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Historic Nuclear Deal Reached with Iran; Israeli Prime Minister Reacts Negatively to Potential Iran Nuclear Deal; Interview with U.S. Congressman Michael McCaul of Texas; Interview with Rick Santorum. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 14, 2015 - 08:00   ET

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


NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And there is a commission set up to make sure that that happens in a swift and timely fashion.

[08:00:05] It is worth expanding just a little bit on this notion of 24/7 access, the idea that inspectors can go to whichever sites they so desire in Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency that is the world's nuclear watchdog learned its protocols, if you will, in Iraq in the '90s where it was doing weapons inspection there. They learned that it wasn't good enough to listen to what the country had said about where their stockpiles were, about where their equipment was to just verify what they were told. They needed additional powers to be able to say we want to go to that town, we want to go to that site, we want to go to that building, we want to go to that room.

That is what is enshrined and that is what Iran has signed up to here, what is known as the additional protocols. And if the IAEA say we want to the go to that building and the Iranians say no, it goes into something called managed access. The inspectors have the under this agreement to demand to go somewhere and reach an agreement with the Iranians in a timely fashion. There is a 15-day mechanism here built into this agreement that if they don't comply with what the inspectors demand for access to a site, then this is something that is going to be escalated to the U.N. Security Council. This is the strength of what President Obama and Secretary Kerry have been talking about in the 24/7 access. Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Man, the devil really is in the details. There's so many different layers of agreements here. Thanks for spelling that out for us.

So this Iran nuclear deal is being called the biggest diplomatic achievement for the Obama presidency. But Congress may not agree. CNN's White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski is following that angle for us. Good morning, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Alisyn. Right, we heard the president just speak. He wanted to confidently stand before the world and say that this will stop the spread of nuclear weapons in that region. It will cut off every pathway for Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. He wanted to hit those points, that Iran will lose two-thirds of its

centrifuges, 98 percent of its nuclear stockpile. To put that in perspective I think one of the strongest points he made was that, look, currently Iran has enough nuclear material to make 10 weapons. Under the new deal they'll have only enough for a fraction of one weapon, and that situation will stay in place for 15 years.

But of course a big concern that the world has about this deal is won't Iran try to do something in secret? Won't they continue to enrich at some secret site that nobody has ever known about or will ever know about? And what about access to military sites? That was a big deal. Iran was saying that will never happen under a deal. Now no one is mentioning it. Could that be something that was a concession to Iran? Although the president said that inspectors would have access to any site they deem suspicious. And the president also mentioned again what has almost become a mantra for the White House on its stance toward Iran, to distrust but verify. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Inspectors will have 24/7 access to Iran's key nuclear facilities. Iran will have access to Iran's entire nuclear supply chain, its uranium mines and mills, its conversion facility, and its centrifuge manufacturing and storage facilities. This ensures Iran will not be able to divert materials from known facilities to covert ones. Some of these transparency measures will be in place for 25 years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSINSKI: And we're already hearing from many members of Congress taking a look at this, including Democrats, reacting with a very skeptical point of view. Chris?

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Michelle, thank you very much.

A big factor of this is going to be whether it gets approved by the Iranian parliament and by then here by Congress. And what will be about what the people of these two nations are saying. So Iran's foreign minister as a leadership position says the deal is a win-win. And in a live address to the nation that we showed you here in CNN, the president Hassan Rouhani told his people that their prayers have come true.

So let's get to CNN's Fred Pleitgen. He spent the last few weeks in Tehran. Now, here in the U.S. there's a lot of division about whether doing business with Iran is the right thing to do. How about there? Do you see the same split.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, exactly the same sentiment. What you have there, Chris, is you have a large part of the population that wants better relations with the U.S., of course with the international community as a whole as well. But there were also a lot of hardliners in Iran that felt that Iran shouldn't give an inch to the international community and who were very skeptical of these negotiations. Now, of course, the most important figure of those conservatives is Iran's supreme leader. And it's not just Iran's parliament that's going to have to sign off on this. The supreme leader himself as the country's highest religious and also civil authority, he is also going to have to be in favor of this deal.

[08:05:00] Now what we're hearing from inside Iran, apparently the president Hassan Rouhani will have a meeting with the supreme leader later today to talk about the matter. Hassan Rouhani was very interesting to see in the speech you just showed, first of all, that Rouhani waited for the U.S. president to finish his speech before starting his own. And then second of all, also, he was talking about concessions that have to be made. He was saying in all negotiations both sides would have to give a little bit of ground. But he felt that in the end Iran was recognized as a nuclear power. Another thing that rarely happens is that beforehand President Obama's speech was on Iranian state TV. And I can tell you from our sources on the ground, a lot of people were watching very, very closely, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: That is remarkable that they carried it in Tehran maybe countrywide live as he was speaking. That does seem unprecedented. Thanks so much for that.

Well, Israel condemning this deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling it a historic mistake for the world. So let's go live to CNN's Erin McLaughlin. She is live in Jerusalem. What's the reaction there, Erin?

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. There may be optimism in Vienna, Tehran, and Washington, D.C., but there is outrage here in Jerusalem. Last hour on your program you spoke to hardline coalition partner Naftali Bennett, the first live Israeli reaction since the deal was announced. And he says that promises have been broken, saying that the promise of lifting any time, anyplace inspections, Israelis objecting to the mechanism, the inspection mechanism that Nic Robertson was referring there in Vienna. And he also had ominous predictions for world peace.

Now, prior to this agreement being formally announced, we heard from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem earlier this morning say the following, quote, "When you're ready to make a deal, no matter what the cost, this is the results. From the first reports that are arriving it is already possible to conclude this agreement is a historic mistake for the world."

We also heard from the minister of defense, Moshe Dayan saying the agreement signed today between the world powers and Iran is built on lies and deceit. Iran, who arrived at the negotiating table in a weak position, has emerged victorious. Now, it is worth noting these statements same out prior to the formal agreement being announced. Bennett was in our bureau reading this agreement, all some 100 pages of it, in great detail. We expect a Security Council meeting here in Jerusalem to take place later today, and we'll get more detailed reaction, the hope is, in the coming hours. Chris?

CUOMO: All right, Erin, appreciate. Let's get some more now on the Iran deal and bring in retired United States army colonel Larry Wilkerson. He was of course chief of staff to former secretary of state Colin Powell. Mr. Wilkerson, pleasure to have you on the show. What is your initial reaction?

LARRY WILKERSON, FORMER CHIEF FO STAFF FOR SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL: I'm rather stunned that we got what we got, frankly. I got the agreement about 5:00 a.m. this morning. I was unable of course to go over it chapter and verse. I've listened to the statements and followed it all along for these past years, and I'm rather stunned that we got what we got.

What I would offer to the critics, and what I've offered to the cricks in Congress and elsewhere is show me your alternative. They don't have any alternatives. So this is the best we can work with this problem at the present time.

CAMEROTA: Let me read you from the president's speech what was agreed to, and perhaps you can comment one after the other. The first is inspectors will have 24/7 access to Iran's key nuclear facilities. Let me stop there. That doesn't mean unfettered access, does it?

WILKERSON: No, it doesn't. And I think we have to understand that under nonproliferation treaty and even the additional protocols, safeguard agreements, and so forth, and this goes even further than that, in fact much further than that if I'm reading the text right. These things are the privileges of a country that is a member of the NPT and tells the international community that it is going to what it has to do under those obligations.

I was really stunned, too, that we got this side agreement with director with Iranian Corporation to render an assessment of Iran's prior military dimensions, that is, those things that it might have done in the past that had nuclear weapon potential. This is something I didn't think we would get. I thought the Iranians would fall on their sword over that. But apparently they have allowed it to happen. We'll see how it comes out in December, but I'm encouraged by that.

CUOMO: The main pushback is that this deal, even taken at its best, is not an if, but a when. And the alternative that's being offered is tighten those sanction screws, it's the only thing that was working. We finally had them on their knees, as we just heard from one of the government ministers of Israel. Do you agree with that assessment?

[08:10:08] WILKERSON: You back out of this deal and you lose the entire international community, including importantly Russia and China immediately, and the sanctions no longer bind, no longer cripple, no longer do anything because they will be unilateral, and unilateral won't do it.

The other aspect of this that no one's talking about that of course Netanyahu and others are scared to death of is that this may, in Churchillian phraseology, if I may, begin the end of the beginning, if you will, or the end of the end, however you want to look at it. We may have an entirely different situation in the Middle East. The disastrous decision the U.S. made in 2003 to invade Iraq produced ISIL. It produced the civil war in Syria. It produced the worst situation for Israel's security in two decades. This is the way to begin to stop that. Without Iran, you get no stability in Afghanistan, no stability in Iraq, no end to the war in Syria, no security for Israel ultimately. This is much more important than just the nuclear agreement.

CAMEROTA: That's not how the Israelis see it, as you know. And in fact, they agree it may be a new day in the international community, but it's a bad one. Chris just interviewed a top Israeli official, a hardliner, who said the problem with this deal is now billions of dollars will flow into Iran as will other weapons.

WILKERSON: I don't doubt that the Israelis, Netanyahu and otherwise, believe that because this puts Iran in a position of becoming a fairly reliable and stable partner for the United States. After all, it is the most stable country in southwest Asia, even today, and therefore giving Israel some competition. I'd probably feel that way if I were Netanyahu with his aspirations too. But that's not the best thing for the region, the best thing for Israel ultimately, and certainly not for the United States.

CUOMO: But the baseline concern is you have a country that you've just done business with or at least promised to do business with who says death to, you, U.S., and death to Israel, and they are actively exporting money and manpower to frustrate efforts at peace around the world. You can see why that's going to draw pushback, can't you?

WILKERSON: They're also our biggest ally in fighting the greatest threat with have from terrorists, ISIL, in Syria and Iraq. So this is a complex and complicated matter that needs dual diplomacy. This needs the kind of diplomacy that I think we've seen displayed over the last year or so and particularly over the last 18 days or so. I'm glad to see that diplomacy has come back to the forefront. I think the military, the hard power, as it were, has been placed on the shelf for a while. It's about time.

CAMEROTA: Very quickly, the other bottom line, of course, is critics say that despite all of the details and the minutia in this contract, that Iran won't stick to it.

WILKERSON: That's, of course, always a possibility. I watched North Korea very closely, a far more dangerous state than Iran, by the way. And we seem to be virtually ignoring it. I watched how they looked at the Congress's inability to fill the agreed framework provisions from our side of the agreement. And I watched how North Korea decided to cheat because of that and built its own highly enriched uranium program ultimately produced a bomb. It can be done. There's no doubt that it can be done.

But I want to hear the alternatives. And the alternatives really boil down to war. And that's not in my opinion a very good idea. Tom Cotton recently said, he recently said, a war with Iran would last a few days. That reminds me of the people who said with Iraq in 2003 we'd be met with flowers in the streets.

CUOMO: Mr. Wilkerson, thank you so much. Appreciate the perspective as always. WILKERSON: Thanks for having me.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

Well, the Iran negotiations are done for the moment, but the deal has another big obstacle, and that is of course to clear Congress. Will U.S. lawmakers approve this deal? We will ask a member of the House Homeland Security Committee.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:17:45] CAMEROTA: The nuclear deal with Iran has skeptics, of course, a number of them members of Congress. The House and Senate will ever 60 days to weigh in on the deal.

So, let's bring in Congressman Michael McCaul. He's Republican from Texas and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Good morning, Congressman.

Tell us what you of the details --

REP. MICHAEL MCCAUL (R), TEXAS: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: -- as you've heard of this deal.

MCCAUL: Well, it's kind of what we expected. I think it doesn't dismantle their nuclear infrastructure, their capability. They can move forward under this deal. They can continue to enrich uranium. They can continue to build intercontinental ballistic missiles, which our intelligence community say by the end of next year could reach the United States.

And I think also, Alisyn, what concerns us the most are -- you know, they talk about verification, but when you look at the verification steps, the access that the inspectors will have, it says key nuclear sites. We don't know what that really -- does that mean nuclear facilities? Does that mean the military installations?

CAMEROTA: It sounds like it doesn't mean --

MCCAUL: We know that Iran has a lot of covert operations as well.

CAMEROTA: I'm sorry to interrupt you, Congressman, it sounds like it doesn't mean their military sites. As you know, Iran felt that they didn't want their military secrets exposed, they said, to the international community. So, it sounds like they have not granted unfettered access to their military sites but rather to their key nuclear sites.

So, can Congress live with that?

MCCAUL: Well, I know based on a lot of briefings I get that they do have in the past engaged in covert development of nuclear capabilities. That's our concern here. They've had underground facilities. I'm sure they'll use their military facilities to do this and the inspectors will have no access to that. That's one of the biggest issues we have.

I'm on the foreign affairs committee as well. We have a hearing later today on this issue. I was just over in the Middle East with Prime Minister Netanyahu and also with the Saudis and the Turks. And, you know, what I'm really concerned about is a nuclear arms race that this could spur in the Middle East in response to this.

They do not want to see Iran go down the path to building a bomb. And that's -- from their perspective, that's how they see this.

CAMEROTA: Sure. Of course.

[08:20:00] And, in fact, President -- Prime Minister Netanyahu has called this a historically bad deal or historic mistake today.

Let me just run through the details as they emerged, as the president spelled them out this morning so that you can comment on them. Here are some other things that we hear are in it, not only inspections that you and I discuss.

But also, it will get rid of 98 percent of the enriched uranium stockpile that Iran holds. The president said that currently they could have produced ten nuclear weapons. Also the stockpile limitation will last for 15 years.

Sanctions relief with Iran will be phased in. It won't happen immediately. And if Iran violates the deal, all sanctions snap back into place.

So, do you believe that Congress will pass or reject this deal as it stands?

MCCAUL: You know, I have to tell you, we're going to look at all the details. It just came out, I think in fairness.

Having said that, I'm not very optimistic that you will see the Congress approve this. And it's not just Republicans, Alisyn, it's a lot of Democrats as well. I think a lot of Democrats associate with the Jewish community particularly --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

MCCAUL: -- are concerned about what this means for Israel.

So, I think you're probably going to see a very bipartisan resolution come out. And I anticipate the president will veto that, and the question, Alisyn, at that point is, do we have a two-third majority to override that.

CAMEROTA: What's the answer to that.

MCCAUL: I think that -- it's uncertain.

CAMEROTA: That's uncertain, because the president --

MCCAUL: That's a very good question. I think it's very uncertain at this point in time.

CAMEROTA: Right, because the president has said he will veto -- if Congress disapproves of this, the president will veto it, since it's uncertain about the 2/3 -- I mean, it sounds as though this is the deal going forward with Iran. Do you believe that it's possible?

I mean, if you take the optimistic outlook today, is sit possible that this ushers in a new day of cooperation with Iran as we have heard from Iranian leaders this morning.

MCCAUL: Well, I'm just -- I'm very skeptical of a country that chants "death to America" that's going to celebrate a holiday tomorrow to call for the destruction of Israel. When these sanctions are lifted, half a million dollars no doubt will be fed into terrorism efforts around the world. And that's would many of our concerns go along those lines.

I would have preferred -- people say, well, what's your plan? You know, we passed sanctions in the last ten years and we should have ratcheted those up to get them to the table to negotiate a better deal than this one and a better deal would be a deal that does not allow them to enrich uranium.

CAMEROTA: We know that you came onto talk about "El Chapo" Guzman who has escaped from a Mexican prison. And we do want to ask you about that, because how dangerous is it that this -- who some call a terrorist, this drug kingpin, that he is out?

MCCAUL: He's a very dangerous man, perhaps the most dangerous, the largest drug cartel in the world, exports more drugs into the United States and makes more money, you know, as well.

I was on CNN a year ago, Alisyn, calling for the extradition of "Chapo" Guzman to the United States so he'd be put in a super max prison and this wouldn't happen. I called specifically what happened that it would happen, that he escaped one more time. He's done this before. And now, you know, the idea that there wasn't complicity and corruption going on when you've got a mile long tunnel in this facility is absolutely absurd.

I talked to the Mexico ambassador. I have a close relationship with the Mexicans, trying to get them to extradite him to the United States where he couldn't into do this again. And they refused to extradite. And now, look what we have, one of the most dangerous drug cartel men out on the streets again.

CAMEROTA: Congressman Michael McCaul, thanks so much for making for NEW DAY. Nice to talk to you.

MCCAUL: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Let's get to Chris.

CUOMO: All right. There's no question -- the story of the day is the nuclear deal with Iran. And it's also going to be a very hot topic of debate and will remain so with the 2016 presidential race getting underway.

We have one of the men who would be president, Rick Santorum. He does not think this is a good idea, this deal, and he says he has a way of it if he's president. He joins us live next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:10] CUOMO: Welcome once again to our viewers in the U.S. and around the world. You're watching NEW DAY.

And one of the things we do on this show, as you may know, is we have the men and women who want to be president of the United States in 2016 and we test what they would do if they were in the position of ultimate power.

One such man is joining us this morning to weigh in on the big deal with Iran and what's going on in the country over all, Republican presidential candidate and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.

Senator, good to have you with us.

RICK SANTORUM (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you, Chris. Good to be with you.

CUOMO: You don't like the deal. Why?

SANTORUM: Well, because number one, it empowers the Iranians. The Iranians came to the negotiating table, if you will, in a very weakened state. And they're going to leave with billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, the ability to project terror, which they are chief sponsor of terror.

We've legitimized them. We've given then legitimacy in the international community, something that they deeply wanted here. And they're done basically nothing in exchange for this that. They come out of this much stronger and more virulent state with few responsibilities. In fact, nothing in this deal curbs their terrorists. There's nothing in this deal that says they have to cease any terrorist activities.

So, in fact, they completely set that aside and focused solely on the nuclear part of it. And, again, there's a lot of questions we've heard about to whether this deal is going to do anything to really curb their intentions.

CUOMO: Well, because it was about the nuclear program, it's somewhat unfair to say it does nothing for their terrorism actions, because that wasn't at the table. The years of sanctions that have been in place against Iran have allowed them to build this massive infrastructure that they have right now.

Where is your confidence that sanctions, more sanctions would make a difference given that they've done all this under sanctions?

SANTORUM: Well, they -- number one, they don't have a nuclear weapon right.