CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: On the Iran Deal

Interview

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KEILAR: And joining me now, we have a leading member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, Republican James Risch of Idaho.

Thank you so much, Senator, for being with us.

And I want to ask you about this tentative deal with Iran. But first you have this -- I want to about something else, Yemen. And we have a U.S. counterterrorism official who is calling the situation there dire. President Obama called Yemen a success story just this past fall.

But has it completely collapsed? Is that your opinion?

SEN. JAMES RISCH (R), IDAHO: It has completely collapsed. I think the report that had you earlier was very accurate.

Look, we have got all of these countries in the Middle East failing. You started with Libya. Then you went to Syria. Now you have Yemen. Yemen, of course, is driven by the Iranians who have been in there supporting the Houthi rebels. Then it was the Houthi rebels that overthrew the government of Yemen who were friends of ours, and now have turned to al Qaeda. It's a mess over there.

And I frankly am greatly disappointed in how the administration handled it from recent months to where we got to today, because it is a failed state today.

KEILAR: What role, I guess, would Congress have had in this? Obviously, the intel available to the White House, much of it is available to members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans. This is something that spiraled out of control very quickly. Couldn't Congress have stepped in and said something?

RISCH: Well, I disagree that it spun out of control very quickly.

Indeed, I'm sure the president sees the exact same intel that we see on the Intelligence Committee. By the time he made that statement that this was a poster child for this was how things are supposed to be handled, he had to have known that there were difficulties there.

And they needed substantially more support than they were getting. Everyone knew that Iran was in there supporting the Houthis, both with military, with advice, with every way you could support them. And the administration had to know that that was going on. And there were a lot of us that were urging that the administration do substantially more in Yemen.

Admittedly, their focus at the time was much more on Syria than it was on Yemen. But Yemen is a very, very dangerous situation because of how difficult it is to do intel in that country. And I think the report that you had earlier about the Saudis doing the airstrikes there, those are all well and good, but you really need to know what you are doing if you are going to be doing airstrikes.

KEILAR: Yes, certainly, and really without any major eyes on the ground, no ears on the ground.

You have 270 prisoners about who were released in this prison break in this coastal city of Yemen. I think we're seeing reports that about a third of them, so you are talking almost 100, who have links to al Qaeda. We have seen reports, according to Twitter and AQAP accounts, they are saying that you have a senior al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula figure who is among those who have been freed.

What can you tell us about this? And how much danger does this pose, including to the U.S. homeland? You are talking about some folks who are trying to plan attacks on U.S. targets.

RISCH: That's a really good point.

And you're right. The number is about 90 that are hard-core al Qaeda operatives. And, look, these people got to prison with blood, sweat and tears. It wasn't a situation where they just went out and gathered them up and put them in prison. It's very, very difficult, particularly in a country like Yemen, to identify who the hard-core people are and then get them into prison. It is very disheartening to have gone through all of that, get them

into prison and then in one fell swoop after the Houthis take over, they go in and let them back out. These people are going to go back to fighting against the United States. And, indeed, your point about a danger to the America homeland is well taken, because it's well known that Yemen is a hotbed of activity trying to bring down an American airliner.

The recent plots that have been uncovered in that regard, the attempts, the near misses, every single one of those have originated in Yemen. This is a serious problem, not only for the region, but for America.

KEILAR: All right. And just before I ask the next question here, I do want to take note -- you can see on your screen we are watching a tornado warning. This is near Nashville, Tennessee. It's actually northeast of Tennessee. We will be monitoring that as we continue on talking about our top story, one of our top stories here, Yemen.

[18:15:02] Senator, so, Yemen obviously a hotbed, as we have been talking about, for terror. But when you have Saudi airstrikes taking on Houthi rebels, does that leave a vacuum? Does that leave breathing room for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to really get its stuff together more?

RISCH: Well, I think more importantly what it does is it distracts from other things that we need to be doing, such as in Syria and in Western Iraq, where things are also getting very bad and going from bad to worse.

That's a problem there. Having said that, I mean, things can't get much worse in Yemen, where the government failed and the Houthis have taken over. Every day, you pick up the paper and something like them taking over the palace or the government buildings or the American Embassy vehicles, those kinds of things, it happens every day.

And it can't get much worse there, really. I wouldn't call it a vacuum, as much as it is just a failure of the people that we want to see in control in that country.

KEILAR: Yes, and so key in that region.

We have many more questions to ask you. Senator Risch, stay with us. We are going to get in a quick break, and we will be right back.

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[18:20:41] KEILAR: We're back now with Senator James Risch, as President Obama steps up his efforts to sell members of Congress on the new tentative nuclear deal with Iran.

And, senator, I understand the president is already in touch with Senate leadership. Let me know if you have heard him calling anyone at this point. But he is warning Congress not -- to not force the U.S. to walk away from this deal with Iran.

What kind of deal would you support?

RISCH: Well, the difficulty is, Brianna, I think they gave away the farm right at the beginning.

I would support a deal where Iran says, look, we made a mistake, we're going to abandon our nuclear ambitions, we're going to destroy all of the centrifuges that we have that make war material. We're going to get rid of the enriched uranium we have and we're going to be good people.

And that's not what you have at all. Instead, you saw the celebrations in Iran. They are celebrating the fact that they now have a path forward to a nuclear weapon. They know what they have to do and how they can do it. At the end of the 10 or 15 years or whatever it is, they will have the right to have a nuclear weapon.

And the other part is, we don't really know what's been agreed to so far. I have been -- I had a member of the administration call me earlier today. And they briefed me on what the situation was. Then this afternoon, I hear the Iranians telling their people that, in late June, when the deal is inked, that all the sanctions will come off immediately and they go away.

The administration is telling the American people, no, that's not the fact at all, that the sanctions stay in place and the sanctions regime stays in place, so that we can ensure that they will behave themselves or we will be able to pull on leash again.

We have two different stories here. And that is very, very problematic. I know the media is reporting on that this afternoon. We're going to see how that plays out.

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RISCH: I understand the administration has offered an explanation of that, that, oh, they're just telling this to the Iranian people so they will accept the deal.

What's that all about? How can you make an agreement like that, enter into a treaty like that where one of the governments is lying to their people? That doesn't make sense.

KEILAR: And, obviously, there's still a lot of details to be worked out as well. But I agree with you. Those are two huge -- a huge discrepancy there between the two sides.

But if you have Iran saying that it's going to reduce its centrifuges dramatically, that it's going to reduce its uranium dramatically and really pushing back its ability to enrich for some time, and then certainly having inspections, if they are to be inspections that can be impromptu, where Iran couldn't, say, clean up some efforts to try to hide them from inspectors, is there something along those lines that you could agree with?

RISCH: Well, I think you have to look at the package in total. And the problem I have got is that they can still enrich, they can

still do research, they can still do all the planning they want to make a nuclear weapon. Now, certainly, their enrichment is ratcheted back. But there's nothing to stop them from making the preparations so that when they have the end of this period, they can immediately produce a nuclear weapon and say, we're in full compliance.

And, by the way, we also have a nuclear weapon. I don't -- I have real difficulties with this. The two governments are coming at this from a different point of view. We want to see that they never have a nuclear weapon. I heard the president say that the other day. He knows better than that. Indeed, the deal gives them a path towards a nuclear weapon.

The other side is saying, we want a nuclear weapon and we want to know what we have to do, what hoops we have to jump through, how long we have to wait, and then we can have a nuclear weapon.

So, we're coming at an agreement that isn't an agreement at all. Indeed, it's two different views of their ability to possess a nuclear weapon.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: It is an agreement that we have heard certainly a lot from the foreign minister of Iran on this, but what about the ayatollah? Do you believe that the ayatollah will follow through in the way that perhaps the Iranian foreign minister says he would?

[18:25:06] RISCH: Well, I can't answer that.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: Do you trust him? Do you trust the ayatollah to go along with this?

RISCH: No, I don't trust any of them. And I have good reason to.

They have got a long history of lying and cheating. And I have no reason to believe that they are going to behave themselves this time. You need to have the strictest sanctions in place, and you need to have an inspect regime that is overall. They have not even declared yet what they did previously as they prepared a nuclear weapon. And the inspectors have been complaining about that even in recent weeks.

KEILAR: All right, Senator Risch, thank you so much. Great conversation on this Iran deal. Really appreciate you being with us.

(CROSSTALK)

RISCH: Thank you so much for having me.

KEILAR: Of course. Thank you very much.

And we have some more breaking news right after this.

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