basis, yes, it was bipartisan, passed very tough sanctions resolutions as part of the defense authorization bill which was signed into law. so all of this means that the noose is tightening around the iranian government, the goal of that is not to hurt the iranian people who are our friends, but it s to get that government to benefit its to ban its policy or its potential policy to develop nuclear weapons and i think the sanctions are biting and the reactions from iran shows that they are, and that says to me two things: number one, keep it going. and number two, keep the military option on the table. jenna: you say that the iranian people are our friends, and i m curious what you think the nature of our relationship should be with iran as we look into the future, not just looking over the next year, but let s say we look ten years out, let s say the sanctions do work, they ve stopped pursuing nuclear weapons. what type of relationship do we really want with iran? well, iran was on
proceed, and it wants to resolve the issue dip plomatically, so i think we re in for some long period of time, weeks if not months, of negotiation over a sanctions resolution, and that s basically repeating a pattern we ve seen in three previous security council sanctions resolutions on iran. shannon: we know that iran s top nuclear negotiator has been in beijing, apparently told reporters china is with us. they understand iran s position. and then we have the white house saying and we re hearing from white house spokesman robert gibbs, hey, we re working with china, with our counterparts, we re very pleased with the progress, they re with us. are they possibly playing both sides of the table, or are we just getting conflicting messages? heaven forbid that that would be the case. you know, never discount the ability of people to hear what they want to hear both in the white house and from the iranian side. and don t discount china speaking in very nuanced terms as they say in diploma
sanctions doomed to fail, in stopping iran s program, i think it is counterproductive. because, it gives the warm and comfortable feeling we re actually doing something about iran s nuclear weapons program, when we re not. it gives people the wrong impression. and i think it simply provides more cover, more time, for iran. martha: we all remember the all of the resolutions that came out of the u.n. that were supposed to do something about iraq and supposed to, you know, hem in saddam hussein and that never happened. is that the path we re going down here? i mean, you are talking about four rounds of u.n. sanctions that you say no teeth and the iaea has been warning iran about what they are building and need to come clean, to no avail and now you say sanctions will not work and, primarily because we need to get in here russia and china gave no indication they want to get on board with the sanctions and if they don t, they are useless, right? right. russia and china watered down
good luck with that. you know, there have been three previous sanctions resolutions, they ve not dissuaded iran in the slightest from pursuing the 20-year-long objective of getting nuclear weapons and china has all but said it will not consider additional sanctions, so even if there is a fourth sanctions resolution and that won t be for weeks or months, it will be marginal at best and i don t think we ll have any impact will have any impact on iran. it may be and i think this is troubling, the administration understands that and they are now preparing the groundwork, simply, to accept iran as a nuclear weapons state. eric: what would that mean if we accept iran as a nuclear state. how much do we know, a laptop computer apparently had a lot of information, several iranian officials, apparently defected and you have the report last week from germany of a possible, they say, predicting a bomb by the end of this year. i think the real trouble is, there is so much we don t know ab