CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: On Iran, Russia, Israel

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

BLITZER: You're right about that.

Jim Acosta, thanks very much.

Joining us now, Senator Angus King.

He's the Maine independent, a member of the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees.

Senator King, thanks very much for joining us.

Do you think there's going to be a deal with Iran?

SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: Well, I think it's 50-50 right now. I've heard 60-40, 50-50. I think it's not done at all.

But what I think is kind of amazing, Wolf, is the way people are lining up. You heard Senator Ted Cruz a few minutes ago saying, you know, you've got to say no to this deal.

There isn't a deal yet. We won't even know the framework for another week or two. And then the details we won't know until June.

So, you know, I'd kind of would like to keep my powder dry and see what it is that's going to come before us before deciding that it's not a good deal.

BLITZER: Based on what you know right now, do you like it? KING: Well, there are some real questions. This is all about

verification, Wolf. That's the real issue.

You know, Ronald Reagan's old line was trust, but verify. In this case, it's no trust and verify like hell. That's what really is going to make this deal either good or bad is the level of verification that we can have on Iranian compliance.

So far, with the preliminary deal that's been in place for over a year now, the compliance has been, actually, quite good; surprisingly good. So that's really what is going to be the key for me, and, of course, what the other terms are, as well.

I'm not ready to say it's a good deal or it's a bad deal. I want to see what they actually come up with. I like to have the facts before I shoot.

BLITZER: Yes, well, that's not unreasonable at all.

Senator, you said that letter written by 47 Republicans to the Iranian leadership was, in your words, "unthinkable," "an unthinkable move." You said it was akin to if Congress had written a letter to Khrushchev right in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis.

Did this letter do permanent damage, in your opinion?

KING: Well, I think we have to see what the Iranian reaction is going to be and whether it, in fact, undermines the talks. To me, what's almost as shocking as the letter itself was that the author, Tom Cotton, a couple days later said, yes, my intention was to torpedo the talks, to undermine the talks.

I don't get that. I mean this is high stakes stuff, Wolf. This is -- we -- this is a very dangerous situation. By far, the preferable solution will be a negotiated settlement to get the capability of a nuclear weapon away from the Iranians. And to do anything to undermine the current discussions, I just don't get. You know, unhelpful is the mildest term I can think of.

You know, you mentioned, I said the other day, it's like Congress writing to Khrushchev, saying don't listen to this Kennedy guy.

The president leads in foreign policy. That's the way the "Constitution" is. That's the way the country has been run since the very beginning.

Congress will have a chance to weigh in. And, in fact, I'm supporting Bob Corker's proposal, at least for now, that will give Congress a chance to weigh in.

15:10:00

But, you know, I've got to be convinced that those 46, 47 people that signed that letter are going to make the decision on the merits and not on some effort to embarrass the president or score points in a presidential primary. This is too serious. I mean is there no issue that we can't turn into a partisan issue

around here?

Come on. Let's see what this really says and then make our decisions accordingly.

BLITZER: But the White House says, Senator, that your role, Congress' role, the Senate's role, will be relatively limited. It's not going to be seen as a treaty, where you have to vote up or down, a two-thirds vote. It's going to be seen as an executive agreement by the United States. In fact, the administration seems to be ready to go to the United Nations Security Council for an up or down vote long before it raises this issue before the United States Senate.

KING: Well, I think we've got to do both, because don't forget, Wolf, everybody talks about this deal as if it's the U.S. and Iran. And, in fact, it's five other countries plus the U.S. that have imposed the sanctions. And most of the sanctions that have had the most impact on Iran are the ones that aren't coming from the US. They're coming from China, Japan, India, Germany, Great Britain. So they've got to be part of this deal.

So involving them has absolutely got to -- is absolutely part of it. But I think -- I disagree with the White House. I think Congress does have a significant role. And I think it's better for us to lay out what the sort of rules of the consideration of that role will be now, rather than have it be a partisan free-for-all in a couple of months. So that's why Tim Kaine and I and a group of other people that are not Republicans are involved in the discussions with Bob Corker, to try to come up with a policy not to derail the negotiations, but to give Congress a chance to take a responsible role in this.

But I've got to tell you, Wolf, my support for that is contingent upon some evidence from the Republicans that they're willing to consider this seriously. And I think Bob Corker is.

But how many of his colleagues are?

And not just as an opportunity to embarrass the president or deny him a diplomatic breakthrough. If the president is able to pull this off, the whole world wins.

BLITZER: All right.

KING: And we ought to be able to take a deep breath and say that's a good thing.

BLITZER: Bob Corker, of course, is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He did not sign that letter by the 47 Republicans to the Iranian leadership.

Senator King, stand by.

We have much more to talk about, including Vladimir Putin.

What is he up to in Russia right now?

Much more when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

<17:17:14> BLITZER: We're back with Senator Angus King. He's the main independent, member of the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. In Russia, the president there, Vladimir Putin, has now admitted that he was ready to put Russia's nuclear forces on alert over the crisis a year ago over Crimea. How big of a deal is this revelation?

KING: Well, I think it's -- I think it is a big deal. I think it's very disturbing that he was willing to even mention that in his -- in his rhetoric. Wolf, you've got to remember that I think part of what's going on here is domestic politics in Russia. When Margaret Thatcher -- the day before the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher's approval rating in England was 23 percent. Two weeks later, it was 70 percent.

Putin now has an 80 percent approval rating in Russia, and it's largely because of his adventurism abroad. So he's going to be talking about these things and probing and sending aircraft along our coastline. And that's why we've got to have a strong defense to deter any thought that he might have of doing something reckless.

BLITZER: Some are saying we're now on the verge of a new Cold War. Would you agree with that?

KING: Well, I'm not quite ready to go that far. But I certainly think it's a lot colder or warmer, if you will, than it was just a few years ago. It's clear, I mean, he has said that he thinks one of the great mistakes of the 20th Century was the dissolution of the Soviet empire. He'd like to put it -- put it together again.

And then of course, we've got ISIS wanting to put the Ottoman Empire back together, and we've got Iran, who wants to put the Persian Empire back together. So we're dealing with a lot of history here. And I think Putin is a guy that we've got to be exceedingly careful with, and that's one of the reasons I've been one of the ones saying, "Let's go slow on this business of increasing our engagement in the Ukraine," because you've got to think three and four steps ahead if you're playing chess with a Russian. And I think we need to be very careful about what the consequences might be.

BLITZER: Another issue on Iran I want to just raise with you. Some have suggested, since Iran opposes ISIS in Iraq and Syria, for that matter, the U.S. opposes ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Maybe it's time for the U.S. and Iran to coordinate this war effort against ISIS. What do you think about that?

KING: Well, here's the problem, and there has been a lot of talk about that, but let's take what's going on in Tikrit right now, which is essentially an effort to take Tikrit back from ISIS exclusively with Shia militia and Iranian leadership and some Quds Force. That's dangerous, because if this again is viewed in, particularly, northern and western Iraq as a Shia-led war, then that pushes the Sunnis back into the arms of ISIS.

<17:20:02> KING: That's what made it so easy for is to take this territory in the first place, was the failure of the government in Baghdad to be inclusive and include the Sunnis.

And it worries me that we've got essentially a Shia-led initiative in Tikrit with Iran in the background; and the Sunnis are going to say, "Well, wait a minute. If this is what we're facing from Baghdad, maybe we need to stay with these ISIS guys and try to work with them."

So very complicated situation, but it's dangerous to have Iran in the leadership up there on this. This should be a multi Muslim army, if you will, involving the Iraqi armed forces, not just the Shia militia.

BLITZER: As I said before, a lot of analysts have said to me the good news is that ISIS might be defeated in Iraq. The bad news is the Iranians and their Shiite militia allies will do the heavy lifting, and they could emerge as the big winner in Iraq, as well.

Let's talk a little about this "Los Angeles Times" report that the United States has spent millions of dollars building replicas of Iran's nuclear centrifuges in order to try to gauge Iran's ability to convert uranium into bomb fuel. The administration, according to this article, may soon use the results to try to convince the American public that a deal with Iran is in the best interests of the United States.

First of all, are you aware of this program? Have you been briefed on it?

KING: I have not been briefed on it. I've read the article and understand some of the background, but I think, Wolf, it goes back to what we were talking about before.

The key to this deal is going to be verification. And I think the effort to build this model plant, if you will, was in order to determine how they could cheat and what needed to be measured and where to look and where the inspectors should pay attention. So I think it's -- I think it was a sensible thing to do, looking toward a deal like this, that is going to rise or fall on our ability to tell whether the Iranians are living up to it.

BLITZER: You heard over the weekend Secretary of State John Kerry saying the U.S. should be willing to sit down, negotiate with Bashar al-Assad. He's the leader of Syria, in order to come up with some sort of solution. Two hundred thousand people have been killed in Syria over the past few years in this civil war. What do you make of this statement by the secretary of state?

KING: Well, that's not exactly the way I would have phrased it, but it's been our policy for a long time that this situation is ultimately only going to be solved by negotiations. But those negotiations have to include the opposition, the Assad regime, the Russians and the Iranians. Frankly, the Russians could solve this tomorrow if they stopped

supplying him, and I think they might have some interest in doing so, now that ISIS has come out of this whole cauldron of violence over there.

The other thing you have to remember is that the Russians work very closely with us to get rid of Assad's chemical weapons. So, you know, this foreign policy stuff is very complicated. Sometimes you have to be able to compartmentalize and say we're opposing over here, but we can work together over there. I think what John Kerry was really saying is this is going to have to be a negotiation involving the regime. You know, I don't -- I wouldn't have said we're going to negotiate with Assad himself.

But that's been the goal to try to get a stalemate on the ground and get us to some negotiation so that we can have a change in the government and get Syria back to some semblance of normalcy.

BLITZER: And you may not know this, but I'll tell you if you don't. Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the elections in Israel are tomorrow and he's fighting for his political life as you well know. He says there will be no Palestine, no independent Palestinian state, no two-state solution if he's re- elected. What's your reaction to that?

KING: My first -- my first reaction is maybe we shouldn't pay too much attention to what the people say three days before an election. But that's too bad is the quote I heard, because four or five years ago he supported a two-state solution.

If all he's saying is that the security situation at this moment isn't appropriate, OK, I can understand that. But if he's ruling it out, I don't know how they solve the problem.

I mean, they've got Palestinians in the West Bank very proximate to Jerusalem. They've got Gaza, and it's an unsustainable situation, Wolf. They're going to have to come to some resolution one way or the other. And it sounds like -- you know, I'm not a commentator on Israeli politics. But it sounds like the prime minister is trying to pick up votes on the right wing over there in order to ensure his re- election.

But he may get reelected, but man, this is a problem. The issue of the Palestinians and a two-state solution is something that eventually has to be resolved. It can't -- it can't go on. I've been over there. I've been to the West Bank and been to Jerusalem. It can't go on like it is now indefinitely. There -- inevitably, there is going to be further violence.

So I think it's unfortunate the prime minister said that, but you know, like I say, maybe we ought to give him a bit of a pass a couple of days before his election.

<17:25:08> BLITZER: The election is tomorrow. So it's only one day before the election. We'll have more on that election later in THE SITUATION ROOM. Senator King, as usual, thanks very much for joining us.

KING: Thank you, Wolf. Good to talk to you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source