my user name is brian stelter and i hope you will join us on cnn.com where my colleagues and i will be covering the day s biggest media stories and we ll recap the stories next week at 11:00 a.m. eastern. state of the union starts right now. are we there yet? today, tis the season to be jolly, and the president may have reason to be. we re moving in the right direction. is it for real? the lowest jobless rate in five years may mean a new political equation. a conversation with two top economists along with annie lowry. and for the first time in over a decade, we have halted advances in the iranian nuclear program. a deal one of the world s leading state sponsors of terror and what it might mean to the terrorism threat. mike mccaul and adam schiff join
that, it can be taken back. centrifuges, they certainly don t need fast speed centrifuges, they don t need thousands of centrifuges. the only reason you want to have the kind of capability iran is developing is because you want a fast break capability. to ramp up uranium quickly. so what i think the administration needs to push for in this negotiation is a peaceful program without enrichment, and i wouldn t begin the process by conceding anything on enrichment. it seems like it s already a little bit now, the exact nature of it, the idea that maybe we would ship in enriched uranium capable of nuclear energy only, but nonetheless a lot of people have complained it does seem like the administration has given up something they shouldn t be gig up. this violates the u.n. security council resolutions, the u.n. proliferation treating and empowers other countries in
right now. and focusing on sort of extending the problem i think is the wrong thing to focus on. if you look at president obama s economic speech, the part i like the best is his emphasis on addressing the long-term unemployment problem. he said he was going to meet with a bunch of executives at the white house soon and announce a new program. i m quite eager to see what he says there. that you get a tax credit for hiring someone who has been unemployment for a certain time. these folks are really in trouble and the good unemployment news doesn t really affect the long-term but we should do both. we should help the folks that are still in trouble. kevin is right, there s an element that s there because of the ui program. and people that stay unemployed because they can get enough from unemployment. there s a lot of academic work and research, but my estimates a percentage is due to ui benefits. kevin is right, we have to work on long term structural unemployment but i w
peaceful program, but rather towards getting a nuclear weapon. let me for you congressman schiff read part of what president rouhani said yesterday. he said nuclear technology and uranium enrichment is our definite right, but progress, better living conditions, and welfare for the people is also our definite right. you saw what countries got angry with the deal and you saw what a blow was inflicted on the zionists. so in context he was talking to a crowd, some of whom were not all that happy that iran is dealing with the united states and, of course, other western countries. so my question to you is does it complicate things when the administration says, yeah, we could see some enriched uranium for nuclear power purposes but nothing else? well, it does. you know, it s one thing to say that iran can have a peaceful nuclear energy program. you can have a peaceful nuclear energy program with no enrichment. the uranium can be provided for
the northeast to say we re going to strike an accord to allow you to continue your uranium enrichment and it encourages other countries to say we ve abided by this and if you allow iran to do this, why can t we do this? we didn t stop pakistan. we didn t stop north korea. the idea that iran can be stopped if they want to make a nuclear weapon seems to not have a great historic precedent. they have the know-how. they re always going to have the know-how. what would it take if they make the decision that they re going to pursue the bomb? it would take a sustained military campaign. not just a bombing campaign because a bombing campaign would set them back for a period of time, but if they were determined, it would have to be repeated bombing campaign and it may involve boots on the ground. because that is often an awful prospect, we need to try everything, in my view, to see if that he is a peaceful way to put an end to this program. that s why i think the interim deal makes sense. i