SFR gets Rep. Chris Stewart’s take on the Iran Deal

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Frank Gaffney: There’s so much to talk about. We are in need of your intelligence on what we’re doing at the moment in terms of this deal with Iran. On the one hand, John Kerry said over the weekend, that he’s prepared to walk away if it’s not a good deal. There seems to be no reason to believe it will be a good deal.

Rep. Chris Stewart: Well, it was a bad deal when we reached the final stages of the negotiation two months ago. I have no reason to believe it’s any better. In fact, I have reason to believe it’s probably worse and when you refer to Secretary Kerry’s statement about “yeah we may walk away,” I mean, no one believes that. This is the president’s most important foreign policy goal and objective of, I would say of his entire administration, not just his second term. And it’s like when the Secretary and others say, “All options are on the table,” no one believes that either. We believe they want this deal desperately. They are willing, in my opinion, to endanger our own national security interests in order to achieve it and it’s terribly, terribly worrisome for us.

FG: In your professional judgment, both as a former air force officer and now as a member of the Intelligence Committee, is there any chance that what will come out of this deal actually advances that goal or is it much more likely that we’re going to see not only Iran with a nuclear weapons capability, but also a host of other countries that will respond by getting there?

CS: Yeah, and in fact Frank, you hit I think the most critical consideration in this whole process and that is: it may no longer matter what you and I think in this deal. It may not matter any longer what the President or Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu thinks about this deal. What it comes down to is what the Saudis think about this because they simply will not allow their rival and their adversary in the area, who have been so for generations, they will not allow the Persians to develop nuclear weapons. They just simply won’t and if the Saudis believe that this process will allow them that pathway, in a few short years, they’re simply going to do it themselves and more quickly. And then so will Turkey, and then so will Egypt, and then so will some desert gulf states.

My great fear is that we may have maybe let the genie out of the bottle already. I don’t know how you put it back and in five years we may have an entirely nuclearized Middle East and, oh my heavens, can you imagine dealing with the security implications if that were the case?

FG: You know, they would be pretty bad, Congressman Chris Stewart, if the present regimes in all those countries had nuclear weapons. I think there’s no getting around it. Most of them are jihadist in character, if not overtly so, certainly in terms of what they’re doing behind the scenes. But if the “no kidding” jihadists who make no bones about their enmity towards us and are seeking our destruction were to come to power in the states, where they’re not already with nuclear arsenals at their back and call, this is a vastly more dangerous world. I can only shudder at the thought.

Let me, speaking of danger, talk about the President’s ruminations at the Pentagon yesterday after taking stock with their senior military leaders about the so-called war against the Islamic State. What did you make of his comments, Congressman, that you cannot defeat an ideology with military means, but only with better ideas?

CS: It makes me cringe because it shows, in my opinion, the overall naivety of this administration that’s been demonstrated now for almost seven years that he’s been in office. Look at history, Frank. For heavens sake, what would have happened-and this sounds so simplistic but its so true. What would have happened in World War II if we ‘d taken this frame of mind? If we said we couldn’t defeat them military, we have to defeat them through our superior ideology, would that have been the outcome? You think we could have persuaded this evil, evil regime of Nazi Germany to see our point of view?

Move that argument forward to now; it is just as unlikely that these nations and these people who have sworn to defeat us, to destroy us, who have demonstrated the most vicious and cruel manner of treating each other. And to say we’re going to persuade them to our way of thinking by providing them with jobs? It’s just insane to me to think that you wouldn’t recognize this fact that at some point, that national security may require the use of arms.

FG: And it’s compounded further, I think it’s fair to say, again Congressman Chris Stewart of the Appropriations and Intelligence Committees, that we are looking at people who regard our moral equivalence between their brand of violent extremism and others, I don’t know, anti-abortion activists, or environmentalists, or what have you, as further evidence of our rot and ultimate destiny of being defeated by them. Do you see it that way?

CS: Yeah, it’s no question that’s true and it’s one of the great consequences of our national security and our foreign policy over the last few years that our allies see us as weak. They don’t know that they can depend on us anymore and believe me, I know that it’s true. I’ve had personal conversations with the leaders of these nations who use to view us as their strongest ally and no longer do. And at the same time, our enemies view us as weak as well.

FG: It emboldens the latter, for sure, and it can only alienate the former, which is a formula, it seems to me, for having a lot more enemies and a lot fewer friends. Congressman let me turn, speaking of people who are pretty hostile to us it turns out, Communist China is, as best we can tell, the agent behind the now 18 million, we’re told, personnel files that have been compromised in the hacking of the Office of Personnel Management databases. What do you make of that and Congressman what do you say- in Utah you have a lot of data centers these days, including those of the federal government-what do you say to people who are concerned that other data that they’re being asked by the government to surrender, perhaps their personal medical histories for example, may be compromised as well?

CS: Yeah, well, we already know that some of the systems of Obama care have been compromised. They were compromised within the first few months of coming online. And it was one of the things that Congress sought to address and sought to hold the administration accountable for, but I think people have to assume that if they’ve got private or personal information online, that it’s subject to being breached. And as you know, as you’ve mentioned a couple times, I was an air force pilot and held one of the highest level of top secret security clearances that’s available. I know what intensely personal and what extensive information is based in those security background checks. Heavens, they went back and talked to people that I knew in high school that I could hardly remember and to think that that type of information has been breached now and there’s a reason for this as well.

We need to recognize that the Chinese didn’t do this randomly. If it was China, whoever it was, they specifically targeted this type of information and it allows them access to all sorts of things to as whom might be potential intelligence agents working for the US, who might they recruit to provide intelligence to them, who might they blackmail. And in fact Frank as I’ve mentioned to you, we’ve written an editorial that will be released in the next few days saying that we need to have a real conversation about how do we respond to these types of breaches because I don’t think we yet have a strategy for doing so,

FG: I think we’re a long way from that and in, fact, the failure of the OPM, Congressman Stewart, to take steps to correct problems that they had earlier been warned of, makes this that just more evidence of malfeasance. Just really quickly your assessment of this as a counterintelligence challenge Congressman?

CS: Yeah, well it’s no questions that it is as I’ve indicated before and in fact, to just back up before to your comment about the OPM: has anyone stepped forward and said ‘This is my responsibility, I’ve failed to protect this information and I will take proper steps, including holding myself accountable?’ No one’s done that and it’s one of the great challenges in federal government that that happens so rarely.

FG: Yeah, well I’m told that the woman in charge of OPM these days is really good on diversity training, but maybe not so good on anything else. Congressman Chris Stewart, thank you very much for your service to our country, both that you’ve rendered in the past in uniform and that you’re rendering today, representing the people of the second district of Utah. Keep up the good work, sir, and come back to us again very soon if you would.