Transcripts For KQED Washington Week With Gwen Ifill 20240622

Back. President obama for all the objections of Prime Minister netanyahu, or for that matter the some of the Republican Leadership thats already spoken, none of them have presented to me or the American People a better alternative. Gwen we examine what happens when history gives way to doubt. Plus a look at whos on first. When it comes to money. In the evermore crowded 2016 president ial race. Depending on how you count, it may not be who you think. Covering the week, indira lakshmanan, Foreign Affairs correspondent for bloomberg news. David sanger National Security correspondent for the new york times. Michael crowley, senior Foreign Policy correspondent for politico. And Jeanne Cummings Political Editor for the wall street journal. Awardwinning reporting and analysis covering history as it happens. From our nations capital, this is Washington Week with gwen ifill. Corporate funding for Washington Week is provided by how much money do you have in your pocket right now . I have 40. 21. Could something that small make an impact on something as big as your retirement . I dont think so. Well, if you start putting that money toward your retirement every week, and let it grow over time, for 20, 30 years, that retirement challenge might not seem so big after all. Additional funding is provided by newmans own foundation. Donating all profits from newmans own Food Products to charity. And nourishing the common good. The corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Once again from washington, moderator gwen ifill. Gwen good evening. It took weeks months, years negotiating table spats and walkouts. Physicists on call. Politicians on edge. But the u. S. And its partners finally struck a deal this week on a farreaching nonproliferation agreement that everyone at the table said means the end of Irans Nuclear ambitions. President obama with this deal we cut off every single one of irans pathways to a nuclear program. A Nuclear Weapons program. And Irans Nuclear program will be under severe limits for many years. Without a deal those pathways remain open. There would be no limits to Irans Nuclear program and iran could move closer to a nuclear bomb. Gwen even before the ink was dry, critics pounced. How would we hold iran to its promises . How extensive would those limits be . And by doing away with punishing sanctions, arent we rewarding enemies who still seek to do our allies harm . They gamble that in 10 years time irans terrorist regime will change while removing any incentive for it to do so. President obama has decided to place all his chips on the fact that the death to america chants will soon disappear. This committee has to ask itself whether we are willing to roll the dice, too. Gwen so its complicated. But fortunately for us we have three of washingtons smartest Foreign Policy journalists at the table to help answer some of those questions. Two of them fresh off the plane practically from vienna. Lets start by talking about how this deal came together. Because this was not a foregone conclusion was it, indira . Not at all. As you said this has been going on for 2 1 2 years really. If you count it back to almadi, kazakhstan and no guarantee that this was going to happen. And we were there for 18 days straight of negotiations. This was meant to be the final push. And i think there were several days when it wasnt entirely clear whether this was maybe going to get bumped back to september. I think, though, that john kerry and his team realized that this was their moment. And they were going to have to seize it. And it was going to be even harder to try to delay. It wasnt going to make it any better and a deadline is a forcing mechanism. And, you know, we wrote stories, david and i, both about sort of what happened behind the scenes. And there were incredible moments of emotion, including shouting at each other and saying do you even want this deal . And threats of walkouts and a lot of drama. And gwen my favorite was never threaten an iranian. Never threaten an iranian which became a hashtag with people showing persian kittens on their hind legs and things. Yes. All of that drama happened because i think both iran and the p5 plus one realized this was their one shot. This was their shot to get the best possible terms they could. They werent going to be able to reopen and renegotiate it and push as hard as they possibly could now. Gwen david, when you finally got the agreement, what surprised you . What were the surprise areas of agreement as opposed to the disagreements we heard so much about leading up to it . Well, the surprise areas of agreement had been somewhat telegraphed at the previous session. And was on switzerland. Where they got to most of the nuclear restrictions. But the big surprise, i think, that indira and i both saw when we were in vienna was that in the end game, some issues came up that really had nothing to do with Irans Nuclear program. So let me give you an example. One of the nuclearrelated sanctions imposed in 2006 during the Bush Administration was a conventional arms trade ban on iran. They couldnt buy arms. They couldnt sell them. And then a ballistic missilerelated ban. The iranians and by the u. N. And this was done by the united nations. The iranians said this is one of the nuclearrelated sanctions. So if we agree to Everything Else here, thats got to come off with Everything Else. This is a big problem for secretary kerry. Because if iran both has an inflow of a large amount of money from the sanctions being lifted. Gwen right. And the ability to go by and sell arms sell arms it will imflame whats happening in iraq syria yemen, hezbollah and so forth. Gwen before you go on i want us to play a little bit of what secretary kerry said to my colleague Judy Woodruff today in washington. Talking about sanctions. And then we will respond on the other side. Sure. Secretary kerry you have a choice. Are you prepared to do what the u. N. Resolution says . Which is lift the sanctions over a period of time and in return for their negotiating . By the way they didnt just come to the negotiations. They have cut a deal. Or do you want to go to war . Because the alternative to this deal is they will do whatever they want. We will lose the sanctions. We will lose the support of the global community. If the congress of the United States turns this down, there will be conflict in the region because as the only alternative. Judy michael, gwen how much was riding on this for secretary kerry . He obviously was a senator. But he has to go back to his former colleagues. Hes got to sell this. And you can see hes already in it. First of all. As a matter of his own personal legacy we talked about the president s legacy and things have broken president s way recently. And you hear some people around him saying he actually didnt need this deal for his own legacy as badly as he might have because he has had a good run. In our superficial calculationness washington. John kerry his political career back to the 1980s has been hounded by the criticism he talks a lot but doesnt have a lot of signature accomplishments, legislative achievements. He won the democratic nomination but not presidency. For him this means a huge amount. There is a real battle now. Because i dont think its a totally foregone conclusion that this deal will survive in the u. S. Congress. I think the odds are very high that it will. Congress would need a two thirds majority, a supermajority to override a veto. If you had some a dozen or so democrats defect, they could uphold it and bring the deal down. So whats happening now, the process isnt over. Theres a sales pitch under way. And when you see the president , his press conference under way or you see john kerry making the rounds of these interviews trying to make a case to the u. S. Congress that says this is the best its going to get. Theres no realistic alternative. You cant tear it down now. Weve gone too far. And the alternative is much worse at this point. Even as they were trying to assure reassure other allies in the region that this isnt as bad as you might think. Gwen and the president talking about the logic of the deal. And i the story i wrote was focused on this, and i thought of his love for mr. Spock which he has expressed, lodge and i can science. The white house is coming really hard with the science on this deal. Trying to make it seem as though theres really no counterargument at all. That drives opponents crazy by the way. What about the science of the deal, guys . Well, theres a reason that ernie monees, former head of Nuclear Physics at m. I. T. And now the energy secretary, was brought to this deal. Because there was a second negotiation going on. That in some ways was more fascinating than the one between secretary kerry and minister javad zarif, the Iranian Foreign minister and that was between monees and his iranian counterpart and also went to m. I. T. As a student. That conversation was an effort to depoliticize the issue. By coming up with Technical Solutions to what was essentially a political problem. And they managed to do it. Much of it down in the wine cellar of the palace hotel which was down so deep in the rocks of this old site that the iranians began to call it fordo which is the name of their underground enrichment how many bottles of 60,000. Looked like a dungeon down there. It did look like a dungeon. We were told defen actively there is no wine in fordo. There was plenty of Radioactive Material which has to come out under this agreement. But the idea here was take the politics out. The problem is that when this goes to congress if your vision of what the deal was going to be was take apart all of Irans Nuclear facilities, dismantle everything theres nothing that earnest monees can say to you that youll like. Gwen there you go. The accountability of iran seems to be the Sticking Point not only at that table but also here. How do how do they reassure, is it possible i expos, for the administration to reassure anybody that iran will be accountable to this deal . Look, i think the Administration Needs to do a better job of explaining why this deal is not great for iran. Its not a gift to iran. Because the other side has been able to sort of appropriate this argument in saying this is a gift. All the sanctions are being released. Theyre allowed to enrich. Its not good. What what they could turn that argument on the head and say wait a second. You know, theyre reducing by two thirds the number of century fugse and centrifuges and this low amount of uranium enriched and constant and invasive sanctions by the iaea. And there has been this controversy thats arisen in the last couple of days about this 24 days that iran will have 24 days if theres a suspect site. And the obama Administration Needs to explain hey look, thats on top of the socalled additional protocol. This is extra. Otherwise the arguments can go on forever. Gwen this is what susan rice said to me the other night on the newshour and what they all said and they have this snapback sanctions which is my new favorite word, snapback sanctions and once we prove that theyre not sticking to the deal we can reimpose the sanctions. We have partially lifted. But its not clear at least to members of congress whether that would work. David, ill defer to you. Quickly, ill say what fascinates me about how that part of the deal and some other things having to do with inspections were structured was the degree to which it was design to prevent russia and china from screwing things up essentially. They did do a decent job in the deal of creating, you know, mechanisms and joint commissions where all the votes are winnable without the participation of russia, china, and iran. U. N. Sanctions. But the u. S. Can snap back its own sanctions unilaterally if it wants to. The only question at that point is are the european nations and russia and china going to abide by u. S. Secondary sanctions to this point . And they wont if they think that iran is not really cheating. But thats one really important point. People talk about this gold rush back to iran. I think thats really premature. I think a gold crawl. Because businesses know that these sanctions could come back any time. And they dont want to take the revving right away. Gwen john kerry made that point to judy today as well. Thats right. They can. And iranians are not without options if the United States or the u. N. Does the snapback. Because they would be free of their responsibilities under this as well. So theres a little bit of a poison pill built into this. But i think it is worth examining the question that secretary kerry brought up in that conversation with judy. Business what were your other alternatives . The president brought this up as well. Im not sure the only other alternative was war. But it is certainly true that if somebody took military action, the israelis, for example, or the u. S. , against the iranian program, the internal intelligence estimates were it sets the program back three or four years. And then it goes deeply underground. And you cant bomb knowledge as they say. So they would rebuild it. The cyberattacks that the United States and israel together did on iran set them back maybe a year. So 10 to 15 years isnt bad. Its also not as good as permanent. And theyre taking the gamble that over that 10 to 15 years, or theyre believing that iran will little by little open up. And that trade will help open up. And bring iran and snetchize iran to come back into the fold of the International Community and not be a rogue state and not do terrorism now. That may be too optimistic. That it may not actually happen that way. But in the meantime, they do at least have verification. And means for making sure that iran is keeping up its side of the bargain. Gwen michael, you were at the president ial News Conference the other day and so anxious to talk about this deal. That he started asking himself questions. Because he didnt trust reporters would ask him. He came prepared to answer it. That was a different way to do a News Conference. But one of the things that came up and there was much commentary about because the way the question was formulated but still an essential question and what about the other things that were never on the table . Which is to say american hostages. Why wasnt that ever on the table . And does that still how did it become an assumption on the part of people who watch these things that somehow there would be a deal for the release of american hostages . Well, to the extent there was an assumption among some people, it may have been a combination of Wishful Thinking and just the perfectly natural conclusion that if were talking to the iranians about these hard issues and theres going to be this very difficult political tradeoff, that this would be part of it. By this, just to clarify there are three americans who are imprisoned in iran. I believe sort of in the judicial system who are being charged, one of them probably best known in this town, jason rizian, a Washington Post correspondent in tehran and a fourth american Robert Levinson who disappeared under mysterious circumstances and i dont think hes formally in the judicial system there. And also when the diplomat he can breakthrough with cuba was unveiled there was essentially a swap of prisoners. And so i think that set a hopeful precedent. Major garrett of cbs asked the president a very provocative question and implying at least from the president s point of view that the president was celebrating a deal that left these gwen he actually used the word celebrating. It wasnt just implied from the president s point of view. And i was sitting pretty much right behind Major Garrett and the look was fierce as sbome obama stared him down. To wrap up my answer the administrations position was we cant its like negotiating with isis. We cant make con segs on the nuclear question because iran is Holding People unfairly in some cases or all cases maybe de facto hostages. Thats rewarding hostage taking. The central argument the president has tried to make here is lets assume iran is going to be a malicious actor. Or at least a malign actor for the next 10 to 15 years. Maybe as long as the Supreme Leader is alive. We dont know who his successor would be. If thats the case, youre better off with an iran that cant threaten a threshold Nuclear State than one that is. So he focused like a laser beam on the nuclear. And it is interesting that some of the opposition thats come up now are raising issues outside the nuclear arena. That may tell you that they think that they dont have much of a ground on the nuclear side. Gwen lets talk about how hard its going to be. Especially on capitol hill by listening to a little bit of what senator bob corker head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had to say about the deal at least when it first came out. Senator corker over the next 60 days, were going to go through this in great detale. Were going to have a thoughtful and deliberate process. Those who believe that this truly is going to keep iran from getting a Nuclear Weapon will vote for it. Those who believe that that is not the case, and the world is not going to be safer and in some ways it may pave the way for them to get a Nuclear Weapon, will vote against it. Thats our responsibility. Gwen on one hand, on the other hand. Where is the hand . I dont know how to put this. How is lady justice handling this today . I think senator corker if we take him at his word is going to be open minded and is going to read deal and listen to the administrations briefings on it. I think there are other members of congress who are not lessening at all. They dont care. Gwen too many people running including people running for president. Who have prejubddle this deal is terrible without reading it or knowing the intelligence behind it. They will find that out but i still think theyre not going to support it and a really tough sell to get approval for this, over 50 in the senate. Gwen and part of the tough sell is because of israel which has been uncompromising in its pushback here. Well, absolutely. And i think d. You know because many members of the public understandably havent been following this in great detail and dont know what snapbacks mean. And the 24day window. What they will hear is an argument about israel. I think a lot of this deal will come down to a lot of this debate will come down to claims that one side or another is for israel or against israel. It will further partisanize israel as an issue on capitol hill. But i think thats the frame through which a lot of it will flow. And Prime Minister netanyahu is not letting up. And i believe hes got another trip to washington scheduled in the near future. So that gwen we can probably write that speech right now. Michael crowley, david sanger indira lakshmanan. Eye popping numbers from the president ial candidates this week. Some of you still think the campaign is starting too early. But tell that to the donors who made hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contributions to the people in the running. Including cash raised by outside groups. Jeb bush leads the pack with nearly 120 million. Followed by Hillary Clinton at nearly 70 million. Republicans ted cruz, marco rubio, rick perry and democrat Bernie Sanders round out the top six. But take that super pac money out of there Bernie Sanders is number two to secretary clinton and way ahead in the percentage of small donations. So Jeanne Cummings now the Political Editor at the wall street journal joins me now. What are those numbers we saw tell us about where this Campaign Stands right now . What they tell us is were in for a long hall this cycle. And its not just the money. Its the size of the field. Because people can go into iowa, go into new hampshire, win by a teeny, tiny margin and get a great big headline. What will be different, i think, this year is that people are used to winning maybe in the first couple of states and then they have a gusher of money come in. That can happen. But we do have a few people in the race who have collected enough that that infusion of cash may not actually be able to help a candidate stay in longer. Gwen it feels like the architecture of fundraising has completely changed now. Because the numbers that were seeing now really arent real until we see the super pac numbers reported later on, right . Thats correct. And whats important for everyone to keep in mind is that with the decision to put so many resources in the super pac, that the candidate has given up a lot of control of their campaign. Gwen which means when i spoke with they cant direct how they spend it and cant tell them, you know quick, we need help in this precinct. Or we need ads over here on this message. Were changing tactics. They have a lot of subtle ways and not so subtle ways that they can signal to the super pac they want it to do. But in the rush of a campaign, those signals can be overlooked. And i spoke with on romneys campaign he had a super pac and said at one point they had pitch ted and pivoted and they were aiming all their firepower at Rick Santorum and the super pac ad went up and targeted at newt gingrich. Those resources in their mind were wasted. Gwen lets talk about how theyre spending all this money. Bringing it in hand over fist and Hillary Clinton for instance is raising a lot of money and spending a lot of money. She is. But she really is building an institution. Hillary clinton has the advantage of being, you know 99 sure shes going to take the primary. So right from the beginning, she could Start Building a general election campaign. So big costs are just computer hardware. Shes buying lists. Shes buying she has a big staff. And these people are in for the duration. It is funny to compare, though, to Bernie Sanders. Gwen thats what i was going to ask. Should she be worried about him . Without super pac money is raising percentage wise a lot of money. Hes doing very well. 15 million. Perfectly respectable. In this arena. But the thing about bernie thats really interesting is he is very frugal. Hes only spent a couple of million. And when he went to get his office furniture, they went on craigs list. Gwen if youre scott walker and you just got into this race this week, and didnt have to report what he pulled in but who is he competing against . Ted cruz is doing well. Jeb bush obviously is leading the pack. I see walker in a very different category and i think walker is going to be interesting because i think hes going to bring a new group of donors. Every cycle theres you know, some new in thing or it people. And in the case of romney, it was mormons and the utah money. The old olympic money. In the case of walker i think we may see some new faces from the industrial midwest and west. Who have not been particularly active in contributing to campaigns. He may bring a whole Different Network in. Gwen and who is the network for jeb bush . Jeb bush is relying upon the bush network. We looked at his who gave to him. And there are tons and tons of associations with the two prior Bush Administrations. In addition, masme out of wall street. Thats not a surprise. He went into on some boards after he was governor. Hes made connections there. He got about 300,000 from wall street. Gwen and hillary is presumably getting the women supporters. And the celebrity, the hollywood group. Yes. She is. And to the surprise of some maybe, is also getting wall street money. Gwen really . 300,000 for hillary. Gwen why is that . The clintons have always been close to wall street. And many of her bundlers are from wall street. Gwen ok. We will be watching the way all of this shoots out because i get the feeling money will be defining this race even more than usual. Uhhuh. Gwen thank you jeanne. Thanks, everybody, for hanging out with us and our temporary digs here. We will be home soon, i promise. In the meantime get your extended Washington Week fix later tonight and all week long on our webcast extra. Where among other things well talk more about the key Players Behind the scenes of the Historic Iran Nuclear deal. Stay up to speed every night with me and Judy Woodruff on the pbs newshour. Where debuting a spiffy new newshour look next week and well see you right here next week on Washington Week. Good night. Corporate funding for Washington Week is provided by prudential. Additional funding is provided by newmans own foundation, donating all profits from newmans own Food Products to charity. And nourishing the common good. The corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Be more. Welcome to kqed newsroom. Im thuy vu. Were going to talk about people over 65 and people under 18. Later in the show, well talk with a man responsible for making sure tens of thousands of oakland students succeed in school. But first researchers from around the globe are gathering in washington this weekend to discuss one of the Biggest Health risks to senior citizens. Dementia. More than 5 million americans over the age of 65 have the most common form of dementia, alzheimers disease. That number will increase by 40 in the next ten years, according to the centers for disease control