Kerry: Iran Without a Nuke Is ‘Better to Deal with’ than Iran with a Nuke

“Sanctions brought them to the table to negotiate. They did the very thing everybody put the sanctions in place to get them to do, which is negotiate. So they negotiated. Now measure the agreement to see whether or not it achieves what we need to in terms of insight, restraint, accountability, and so forth. That's what we should be doing… 

…We have unprecedented access through this in terms of verification. So, yes, they get to do more in the out years. That's their right as they clean up, supposedly, and become an NPT good-standing country. Remember, during all of this time, Iran never pulled out of the non- proliferation treaty. They could have. They could have said, to hell with you, we'll do our own thing. They've lived by the NPT. They're living by it now. Well, they say they're living by it. They haven't lived by it completely which is why we put the sanctions on them. Now, we're putting to test if there's a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of direction, and if there isn't, we have every option available to us every day that we have right now… 

…We exclusively negotiated a nuclear deal because we knew that, if we got into the other issues, you would never get to the nuclear deal. So an Iran without a nuclear weapon, Christiane, I think, you know, this as a matter of common sense, is better to deal with than an Iran one with one. For those who are worried about Iran's behavior in the region, we are better off pushing back and dealing with that behavior if they're not on a path to get one, and we believe we're clearly demonstrating a way in which they cannot get a nuclear weapon.”