ANNOUNCER: This is the Washington Week Webcast Extra.
GWEN IFILL: Hello, and welcome to the Washington Week Webcast Extra, as you just heard.
I'm joined around the table by Michael Crowley of POLITICO, Jeanne Cummings of The Wall
Street Journal, Indira Lakshmanan of Bloomberg News, and David Sanger of The New York
Times.
As we watched the Iran negotiations reach their climax, we focused on a few key
personalities: John Kerry, Javad Zarif.
But who were the key players most of us never heard about, David?
DAVID SANGER: Well, I would say that one of them was Ali Akbar Salehi, who was - is the
head of the Iranian atomic energy agency, used to be the foreign minister of Iran.
And what was fascinating about him was that he showed up, because he had been a key
negotiator back in Lausanne in March and April, and then he fell very ill.
He went through three surgeries.
And by the time they got to Vienna, he wasn't there.
And one of the most critical things the United States was worried about was that they
couldn't get any of the nuclear negotiators to make a decision without him.
So the Iranian foreign minister, on the pretense of going back to have consultations in
Tehran, got onto his airplane from Vienna, flew back to Tehran, picked him up and brought
him back into Vienna.
And only then did this whole thing really get on the road.
GWEN IFILL: And also the sultan of Oman.
He was another behind the scenes player.
DAVID SANGER: The sultan of Oman was.
This was two-and-a-half years ago.
He - you know, a lot of people would come to the Obama White House and say, I can work
out a deal with the supreme leader.
At one point, Jim Jones, the former national security adviser, said not a week went by
when somebody didn't come by with an offer to get it going.
But the sultan of Oman actually delivered.
Remember those hikers who got imprisoned?
GWEN IFILL: Yeah.
DAVID SANGER: He helped get them out.
And that convinced President Obama that he had some juice in Tehran.
That's what began the secret negotiations in which Jake Sullivan and Bill Burns, two of
the top aides to Hillary Clinton, basically went over and started getting this going.
GWEN IFILL: I want to take - Indira to take us behind the scenes.
I know you guys were standing outside with your ears pressed to doors there at the
Coburg Palais.
(Laughter.)
INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Literally.
(Laughs.)
GWEN IFILL: Literally, hoping for any little tidbits.
DAVID SANGER: It wasn't that bad.
(Laughter.)
INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Well, some of it - some of it you actually didn't have to press your
ear to the door because it could be overheard.
And I'm talking about the really emotional moments, when, you know, John Kerry and Javad
Zarif, his opposite number from Iran, were really going at it because they realized they
were - you know, they were fighting over every detail, over every comma and T that was
being crossed in this document.
And there was one point where Kerry's aides told us where he really didn't know if this
was going to happen.
He didn't know if Zarif had the backing of Iran's supreme leader to get this deal done,
and at one point John Kerry said to him, you know, do you even want this?
And they were yelling at each other so much that the German foreign minister, who we
discovered through this whole process has a quite dry sense of humor, said the next day,
oh, I understand you had a very constructive meeting last night; the whole hotel could
hear you.
(Laughter.)
You know, it ended up - so there were several of these fights that really
burst out into the open because literally the rest of the hotel could hear them.
And then, in the end, it came to a very emotional moment, which was described to me by a
few different delegations, not just by the Americans, before we think that they're saying
it self-servingly.
But it was at the final moment, when all of the foreign ministers from the P5+1
countries, the great powers, and Iran met together in this room at the United Nations in
Vienna.
We were not in this room.
And privately - they asked everyone to leave except a few key aides, and privately they
said, OK, this is it, we've got it now.
And the moment kind of sank in slowly, and everyone was kind of in awe.
And then each foreign minister in order - alphabetical order of his country said something.
And the French foreign minister said this is Bastille Day and I hope that this deal has
the same great history as Bastille Day for us.
And the Iranian foreign minister said this is the opening, the end of our isolation, and
I hope that this can lead to new beginnings.
And John Kerry said, I went to war in Vietnam as a young man at age 22, and then he sort
of stopped because he choked up and his voice broke.
And he had to collect himself, and he said, and ever since then I have felt that you
have to exhaust every diplomatic possibility before resorting to war.
And literally, we were told by multiple delegations, that everyone clapped, all the
foreign ministers clapped, which was the first time anything like that had been done in
two years of negotiations.
And apparently also a few of the Iranian diplomats were wiping their eyes.
GWEN IFILL: A lot of emotion.
INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Pretty emotional, yeah.
GWEN IFILL: Well, you know that story must have made its way to
the White House, Michael.
Maybe that fueled some of the president's, I don't know, almost indignation about what
was great about this deal that he was certainly going to sell, and kind of the way he -
(laughs) - he forced the point on the reporters in the room in his news conference.
You were there.
MICHAEL CROWLEY: Yeah.
So one of my colleagues wrote a story whose headline was "Drama Obama."
You know, the
cool president at this press conference was raring to go.
His body language, everything about his presentation, including some improvisation,
which I'll explain, really signaled, number one, how immersed in the details of this
process he was.
I mean, he is fluent in this - in this deal.
And he believes firmly that reason and facts and logic and science are all on his side,
and he's primed for the debate.
His argument is that my opponents haven't even read the thing, they don't have a
realistic alternative, and they are illogical.
And he's so eager to make this argument that, among other things, when the topic shifted
from Iran - which had been the topic of the press conference for 45 minutes or so - to
Bill Cosby and prison reform, he said, I had some other things I wanted to say about Iran
you guys haven't asked me.
And he consults this list of notes and he says, let's see here.
And he's saying things like, well, inspections, sunset, have we gotten to that?
The reporters start calling things out.
And I think it's been -
GWEN IFILL: Now, if I'm a reporter in that room, I'm kind of insulted because he
doesn't trust me to have a smart question.
MICHAEL CROWLEY: There was an implication that, you know, you guys haven't asked all
the good questions.
Then it's a free-for-all, and I don't know that the - a White House briefing has been
like that in - a presidential briefing - in decades, where people are shouting things out
and he's just responding and it's all kind of broken down.
But he was loving it, and he was joking that, you know, I really enjoy this debate, and
I think he wants more of it.
Now, the question is, is he right?
I think sometimes - you know, I think a little bit of the Obamacare debate, where I
think he thought, you know, the facts and the - and the data is on my side, and what was
he confronted with?
Death panels.
And I think he's going to have a similar frustration with Congress this time.
GWEN IFILL: One final thing we want to talk about which we managed not to get to
magically on the program was Donald Trump.
When we talk about money, we talk about Donald Trump, right?
Let's listen what he had to say this week when he was asked whether
he was raising money.
DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)
A friend of mine comes up.
He said, I want to give you - a rich guy - I want to give you a lot of money.
I said, you know, honestly, don't - I don't need it.
GWEN IFILL: He doesn't need it, but he's only raised about a million dollars on his own
outside of his own pocket.
JEANNE CUMMINGS: Well, but that's without asking for a penny.
I mean, if anything, what that is - we always talk about how fundraising is the first
measure of voter support.
Well, in the case of Trump, it truly is.
He didn't ask for any of that.
That all just came in.
So that - those were some voters who were casting their first vote.
Now, the Trump money, I just hope he stays in the race for a really long time because I
want to keep writing about Donald Trump and his money.
(Laughter.)
GWEN IFILL: (Laughs.)
Speak for yourself.
JEANNE CUMMINGS: He has spent a half a million dollars on airplanes.
Who did he pay for those airplanes?
GWEN IFILL: Himself.
JEANNE CUMMINGS: Donald Trump.
(Laughter.)
It's just going to be amazing
to - where - his headquarters is $10,000 a month in rent - at the Trump Tower.
So this whole thing is just one big washing machine with Trump money all inside of it.
(Laughter.)
Now, the other thing that we found is that he has what we're calling a longshot
candidate premium when it comes to hiring employees because, you know, we all know these
aides go out, they give up their lives for almost two years, with the payback being a
great big title inside the White House, right?
Well, Trump, Dr. Carson, Bernie Sanders, mmm, maybe not.
So they got to pay if they want a good strategist.
Trump's strategist - campaign manager is getting paid $250,000 a year.
GWEN IFILL: Wow.
JEANNE CUMMINGS: That is almost double what Mitt Romney paid his campaign manager in
the last cycle.
So we - and we have seen the same with Carson.
Dr. Carson's paying ($)210,000.
GWEN IFILL: And the real cost will be which candidates fall out because Trump is still
in.
Well, thank you, everybody.
If you're dying for more, be sure to check out my take online, where I write this week
on the topic, who do these candidates think they are?
And we'll see you here next time on the Washington Week Webcast Extra.
