State of the Union: Interview With Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT)

Interview

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Well, the prime minister, as he has been every time I have met with him -- and that's probably three times -- he was very, very focused on Iran, and probably said to us nine or 10 times that it was intolerable for him to imagine an Iran with a nuclear weapon.

That's not news. Of course, if you have spent time around Bibi Netanyahu. Now, we know where he is on the JCPOA. The reality is that the JCPOA, whatever you thought of the deal, when it was in effect, the Iranians were not making -- enriching more uranium. Now they are.

So, the problem, of course, is that, with Iran so brutally abusing its own people, I think the prospect for negotiation is arguably further away than ever before. So, we're in a little bit of a fix right now, because we don't have a lot of leverage. The prime minister is, of course, where he always has been, which is enormously hawkish.

And there's just not a lot of diplomatic tools available to address the challenge of the possibility of a nuclear Iran.

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Jake, one thing was very clear. All three countries -- the leadership of all three countries was very, very clear with us that they view the U.S. alliance as indispensable and that they would much rather work with us than with the Chinese or, quite frankly, with the Russians.

We heard an interesting story today from the president of Egypt, President Sisi. He -- and this is an illustration of how complicated this region is. He said, when the United States conditioned some of its arms sales and shipments to Egypt, and at the same time was pushing Egypt to step up its work against terrorism, he said to us: "What do you really want me to do?"

And that is what initiated some conversations that he had with the Russians about weapons. And, of course, then we got angry about that. And that just illustrates how complicated this region is and how challenging the diplomacy and our strategic thinking about the region necessarily is.

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Well, so that didn't come up directly. And, needless to say, neither Mike nor I are going to get into with a foreign leader what may or may not be United States' intelligence.

But I can tell you -- and I think the chairman would agree with me on this -- that, based on President Sisi's tone today, I'm very skeptical that he was ever seriously considering arming the Russians.

Now, remember, one of the most critical things that Egypt has going is, they need to import a lot of wheat. Apparently, governments fall in Egypt if there's not enough relatively cheap wheat. And, of course, they used to import that from Ukraine and Russia.

So, on the one hand, I don't really believe that he was seriously considering sending weapons to Russia. On the other hand, he can't afford to alienate what -- the nation that provides the commodity that allows his country to eat.

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So it has not come up in the meetings that we had in Jordan and Israel and Egypt.

But, of course, the Russians and the Chinese would seek to exploit it. The United States has never really come close defaulting on its debt before. So it's hard for us to imagine what that might look like. But, of course, it could be catastrophic. Frankly, the full faith and credit of the United States is the bedrock on which the global financial system is built.

And if that comes into question, all kinds of things could happen. Look, the U.S. dollar could -- could -- its position as the global reserve currency could be eroded. People may choose to invest in the United Kingdom or in the European Union, rather than the United States.

So I'm not sure that either the chairman nor I know what the solution looks like in the coming weeks, but there had better be a solution.

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Thanks, Jake.

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