another 10-year plan for U.S. security assistance to Israel.

OBAMA: We can enhance support for areas like missile defense, information sharing, interdiction, all to help meet Israel's pressing security needs. And to provide a hedge against any additional activities that Iran may engage in as a consequence of sanctions relief.

[12:45:15] But I have also listened to the Israeli security establishment, which warned of the danger posed by a nuclear armed Iran for decades. In fact, they helped develop many of the ideas that ultimately led to this deal. So to friends of Israel and the Israeli people, I say this. A nuclear armed Iran is far more dangerous to Israel, to America, and to the world than an Iran that benefits from sanctions relief.

I recognize that prime minister Netanyahu disagrees, disagrees strongly. I do not doubt his sincerity, but I believe he is wrong. I believe the facts support this deal. I believe they are in America's interests and Israel's interests, and as president of the United States it would be an abrogation of my constitutional duty to act against my best judgment simply because it causes temporary friction with a dear friend and ally.

I do not believe that would be the right thing to do for the United States, I do not believe it would be the right thing to do for Israel.

(APPLAUSE)

For the last couple of weeks, I have repeatedly challenged anyone opposed to this deal to put forward a better, plausible alternative. I have yet to hear one. What I've heard instead are the same types of arguments that we heard in the run up to the Iraq war. "Iran cannot be dealt with diplomatically." "We can take military strikes without significant consequences." "We shouldn't worry about what the rest of the world thinks, because once we act, everyone will fall in line." "Tougher talk, more military threats will force Iran into submission." "We can get a better deal."

I know it's easy to play in people's fears, to magnify threats, to compare any attempt at diplomacy to Munich, but none of these arguments hold up. They didn't back in 2002, in 2003, they shouldn't now.

(APPLAUSE)

That same mind set in many cases offered by the same people, who seem to have no compunction with being repeatedly wrong...

(LAUGHTER)

... lead to a war that did more to strengthen Iran, more to isolate the United States than anything we have done in the decades before or since. It's a mind set out of step with the traditions of American foreign policy where we exhaust diplomacy before war and debate matters of war and peace in the cold light of truth.

"Peace is not the absence of conflict," President Reagan once said. It is the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means. President Kennedy warned Americans not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than the exchange of threats. It is time to apply such wisdom. The deal before us doesn't bet on Iran changing, it doesn't require trust, it verifies and requires Iran to forsake a nuclear weapon.

OBAMA: Just as we struck agreements with the Soviet Union at a time when they were threatening our allies, arming proxies against us, proclaiming their commitment to destroy our way of life, and had nuclear weapons pointed at all of our major cities, a genuine existential threat.

[12:50:21] You know, we live in a complicated world, a world in which the forces unleashed by human innovation are creating for our children that were unimaginable for most of human history.

It is also a world of persistent threats, a world in which mass violence and cruelty is all too common and human innovation risks the destruction of all that we hold dear.

In this world, the United States of America remains the most powerful nation on Earth, and I believe that we will remain such for decades to come. But we are one nation among many, and what separates us from the empires of old, what has made us exceptional, is not the mere fact of our military might.

Since World War II, the deadliest war in human history, we have used our power to try and bind nations together in a system of international law. We have led an evolution of those human institutions President Kennedy spoke about to prevent the spread of deadly weapons, to uphold peace and security and promote human progress.

We now have the opportunity to build on that progress. We built a coalition and held together through sanctions and negotiations, and now we have before us a solution that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon without resorting to war.

As Americans, we should be proud of this achievement. And as members of Congress reflect on their pending decision, I urge them to set aside political concerns, shut out the noise, consider the stakes involved with the vote that you will cast.

If Congress kills this deal, we will lose more than just constraints on Iran's nuclear deal or the sanctions we have painstakingly built. We will have lost something more precious: America's credibility as a leader of diplomacy. America's credibility is the anchor of the international system.

John F. Kennedy cautioned here more than 50 years ago at this university that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war. But it's so very important. It is surely the pursuit of peace that is most needed in this world so full of strife.

My fellow Americans, contact your representatives in Congress, remind them of who we are, remind them of what is best in us and what we stand for so that we can leave behind a world that is more secure and more peaceful for our children.

Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE)

(END LIVE SPEECH COVERAGE)

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN HOST: And there you have it.

That is effectively where fear and politics and the rubber meets the road, so to speak. That is one big sales pitch, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to all of our viewers around the world, here in America as well.

I'm Ashleigh Banfield.

The president wrapping up about a 56-minute speech all about the Iranian nuclear deal, that speech directed as you heard it at the end directly to congress. By appealing to the American public to contact your congressional representative, this is effectively what the president wants you to do, wants congress to hear -- pass this deal.

And he did it at about a half century anniversary where JFK gave a speech at the same university in the height of the Cold War when the president said we may have not been in a more dangerous time than then. Certainly we're not in as dangerous a time as we were back then and JFK was all about peace. The president is saying this is all about peace as well.

I want to bring in CNN's Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto and also CNN's Global Affairs Correspondent Elise Labott, two of our correspondents who have perhaps followed every arcane moment of this process from the very sleepy moments when it didn't make the news.

[12:55:12] Jim Sciutto, quickly, your thoughts?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: This was a president uncowed, making an unabashed, unembarrassed case for this agreement for his legacy here. He takes on his sharpest critics. He took on Benjamin Netanyahu, he said in no uncertain terms he is wrong on this. He took on the Bush administration and said and blamed them for the war in Iraq, talked about all the damage and said if we don't have this deal we may face another costly and damaging war in the Middle East.

But he also went very micro here, getting into the basics of this agreement like the details of when the U.S. can expect not only known nuclear sites but undeclared nuclear sites.

He got a laugh from the audience when he said, listen, you can't hide nuclear material in your closet. If Iran tries to cheat, we're going to be able to find it. This was a confident president, he is uncowed, he's backing this deal.

But I have to tell you that these positions, Ashleigh, are so entrenched from critics outside the country, Benjamin Netanyahu but also on Capitol Hill listening to that speech, did he change minds today? I'm not so sure.

BANFIELD: Uncowed is also a euphemism for swagger in some people's minds.

And Elise Labott, I would love you to weigh in on that, because this president has a different style than he did six years ago and a lot of people say its swagger.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right. I mean listen, this president made a very stark choice. He said the alternative is war and he made very clear, invoking reducing all of the criticism really of this deal to warmongers and partisan politics.

Ashleigh, there's a lot of concern about this deal. And I think one of the problem this is president has had in confronting critics is he reduce this is to partisan politics. There are some very influential democrats that the president is trying to reach who are concerned about this deal. I'm not sure that he brought them along with this speech basically saying that, you know, you have to -- I think what he needed to do is nest this in more of a strategy of how he was going to make this deal stick.

He said he doesn't think Iran is going to change his thoughts and I think some of these reluctant law makers would have liked to see how he would have helped protect the region in a larger regional strategy.

BANFIELD: Well, those reluctant lawmakers may appreciate the words of President Reagan. It's nothing like a democratic president quoting Ronald Reagan when he said "Peace is not the absence of conflict, it's the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means." We shall see.

Jim Sciutto and Elise Labott, thank you for your thoughts. We're going to dig in a whole lot deeper as CNN continues its coverage after this quick break.

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