Iranian Negotiations A Trainwreck

11:34 AM ET

 

Zakaria: Iran nuclear agreement a train wreck on the way

CNN speaks with Fareed about his interview this week with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. This is an edited version of the transcript. You can watch the full interview with Rouhani on “Fareed Zakaria GPS” this Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN.
Rouhani said that there would be no destruction of existing centrifuges “under any circumstances.”  It seems he is going even going further than what his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, told CNN’s Jim Sciutto this week. What’s going on here? Because there could be, potentially, some sort of fundamental disagreement between Iran and the United States.
That’s exactly what I worry about. I think you’re right. It’s the first time an Iranian official – and this is the president – has laid out his vision, if you will, of the final agreement. And what he said to me, what Rouhani said was, look, we intend to have a robust civilian nuclear program. You can have as many inspections as you want, but we are not going to roll back that program. In fact, we’re going to expand that program.
Now, that’s a very different vision from what the United States has laid out, where they expected significant rollback of the program. They talked about shuttering some of those centrifuges. They talked about dismantling the heavy water reactor at Arak. But he [Rouhani] made clear, categorically, specifically and unequivocally, none of that is going to happen.
So I think we have a train wreck on its way here.