Marco Rubio on Iran Deal: No Doubt Majority of Congress Will Vote Against It
O’DONNELL: “The nuclear deal with Iran faced tough scrutiny from lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday. Secretary of State John Kerry defended the agreement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He faced heavy criticism from the panel's Republicans. Kerry said it's a ‘fantasy to think the U.S. failed to hold out for a better deal.’ He had a particularly heated exchange with Republican senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio. Rubio says the next president can scrap the deal.”
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KERRY: “I listened to a long list of your objections here about it, but there's no alternative that you or anybody else has proposed --”
RUBIO: “I sure have, Secretary Kerry.”
KERRY: “And I am confident that the next president of the United States will have enough common sense that if this is being applied properly, if it's being implemented fully, they are not just going to arbitrarily end it.”
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O’DONNELL: “Senator Marco Rubio is with us from Capitol Hill. Senator, good, morning.”
RUBIO: “Good morning.”
O’DONNELL: “I want to ask you about that. You heard Secretary Kerry say it's a fantasy to think that you can just bomb away Iran’s knowledge. What is specifically your alternative?”
RUBIO: “Well, as I talked about, first of all, the fantasy isn't believing that they are going to even live to the accord. This is a country that has a long history, at least the leaders of Iran do, of violating agreements and have always having a secret nuclear program. They had two secret sites that neither the Israelis nor the U.S. knew about for years, after they had started. I believe that we should have not just kept the sanctions in place from the U.S. perspective, but increased them, along with keeping together the global coalition. What unraveled the global coalition and those sanctions, is when we went into these negotiations without the precondition that in order to move forward Iran had to abandon its long range missiles and that Iran had to abandon enrichment capability. Once we gave those things away, it began to unravel everything.”
O’DONNELL: “All right. Senator –“
RUBIO: “Now, moving forward – well, not moving forward the only option we have is to re-impose the American sanctions and give Iran a very clear choice, you can have an economy or you can have a weapons program, but you will not be able to have both.”
O’DONNELL: “Senator, the deal now has the unanimous support the U.N. Security Council, you heard the Saudi foreign minister as well say that they support this deal. Will Congress have the votes to override a presidential veto?”
RUBIO: “Well, it all depend on how many Democrats join us. There is no doubt the majority of members of Congress are going to vote against this agreement, I believe. The question is whether enough Democrats will join in this effort. Otherwise, the president will veto whatever we do and it will go into place. But as I made clear yesterday and it's important for people around the world to understand, is that, this is a deal with the Obama administration. It is not a treaty. It is not binding on the next president, and I anticipate that the next president of the United States may very well, and if it's me, I will, re-impose the American sanctions that are in the law right now.”
MASON: “Senator, is there any realistic deal with Iran that you would have supported?”
RUBIO: “Yeah would have had to be one, for example, that abandoned the long range missiles. Why are they building long range missiles if they have no interest in nuclear weapons? There is no other reason for ICBM, other than to put nuclear warhead on it. The second problem is, Iran is going to get billions of dollars in sanctions relief, which everything in their history indicates they will use to sponsor terrorism around the world, and that means their proxies in Hezbollah, their proxies in the Shia militias inside of Iraq, their proxies in the 14th of February movement in Bahrain, their proxies whether Houthis in Yemen, this is a country that's was leadership tried to assassinate the Saudi ambassador right here in Washington, D.C. just a handful of years ago.”
NN REPORTER: “Senator, as Norah mentioned, this does have the unanimous support of the U.N. and Secretary Kerry said that if we walk away from this, from our partners, we're basically on our own and will have squandered our best chance to stop Iran.”
RUBIO: “Well, first of all, I don't think our foreign policy should be set by the United Nations or by unanimous of anything. The United States has to act in its own national security interests. Second of all, it had the unanimous support of many of our allies, because we led them there, because this administration took them in that direction. We know for a fact that the French wanted a deal stronger than the one that came out. They may be willing to support it, but they have significant concerns about the issues I’ve pointed to. And our most important ally in the Middle East, the state of Israel, the only pro-American free enterprise democracy, they are fervently against this deal because they understand the true nature of who we're dealing with. And you mention the Saudis for a moment, you know, the Saudis are using diplomatic language in discussing this, they've been very up front. Whatever Iran has, they are going to have, which means they will now pursue an enrichment capability, long range rocket capability, and if Iran ever moves towards a weapon of their own in Saudi Arabia.”
