tv Fareed Zakaria GPS CNN January 17, 2016 7:00am-8:01am PST
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this is gps, the global public square. welcome to all of you around the world. i'm coming to live from new york. we have a great show for you today starting with the day many critics said would never come. iran comes in from the cold satisfying all the initial requirements of the nuclear deal. at the same time tehran releases five american prisoners. is this a new era of relations with the west or are is a trick as some critics contend? a good deal or still a deal with the devil? president obama began his final year with a heartfelt
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state of the union. >> protecting our kids from gun violence. >> what will he be able to accomplish in 2016 and what to make of his possible successors. finally, a riddle. what do asteroids, ice ages and man have in common? find out later in the show. first, here's my take. i want to tell you today about an experience i had recently. one that i think shed some light on a big trend that worries all of us, radicalization. i'll get to my tale in a moment, so bear with me. thomas jefferson often argued that an educated public was crucial for the survival of self-government. we live in which that education takes place through new
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platforms. it's the main mechanisms by which people receive and share fact, ideas and opinions. what if these new technologies encourage misinformation, rumors and lies. in a comprehensive new study analyzed posts made between 2010 and 2014, people mainly share information that confirms their prejudices paying little attention to facts as was written about in a recent article. the result is the proliferation of bias narratives fermented by mistrust and paranoia. false information with the hope
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of spreading it widely. as it happens, in recent weeks, i was the target of a trolling campaign and saw exactly how it works. it started when an obscure website published a post titled, cnn host fareed calls for rape of white women. in my private blog, i urged the use of american women as sex slaves to depopulate the white race. disgusting. you would think the item could collapse of its own weightlessness. wrong. here's what happened next. hundreds of people began linking to it and adding their comment which is are too vulgar or racist to repeat. a few far right wing websites
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printed it as fact. the levels of hysteria rose and people started demanding that i be fired, deported or killed. for a few days the digital intimidation veered into the real world. some people called my house late one night and woke up and threatened my daughters who are 7 and 12. it would have taken a minute to see that the post was on fake news site. one that claims to be satirical but doesn't make that clear. none of this matter. the people spreading this story were not interested in the facts. they were interested in feeding prejudice and hysteria. the original story was cleverly written to provide conspiracy theorists with enough ammunition to ignore evidence. it claims that i took down the post after a few hours when i realized it received negative
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attention. when the occasional debunker would point out there was no evidence of the post anywhere, it made little difference. when confronted with evidence that the story was utterly false, it only convinced many there was a conspiracy and cover up. elizabeth colbert recalled an experiment performed by two psychologist in 1970. they divided students into two groups based on their answer, high prejudice and low prejudice. then the questions were asked again. the surveys revealed a striking pattern. by talking to one another, the bigoted students had become more bigoted and the tolerant, more tolerant. this group polarization is now taking place at hyper speed around the world. it is how radicalization
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happens. i love social media, but somehow we have to help create better mechanisms in it to distinguish between fact and falsehood. no matter how passionate people are, no matter how cleverly they can blog or tweet or troll, no matter how viral things get, lies are still lies. for more go to cnn/fareed and read my washington post column this week, and let's get started. saturday was a banner day for iran. it was a day that many of the islamic critics were certain would never come. the rogue nation or once rogue nation was found to have complied with its requirements under the nuclear deal. it took part in an extraordinary prisoner swap with america and
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then major financial sanctions against the country were lifted and billions of dollars of its assets released. we'll unpack all the details in this hour. let's start with cnn nic robertson who is live. one of the things that struck me is while america media made a big deal of this story, the iranian media had not because it was reported that there were many hard liners in iran still opposed to the deal. explain the politics of iran that allowed this to happen. >> reporter: it's long been understood that the hard liners, those who sort of came to power through the revolution of wanting to maintain a firm control over the country and a lot of people have questioned whether or not the president who
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have been behind negotiating this deal were a power within the country were really strong voices within the country or merely a front put up by the iranian government to improve their standing of iran in the world to unfreeze those billions of dollars. we heard in the last few hours from the president some quite striking words. i believe go to the heart of that. he talked and appeared to have a message for the hard liners in his own country. he said would have believed that our own diplomats and politicians can negotiate for iran and come back on an equal footing with the rest of the world and negotiate a good deal for iran that diplomacy is good. there's a win win situation. it's way for it. that appears from the president of iran to be a very clear message to the hard liners in his country and for the p population that it's been achieved. there is positive benefit.
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we've heard during the process of waiting for the international atomic energy agency to announce iran's compliance from the iranian media. we heard leads there was going to be a prisoner exchange from a lawyer representing one of the american -- iranian detainees. the release held up according to the lawyer because the iranians weren't sure, wanted to make sure that the assets that were being unfrozen were unfrozen and money was blowing before the prisoner exchange could happen. the diplomatic foot work here has been obscure to us a lot of the time but for the iranian president he's using it to bolster his moderate position in iran right now. fareed. >> thanks, nic. terrific reporting as always. this deal would not have happened without my next guest.
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wendy sherman was the united states' lead negotiator on the deal. she's senior fellow at harvard belford center. thank y thanks for joining us. >> thank you. good to be here on a good day. >> there are critics that say let's start with the prisoner exchange that i know was a side negotiation that secretary kerry was having. that this is iran's pattern. it takes hostages, should never have happen and then demands concessions of it. what do you say to people who argue that the iranian position has been one of doing things that they should not do even in the nuclear arena and then expecting concessions for undoing them. >> i think there's no question that iran has done things that
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all of us think are wrong. they detained american citizens completely unjustly. they built up a nuclear program that even the iaea said in the past had really been focused towards nuclear weapons. we know that they are destabilizing parts of the middle east. they sponsor state sponsorship of terrorism. their human rights record is not good to say the least. all of these facts are facts. it's also true that not only the united states but the international community has sanctioned iran repeatedly for all of these terrible actions. it has really harmed the iranian economy. that's why as nic robertson reported you hear the president who is about to face parliamentary elections and council of expert elections talking about how this is good for the country because they need to write an economy that,
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quite frankly, is very deep in the hole. they have paid a price. a very big price for what they have done. what i think we should be focused on today are two very important things. one, american citizens are coming home, though we still have some more work to do in that area. probably for robert levinson and his family. he's been missing for so many years. we have a nuclear deal that's been implemented where iran has significantly reduced its program and must remain entirely peaceful forever. >> when you negotiated with these people, did you get the feeling when you were negotiating with them that a, they were trustworthy and when they would say something across the negotiating table, they stuck to it. secondly, did they have the power to make the deals they were making as you went through
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this long process. >> as secretary kerry and president obama have said, this is not a deal about trust. this is a deal about verification. if my counter parts said something across the table, we needed to verify it. we needed to know it was fact there had been compliance. as you know there was an interim step called the joint plan of action. it ended up being in place for nearly two years and the iranian s complied with every step of that which added confidence they might comply with a comprehensive plan and all the provisions appear to have been implemented and the iaea will continue to monitor compliance. as to whether they had the power, there were times when they said things and hard liners since iran has hard liners did
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not back up where they were and they had to start again. they also watched in our country and the united states a very vigorous debate where there was not agreement and with our international partners around the world there was not complete agreement about going ahead with this deal. this was a very complicated negotiation, not just in the room, but with parties in our own country and around the world. >> stay with us. up next, i'll dig deeper into the sanctions with the prisoner swap. we'll be back with more. welcome. how you doin'? good how are you? so today you're gonna choose a mobile office. you can choose this chevy silverado which offers built in 4g lte wi-fi. or you can choose this ford f-150, which doesn't offer wi-fi. but to make up for it, we added a trailer, a satellite antenna, and dolores. hey fellas! (group laughter) what? so, which one do you want? i pick the chevy. definitely.
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wendy sherman remains with us from tel aviv. joe, let me ask you about the nature of these concessions and how far it puts iran back. one of the things it hasn't focused on enough is the plutonium. the united states' arsenal is 100% plutonium because it gives you a bigger bang for the buck. iran has not escaped back but completely destroyed. >> yes. many people didn't want us to negotiate with iran on this deal. they wanted to go to war and attack iran. the reactor was one of the drivers that pushed the israelis to say we have to attack now. once it goes operational, attacking then would spew radio
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activity all over the region. it was these negotiations that stopped the construction of that reactor and now as verified just yesterday by the iaea has gutted that reactor. we've taken out the core of the reactor. the iranians have filled it with holes. this is now like the parrot from monty python. it's gone. they is pledged to never rebuild it an make sure we have year of inspections instead of soldiers patrolling. we make sure this is under lock and key tied down for a generation or more. >> ythey were a couple of month away from making a bomb. where are they now? >> weeks away. that bomb has been completely
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drained of uranium. bebe can rest assured they do not have the capability to build a bomb. under this timeline, it would take a year to restart the facilities and have enough for one bomb. the underground facility that israeli bombs can't penetrate. they're not allowed to enrich uranium. only about 500 centrifuges are left from the 20,000 they had. they put them under lock and key and camera in safe warehoused facilities. any gas they had most of that has been shipped out of the country. they are years away from the capability of building a nuclear weapon. >> brett, you were a skeptic from the start.
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are you still a skeptic? >> sure. the enthusiasm that joe shows for the deal is like the same that was made in 1994. there's a couple of basic problems. one of them is the quality of intelligence. intelligence must never be mistaken for intelligence. time and time again we're surprised by nuclear developmen developments, which ever way they go. john bolton was mocked in 2003. the facility was confirmed by professor hecker several years later.
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people should be muted in their confidence for things we have uncovered and things that we might not know about. even as the iranian's have leased their hostages, they've taken the biggest hostage of all, and that's nuclear deal itself. iran test fired two ballistic missiles in blatant violation of u.n. security council resolutions. the administration said it would sanction iran for that. the iranians said we'll consider that a violation of the deal and the administration quietly removed the sanctions. iran is going to use the threat of nuclear snap back to constantly tell the west if you sanction us for our behavior, the deal is off. >> wendy, you heard brett stephens on this issue of missile testing. what do you think happened? we have about a minute. i'm sorry to ask you to do this briefly.
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>> sure. the administration said it will proceed with sanctions against iran and i expect that they will. it takes time to put the evidentiary material together. in that i think brett is entirely wrong. >> what about the more general point which is that the deal is one that the administration is going to want to preserve and wink at some smaller iranian violations. >> this is not an all or nothing response to iran. the way that the deal is written, there can be calibrated responses if iran doesn't do something major, but does something minor. there's an entire dispute resolution mechanism and an ability for the united states to unilaterally slap back sanctions on and to go to the united nations and get multilateral sanctions on without the ability of china, russia or anybody to
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veto that action. this can be done in small steps or all at once. we have a way to calibrate this and respond to the violations that occur. i trust that we will. >> stay there everyone. we'll be back with more news out of iran including a statement by the president of the united states, coming up at 10:45. stay with us. d last tuesday. one second it's there. then, woosh, it's gone. i swear i saw it swallow seven people. seven. i just wish one of those people could have been mrs. johnson. [dog bark] trust me, we're dealing with a higher intelligence here. ♪ the all-new audi q7 is here. ♪
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we are back with more on the iran deal, the sanctions relief and the prisoner swap. you're a great follower of iran's internal politics. what i'm struck by is the hard liners in iran have always been very poppwerful. if you think about this naval incident that happened in 2007 when the british naval boat goes in. they're able to take them for 13 days. they parade them around. he gives them free uniforms, clothes back. one day they return them. the hostages whom they had taken from to be given back. of course, as in india, the iranian parliament, they said 300 sanctions were made by iran. has the power of the hard liners
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weakened? are we looking at a different iran? >> i think it's premature to say that. this deal wasn't signed by the iranians because of the geopolitics. it was because of sanctions and the drop in oil prices. it forced them to take this decision. that's why some folks, people like henry kissinger are concerned. maybe oil prices have come up a little bit. are the iranians going to continue to adhere to the deal. we'll see what happens. >> when you look at what it was that got rohani, the support. is it public support. is it at the end of the day they know this deal is popular or the supreme leader who is the power has decided to come to terms with reality? >> i think power in iran, the power of a politician in iran
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doesn't necessarily derive from the popular support. it's from the monopoly of coercio coercions. the iranian people overwhelmly want change. we shouldn't understood estimate the will for change but we shouldn't underestimate the will of the iranian hard liners for change. economic integration, reproachment with the united states poses more of a threat than continued isolation. what we have seen since the 1979 revolution has been these moments of great expectations followed by years of disillusionment. at the moment there are great expectations in tehran. the pattern here isn't necessarily a very optimistic one. >> brett, what do you make of the fact we have this peculiar
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situation where in iran we are witnessing real politics. the hard liners have some power. frankly, there is a certain amount of similarity with the stuation in the united states. i would underscore iran is a dictatorship. united states is a democracy. you can see the politics. in all our arab allies, saudi arabia, egypt, jordon, you don't see any politics. it's a entirely dictatoria almo l system. is that a good thing? >> we have managed politics or stage managed politics. it's going to be an election. the candidates have been selected in advance. i'm not sure if that is real politics. the supreme leader ultimately
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was the person who had to give his assent to the deal. he renegotiated a part of the deal. you have what you might call the illusion of participatory politics. you have a variety of dictorarial systems. much to see possibilities of hope. go to dubai and compare that to what's happening just across the water in the persian gulf. it's a much more open society. for better or worse we're saddled or wedded to the alliances that we have. we betray those strategically from realist perspective at our own peril. how badly do we want to push a already shaky monarchy into the
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wrong direction. we have an interest in making sure that our allies understand we're going to remain committed despite the obvious defects of their social and political systems. >> i want to talk about the sanctions relief. i think it's going to be a little less dramatic than people realize. oil is at $30 a barrel. iran needs oil at $145 a barrel to balance its budget. i don't see much of a windfall at the end of the day. >> i think that's right. i think that's why the popular expectations people have that their quality of life is going to significantly improve may be disappointed. iran is probably the largest population in the world, which is still isolated from the global economy. you can't use your credit card.
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there's huge interest in iran from asia. asian businessmen and western businessmen. there's an important litmus test which is the case of the last remaining hostage in iran. he's an energy consultant which is very well known by major oil companies. when you have someone like that languishing in the iranian prison it will continue to send the message to western businesses that this country isn't ready for change. >> on the nuclear program, very quickly. we have 30 seconds. dw do you think there's way for them to do this? we heard talk about satellites and things like that. how worried are you about the points that brett was making? >> this deal cuts off the iranian pathway to a bomb. it cuts off the covert pathway to a bomb. it's true they could have a
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small secret facility but then they would have to have a secret mine to get uranium. the restrictions on their program are so deep it would be extraordinary if iran could break out of this deal without us knowing it. >> that's different from north korea, brett. 15 seconds. >> precisely so. what we have learned, the defense side had a wonderful paper on this in the early 2014 and the emphasize is especially with the primitive nuclear programs, the pathway to proliferation are multiplying what we don't know. we learned that with the aq con network is vast. it's foolish to imagine a country like iran that we can know everything about what's going on in this country. the nuclear program was secret to begin with. >> stay there. we'll be back with a statement from the president of the united states on the iran deal and the prisoner exchange coming up at 10:45. we'll have live reports from germany where the american
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prisoners are expected to land shortly and our panel. stay with us. hwe'll match any competitorse best prprice. this? what about this? price match guarantee. and this? yep! so no monkey business, no tomfoolery? oh, we do have tom foolery, tom. staples has a price match guarantee. make low prices happen.
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condition of the former prisoners? i remember reading reports that the washington post correspondent lost 40 pounds in prison. do we know much about their health? >> reporter: we don't know very much about their health. we know that from the reports we have been hearing that he wasn't doing well and he was in that tough detention facility there which is known to be one that is very, very harsh and not one that would be conducive to someone with a medical condition. the other condition is he was in prison for four years. that raises all sorts of question marks as to how he was doing. the next couple of hours we expect the plane that took off from tehran to land in switzerland and come here to the air base. what's going to happen then is the people who came out of iran will be taken off and taken by bus to the medical facility.
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they will get state of the art medical treatment. the medical center is well known around the world as america's biggest u.s. military medical facility outside of the u.s. it's a class two trauma center. it's place where they will receive world class treatment. the other thing it's not only a hospital, it's a very large compound and from what we're hearing there's going to be reunited with their family in that place where they will have some privacy to see each other again and hold their loved ones once again and receive the medical treatment they are going to need after this long imprisonment. >> thanks so much. terrific reporting. when we look at the images once we'll see them, it will remind us of the cold war. the base was often the transit point, the movie "bridge of spies" has these kind of exchanges and the israeli government has done many such
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exchanges. sometimes 1,000 palestinians for one israeli. yet, there are critics who say this should never have happened because you are, in some sense, making concessions that will lay the seeds for the next round of hostage taking. >> i'm glad these americans are coming home. it seemed a fairly even exchange accept for the obvious flag that the iranians were being exchanged were indicted or charged with serious crimes. these are people, americans who happen to be in iran and were genuine hostages. the israeli case is complicated by a number of factors. one soldier who had been taken in gaza for a number of years were we released for like 1,000 prisone prisoners. a lot of them were dangerous people who returned to terrorist organizations. >> which is not true in the case of the iranians who were being held in america.
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my understanding is these were people -- >> businessmen passing on technology. >> they violated the embargo but not terrorists? >> that's right. it's a citizens army. the people in it are often conscripts. there's a feeling there's an advantage for every soldier to know that the entire country will go all the way to get them back. i think we owe soft deference to make those sort of ethical decisions for themselves. >> super. we're going to go to jake tapper in washington. we'll hear from the president shortly. i would love to hear from what jake thinks the president is going to say. this is a big victory for diplomacy. >> he talked about dealing with iran and other nations that the united states has had icy and
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hostile relations. there's going to be time for politicians to criticize the iran deal and criticize details of the swap that took place, four americans being held under what american officials call trumped up charges in iran. being swapped for seven individuals being held in the united states. there will be time for criticism. right now, what we should probably do is take a moment and reflect on how wonderful a moment this is for the families of these four individuals. the former u.s. marine who has been held since 2011. the washington toapost reporter. that's been a big cause, getting him freed. the ministe, we had his wife on the show several times talking about her desire to get him home. then there's one not coming
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back. he's staying in iran for now. it's a remarkable moment for these families. so many tears shed. the great news that these individuals will be coming home. >> jake, do you think that the president is going to use this as an opportunity to talk about a thaw in relations with iran. there's always been two elements to this. one is you do the deal because iran is a rogue nation and you want to make sure it doesn't have nuclear weapons and it is a competitor, and you want to make sure it doesn't have the nuclear capacity. the other was the nixon goes to china. the opening up of iran. the bringing iran in from the cold. do you think the administration feels it's time to start talking about that broader possibility? >> i think probably. i don't know exactly what he's doing to say. i do think he will herald this moment as an opportunity to
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demonstrate what diplomacy can achieve in terms of getting these americans home safe. he'll likely make the case that it's because of the thaw in relations between the united states and iran. it's likely because of this deal, this deal to end iran's potentially nuclear weapons program. it's a nuclear program. potentially those could be weaponized and to end the program that's how this was able to be diffused including what happened recently just in a few days ago with the ten u.s. sailors who had, according to them, accidentally drifted into iranian waters were being detained by irans. we said the aide of the president putting the remarks out on the podium. there's a real
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compartmentalization. doing everything it was told it needed to do and the united nations certifying they had done it when comes to ending their potential weaponization program of their nuclear program. then at the same time also doing things that they are not supposed to be doing such as the ballistic missile test several weeks ago. it's not long ago, just over the weekend, i believe, that the obama administration and the treasury department initiated some new sanctions against individuals in iran for that ballistic missile test. i wonder if the president will take the opportunity to both herald this moment, talk about the achievement in diplomacy, getting these americans home, getting the ten u.s. sailors home, ending the nuclear program as it existed while also issuing something of a warning to iran in terms of their behavior, in terms of the ballistic missile test and in terms of their sponsoring of terrorism. they are listed as a state
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sponsor of terrorism. that hasn't changed. it might be a double edged message especially now that the americans are out safely and he can talk about the ballistic missile test and the sanctions against those iranians allegedly responsible for that test, fareed. >> i think it's going to be a very big event in geopolitics. you hear the chinese president has made plans to visit iran. the french foreign minister is making his trip there. india is boosting it relations. in many ways, i think we might look at this as iran come ing i from the cold and a victory for the president, and there he is. >> this is a good day. once again we're seeing what's possible with strong american diplomacy. as i said in my state of the union address, ensuring the security of the united states and the safety of our people
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demands a smart, patient and disciplined approach to the world. that includes our diplomacy with the islamic republic of iran. for decade, our differences meant our governments almost never spoke to each other. ult maimately that did not adva america's interest. over the year iran moved closer and closer to having the ability to build a nuclear weapon. from president franklin roosevelt to john f. kennedy to konl ronald reagan, the united states has never been afraid to pursue diplomacy. we could advance by engaging directly with the iranian government. we've seen the results. under the nuclear deal that we, our allies and partners reached with iran last year, iran will not get its hands on a nuclear
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bomb. the region, the united states and the world will be more secure. as i've said many time, the nuclear deal was never intended to resolve all of our differences with iran, but engaging directly with the iranian government on a sustained basis for the first time in decades has created a unique opportunity, a window, to try to resolve important issues. today, i can report progress on a number of fronts. first, yesterday, marked a milestone in preventing iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. iran has fulfilled key commitments under the nuclear deal. i want to explain why this is important. over more than a decade iran moved ahead with its program and before the deal it has installed nearly 20,000 centrifuges that could enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb. today, iran has removed two-thirds of those machines.
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before the deal, iran was increasing stockpile of enriched uranium. enough for up to ten nuclear bombs. today, more than 98% of that stockpile has been shipped out of iran. meaning iran doesn't have enough material for even one bomb. before, iran was nearly completion of a reactor capable of plutonium for a bomb. today it's been poured out and filled with concrete so it cannot be used again. before the deal, the world has relatively little visibility into iran's nuclear program. today inspectors are on the ground and the iran is being dealing with monitors. inspectors will monitor the facility 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. for decades to come, inspectors will have access to iran's
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entire nuclear supply chain. in other words, if iran tries to cheat, if they try to build a bomb covertly, we will catch them. the bottom line is this, where as iran was expanding its nuclear program, we have now cut off every single path that iran could have used to build a bomb. where as it would have taken iran two to three months to break out with enough material the rush with a bomb, we have extended that break out time to a year. with the world's unprecedented inspections and access to iran's program, we'll know if iran ever tries to break out. now that iran's actions have been verified, it can begin to receive relief from certain nuclear sanctions and gain access to its own money that had been frozen and perhaps most important of all, we achieved this through diplomacy without
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resulting to another war in the middle east. by working with iran on this nuclear deal, we were better able to address other issues. when our sailors in the persian gulf strayed into iranian waters that could have sparked a major international incident. some folks rushed to declare it was the start of another hostage crisis. we worked with the government to secure the release of our sailors in less than 24 hours. this brings me to a second major development. several americans unjustly detained by iran are finally coming home. in some cases these americans faced years of continued detention. i've met with some of their families. i've seen their anguish. how they ache for their sons and husbands. i gave these families my word. i made a vow that we could do everything to win the release of their loved ones and we have been tireless.
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on the sidelines of the nuclea negotiations our diplomats at the highest level, including secretary kerry, used every meeting to push iran to release our americans. i did so myself in my conversation with president rohani. after the nuclear deal was completed, the discussions between our governments accelerated. yesterday, these families finally got the news that they had been waiting for. jason is coming home. the courageous journalist for the washington post who wrote about the daily lives and hopes of the iranian people, he's been held for a year and a half. he embodies the brave spirit that gives life to the freedom of the press. jason has already been reunited with his wife and mom. pastor siyad is coming home.
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his unyielding faith has inspired people around the world. now he'll return to his church and community in idaho. a former sergeant in the marine corps. he's been held for four and a half years. today his parents and sisters are giving thanks in michigan. two other americans unjustly detained are also being released. an iranian who is in iran has a student. their cases were largely unknown to the world. when americans are freed, that's something we can all celebrate. i want to thank my national security team, especially secretary kerry. susan rice. brett mcgurk, avril haynes.
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our team worked tirelessly to get them home. iran has agreed to deepen our coordination as we worked to locate robert levinson, missing from iran for eight years. we'll never forget about bob. each and every day our hearts are with the family and we'll not rest until their families home again. the individuals were not charged with terrorism or any violent offenses. they are civilians and the release is a one time gesture to iran given the unique opportunity offered by there moment in larger circumstances at play. it reflects our willingness to
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engage to advance our mutual interest. nuclear deal implemented. american families reunited. the third piece of this work we got done was the united states and iran resolving a financial dispute that dated back three decades. we worked through a international tribunal to resolve claims with our countries. we're settling a long standing iranian government claim against the united states government. iran will be returned its own funds, including a appropriated interest. much less than the amount iran sought. for the united states, the settlement could save us billions of dollars that could have been pursued by iran. there was no benefit to the united states in dragging this
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out. with nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well. of course, even as we implement the nuclear deal and welcome our americans home, we recognize that there are profound differences between the united states and iran. we remain steadfast and opposing iran's destabilizing behavior elsewhere. we still have sanctions on iran for violations of human rights for support of terrorisms and for its ballistic missile program. we will continue to enforce these sanctions vigorously. iran's recent missile test was a violation of its international obligations. as a result the united states is imposing sanctions on individuals and companies working to advance iran's ballistic missile program.
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we're going to remain vigilant about it. we're not going to waiver in the defense our our security or allies and partners. i do want to speak directly to the iranian people. yours is a great civilization with a vibrant culture that has so much to contribute to the world in commerce and science and arts. for decades your government's threats and actions to destabilize the region has isolated iran from much of the world. now our governments are talking to each other. following the nuclear deal, you, especially young irans have the opportunity to build new ties with the world. we have a rare chance to pursue a new path. a different, better future that delivers progress for our people and the wider worlds. that's the opportunity before the iranian people. we need to take advantage of that.
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to my fellow americans, today we're united in welcoming home sons and husbands who in lonely prison cells have endured an absolute nightmare. they never gave in and they never gave up. at long last they can stand tall and bring deep the fresh air of freedom. as a nation, we face real challenges around the world and here at home. many of them will not be resolved quickly or easily. today's progress, americans coming home, an iran that's rolled back its nuclear program and accepted unprecedented monitoring of that program, these things are a reminder of what we can achieve when we leave with strength and wisdom, with courage and resolve and patience. america can do and has done big things when we work together. we can leave this world and make it
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