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Amanpour

What Will the Victory of Hassan Rouhani in Iran's Presidential Election Mean?; Former ACLU Lawyer Says Government Surveillance Oversight Works

Aired June 17, 2013 - 15:00   ET

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

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

The leaders of eight of the world's most powerful economies are meeting in Northern Ireland for the G8 summit. Top of the agenda: Syria and U.S. plans to arm the Syrian opposition.

Now the commander of Syrian opposition forces tells me that he still doesn't know exactly what the United States plans to deliver.

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AMANPOUR (voice-over): And in Belfast, it is Putin versus Obama as Russia warns the West not to send arms. And Bashar al-Assad warns Europe will pay the price with terrorists, he says, flooding its back yard.

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AMANPOUR: But the United States is stepping up its support for the opposition because Assad is beginning to win big on the battlefield, aided by Iran and Hezbollah. Now Iran is also front and center for G8 leaders after the stunning election victory of the moderate reformer Hassan Rouhani.

He says the people's backing has ushered in a new era. And he used his first address to the world to call for a more moderate and constructive Iranian foreign policy. He said the relationship with the United States is complicated, an old wound that somehow must be healed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HASSAN ROUHANI, IRANIAN PRESIDENT-ELECT (through translator): We don't want to see more tension but speaking to America, in addition to the -- to the fact that it should be based on mutual respect and interest, and it should be on an equal footing, a need to expressly say that they will never interfere in the domestic affairs of Iran.

And secondly all the rightful rights of Iranian nation including the nuclear rights need to be recognized by Americans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And so what will Rouhani's election mean at home and abroad after eight excruciating years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? I'm joined on the phone from Tehran by Sadegh Zibakalam, a campaign adviser and a leading member of the reformist camp.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Professor Zibakalam, thank you very much indeed for joining me from Tehran.

First of all, we heard the press conference today; it sounded conciliatory.

What message is Dr. Rouhani trying to send to the world?

SADEGH ZIBAKALAM, ROUHANI CAMPAIGN ADVISER: He is sending this simple message to the world that there has been a real election in Iran and hopefully, Inshallah, there will be new foreign policy as far as Iran is concerned.

AMANPOUR: And what about -- is he a real reformer? Obviously it's within the system. Dr. Rouhani was a national security adviser. He's also one of the founders of the Islamic revolution.

Is he a reformer?

ZIBAKALAM: It is not the question of being a reformist at the moment or not. The most important issue is not to continue with the policies that have been running and guiding Iran during the past particularly four years. And moving towards a better conciliatory realistic and pragmatist policy. I mean, that is the main issue.

And whoever can deliver this change is important. Be it a reformist, be it a pragmatist, being given a number formis (ph).

AMANPOUR: Well, what do you make of, then, can he actually deliver? I note that Saeed Jalili, who is one of the more headline conservatives; he is the current nuclear negotiator, and he was a presidential candidate. He tweeted that he supported and congratulated Mr. Rouhani and that everyone has to work together.

So does that mean the system, the Supreme Leader, is going to allow Dr .Rouhani to enact these things he's been saying today?

ZIBAKALAM: Rouhani will have -- will have tremendous domestic resistance.

But as for the Supreme Leader, you must realize that although the Supreme Leader has the tremendous power according to the constitution, but he doesn't take the decision in a vacuum. He must -- obviously he has seen that the mood of the people, the people are more or less tired of the hardline policies that have been governing Iran, particularly during the past four years.

AMANPOUR: And what kind of a government do you think we'll see from Mr. Rouhani? Will he try to bring in some of the so-called more conservative, more hardliners, to have a consensus government, a national unity government?

ZIBAKALAM: Well, there has been serious suggestion by his advisers that he must invite Mr. Velayati (ph) to his cabinet; he must invite Bagher Ghalibaf.

He must invite Mohsen Rezaee (ph). He definitely needs reality (ph) if he wants to conduct serious negotiation with 5+1 and also to break some ice with the West, because reality (ph) (inaudible) the support and confidence of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

So there's the -- some of his advisers have suggested to him that you -- we have to invite variety (ph) to the cabinet, either as foreign ministers or as someone who is in charge of conducting negotiation with 5+1.

AMANPOUR: All right, Dr. Zibakalam, thank you very much indeed. And of course to remind everybody, Mr. Velayati was a foreign minister and he has conducted negotiations with the West for many, many years. Thanks very much for joining us.

ZIBAKALAM: You're welcome.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: So while reaching out, Rouhani also appealed to other nations to take advantage of this new opportunity, as he called it. In his press conference, he was asked whether he would be willing to engage in direct talks with the United States.

He said smiling, "That is a difficult question."

And so what will America do? Rouhani's election comes at a crucial time in negotiations over Iran's nuclear conflict -- nuclear program, which has come almost to the brink of conflict.

Vali Nasr is a former member of President Obama's foreign policy team at the State Department, and he is now dean of the School of International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. And I spoke to him moments ago.

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AMANPOUR: Vali Nasr, welcome back to the program.

VALI NASR, SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: Good to be here.

AMANPOUR: Is this a real opportunity for the United States right now?

NASR: Yes, it is. First of all, just having a reformist person different than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the president of Iran provides much more breathing room, much more space for the administration and the international community to try something new with Iran.

And then, after all, Rouhani was the architect of probably the most forward-leaning position Iran ever had on the nuclear deal back in 2003.

AMANPOUR: In other words, the suspension of their program for a significant period of time.

NASR: Yes, and he's held onto that view, because literally every diplomat that Ahmadinejad fired for favoring engagement with the U.S. was later on hired by Rouhani in his think tank.

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: So he was --

NASR: So he's been working on this.

AMANPOUR: -- roundly criticized for that. Do you think that suspension has even a glimmer of a hope under him now?

NASR: Well, he's once bitten, twice shy. In other words, he's not going to stick his neck out for it to be chopped off. That's the challenge for the United States and the P5+1. They have to give him something tangible so he's not seen as naive and repeating the same mistake as 2003.

So we shouldn't read reformism as immediate capitulation at an open door for a deal (ph). We have work to do. But the opportunity is there.

AMANPOUR: Now you have written that actually the ball is in the U.S. court right now.

What do you mean?

NASR: Well, because the United States has to at least suggest that it's willing to deal with Rouhani different than they dealt with Ahmadinejad. In the past, the impression in Iran was that Ahmadinejad got better deals than Rouhani did.

And Rouhani can't come to the table seriously unless the indication is that he can deliver more than Ahmadinejad. We have to help strengthen his stand in Iran. That way he can actually sell the (inaudible).

AMANPOUR: Now you've been inside the administration; you've worked on Afghanistan and Pakistan. But obviously Iran as well. Is there a willingness to get beyond this really terrible 34-year wall of mistrust that has gone up between the two countries?

NASR: I don't think so. I think the administration's handled Iran tactically, not only managing it one step at a time with an eye on American domestic public opinion. There hasn't been an audacious view of bringing Iran in from the cold, as difficult as that might be.

And I think that the election of Rouhani is a challenge for the Obama administration because they hadn't planned for it. They were waiting for Jalili or some hardliner. They have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan.

But I hope they do because the president does have some more room with Congress and with the American public that he would have had had Jalili or a hardliner been elected.

AMANPOUR: But let's just call a spade a spade. I've spoken to Iranian officials, former negotiators, actually people who worked for Dr. Rouhani earlier, and they said that so far the American incentives to Iran in these nuclear negotiations amounts to demanding diamonds for peanuts. In other words the incentives that the U.S. has given so far don't amount to much.

NASR: They don't amount to much at all. The United States has only offered aircraft parts and most recently modest permission to trade in gold and silver.

What Iran is really after is offer of taking Syria's sanctions off the table, which has not been -- and possibly recognizing Iran's right to enrichment.

Rouhani has to be -- has to be able to show Iran's Supreme Leader and Revolutionary Guards that the reformists can actually get the United States to offer these things. That's how you build momentum for reform in Iran.

AMANPOUR: And of course Iran has to show the United States, the West and Israel that there's going to be total transparency and that they're not going for a weapon.

Can he deliver on that?

NASR: This is a give-and-take, in other words, each side has to risk a little and be willing to offer something. And then you go from there.

So he's talked about transparency. He's talked about constructive engagement. Those are all positive things. We have to test those things. But he has to also know that if he takes a serious step in the direction of transparency, that he will not end up where he ended up in --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: But you think the regime as a whole wants this, Supreme Leader, the Revolutionary Guards; do they want a ratcheting down of the crisis?

NASR: I think they want the sanctions to go away. Iran is really hurting. They may not be -- they may not want to give up the nuclear program but they know that they can't survive under the sanctions. The country's hurting.

So lifting sanctions is an objective. And they have to be -- they have to realize they have to give something for that. And that has to come out of the constructive negotiation process.

AMANPOUR: Let's move quickly to Syria because Dr. Rouhani has actually talked about it just the day before his election in an interview in Iran.

He said, "In my opinion, in order to reach a just solution in Syria (sic) that's accepted by all parties, Iran can play the role of mediator between the Syrian government and the opposition that is working hard to achieve democracy and good governance."

Can Iran actually play a role? Because right now we know the role it's playing is bolstering Assad and actually helping turn the tide in Assad's favor along with Hezbollah in Syria.

NASR: Well, Iran wants this conflict to go away. They don't want to lose. But they want the conflict to stop. And that's a beginning.

And secondly you're not going to get to any kind of a peace deal on Syria unless Iran is on board, because Iran is the most important of Assad's backers.

It is a possibility to use the new phase in Iran to see whether we can engage them and is a potential to see whether Rouhani would be willing to play a constructive role in the Geneva conference. It's a very, very slim chance but we have to use this opening in Iran to try and do things with them.

If we treat Iran the way we did before, as if there has been no change at the top, then there will be no change in (inaudible).

AMANPOUR: Vali Nasr, thank you very much indeed.

NASR: Good to be with you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And just a reminder on Syria, the U.N. now says that the death toll there has reached 93,000. And in Belfast, the humanitarian group Oxfam is trying to catch the G8 leaders' attention, planting these symbolic headstones near city hall while world leaders are meeting.

Human rights groups accuse the Assad regime of preventing the flow of food and humanitarian relief -- in other words deliberately trying to starve out large numbers of people.

And after a break, another story that refuses to go away: more fallout from the lead of secret American surveillance program. My next guest, a former insider says U.S. intelligence has only itself to blame, when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program and to that spy scandal that keeps mushrooming.

As far as Syria, Iran and the global economy, world leaders at the G8 are also dealing with allegations that the U.K. spied on its partners and allies during the G20 summit back in 2009.

Coming on the heels of the massive electronic surveillance leaks by the USA, now the Obama administration wants to release further details from the top secret National Security Agency in an attempt to provide that terrorist plots were indeed thwarted.

The president's approval ratings, though, have dropped since the news broke. A new CNN poll shows that for the first time more Americans do not believe the president is trustworthy.

My guest tonight, Timothy Edgar, has been on both sides of the surveillance debate and he says that the protections in place do actually work. He was a lawyer holding the government's feet to the fire at the American Civil Liberties Union and then he became, in his own words, a reluctant insider advising both Presidents Bush and Obama on this very issue.

And he joined me to speak about it all as the revelations were unfolding fast and furious.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Mr. Edgar, thank you for joining me.

TIMOTHY EDGAR, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: Sure. Thank you.

AMANPOUR: The president has said that all the safeguards are in place and that Congress shouldn't worry. Yet the director of the NSA has already been on Capitol Hill -- still is -- and there are a lot of members of Congress who are expressing deep concern and outright ignorance of the scope of this program.

How can the president be right?

EDGAR: Well, certainly Congress has been briefed repeatedly numerous times over the years. The intelligence and judiciary committees probably more than the rest of them, but many of them have gotten extensive briefings.

But it's very different when you're having a public debate than one in which you're just getting briefed by intelligence officials.

AMANPOUR: Should there have been this public debate? Obviously this is now happening because of a whistleblower, because of a reporter who reported all this and everybody's suddenly come out of the woodwork and say, yes, this is happening.

Should this have happened earlier?

EDGAR: Absolutely, I think it should have. We did have a good public debate about the surveillance issues involved in PRISM, but we haven't had a good debate about the call records program, and that's the part that we're just learning about and having a public debate about now.

AMANPOUR: Well, not only didn't you have a public debate, let me play you this of an interview actually testimony by the DNI head, James Clapper, not so long ago on Capitol Hill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. WYDEN: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

JAMES CLAPPER, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: No, sir.

WYDEN: It does not?

CLAPPER: Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So even now since he has said that that was the least untruthful way he could put that. But certainly that doesn't spell confidence and a lot of people are wanting to know about this program.

EDGAR: Yes, I think this really was the problem about content versus call records. What he meant to say is the NSA doesn't purposely collect the content of Americans' communications. We have privacy safeguards in place to prevent that. It sometimes happens by mistake.

What he failed to talk about was the call records. And he didn't because that hadn't been disclosed. I think that should have been affirmatively disclosed in a broad outline and not waiting for some leak from a 29-year-old Booz Allen employee. That's not the way to do it.

AMANPOUR: But you were in the administration and you were part of this safeguard sort of group. Why didn't you suggest that?

EDGAR: Well, you know, we're part of a large team and probably I should have been more forceful in advocating for that. But it's difficult for the intelligence community to break out of its culture. Its culture really prizes secrecy -- for very good reasons.

But sometimes you need to have that debate. And that can make intelligence agencies very uncomfortable.

AMANPOUR: I'm really interested because you are formerly from the ACLU; you're a civil rights advocate, an openness advocate, a constitutional advocate and now you find yourself in the administration policing or safeguarding or watching the watchdogs, almost sort of a flip of what you normally do.

I'm interested in how you've made that sort of professional switch, particularly regarding the safeguards, which I think you say are adequate.

I want to play again a little bit of Senator Feinstein's description and Glenn Greenwald's rebuttal of her description. He's the reporter who'll break it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D), CALIF.: The program is essentially walled off within the NSA. There are limited numbers of people who have access to it.

GLENN GREENWALD, "THE GUARDIAN": As for it being walled off, all I would say is that I just sat and looked through over the last week all sorts of top secret documents that were accessible to a relatively low- level outside contractor who was tasked at the NSA through Booz Allen and the Dell Corporation.

So you just make your own assessment about whether or not the NSA's systems, all this data they're collecting, seems secure when there are tens of thousands of people with unfettered access to the system.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: I mean, isn't Glenn Greenwald right? Isn't that the problem, that Ed Snowden, this 29-year-old guy had that access, even claimed he could tap into the president with the right email?

EDGAR: Well, basically he had access to the general top secret classified system, and that's a problem because obviously he leaked and also that system isn't careful enough in tagging data and saying here's the data that you can get, even with a top secret clearance.

But the walled-off part is for the records themselves, the database themselves. That requires that you get special training in additional procedures to access. I have no idea whether Snowden had that training or that access.

AMANPOUR: So but you say that this works, the system works.

What are the safeguards?

How do you know?

What can you tell us about the checks and balances?

Because obviously, a lot of people don't think it works.

EDGAR: Well, it varies by whether you're talking about content or call records.

If you're talking about content there are safeguards that are basically designed to make sure we're targeting foreigners overseas. And there are safeguards that are designed to make sure we're not mistakenly collecting innocent Americans' communications.

For the call records, the safeguards are that the analyst needs to have reasonable suspicion that there's a connection to terrorism before he or she can query them. And all of these are overseen by the Justice Department and by the Director of National Intelligence. They do periodic audit reports that are supplied to Congress and the court.

AMANPOUR: Does it bother you, this figure, the FISA court that we're talking about, has something like 33,900 surveillance applications -- that's the latest figure -- where only 11 were rejected?

Does the court work?

EDGAR: It did bother me a lot on the outside, because those numbers make it sound like a rubber stamp. But in reality, they take their job very, very seriously.

Part of the reason for those numbers is that it's very difficult to get your applications for surveillance through the Justice Department. There's an office there that really views themselves kind of as neutral arbiters between the intelligence community and the courts.

So they go back and forth with the intelligence agencies a lot.

And then if they think they're going to get a denial, they'll usually withdraw it and try to create a more narrow application.

So if you see how it works, those numbers, you know, don't really tell that story.

AMANPOUR: Timothy Edgar, thank you very much indeed.

EDGAR: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And after we take a break, another look at Iran's new president. Does he herald a bold new breakthrough in relations with the West? Or is history repeating itself? When we come back.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, Iran's new president is talking about moderation and raising hopes around the globe for a more constructive relationship with the rest, including the United States.

Imagine a world where it's deja vu all over again, because back in 1998, the new reformist President Khatami made front page news around the world inspiring optimism in people everywhere when he sat down with me in Tehran and reached out to the American people, becoming the first Iranian leader to apologize for the hostage crisis of 1979.

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MOHAMMAD KHATAMI, FORMER PRESIDENT OF IRAN (through translator): With regard to the hostage issue which you raised, I do know that the feelings of the great American people have been hurt, and of course I regret it.

AMANPOUR: The average American, is familiar with one image from Iran, death to America, the burning of the American flag and, as we talked about, the hostages.

You talk about a new chapter in relations between the peoples of the world.

What can you say to the Americans listening tonight, to show that person that your Iran is a new Iran or a different Iran?

KHATAMI (through translator): There are slogans being chanted in Iran. But, you as a journalist can ask all those chanting the slogans whether they are targeting the American people. And they would all say no. Not only we do not harbor any ill wishes for the American people, but in fact we consider them to be a great nation.

Our aim is not even to destroy or undermine the American government. These slogans symbolize a desire to terminate a mode of relations which existed between Iran and the United States.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Now two years later in the year 2000, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reciprocated in a speech that expressed regret for the CIA-backed coup of 1953 that deposed Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mosaddegh, and put the Shah of Iran back on the throne.

And for a while, there was a spirit of detente between the two nations. Now the window of opportunity seems to be opening again. So will both sides find a way to reach through it?

That's it for tonight's program. Meantime, you can always contact us on our website, amanpour.com. Thanks for watching and goodbye from New York.

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