MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Tim Kaine

Interview

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HAYES:  Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia joins me now.  Senator, you had a strong reaction to that New York Times story about the military options being mapped out by Pentagon planners on Iran.  What is going on here?
 
KAINE:  Well, look the President and the -- apparently had a discussion about you know, hundreds of thousands of troops, more than a hundred thousand troops potentially into Iran.  And Chris, this is a president who broke a diplomatic deal that was working.  We did a diplomatic deal with Iran that was limiting their nuclear program.  This president scrapped it.  And now we`re going to potentially put a 125,000 troops in to stop them from enriching uranium when we broke the deal?
 
This is very reminiscent of Iraq.  A president got us into a war telling us there was weapons of mass destruction program.  There wasn`t.  Now, this president when we had an effective limitation on Iran`s nuclear capacity, this president destroyed the limit, and now wants to potentially put troops back into the Middle East over a deal that he broke.
 
The U.S. needs to stop being an aggressor and trying to instigate and provoke military action with Iran and the president can`t constitutionally do it without coming to Congress.
 
HAYES:  John Bolton by all accounts both publicly on the record in the past and also reporting behind the scenes now is that the sort of head of pushing for this.  We have anonymous officials talking about intelligence reports that are somewhat opaque about Iran aggression.
 
I mean, you`re a U.S. Senator.  Do you trust what you`re hearing?  Do you trust them not to manipulate intelligence in these circumstances?
 
KAINE:  I do not because as a member of the Senate, I actually also have information about the things that the U.S. is doing to provoke and poke Iran.  I think that there is an effort under by the U.S. to try to instigate Iran to doing something, and if they do something in response to U.S. provocation, then the Trump administration will say away, how dare they do this, and then use that as their pretext for 125,000 troops or as the President said today might be more.
 
HAYES:  Do you think -- there`s some line of thinking that that report is you know, the Pentagon has planned for everything A.  B, some kind of show of strength behind the scenes essentially a bluff right, that this is all a kind of way of squeezing Iran and not serious and don`t worry they`re not actually going to start a war or get into a war.  What do you say to that?
 
KAINE:  Well, look, if the President is bluffing when he`s talking about troops numbers, let me say this to him.  Our troops are not your pawns.  This isn`t toy soldiers that you move around the table.  These are -- these are living, breathing, feeling people.  Virginia`s a very military state.  I have a kid in the military.
 
When you talk about -- and it comes out 100,000 troops in the Middle East, the President may think that`s a bluff but do you know what that does to military families who have already seen their members deployed over and over and over again into the Middle East, and especially something as stupid as this?  We would talk about putting our troops into a war after the president broke a diplomatic deal that was keeping us from going to war?  How unjust would that be?
 
And I`m going to do anything I can in the Senate to convince colleagues.  And I`ll have both Democrats and Republicans that will stand up to stop this president from getting into an idiotic war against Iran.
 
HAYES:  You know, there`s a sort of gobsmacking exchange that happened today.  A British officer, a top British officer who works with the U.S. in the joint anti-ISIS coalition gave an on-the-record statement basically saying that there is no increased threat we`ve seen in Syria, Iraq from the Iranians.  That contradicts official statements that have been coming out from Mike Pompeo among others.
 
And then after that CENTCOM puts out a release basically smacking him down and saying no, no, no, don`t listen to him.  What is going on?
 
KAINE:  Well, it`s that -- look, when the U.S. is fighting against allies like the Brits over something like this, and of course this is not new for this administration.  All of our allies including the Brits said stay in the Iran deal, then-Secretary Tillerson, then-Secretary Mattis, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joe Dunn for the IAEA, they all said the Iran deal was working.
 
And so I mean this is a sad situation where it wasn`t Iran that broke down the diplomacy that was keeping their nuclear program, one that was not producing weapons, it was the U.S. that broke the diplomatic deal.  So I don`t give a lot of credence to CENTCOM statements like that, that I think might just be pushed by the White House press shop.
 
Further, you would have to ask the question if there are things that Iran is doing that pose some threat to us now.  Are they doing it on their own are they doing it because they`re being provoked by the United States?  And I happen to believe that this administration since the day they tore up the deal nearly a year ago, they`ve taken a series of steps trying to provoke Iran and they need to stop it.
 
HAYES:  All right, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, thank you for making time tonight, sir.
 
KAINE:  Absolutely.

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