Obama States That Rejection Of Deal Will Lead To Another War; Obama Defends Nuclear Agreement
KEILAR: President Obama is making a hard sell for the Iranian nuclear deal. Speaking earlier today, the president portrayed it as the most consequential foreign policy decision for Congress since the vote to go to war in Iraq.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not three months from now. But soon. And here's the irony. As I said before, military action would be far less effective than this deal in preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. If Congress kills this deal, we will lose more than just constraints on Iran's nuclear program, or the sanctions we have painstakingly built. We will have lost something more precious - America's credibility.</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto and global affairs correspondent Elise Labott joining me now. And it was interesting because I thought, you know, you saw President Obama and he framed this as a choice between diplomacy and war. And we know that Americans are war weary.</s>JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: They are. I mean he - he's making that - he's trying to make it an obvious decision. But the fact is, it's not an obvious decision, right, because we know that even members of his own party haven't come around on this and they have real doubts beyond that dichotomy between war and this nuclear deal. They have differences with the nuclear deal. They say, in effect, he's given up too much in this nuclear deal. And they have - they have a fair argument there because if we go back two years to where we are today with this deal, a lot of these things are ones that the administration would not have been trying to sell them. You know, every nuclear facility still open, though under restrictions and with changes, et cetera.</s>ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Thousands of centrifuges.</s>SCIUTTO: I mean you can reasonably take issue with the deal. But he's basically saying you can't because it's either this deal that I negotiated or we're go into another war like the Iraq War.</s>LABOTT: That's right, he said basically, I was right about the Iraq War and it was - catastrophic disaster and the same people that are against this deal are - want to go to war with Iran now. And I think what - this is not going to bring over reluctant Democrats who, as Jim said, have legitimate grievances about the deal they share with Israel. And I think what they would have liked to see is addressing the legitimate concerns. This is how I'm going to make this deal stick.</s>SCIUTTO: Right.</s>LABOTT: You have problems with inspections? This is how we're going to make sure the inspections work.</s>KEILAR: And you didn't hear that?</s>LABOTT: I didn't hear a larger strategy to make sure that this deal is workable.</s>SCIUTTO: Right.</s>LABOTT: Including in the region. I would have liked to see him nest this in a broader strategy on how they're going to make the allies stronger and how they're going to make Iran weaker.</s>SCIUTTO: Right.</s>KEILAR: Elise and Jim, thanks so much for your insights on that.</s>SCIUTTO: Thank you.</s>KEILAR: There are a small group of lawmakers who really could make or break this deal. You heard Elise and Jim talking about that. One of them is Democratic Senator Ben Cardin. He is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and he's joining me now from Capitol Hill. Senator, thanks for being with us.</s>SEN. BEN CARDIN (D), MARYLAND: My pleasure.</s>KEILAR: You helped negotiate a bipartisan measure that gave Congress the authority to review this agreement. So let me begin by asking you, have you made a decision on whether you were going to support or oppose this Iran nuclear deal?</s>CARDIN: Well, we're in, I think, day 17 or 18 of a 60-day review period. Today we just finished a meeting with the director general of the IAEA, the monitoring agency, which I thought was an extremely important meeting. We have a public hearing this afternoon in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Iran deal. So we're not finished our hearings and our reviews this evening. We're going to have a briefing, a classified briefing for all senators. So we're still in the review process. I'm proud of the statute that gives the congressional review. I think as a result, we have a stronger agreement that's been presented by the administration and we're doing the type of review that I think the American people expect Congress to do.</s>KEILAR: Are you - are you leaning one way or the other? What do you need to hear in order to support this deal and support the president?</s>CARDIN: Well, it's not a matter of leaning one way or the other. I thought your analysis of the president's speech was right on. We need to be talking about how we're going forward with this agreement or without this agreement. There are certain issues that are - that are being raised, particularly about regional security or our ability to confront Iran on nonnuclear nefarious activities, including their support of terrorism and interfering with other countries. These are questions we've got to answer. Yes, the first question is, does this agreement put us on a better path to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state or not, but there are related issues as to how we implement this agreement if it goes forward.</s>KEILAR: You're, I know, getting lobbies big time from both sides of this debate. The calls coming into your office, can you characterize them for us? How many are you getting telling you not to go along with this? How many you're - you're getting telling you to go along with it?</s>CARDIN: Every time I mention this, one side winning or the other, the other side seems to get more energized and I get more communications. It's been divided. On any given day, it's been pretty close. The intensity is pretty high. There's a great deal of interest. I can tell when I - in Maryland, I go home every night, people want to talk to me about this, and I think that's good. I think that's part of the process.</s>KEILAR: But you represent Maryland. And at this point you have President Obama, this is his deal, and Hillary Clinton has come down on the side of this deal. She is far and away the front-runner in the Democratic field for 2016. How, in a state like Maryland, could you buck both President Obama and Hillary Clinton on this and not go for it?</s>CARDIN: You know, this - I agree with the president, that this is a pretty consequential vote. So I need to do what's in the best interest of this country. It's not whether I appease the president or one political party, it's what's in the best interest of this country. The president mentioned the Iraq War. I voted against sending our troops to the Iraq War. And that was an unpopular vote I made when I voted against that. This issue is much more divided among the American public. There's a, I think, divided popularity for either going forward or not. I, I mean, I think, at the end of the day, it's not what's popular, it's not what the president of the United States is asking us to do, it's what's in the best interest of America, and that's how I'm going to judge it.</s>KEILAR: I want to ask you about the briefing that you got from the IAEA. There have been a lot of concerns raised, especially by republican, but I know Democrats are also concerned, about what they're calling side deals or separate agreements between the IAEA and Iran on how weaponized Iran - how close they had come to a weapon, the weaponization of their nuclear system. Did you get any information about the details of those agreements?</s>CARDIN: Well, I thought the director general explained pretty clearly that he's under restrictions where he cannot release confidential information. That's the practice of the IAEA and their arrangements with states that they'll maintain confidentiality of their information. So I fully understand his position. Where we tried to get further clarifications is that there are provisions in these two annexes that deal with the ability of the IAEA to gain access to the possible military dimensions of the Iranian program. That's pretty important for us to understand. And so we're trying to tease out the process information's access, can they get full access, et cetera. And it was difficult because of the confidentiality clause that IAEA operates.</s>KEILAR: The Obama administration says it's expecting to get some of that information and it will share it with everyone on Capitol Hill. Are you expecting that to happen?</s>CARDIN: I know there's going to be an all members briefing on this, so we are hopeful we'll get more information, yes.</s>KEILAR: All right, Senator Cardin, thanks so much.</s>CARDIN: My pleasure. Thank you.</s>KEILAR: A really important topic and we appreciate as you consider which direction you're going to go on this that you are talking to us today. Thanks.</s>CARDIN: Thanks.</s>KEILAR: Still ahead, Donald Trump, well, he may love the spotlight, but the former reality TV star has a much different stage waiting for him tomorrow night. How will he tackle his first debate and what can his rivals do to steal some of that spotlight? Our political experts will be weighing in. Plus, the hunting guide involved in the killing of the famous lion Cecil appears in court in Zimbabwe. How he defended his actions. What's next in his case? Stay with us.