Kerry: ‘I Never’ Sought ‘Anytime, Anywhere’ Inspections of Iran
WALLACE: “Gentlemen, welcome to Fox News Sunday."
KERRY: “Pleasure to be here.”
WALLACE: “President Obama and both of you talked about insisting on anytime, anywhere inspections, but what you ended up with is that Iran can keep us out of its most secret, most suspicious sites for up to 24 days. Secretary Kerry, three and a half weeks is not anytime anywhere.”
KERRY: “Well, that's not accurate, that we ever -- I never, in four years, had a discussion about anywhere, anytime, that is the –“
WALLACE: “Secretary Moniz did.”
KERRY: “Before he came into this negotiation, he did not, not in the course of this negotiation.
WALLACE: “President Obama, on April 2nd, he said this.“
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OBAMA: “If Iran cheats, the world will know it. If we see something suspicious, we will inspect it.”
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KERRY: “That's accurate. That's –“
WALLACE: “He didn't say in 24 days.”
KERRY: “Well, but, Chris, don't play a game here. The fact is that in arms control, there is no country anywhere on this planet that has anywhere, anytime. There is no such standard within arms control inspections. There is an IAEA process for which we have negotiated a unique ability to be able to bring cloture. The reason we're in this predicament right now is the IAEA was never being able to close the deal. We have created a mechanism by which we can go to the United Nations, one country can take this to the supreme -- to the -- to the Security Council. We have an ability to snap back all the sanctions or to put any sanction on we want, hold them in material breach if they do not give us access. That's never existed previously. But we never ever had a discussion about anywhere anytime. It's called managed access. It's under the IAEA. Everybody understands it. And the intelligence community has made it clear to us, as they did before we signed onto this deal, that we would be able to know what they are doing during that intervening period of time.”
WALLACE: “Of course -- of course the question is managed access, is that good enough? And in his news conference this week, Secretary Moniz, the president said, look, you can't hide whatever they're doing, if they are doing something in violation, in a closet in -- in 24 days. But there are plenty of arms experts, nuclear experts out there that say you can hide plenty of stuff in three and a half weeks. That's almost a month, sir.”
MONIZ: “Let me clarify, first. Let me read the rest of the sentence. I said managed -- I said access anywhere anytime in the sense of a well-defined procedure and a well-defined time window to resolve it. So, that's -- first of all, I want to clarify that. Second of all, what will happen is if the process runs the full length of 24 days, the IAEA inspectors will take environmental samples. When environmental samples are taken and nuclear activity has taken place, it is virtually impossible to clean up that place. You can paint the floors, you can do what you -- do what you want. We feel very confident that one would find the evidence of [nuclear activity.]”
