Hall of fame. Im chuck todd. Joining me to provide insight and analysis this morning are matt bai of yahoo news Helene Cooper of the New York Times, imy walter of the Cook Political Report and perry bacon from nbc news. Com. Welcome to sunday. Its meet the press. Announcer from nbc news in washington, this is meet the press. Good morning. Now comes the hard part the u. S. And its negotiating partners reached an agreement with iran on a framework of a deal to contain Irans Nuclear program. Not surprisingly the reaction is decidedly mixed. Irans foreign minister got a heros welcome when he arrived home. But more hawkish elements in each country criticized the deal. Hardliners on iran charge their side gave up too much to placate the United States. And here at home president obama faces a tough task of convincing not just republicans but Many Democrats that this deal is better than no agreement at all, which could allow iran to continue its Nuclear Program without limitations or inspections. One key ally the president has certainly been unable to convince is israels Prime Minister benjamin netanyahu. He joins me now live from jerusalem. Prime minister, happy passover. Welcome back to meet the press. Thank you. Happy holidays to all. I will have more than four questions for you i promise you that. Let me start with this, which is if this deal you were going to be against perhaps any deal that didnt bring iran down to zero centrifuges. Why not let this zeal diehl getdeal get implechltim implemented even for six months to see how this is implemented before trying to kill the deal . Not trying to kill any deal. Im trying to kill a bad deal. You say it is historic decision, historic deal, could be historically bad deal because it leaves the preeminent terror state of our time with a vast nuclear infrastructure, and, remember, not one centrifuge is destroyed thousands of centrifuges will be left spinning iranian not a single facility including underground facilities, Nuclear Facilities as being shut down. This is a deal that leaves iran with the capacity to produce the material for many, many Nuclear Bombs and it does so by lifting the sanctions pretty much up front so iran will have billions of dollars flown to its coffers, not for schools or hospitals or roads, but to pump up the worldwide terror machine and military machine which is busy conquering the middle east as we speak. The preeminent terror state of our time should not have access to a vast Nuclear Capability that will ultimately give them Nuclear Weapons. Thats concern for israel, for the region, for the peace of the world. Let me ask you this, you have a deal that was negotiated by the United States, china russia, britain, france, germany, all of them on one side of this deal. Youre on the other. Are you concerned that israel is being isolated from the World Community on this issue . No, i dont. Look, the entire world celebrated the deal with north korea. It was deemed to be a great breakthrough it would break into the program, you to would have inspectors that would do the job. And, of course everybody applauded it. It turned out to be a very, very bad deal. And you know where we are with north korea. I think the same thing would be true in the case of iran, except that iran is a great deal more dangerous than north korea. It is a militant islamic power built on regional domination. Bent on world domination. Openly says so. They just chanted death to america a few days ago on the streets of tehran. The same streets where theyre rejoiceing right now. Dont give the preeminent terror state of our time the access to a Nuclear Program that could help them make Nuclear Weapons. It is very bad for all of us. Well you, in 2012 contemplated a preliminary report that you kind of asked your cabinet for permission to potentially strike Irans Nuclear facilities. Do you still plan on keeping that option open even if this deal is implemented by the United Nations and by the United States . Chuck im the only israeli left standing. I never talked about our military option. But i will say this, i prefer a diplomatic solution. You know why . Because for any military option the country that will pay the biggest price is always israel. So we want a diplomatic solution, but a good one one that rolls back Irans Nuclear infrastructure and one that ties the final lifting of restrictions on Irans Nuclear program with a change of irans behavior. Mainly they stop their aggression in the region, stop the world wide terrorism and stop calling and working for the annihilation of israel. These are the requirements there is still time to put in place and ill use whatever means i have including this program to try to persuade people to go for this deal, which is the only one that will give us peace and security. Would you advise saudi arabia and egypt now to pursue their own Nuclear Program, given the way this deal looks in your eyes . No i wouldnt advise them to do that, chuck, but i think that despite the spoken words there is enormous concern throughout the sunni states in the region and i think one of the unfortunate, even tragic results of this deal, if it goes through, is that it would spark an arms race among the sunni states Nuclear Arms Race in the middle east. And the middle east crisscrossed with nuclear trip wires is a nightmare for the world. I think this deal is a dream deal for iran, and it is a nightmare deal for the world. There has been plenty of reports about israels Nuclear Deterrent strategy. Do you believe that in an ideal situation no middle eastern country would have Nuclear Weapons . In an ideal situation, it wouldnt have countries seeking to annihilate the state of israel and openly say that. The iran general said that on the eve of the signing or the announcement of this framework in lausanne, the commander of the sources in tehran says the destruction of israel is nonnegotiable. I think the real problem in the middle east is not the democracy of israel that has shown restraint and responsibility but it is the countries like iran that pursue Nuclear Weapons with the exclusive goal of annihilating us and also ultimately of conquering the middle east and threatening you. Thats why theyre developing icbns, intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, that are meant for one purpose only, to carry nuclear payloads to a theater near you. Theyre not intended for us. They already have missiles that reach us. Theyre developing icbms to reach the United States. Dont give them these weapons. Dont give them nuclear tips Nuclear Icbms with which they can threaten you. Sounds like you Want Congress to kill this deal. Sounds like you want the u. S. Congress to do everything in their power to kill this deal. Is that what you would like them to do . I would like the United States and the other members of the p5 plus 1 to get a better deal. There is still time. You can ratchet up the sanctions. Abiding sanctions were imposed for first time only in 2012. That got iran within 18 months to the table. Once you got to the table instead of ratcheting up the sanctions and the pressures in fact, you reduce the pressure and iran felt no need to make any concessions at all. You have time to insist on a better deal and to ratchet up the pressure. Thats the preferable route for all of us. I want to ask you a quick question on two state solution issues. Want to read you some sound from denis mcdonough, the white house chief of staff. Here is what he said right after your reelection. The word bords of israel and independent palestine should be base on the 1967 line with mutually agreed swaps. Each state needs borders and there must be safeguards for israels security. An occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must ind and the Palestinian People must have the right to live in and govern themselves in their own sovereign state. Are you comfortable with the president s chief of staff referring to israel as an occupier . Well you know, successive israeli governments including my own offered to end this dispute and have i have offered to have a demilitarized palestinian state recognize the one and only jewish state. That was and remains my position. What i said was that under the present circumstances, when president abbas not only refuses to recognize israel as the nation state of the jewish people, he embraces, he embraces hamas and outright calls for our destruction. And when you have every territory that is vacated in the middle east taken over by the forces of militant islam, those led by iran or isis, i think you know that we better make sure that if we want a twostate solution, we dont get the opposite, that is a nostate solution, a no state of israel solution. And that i think, requires that we work closely with our American Allies because we both want the same thing, perhaps not exact same borders, but the same principles. I dont want toa binational state. But if a palestinian state is created it should not be used as a platform to anigh litenihilate the one and only jewish state. Benjamin netanyahu thank you for spending part of your passover holiday with us here on meet the press. See you soon. Thank you. I can tell you that those who work for israels defense dont have a holiday. Fair enough. Thank you sir. Im joined by democratic senator chris murphy of connecticut, who has been supportive of efforts to reach a deal with irans senator. Welcome back to meet the press. Let me ask you this. You heard Prime Minister netanyahu not obviously he wants to see a better deal. Do you believe the United States should be negotiating for a better deal . Well i think we have a pretty remarkable deal on the table today. If you look at what our parameters were, at the outset for negotiated agreement you see the outlines of them right now. We have increased breakout time to a year. We have significantly rolled back their enrichment capability, were dismantling the potential plutonium path at iraq and have an inspections regime that is absolutely unprecedented. That will allow us to find a Covert Program if it exists outside of the known research facilities. The idea that we should just go back to the negotiating table and put back sanctions into place i think that doesnt understand the reality that with this deal on the table it would have been hard to get our partners especially russia and china to go back to sanctions when most of our objectives were met at the negotiating table. It is easy to say that we just continue to negotiate and effectively sanction iran into submission. I dont think that that is the deal that the rest of our negotiating partners signed up for. And thats the reality that we have to deal with. Senator what about the Prime Ministers point and frankly the point of others, were not asking iran to stop supporting terrorism. Were not asking iran to change its behavior. Were about to hand them more resources and they have been doing nothing arguably but expanding their sphere of influence in the middle east. Now youre giving them more money to do that by lifting the sanctions. And we didnt ask for a behavior change on anything other than nuclear inspections. Did we just ask for too little . Well, it is true that this deal doesnt turn iran from a bad guy into a good guy. But it is a little bit rewriting of history to suggest these negotiations were about all of the other activityies of iran in the region. We can start to lift up the moderate elements, within iran, the internationalists who want them to be sitting as a member of the World Community so we can talk about all the other issues. It is also important to point out we have a host of other sanctions that are in place trying to change their behavior on their Ballistic Missile program, on their human rights violation and on their support for terrorism. Those sanctions dont go away. They stay in place and congress and the president reserves the right to increase those sanctions if they continue to undermine stability in the middle east, notwithstanding the progress were making on the Nuclear Program. So you support, let me get this right, you support potentially increasing sanctions if you connected to their support, say, of the hujis in yemen but pulling back sanctions that are connected to the Nuclear Program. We have sanctions in place that dont go away that are connected to other activities. I think congress always reserves the right to change our policy visavis iran if they continue to act in a way that they are and the rest of the region. Absolutely we reserve girour right to continue to try to use whatever leverage we have at our disposal to try to make them a less of an evil within that region. Okay. But do you want as a compromise to get congress to potentially accept this nuclear deal, would you be willing to increase sanctions and other spots in iran to pull back in other places as part of the agreement, not to undermine the president s ability to negotiate this agreement . Well, i dont know we need to talk about that right now. I think we should get through the nuclear negotiations. I think this will give us an opportunity potentially to talk to the iranians, either directly or through interimmediateries, about solutions to other problems in the region. You take this issue off of the table, you empower people like rouhani and czarzarif who may want a different role and you may see a pathway to solving some of these other problems and you can do it potentially without new rounds of additional sanctions. Quickly, on another topic the Ranking Member of the Senate ForeignRelations CommitteeRobert Menendez was indicted on corruption charges. He stepped down as Ranking Member, but the New York Times , a home newspaper for yourself in connecticut there, has called for senator menendez to resign from the senate completely. Do you think senator menendez ought to consider a full resignation . I dont. I think our judicial system works in a Pretty Simple way. Youre innocent until proven guilty. Hes a respected member of our caucus. Hes not going to be the leader of the Foreign Relations committee any longer but he deserves a chance to be able to have his day in court before hes forced out of the United States senate. All right, senator chris murphy democrat from connecticut thanks for spending part of your Easter Sunday this morning with us here on meet the press. Thanks a lot, chuck. When we come back those religious liberty laws are they about protecting freedom of conscience or more about giving people a license to discriminate . President ial hopeful bobby jindal of louisiana joins me edward jones. This is shirley speaking. How may i help you . Oh hey, neill, how are you . How was the trip . With nearly 7 million investors hes right here. Hold on one sec. Youd expect us to have a highly skilled call center. Kevin, neill holleys on line one. Ok, great. And we do. Its how edward jones makes sense of investing. E plane and thought. Yeah empty seat next to me. And then i saw him slowly coming down the aisle. One of those guys who just cant stop talking. I was downloading a movie. I was trying to download a movie. I have verizon. I dont. I get that little spinning wheel. Download didnt finish. I finished the download. Headphones on. And im safe. I didnt finish in time. So. Many. Stories. Vo join us and save without settling. Verizon. Sunday dinners at my house. Its a full day for me, and i love it. But when i started having back pain my sister had to come help. I dont like asking for help. I took tylenol but i had to take six pills to get through the day. So my daughter brought over some aleve. Its just two pills, all day and now, im back aleve. Two pills. All day strong, all day long. And for a good nights rest, try aleve pm for a better am. Those were pictures from pope francis, easter mass, attended by thousands of the faithful in vatican city. In honor of easter and passover nerd screen has a bit of a religious theme to it, but you have to go to our website to see the whole thing. We looked at the connection between how often people attend religious services and their political leanings. It is much different than simply doing it by religious denomination. That and more can be found at meet the press. Nbc. Com. Mee i care deeply about the gulf. I grew up in louisiana. I went to school here. Ive been with bp ever since. Today, i lead a team that sets our Global Safety standards. After the spill we made two commitments. To help the gulf recover and become a safer company. Weve worked hard to honor both. Bp has spent nearly 28 billion dollars so far to help the gulf economy and environment. And five years of Research Shows that the gulf is coming back faster than predicted. Weve toughened Safety Standards too. Including enhanced training. And 24 7 on shore monitoring of our wells drilling in the gulf. 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