In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, President Barack Obama argued that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be negotiated with because he was a politician like everyone else. It’s the height of foolishness, especially when one considers that the Ayatollah is not just a political leader but a religious one as well. Iran leads the way in sponsoring Islamic terrorism throughout the Muslim world not simply for political reasons but for religious ones as well…
Fareed Zakaria: You talked about Iran’s hardliners, the old guard. But one member of Iran’s old guard certainly seems to be Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader… Is this a guy you can really make a deal with?
President Barack Obama: Well, as I said, Fareed, you don’t negotiate deals with your friends. You negotiate them with your enemies. And superpowers don’t respond to taunts. Superpowers focus on what is it that we need to do in order to preserve our national security and the national security of our allies and our friends…
So there’s always a gap between rhetoric and action. And, you know, the Supreme Leader is a politician, apparently, just like everybody else. What I’m focused on is can we make sure that they are doing what they have to do and that we have sufficient safeguards and verification mechanisms to ensure that they don’t have a nuclear weapon.
And, again, Fareed, it is very important, I think, over the next several weeks, to not get distracted by tone, vote counts, is Mitch McConnell’s feelings hurt. But let’s address the argument. And it — the central point I was making yesterday — fairly exhaustively, it was a long speech — was that nobody has presented a plausible alternative, other than military strikes, to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
Nobody has presented a more effective way to ensure they don’t have a nuclear weapon, including military strikes, because we know, actually, if this deal is executed, it will provide more limitations on the Iranian nuclear program for a longer period of time in a more verifiable way. And that central argument hasn’t really been effectively contested. Nobody has had a good answer for that.