JESSICA DESVARIEUX, PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux
in Baltimore. And welcome to this edition of the Wilkerson Report. Now joining us from
Williamsburg, Virginia is Larry Wilkerson. He is the former chief of staff for U.S. Secretary
of State Colin Powell, and he's currently an adjunct professor of government at the
College of William and Mary, and of course he's a regular contributor to the Real News.
Thanks for joining us, Larry.
LARRY WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: Thanks for having me, glad to be here.
DESVARIEUX: So Larry, the momentum for the Iran deal seems to be moving in President
Obama's direction. Obama just needs 3 of the 13 undecided Democratic senators remaining
to side with him, and in the House it looks like he has enough votes to uphold a veto.
That's according to Politico.
But Larry, the main argument for those opposing this deal is that this makes Israel less safe.
Do critics have a point here, that this deal will negatively affect the long-term security
of Israel?
WILKERSON: I think if you look at it from the perspective of Bibi Netanyahu politically,
it does probably make his political career suspect. But I think it makes Israel's security,
at least for the 15-year window, and I would argue beyond that but at least for that 15-year
window, far more solid than it would without the agreement.
Let me just say why. First of all, before the agreement there was roughly two to three
months of warning time before a breakout might occur. Before they could get to the point
where they were actually using fissionable material to build a bomb. This agreement once
it's in place, six to nine months down the road, no cheating here, everybody working
it out. Us doing our sanctions bit and their doing their adhering to the agreement bit,
which is quite extensive and intrusive. Then we will have probably a year or more in order
to find out if they're cheating and then to do something about it. So it increases the
warning time from two to three months to a year or better. That is in Israel's favor.
And it doesn't obviate any of the other options, which is what I keep telling my Republican
colleagues who I know are politically motivated, and they don't want to listen to logic and
reason. This agreement does not obviate any other of the options. You can still bomb.
You can still invade. You can still do nothing. Iran will simply be operating in accordance
with the most intrusive inspections regime ever devised under the NPT, the Nuclear Non-proliferation
Treaty, and they will be under 24/7 watch. So very stringent, stringent watch.
And if they cheat--if they do. I'm not saying they might not. If they do cheat, we will
detect it and we'll be able to revisit the other options, whichever one we might want
to implement. The deal does not foreclose anything. That's how stupid and purblind these
other people are. I say that knowing full well that they know that. They're doing this
for political reasons, not for national security reasons.
DESVARIEUX: Larry, you say all the options would still be on the table but there's criticisms
that even if those options are still on the table that means that Iran actually might
have a nuclear weapon, so it does change the game. And I'm going to talk about some of
the opposition, some of the usual suspects coming out like Dick Cheney and his daughter
Liz. And in an excerpt of their forthcoming book, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful
America, they write this: “Allowing the Iranians to continue to enrich uranium and
agreeing to the removal of all restraints on their nuclear program in a few short years
virtually guarantees that they will become a nuclear weapons state, thus undermining
the fundamental agreement at the heart of the NPT. President Obama is unraveling this
international structure as part of an agreement that provides a pathway for the world's worst
state sponsor of terror to acquire a nuclear weapon.”
What do you make of this argument, Larry, that this is only delaying Iran from developing
a weapon?
WILKERSON: There is so much illogic and so much fabrication in that statement that I
want to go back to Dick Cheney's assurance to the American people, and this is a direct
quote, “We know with absolute certainty that Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons.”
That's Dick Cheney, that's about Iraq, that was dead wrong.
This is even worse than that, because he does not know. She, his daughter, does not know
from whence they come. This is all politically inspired. This, as I said before, this agreement
actually extends the warning time from two to three months to over a year, and gives
the best assurances you could conceive on paper and in the agreement for detection of
something untoward happening, cheating or whatever it might be, within that year to
year, longer than a year period, and then you've got time to take action.
What they're really saying, what Liz and Dick are really saying, is they're say--and I give
it about as much credibility as I did that we'll be met in the street with flowers in
Iraq, another statement by Dick Cheney. And this, you know, Saddam Hussein has weapons
of mass destruction and so forth, another statement by Dick Cheney, as I just said.
Both lies. Both untruths, if you will, at best.
If this situation is as it is, then we're talking about a situation where Israel will
have to react within a two to three month window. They will have to detect whatever
is going on that they think is against their interest, whether it's making triggers for
nuclear weapons, miniaturizing a weapon to put it on a missile, or all the different
things tat one has to do before it really becomes a threat to anyone, they all have
to detect that within a two to three month window, make a decision, and then do whatever's
necessary to be done. With the agreement we have a year or more to do this. We have the
most intrusive inspection regime to detect it in the history of the non-proliferation
treaty. And we have people on the ground and cameras on the ground 24/7 to help us with
that process.
We also have, and people have dismissed this, but I do not dismiss it. We also have a president
of Iran, Rouhani, Hassan Rouhani, who has promised the Iranian people that he is going
to improve their economy. The only way he can do that is to use the preponderance of
the not hundreds of billions, but the 59 or so billion that are going to come back to
him over the course of the first part of this agreement to apply to the Iranian economy,
to do the things that he needs to do to make it work better. So the idea that it's all
going to go to terrorism or something like that is just simply preposterous. Iran is
going to have to do what Rouhani said it would do, or he won't be reelected.
So that's another problem that my Republican colleagues have, and others who oppose this
deal like Schumer and Menendez in the Democratic party. They can't explain that this is going
to be the case, and that we're going to have a better situation down the road than we have
today. I [hold] the situation more conducive to eliminating any possibility that Iran will
build a nuclear weapon, not a 15-year window that suddenly elapses and Iran says, aha,
now's the time to build a nuclear weapon. That's not only absurd, it defies rational
thought.
So I'm encouraged by the fact that we've got more and more people on both sides of the
political aisle, more and more independence, more and more military validators. We even
have Israelis who are coming out now publicly and validating the fact that this agreement
and the signing of this agreement, the putting in force of this agreement, is a better assurance
of Israeli security in the long term than not signing the agreement, which would put
us right back where we are.
And let me just tell you we were. We were at a point in the Bush administration where
Iran had 200 centrifuges, roughly. With Dick Cheney's policy of we don't speak to evil,
with Dick Cheney's policy of no policy with regard to Iran, we went to 8,000. By the time
George W. Bush left office they had 8,000. Before President Obama could put this very
comprehensive stringent regime in place of sanctions, crippling sanctions, as Secretary
Clinton called them at the time, they went to 19,000 centrifuges. This agreement is going
to take them back to roughly 6,000, get rid of 97 percent of the enriched uranium, changed
the Iraq plutonium reactor from a core that could produce a bomb to one that can't, and
put on the ground 24/7 intrusive inspection for 15 years or longer, because the NPT doesn't
go away at the end of 15 years.
This is all about politics, Jessica. It has nothing to do with U.S. or Israeli long-term
security.
DESVARIEUX: All right. We're going to be following those politics, because Congress is back in
session next week. Larry Wilkerson joining us from Williamsburg, Virginia. Always a pleasure
having you on.
WILKERSON: Thanks for having me, Jessica, and have a good day.
DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.