Kathianne
08-10-2015, 09:18 PM
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/08/marco-rubio-iran-deal-election/400313/
How a President Rubio Would Undo the Iran Deal JEFFREY GOLDBERG (http://www.theatlantic.com/author/jeffrey-goldberg/)
<time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2015-08-06T12:22:49">AUG 6, 2015</time>The Republican senator is “not sure” Congress can kill the agreement, which he dismisses as a “piece of paper” that Tehran will disregard and exploit.
In the course of a long telephone conversation last week, I learned a couple of important things from Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican running for president (one of the Florida Republicans running for president, I should say). Rubio, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is, with Lindsey Graham, the most fluent of the 3,000 or so candidates for the Republican nomination on matters concerning international affairs and national-security policy, and our conversation gave me a good sense of how the Iran issue would be managed with a Republican—or at least the particular Republican I had on the phone—in the White House.
The full transcript of our discussion can be found below, but I would highlight a number of points. The first is that Rubio made it clear he believes that Barack Obama will have his way on Iran: that Congress will not be able to muster a sufficient number of votes to override the president’s veto of an initial, Republican-led rejection of the Iran nuclear deal—a deal Rubio describes caustically as a “piece of paper that is blocking the pathways” to an Iranian bomb.
“I think the majority of members of Congress are going to vote against it,” he told me. “I’m not sure we’re going to have 67 senators, which would have to include a significant number of Democrats, to reach a veto-proof majority.”
Rubio argued that an Obama victory now would not necessarily translate into what the White House, or the Iranians, would see as a permanent win. He was blunt about what he would do should he reach the White House: undo, in whatever way possible, the deal. He believes it is inevitable that Iran will be caught cheating on its obligations, and when it does, he would be ready to mete out punishment—including to companies that will presumably be rushing into the Iranian market once the deal is finalized.
“There are companies and banks around the world that might be considering making significant investments in Iran, and what they need to know is that if they make a significant investment in Iran and a future administration reimposes sanctions, or Iran violates the deal, or Iran conducts some outrageous act of terrorism around the world and [is] sanctioned for it, your investment could be lost,” Rubio told me. “If you go into Iran and build a pharmaceutical plant, and you invest all this money to build it, and then suddenly Iran does something, and now you’re subject to sanctions if you continue to do business with them, you’re going to lose that investment. And so I do think that it’s important for investors and others around the world who are looking to do more business with Iran to be very conscious about this, because they’re basically gambling that this regime is not violating the deal or doing something new that could impose sanctions.”
Rubio is worried, however, that the world is ready to let Iranian cheating slide by: “Unless you absolutely catch them in a Cuban missile crisis-style situation, with pictures, red-handed, the world’s not going to force it, because there’ll be too many vested interests economically in Europe and around the world arguing against it.” The job of the next president, he said, would be to ensure that the United States, at least, doesn’t allow Iran to reach the point at which it is “immune” to punishment, or even attack by the United States.
Here is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity:
...
How a President Rubio Would Undo the Iran Deal JEFFREY GOLDBERG (http://www.theatlantic.com/author/jeffrey-goldberg/)
<time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2015-08-06T12:22:49">AUG 6, 2015</time>The Republican senator is “not sure” Congress can kill the agreement, which he dismisses as a “piece of paper” that Tehran will disregard and exploit.
In the course of a long telephone conversation last week, I learned a couple of important things from Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican running for president (one of the Florida Republicans running for president, I should say). Rubio, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is, with Lindsey Graham, the most fluent of the 3,000 or so candidates for the Republican nomination on matters concerning international affairs and national-security policy, and our conversation gave me a good sense of how the Iran issue would be managed with a Republican—or at least the particular Republican I had on the phone—in the White House.
The full transcript of our discussion can be found below, but I would highlight a number of points. The first is that Rubio made it clear he believes that Barack Obama will have his way on Iran: that Congress will not be able to muster a sufficient number of votes to override the president’s veto of an initial, Republican-led rejection of the Iran nuclear deal—a deal Rubio describes caustically as a “piece of paper that is blocking the pathways” to an Iranian bomb.
“I think the majority of members of Congress are going to vote against it,” he told me. “I’m not sure we’re going to have 67 senators, which would have to include a significant number of Democrats, to reach a veto-proof majority.”
Rubio argued that an Obama victory now would not necessarily translate into what the White House, or the Iranians, would see as a permanent win. He was blunt about what he would do should he reach the White House: undo, in whatever way possible, the deal. He believes it is inevitable that Iran will be caught cheating on its obligations, and when it does, he would be ready to mete out punishment—including to companies that will presumably be rushing into the Iranian market once the deal is finalized.
“There are companies and banks around the world that might be considering making significant investments in Iran, and what they need to know is that if they make a significant investment in Iran and a future administration reimposes sanctions, or Iran violates the deal, or Iran conducts some outrageous act of terrorism around the world and [is] sanctioned for it, your investment could be lost,” Rubio told me. “If you go into Iran and build a pharmaceutical plant, and you invest all this money to build it, and then suddenly Iran does something, and now you’re subject to sanctions if you continue to do business with them, you’re going to lose that investment. And so I do think that it’s important for investors and others around the world who are looking to do more business with Iran to be very conscious about this, because they’re basically gambling that this regime is not violating the deal or doing something new that could impose sanctions.”
Rubio is worried, however, that the world is ready to let Iranian cheating slide by: “Unless you absolutely catch them in a Cuban missile crisis-style situation, with pictures, red-handed, the world’s not going to force it, because there’ll be too many vested interests economically in Europe and around the world arguing against it.” The job of the next president, he said, would be to ensure that the United States, at least, doesn’t allow Iran to reach the point at which it is “immune” to punishment, or even attack by the United States.
Here is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity:
...