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Political Blame Game Plays On; Netanyahu Speaks to U.N.

Aired October 01, 2013 - 12:00   ET

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

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Big stories right now.

It's day one of the federal government shutdown. Hundreds of thousands of workers going home without a paycheck for who knows how long.

Also, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, only minutes away from speaking at the United Nations General Assembly. What will he say about the U.S. attempts to try to forge a new, more positive relationship with Iran? We're going to carry his speech live.

And President Obama getting ready to speak to the nation from the Rose Garden in the White House in about 20 minutes or so. You'll hear him live here, as well.

Welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting today from Washington.

Happening right now at the United Nations, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, about to deliver a major speech before the General Assembly. He's the final world leader to address the group during this year's annual meeting. In last year's speech, the prime minister drew a red line literally on a cartoon drawing of a bomb to illustrate his deep concerns over Iran's nuclear program. So what will he hear? What will he do this year? We'll bring you his speech live as soon as it starts. That should be in a few minutes.

But let's get to another huge story we're following right now. We're 12 hours into the government shutdown. No end in sight. Deadlocked members of Congress will keep drawing their paychecks, while hundreds of thousands of federal employees will go without their paychecks. It's all because Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on a bill to fund the federal government.

Millions of people who depend on food assistance are being directly impacted. We're talking seniors and those on the program for women, infants and children known as WIC. Plus, those who - those of you applying for federal loans to buy a new home, you're going to have to wait. And national parks and museums, they are shutting down, affecting vacationers and those whose livelihoods depend on tourism.

But the shutdown will not affect some important critical services. Social Security, Medicare and unemployment benefits will keep being paid. Air traffic control and military salaries are also being funded. You'll still get your mail.

We're seeing the shutdown blame game intensify right now here in Washington. The impasse is centered on funding for Obamacare. Neither side appears ready to budge.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HARRY REID (D), MAJORITY LEADER: Mr. President, no matter how many times they try to extort the American people and the Democrats here in the Senate, we're not going to relitigate the health care issue. We're not going to do that. If they want - if they have problems with that bill, we will be happy to sit down and talk to them about a reasonable approach to do it, but we're not going to do it with a gun to the heads of the American people.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MINORITY LEADER: They refuse to pass anything. These reports suggest the majority leader was even working behind the scenes to block any bipartisan negotiations from taking place. Then after doing essentially nothing all weekend but obstruct, with just hours left to go, Democrats voted again and again to reject reasonable legislation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Let's bring in Dana Bash, our chief congressional correspondent.

So what's happening, if anything significant, right now? Where do we go from here?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What's happening is, unfortunately, nothing. I mean that's the truth. House Republicans are having a press conference where they're showing their -- what's known as conferees, or negotiations that they insist are ready to go and sit down with Senate Democrats. But as we saw this morning, Senate Democrats are saying, no way, we're not going to do that. We are not negotiating on anything. We want a clean bill and that's the end of it.

House Republicans are going to meet at the top of the hour, at 1:00, but I'm told by Republican sources not to expect them to come out and say, you know, white flag, eureka, uncle, whatever it is. They're not going to pass a clean bill as the Democrats want.

But there are some more cracks. I want to read you a tweet from --

BLITZER: Cracks among the Republicans.

BASH: Cracks among the Republicans. A tweet from Scott Rigell, who is from Virginia -- I interviewed him yesterday -- saying that he wants to fight, fight, fight. Well, today he's saying the opposite. "We fought the good fight. Time for a clean CR." A clean CR, of course, being Washington lingo for fund the government without strings attached.

BLITZER: A continuing resolution.

BASH: A continuing resolution. So, you know, he is somebody who might not be that representative of his Republican caucus because he represents a very heavy military district in Virginia and they're clearly going to feel the effects big-time. But if there are people like that sprinkled across the House Republican conference who are feeling it for different reasons, and enough of them, if you sort of count them up, maybe 17, 18 of them, it's really all you need if all the Democrats go with - go with them, then they could pass this clean bill.

The open question now, Wolf, is the same that it has been for a week, two weeks, is not whether the votes are there, bipartisan votes, it's, will John Boehner bring the vote to the floor. And so far I'm told he's still not ready to do it.

BLITZER: Is it true? I mean, because in the past, he's waffled on this a little bit. Only if a majority of the Republicans are in favor of something, the so-called Hastert (ph) rule, will he allow it to come to the floor. Is he still holding firmly on that?

BASH: You know, he actually has never subscribed to that as a rule. He has let lots of things come to the floor of the House with bipartisan support. The Violence Against Women Act and --

BLITZER: Go ahead.

BASH: I'm sorry, Violence Against Women Act and he's voted -- let other things like that to come to the floor. The payroll tax extension. But this particular issue is so divisive and so - has so much passion among the base, and therefore, among many in his conference, that he's simply not been willing to allow this to come up with (ph) a bipartisan vote.

BLITZER: So the question is, how many -- if he were to allow it to come up for a vote, you say Scott Rigell is now -- would be on board for a clean piece of legislation without any attachments to Obamacare. And if all the Democrats were to support it, you'd need 17, 18, 20 Republicans to support it and you've got, you know, Peter King. You've interviewed him. Charlie Dent. There are at least a dozen, but are there 20?

BASH: You know, what those members have told me is that if they actually had the bill presented to them and they were actually able to vote on it, there would be a lot more than 20. That they would - that they would be close to that (INAUDIBLE).

BLITZER: So it would pass overwhelmingly?

BASH: Yes, that that's what they're hearing privately from their colleagues. Again the question is whether or not John Boehner and his Republican House leaders are going to be willing to do that. And now I'm told that at least in the near future, the answer is no.

BLITZER: All right. We're going to get back. We have a lot more to watch, including the president of the United States.

But let's go to the United Nations right now. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is about to speak.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Foreign affairs and minister of public affairs and the diaspora (ph), his excellency, Benjamin Netanyahu, of the state of Israel. And I invite him to address the General Assembly.

Mr. Prime Minister.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: Thank you, Mr. President.

I feel deeply honored and privileged to stand here before you today representing the citizens of the state of Israel. We are an ancient people. We date back nearly 4,000 years to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We have journeyed through time. We've overcome the greatest of adversities. And we re-established our sovereign state and our ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.

Now, the Jewish people's odyssey through time has taught us two things -- never give up hope, always remain vigilant. Hope charts the future. Vigilance protects it. Today, our hope for the future is challenged by a nuclear armed Iran that seeks our destruction. But I want you to know that wasn't always the case.

Some 2,500 years ago, the great Persian King Cyrus ended the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people. He issued a famous edict in which he proclaimed the right of the Jews to return to the land of Israel and rebuild the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. That's a Persian decree. And thus began am historic friendship between the Jews and the Persians that lasted until modern times.

But in 1979, a radical regime in Tehran tried to stamp out that friendship. As it was busy crushing the Iranian people's hope for democracy, it also led wild chants of death to the Jews. Now, since that time, presidents of Iran have come and gone. Some presidents were considered moderates, others hard liners. But they've all served that same unforgiving creed, that same unforgiving regime, that creed that is espoused and enforced by the real power in Iran, the dictator known as the supreme leader -- first Ayatollah Khomeini and now Ayatollah Khamenei.

President Rouhani, like the presidents who came before him, is a loyal servant of the regime. He was one of only six candidates the regime permitted to run for office. See, nearly 700 other candidates were rejected. So what made him acceptable? Well, Rouhani headed Iran's Supreme National Security Council from 1989 through 2003.

During that time, Iran's henchmen gunned down opposition leaders in a Berlin restaurant. They murdered 85 people at the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. They killed 19 American soldiers by blowing up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Are we to believe that Rouhani, the national security advisor of Iran at the time, knew nothing about these attacks? Of course he did. Just as 30 years ago, Iran's security chiefs knew about the bombings in Beirut that killed 241 American Marines and 58 French paratroopers.

Rouhani was also Iran's chief nuclear negotiator between 2003 and 2005. He masterminded the strategy which enabled Iran to advance its nuclear weapons program behind a smoke screen of diplomatic engagement and very soothing rhetoric. Now, I know, Rouhani doesn't sound like Ahmadinejad. But when it comes to Iran's nuclear weapons program, the only difference between them is this, Ahmadinejad was a wolf in wolf's clothing. Rouhani is a wolf in sheep's clothing. A wolf who thinks he can pull the eyes - the wool over the eyes of the international community.

Well, like everyone else, I wish we could believe Rouhani's words, but we must focus on Iran's actions. And it's the brazen contrast, the extraordinary contradiction between Rouhani's words and Iran's actions that is so startling. Rouhani stood at this very podium last week and praised Iranian democracy, Iranian democracies, but the regime that he represents executes political dissents by the hundreds and jails them by the thousands.

Rouhani spoke of, quote, "the human tragedy in Syria, yet Iran directly participates in Assad's murder and massacre of tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children in Syria. And that regime is propping up a Syrian regime that just used chemical weapons against its own people. Rouhani condemned the, quote, "violence scourge of terrorism," yet in the last three years alone, Iran has ordered, planned, or perpetrated terrorist attacks in 25 cities in five continents.

Rouhani denounces, quote, "attempts to change the regional balance through proxies," yet Iran is actively destabilizing Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain, and many other Middle Eastern countries. Rouhani promises, quote, "constructive engagement with other countries," yet two years ago Iranian agents tried to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador in Washington, D.C. And just three weeks ago, an Iranian agent was arrested trying to collect information for possible attacks against the American embassy in Tel Aviv. Some constructive engagement.

I wish I could be moved by Rouhani's invitation to join his wave, a world against violence and extremism, yet the only waves Iran has generated in the last 30 years are waves of violence and terrorism that it has unleashed in the region and across the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wish I could believe Rouhani, but I don't, because facts are stubborn things. And the facts are that Iran's savage record flatly contradicts Rouhani's soothing rhetoric.

Last Friday, Rouhani assured us that in pursuit of its nuclear program, Iran, this is a quote, Iran has never chosen deceit and secrecy, never chosen deceit and secrecy, while in 2002, Iran was caught red handed secretly building an underground centrifuge facility.

And then in 2009, Iran was again caught red handed secretly building a huge underground nuclear facility for uranium enrichment in a mountain.

Rouhani tells us not to worry. He assures us that all of this is not intended for nuclear weapons.

Any of you believe that? If you believe that, here's a few questions you might want to ask. Why would a country that claims to only want peaceful nuclear energy -- why would such a country build hidden underground enrichment facilities?

Why would a country with vast natural energy reserves invest billions in developing nuclear energy?

Why would a country intent on merely civilian nuclear programs continue to defy multiple Security Council resolutions and incur the tremendous cost of crippling sanctions on its economy?

And why would a country with a peaceful nuclear program develop intercontinental ballistic missiles whose sole purpose is to deliver nuclear war heads?

You don't build ICBMs to carry TNT thousands of miles away. You build them for one purpose -- to carry nuclear warheads. And Iran is building now ICBMs that the United States says could reach this city in three or four years.

Why would they do all this? The answer is simple. Iran is not building a peaceful nuclear program. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Last year alone, Iran enriched three tons of uranium to 3.5 percent, doubled its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium and added thousands of new sentry futures.

It also continued work on the heavy-water reactor in Iraq. That's in order to have another root to the bomb, plutonium path. And since Rouhani's election, and I stress this, this vast and feverish effort has continued unabated.

Ladies and gentlemen, underground nuclear facilities, heavy-water reactors, advanced centrifuges, ICBMs, see, it's not that it's hard to find evidence that Iran has a nuclear program, a nuclear weapons program. It's hard to find evidence that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program.

Last year when I spoke here at the U.N., I drew a red line. Now, Iran has been very careful not to cross that line, but Iran is positioning itself to race across that line in the future at a time of its choosing.

Iran wants to be in a position to rush forward to build nuclear bombs before the international community can detect it and much less prevent it.

Yet, Iran faces one big problem. And that problem can be summed up in one word -- sanctions. I've argued for many years, including on this podium, that the only way to peacefully prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is to combine tough sanctions with a credible military threat, and that policy today is bearing fruit.

Thanks to the efforts of many countries, many represented here and under the leadership of the United States, tough sanctions have taken a big bite off the Iranian economy. Oil revenues have fallen. The currency has plummeted. Banks are hard-pressed to transfer money.

So as a result, the regime is under intense pressure from the Iranian people to get the sanctions relieved or removed. That's why Rouhani got elected in the first place. That's why he launched his charm offensive.

He definitely wants to get the sanctions lifted. I guarantee you that. But he doesn't want to give up Iran's nuclear weapons program in return.

Now, here's a strategy to achieve this. First, smile a lot. Smiling never hurts. Second, pay lip service to peace, democracy and tolerance. Third, offer meaningless concessions in exchange for lifting sanctions.

And fourth, and the most important, insure that Iran retains sufficient nuclear material and sufficient nuclear infrastructure to race to the bomb at a time that it chooses to do so.

You know why Rouhani thinks he can get away with this? I mean, this is a ruse. It's a ploy. Why does Rouhani think he can get away with it? Because he's gotten away with it before, because his strategy of talking a lot and doing little has worked for him in the past.

He even brags about this. Here's what he said in his 2011 book about his time as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator. And I quote, "While we were talking to the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in Isfahan."

Now, for those of you who don't know, the Isfahan facility is an indispensable part of Iran's nuclear weapons program. That's where uranium ore called "yellow cake" is converted into an enrichable form.

Rouhani boasted, and I quote, "By creating a calm environment" -- a calm environment -- "we were able to be complete the work in Isfahan."

He fooled the world once. Now he thinks he can fool it again.

You see, Rouhani thinks he can have his had yellow cake and eat it, too. And he has another reason to believe that he can get away with this, and that reason is called North Korea.

Like Iran, North Korea also said its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes. Like Iran, North Korea also offered meaningless concessions and empty promises in return for sanctions relief.

In 2005, North Korea agreed to a deal that was celebrated the world over by many well-meaning people.

Here's what "The New York Times" editorial had to say about it. "For years now, foreign policy insiders have pointed to North Korea as the ultimate nightmare, a closed, hostile and paranoid dictatorship with an aggressive nuclear weapons program. Very few could envision a successful outcome.

"And yet, North Korea agreed in principle this week to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, return to the NPT, abide by the treaty's safeguards and admit international inspectors."

And finally, "Diplomacy, it seems, does work after all."

Ladies and gentlemen, a year later, North Korea exploded its first nuclear weapons device.

Yet, as dangerous as a nuclear-armed North Korea is, it pales in comparison to the danger of a nuclear armed Iran, a nuclear armed Iran would have a chokehold on the world's main energy supplies.

It would trigger nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East, turning the most unstable part of the planet into a nuclear tinderbox.

And for the first time in history, it would make the specter of nuclear terrorism a clear and present danger.

A nuclear armed Iran in the Middle East wouldn't be another North Korea. It would be another 50 North Koreas.

Now, I know that some in the international community think I'm exaggerating this threat. Sure, they know that Iran's regime leads these chants, "Death to America, death to Israel," that it pledges to wipe Israel off the map, but they think that this wild rhetoric is just bluster for domestic consumption.

Have these people learned nothing from history? The last century has taught us that when a radical regime with global ambitions gets awesome power, sooner or later, its appetite for aggression knows no bounds. That's the central lesson of the 20th century, and we cannot forget it.

The world may have forgotten this lesson. The Jewish people have not. Iran's fanaticism is not bluster. It's real. This fanatic regime must never be allowed to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

I know that the world is weary of war. We in Israel, we know all too well the cost of war, but history has taught us that to prevent war tomorrow, we must be firm today.

This raises the question, can diplomacy stop this threat? While the only diplomatic solution that would work is one that fully dismantles Iran's nuclear weapons program and prevents it from having one in the future.

President Obama rightly said that Iran's conciliatory words must be matched by transparent, verifiable and meaningful action, and to be meaningful, a diplomatic solution would require Iran to do four things.

First, cease all uranium enrichment. This is called for by several Security Council resolutions.

Second, remove from Iran's territory the stockpiles of enriched uranium.

Third, dismantle the infrastructure for nuclear breakout capability including the underground facility and the advanced centrifuges in Natanz.

And four, stop all work at the heavy water reactor in Iraq aimed at the production of plutonium.

These steps would put an end to Iran's nuclear weapons program and eliminate its breakout capability.

There are those who would readily agree to leave Iran with the residual capability to enrich much uranium. I advise them to pay close attention to what Rouhani said in a speech to Iran's Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council. This was published in 2005.