CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Iran Deal, ISIS and Iran in Iraq

Interview

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BLITZER: We should know soon enough whether there's a deal or no deal. Thanks very much, Jim Sciutto, for that report.

Let's bring in a leading member of the House Intelligence Committee, the ranking Democrat, Congressman Adam Schiff of California.

Congressman, thanks very much for joining us.

What are you hearing, deal or no deal?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), CALIFORNIA: I'm hearing the same thing you are.

I was at the Intelligence Committee today, but really no update. And the question is, is there going to be enough meat on the bones to justify going until June 30 and enough to hold off the Congress from enacting new sanctions? I think all of us are waiting with bated breath to see what materializes in the next 24 hours.

BLITZER: Are you open-minded about all of this?

SCHIFF: I am. I try to keep my powder dry and wait until we see the whole agreement. There are a lot of moving pieces. And a lot of them are interrelated, in the sense that it's not just the number of centrifuges, but the generation of centrifuges.

It also involves whether they move uranium out of the country or keep it in, whether inspections are limited to only the known sites, or can go elsewhere in the country, how long the agreement is. There are lot of key variables that we will have to measure together.

BLITZER: What happens if they don't announce any of those specific technical arrangements and they say, you know what, the real deadline is the end of June, that's when all these technical details will be worked out, there's a framework to continue the discussions?

Is that going to hold off members of Congress like you and others, Democrats and Republicans, from imposing fresh new sanctions against Iran?

SCHIFF: I don't think so.

I think the administration is going to have to produce something very tangible. This is where we have found common ground. This is where we have the outlines of an agreement. And now all we really need to do is work out the technical details. Today, it doesn't sound like they are there. But this may be the final last-minute posturing, as Jim mentioned, before they get to a deal, or it may fall apart.

BLITZER: Would you vote for those sanctions?

SCHIFF: If we don't have a deal and we don't even have the outline of a deal, I think a sanctions bill is inevitable. And I would probably support that. The question is, what kind of a bill would that be? And would it

still hold open the prospect that by June 30 they may achieve what they haven't achieved thus far?

BLITZER: Because I spoke to Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas -- he's a member of the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee -- in the last hour. He said even if the sanctions are approved by Congress, they wouldn't go into effect until after the June 30 deadline.

SCHIFF: You know, we could work with the president on even a sanctions bill that reinforces American's position in the negotiation. Ideally, that's what we should be doing, instead of working at cross- purposes.

I don't know if that will happen. But we will see what the administration comes up with when the next 24 hours have come and gone. And then we will have to go from there.

BLITZER: Senator Cotton says he would just walk away from these negotiations right now and tell the Iranians, you know what? We're going back to the sanctions and put the pressure on them that way, because they think the U.S. wants a deal more than the Iranians want a deal.

SCHIFF: That's an attractive idea, except when you realize that that leads us right back to where we were before the interim agreement, which is Iran spins up its centrifuges again, it goes beyond 20 percent enriched uranium.

It gets closer and closer to either Israel's red line or our own. That's not a very great scenario either. And I'm not sure there's much of a plausible case to be made that increased sanctions will force Iran back to the table ready to capitulate their entire nuclear program.

[18:15:02] BLITZER: That's what they want, even tighter sanctions. And they say the U.S. lost a lot of leverage by easing those sanctions over the past 18 months.

SCHIFF: You know, actually, a lot that has been said about the interim agreement has not proved to be true. In fact, a lot of the people that are making the same argument today against these negotiations were arguing that the interim agreement would be a nightmare, that the interim agreement would cause the sanctions regime to collapse.

None of that happened. So, some that are making this argument now don't have a very good track record.

BLITZER: The White House press secretary, Congressman, Josh Earnest, he said a military option, in his words, sitting on the table right now.

Stand by. I want to pick that thought up. We will take a quick break. Much more right after this. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:20:11] BLITZER: We're back with the ranking Democrat of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff of California. We're talking about the Iran nuclear talks.

Right now, there has been an extension, as you know, Congressman.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said today basically what Ash Carter, the defense secretary, said yesterday. He said, "The military option, as far as the U.S. is concerned is" -- this is Earnest -- "sitting on table right now."

If these talks don't succeed and the U.S. determines that Iran is going forward with a building of a nuclear bomb, would you support a preemptive strike by the United States to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities?

SCHIFF: I don't like the term preemptive. But if Iran was moving forward to develop the bomb and that was the only option we had to stop them, then, yes, I would support it.

And for that reason, it really has to be on the table. And if this deal falls apart and if the result is that Iran goes forward, and they cross that line, they make the decision to break out and build the bomb, then, yes, as a last resort, we would have to use force.

BLITZER: Well, why wouldn't you call it a preemptive strike?

SCHIFF: I guess preemptive in the sense that it stops the ultimate step to get the bomb. But I think it has to be viewed as a last resort and not a first resort.

And I think too often in the past decade, the preemptive use of force has been so far ahead of the last step, that it has created enormous problems for us.

BLITZER: Would you agree that if the U.S. were to use military force, it would, in fact, destroy Iran's nuclear capability?

SCHIFF: We have the ability to destroy their nuclear program and set it back for a few years.

Israel probably has the capability of doing it for a smaller period of time. So, the problem is that, once you do that, Iran then begins to break out in earnest. They throw out whatever inspectors you had. They are then in a mad dash for the bomb. And you have go back in militarily, and we're in a full then, I think, asymmetric war with Iran.

And that is not a scenario that we ought to invite as anything other than the last resort.

BLITZER: Because a lot of us -- and I have been reminded of the optimism that occurred during the Bill Clinton administration when there was a nuclear deal with North Korea. We all thought the president was making public statements, the secretary of state, that there's going to be a new Korean Peninsula, North Korea is moving in the right direction, they are walking away from nuclear capability.

And we all know how that turned out.

SCHIFF: It turned out very badly. And there are a lot of unfortunately bad examples out there that people look to.

You have the bad example of North Korea developing the bomb under negotiations. You also have Libya giving up its nuclear program and Gadhafi ending six feet under the ground. Other nations watch these things and it determines how they behave. Unfortunately, we have set many of the wrong examples.

BLITZER: But do you really think that under the best of circumstances, this regime in Tehran, the ayatollah and all of his mullahs would in fact give up that dream of having a nuclear bomb?

SCHIFF: I don't think the ayatollah has made the decision, we're going to build the bomb. I don't think they have crossed that threshold.

I think they have made the decision, the mullahs, that they want to get close, that they want to have a short breakout time so if down the road they decide it's in their interest, that they can break out and quickly develop a bomb. The question is, how close are they going to get and can we live with that or do we need to act, as you say, preemptively?

And I think none of us can tell how close those mullahs are willing to get to the bomb.

BLITZER: Let's talk about Tikrit for a moment. You visited Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's birthplace, his hometown in Iraq. Today, the Iraqi military has gone in, with the aid of these Iranian-backed Shiite militias, U.S. airpower, and liberated Tikrit.

You saw Arwa Damon's report with all the damage, the destruction there. Is Iraq turning out to be a huge strategic win for Iran?

SCHIFF: I wouldn't say that yet.

Certainly, the past several years have been good for Iran in Iraq. It has seen its influence only increase. And that's a stark contrast to the days when they were at war with Iraq under Hussein. But in terms of the last few days and what's gone on in Tikrit, it has been a mixed picture for the Iranian militias and for Tehran.

After all, they had to pull back from the fight. They were not succeeding in Tikrit until the American airstrikes were called in. And the real risk, I think, is that these militias abuse, murder, decapitate people, like we saw in the video you showed. And that just makes the Sunnis cling even more to ISIS in places like Mosul.

So, they could win the battle in Tikrit and lose the war if these Iranian-backed militias overreach. BLITZER: Yes, and I'm sure they will.

Congressman, thanks very much for joining us.

SCHIFF: Thanks, Wolf.

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