Fox News - February 12, 2012

Iran has been a very prominent issue in this republican race with completely contrasting views. On one hand you've got Ron Paul, who says Iran does not threaten American security and he calls claims that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapon "war propaganda". Yet on the other hand, Rick Santorum has praised the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. He calls it a "wonderful thing". Mitt Romney said Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be indicted. Ahmadinejad claims he will make a big announcement about Iran’s nuclear program shortly. Can Iran be stopped?

Eric Shawn:

Joining us now is former presidential candidate and mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani. Mr. Mayor Thank you for coming in.

Giuliani: Nice to be with you Shawn. Good Morning.

Eric Shawn: First let me start with what happened yesterday. Two wins for Mitt Romney, within two hours, CPAC, a surprise, and also Maine some Paul pullout. Your reaction?

Giuliani: I think it's an example of how this race has gone up and down. Newt Gingrich wins, then Mitt Romney wins, then Santorum wins, now Romney has won several. I still think it's an open race. I think Governor Romney has the edge. There's no question about it, but Rick Santorum is definitely in there, still has a real chance to prove himself, I think. I think Newt who has nine lives, probably used 6 of them already, maybe 7. But he's got a couple more to use up so, I don't know we are going to have to see. And I think Sara Palin is absolutely right, they should now stop the negative campaigning against each other. We know all the distinctions between them; most of it is about their prior record. I'd like to hear them talk about what they would do about Iran, what they would do about North Korea, what they are going to do about the economy, taxes, healthcare …

…

Eric Shawn: Speaking of frightening Americans about the issue of Iran and the Obama administration, you were very tough yesterday in your speech on the administration on Iran. We just heard from John Bolton in the last hour potentially there are estimates that Iran can be able to assemble a nuclear bomb, potentially within 6 to 12 months. What do you think?

Giuliani: I think first of all, those are realistic estimates. I thought the national security estimate that was put out in the middle of when I was running for president, late 2007, early 2008, that Iran had ceased its nuclear ambitions, I thought it was some kind of sick political document trying to hurt President Bush as opposed to everything I know about intelligence. It's a good deal; I've been involved in that as you know for longer than I have in politics. I have no doubt that Iran is on the way of establishing a nuclear weapon. I think they are very close, I can't tell you if its 6 months, a year, a year and half or 2 years, but its in the foreseeable future and forget about just a missile capacity, keep focusing on the ability to hand off nuclear weapons to the terrorists they are presently employing, using, financing. They are the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world! Should the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world have nuclear weapons? Insane! Totally insane!

Eric Shawn: You were very critical of the president saying he shouldn't write any more dear Ayatollah letters, yes, we're talking about the letters that he wrote.

Giuliani (laughter): what is he thinking about?

Eric Shawn: you called it quote "a joke". But some would say shouldn't you try to negotiate with them, talk with them?

Giuliani: Yea, if you are 15 years old, totally immature, and you have no idea how power politics works, and you've never faced evil in your life, and had a sense that hey, they've already told us they don't want to negotiate with us, and we've seen what happens when you beg dictators and tyrants to negotiate. They take advantage. Just read American history and you'll learn that. You'll learn that from the 30's, you'll learn it from the 50's and 60's.  You'll learn it from what happened before the attack on the World Trade Center. We are not responding effectively enough.

He's writing them letters, "Dear Ayatollah, Please talk to me. Best Regards, President Obama". And the ayatollah has responded several times, by saying to go … you know were.

Eric Shawn: Yes, he's exactly

Giuliani: How about we get the point! You know what the ayatollah will respect? Not a letter, but a statement of strength. A statement that we will not allow you to become nuclear, we don't want to engage in military action against you, we want you to give us every reason not to, but if you don't this is the strongest military on earth, and if you don't think we can take out your nuclear devices, you are out of your mind.

And that will be target practice for us.

Eric Shawn: There are some thoughts that potentially in the spring or summer Israel could launch a military strike, or maybe not, the sanctions are continuing. You've also got the assassinations of the nuclear scientists.

Giuliani: I'm not sure Israel can do it. I'm not sure it can be done with just surgical bombings. It may require some special forces; it may require something more than that. But here's the point; whatever is needed. The question is: is it more dangerous to use military force to take out Iran as a nuclear power or is it more dangerous to have a nuclear Iran?

I say the latter is much more dangerous. And I think if you start talking tough, and they start to believe it, I think the chance of having to use military force is lessened dramatically.

What's missing from here is they figure they have president Obama predicted. This guy wants to write letters, he's begging to talk to us. From their point of view that shows significant weakness.

Eric Shawn: But the administration has backed sanctions and tougher sanctions!

Giuliani: Well they've lived with sanctions forever and it doesn't really seem to stop them. Since you've got Russia vetoing the significant sanctions, and you've got China vetoing, those are two big economies you continue to deal with, and it really ameliorates a lot of the damage that the sanctions do. So they have like a safety valve, that if that's not cut off, the sanctions only have half their impact, if that.

Eric Shawn: You spoke yesterday at a conference about this, how do you see this playing out?

Giuliani: I believe that if we don't become very serious, and convince the Iranians that we will use significant military force to stop them, they are just going to move straight ahead. I believe what Ahmadinejad is going to say, is "we're moving in this direction, but we are willing to talk."

That's the dodge. That's how he gets all the left wing silly romantic dreaming about peace people to say "Oh, let's negotiate with them". He'll get a little more delay that way.

I think we are going to have to be prepared to use military force and we are going to have to give the signal that we are not so darn reluctant to do it. I think that might create a different psychology.

I also think yesterday's conference was about the MEK. I think we should delist them as a terrorist organization. I think that would be a real shot in the face of Ahmadinejad and the ayatollah. They've had this organization listed a terrorist organization for years. There is a reason they are doing that.

They are afraid of them. That’s why they are doing that.

Eric Shawn: It’s an organization of activists…

Giuliani: It is a resistance organization that was involved in overthrowing the Shah, was involved on their side in the early days of the revolution, so they’ve got a history back then. That’s a bad one. Than all of a sudden they became concerned with the excessive religious nature of the government, they turned. And over 100,000 of them have been slaughtered by the ayatollah.  I have a book at home of over 20,000 people, doctors, lawyers, teachers killed by them. They have gotten them designated a terrorist organization. The Clinton administration did it back in the late 90’s in order to ingratiate themselves to Iran to talk when Rafsanjani became prime minister. Maybe a decent decision at the time, didn’t work out, as you heard, Louie Freeh was the head of the FBI at the time, says, there was no basis to declaring them a terrorist organization back then. There is no basis for it now.

Eric Shawn: well some say, there’s a report this week that says, that they are involved in the assassinations of the nuclear scientist, that they’re being trained by Mossad to do that. They deny that.

Giuliani: they deny it … I don’t know what do believe, maybe true, may not be true. If they were involved, than I think they belong as TIME person of the year. Right, just think about that, what they are trying to do is they are trying to take out the Iranian regime. Well, the people who took out the Egyptian regime, the people who took out the Libyan regime, the people who are taking out the Assad Regime and Occupy Wall Street were TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR for protests.

These people are trying to take out a regime that is ten times worse than all of that combined.

Eric Shawn: But would someone say that killing a scientist, a civilian is terrorism?

Giuliani: Unless that scientist is working on a weapon of mass destruction that’s going to be put in the hands of a maniac, would killing some of the German scientists working for Adolf Hilter on how we do human cloning or how we develop the V rocket that could have ended up changing the balance, killing a few of those people is that terrorism? Or is that necessary central policy?

Than why is that everything than that happened in Egypt, libya, how do we support those people? Where they terrorist? When they were killing members of the Mobarak government, members of the Ghadafi government? After all they are going up against a government that has killed millions, millions of people.

The regime in Iran make Ghadafi, Mobarak and even Assad look like, not so bad.

Eric Shawn: Finally Mr. Mayor what do you want the administration to do? What do you want this country..

Giuliani: I want this administration to get realistic and get tough about Iran. Stop this nonsense of talking to them, which goes back to when he was debating Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton told him to his face, that he is naive. Stop it. Cut it out Mr. President. They don’t want to talk to you.

You know what they want to hear from you, you are tough, you are capable of attacking them if that is necessary and that you are not going to sit there and labor over you are willing to do it if that is necessary to stop them from becoming a nuclear power. And he should say to them, in the toughest language he can come up with, there’s no way on earth I’m going to let you become a nuclear power. It’s just too darn dangerous. The danger of the cold war was nuclear weapons in the hands of the irresponsible irrational people. The ayatollah and Ahmadinejad has proven to us beyond our reasonable doubt that they are irresponsible, they should not have nuclear weapons in their hands, its dangerous for Israel, its dangerous for America, its dangerous for England and its dangerous for the world.

Eric Shawn: An ominous warning on Sunday morning from Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Mayor, Thank you.

Thank you for coming in this morning.

Giuliani: Thank you. It’s always good to see you.

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WABC News Radio

Welcome back, we’re religion on the line, I’m Rabbi Joseph Potasnick and I’m Deacon Kevin (McCaul?)

Rabbi: It is a great honor to go to the conf line to speak with the former New York city Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, and let me add, a very close, personal friend, and you know where I met the mayor?

Deacon: No.

Rabbi: Church

Deacon: Did you really?

Rabbi: It was St. Patrick’s that brought us together. Where else do you meet a mayor?

Deacon: Right. I’m one degree away from the Mayor. We have a mutual friend, Allen Plackard, and I live vicariously through Allen.

Rabbi: Good morning Mayor Giuliani.

Giuliani: Good morning both of you. How are you?

Rabbi: I’m alright, thank you. Let me also thank Dr. Eve Epstein for helping arrange the interview today, I know she was with you yesterday.

Giuliani: Yes she was.

Rabbi: This issue of Camp Ashraf and former dissidents in Iran, who’ve been labeled terrorists and cannot have that label remove thus far. Talk to us about it. Who are they? What do they represent?

Giuliani: Sure. It’s a very traumatic and very, very horrible human rights issue. These are Iranians. They belong to a group, the MEK, that way back opposed the Shah, and was instrumental in overthrowing the Shah, instrumental in establishing the first government in Iran. And then when the government turned excessively religious, they turned on the government or maybe the government turned on them, and started killing their people. That started in 1981, so that was two years after the revolution began, and so far documented, the Ayatollahs, Mullahs, various versions of that theocracy have killed over 120,000 of their people. I have a book in my house of 10,000 pictures of people who were killed. These include doctors, teachers, to just regular ordinary people. And they began a resistance movement. The resistance movement begins during the Iran Iraq war. During the Iran Iraq war because they wanted to free their people, they sided with Saddam Hussein, with Iraq, as on occasion by the way, we did. And so when that war was over a lot of them couldn’t return to Iran so they were put in a camp called Camp Ashraf which is in northern Iraq, not far from the Iranian border, and some of these people have been there for over 25 years. And it’s a home, it’s a city. It’s not a camp. I mean over the years they developed their own schools, they developed their own sports facilities. When you go there you feel like you’re actually in a pretty nice city. In 2003 the Iraqi government was concerned and Iran was concerned. They gave up whatever remaining military capacity they had, which wasn’t much at the time, they gave up at the request of the American government. They gave up all their guns. They turned in their guns, they signed a compact with the American government that they would never use force, and in return for that the American government promised them protection against Iraq because the Shiite element in Iraq hates them. The Shiite element in Iraq is aligned in a large part with Iran and Iran wants them destroyed because they see them as a threat to the regime. And then in ’08 we turned the camp over to the Iraqis. Since ’08, there have been two raids on the camp, conducted by Maleki, all told he’s 47 people, injured 1000. Just slaughtered them, no reason for the raids. None, except Maleki’s wanting to ingratiate himself with the Iranian government. Now they’re going to move them from Camp Ashraf to a place much closer to the airport in Baghdad, and there’s no reason for the move because they qualify for refugee status, the UN has a system set up for qualifying them for refugee status. They’ve all filled out their applications; they’re all going to head to other countries. Italy has just agreed to take 40 of them. You could keep them at the camp they’re at, and you could move them right out of there. So they’re moving them into a new camp, except the new camp is 100 times smaller than the old one, looks, I think, like a prison camp. Some of my friends and colleagues who were part of this like former General Mukasey who ran the bureau of prisons says this looks more like a concentration camp. And it looks like an excuse to see if they can weed out a few more, kill a few more, turn a few over to Iran for questioning. Now recently, the last couple of days, this article comes out of the State Department, out of Obama’s State Department saying MEK has been helpful to Israel in killing some of the scientists that are part of the nuclear program and therefore this reiterates the fact that they’re terrorists.

Rabbi: What genius by the way leaked that story?

Giuliani: Well that genius belongs in the federal prison. I mean now MEK says it’s not true. But even if it is true, and you and I know sometimes in diplomacy in foreign affairs there’s plausible deniability. Even if it is true, don’t they qualify for being Time Person of the Year like the dissidents in Libya, in Syria, in Egypt. What are they doing? They’re overthrowing the worst regime in the Middle East. These people overthrew regimes in the Middle East that weren’t as bad.

Rabbi: Mr. Mayor what I don’t understand is, here we have America that lost so many lives trying to change the government in Iraq. Maleki wouldn’t be in power without America and yet here he is putting Ashraf not only in danger, he’s helping to liquidate the members of Ashraf and is just completely deaf to the concerns of America.

Giuliani: Yesterdays program at the Waldorf was started by Patrick Kennedy. It included Howard Dean and Patrick Kennedy, certainly you know liberal Democrats right? It also included Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, a conservative Republican. It included Michael Mukasey, a distinguished judge and former Attorney General under President Bush. It included Louie Freeh, the FBI Director under Bill Clinton; it included me, who has a long history in law enforcement, going back much longer than politics, a former Chief of the Military, General Sheldon, the guy who was commander of this base, Camp Ashraf. Here’s what every single one of them said, all of them have studied this group. This group’s not a terrorist group. Louie Freeh who was there at the time they were designated a terrorist group says it was only done for political purposes. It was done because the Clinton administration thought they had a breakthrough with Iran. There was a more moderate government. Rafsanjani took over in Iran and they were kind of sucking up to Iran. They were trying to figure out if we… Iran hates this group which gives me great confidence that maybe this group could have a lot of success inside Iran undercutting them because, they are obsessive about getting people to list them as terrorists. Now Europe has delisted them The European Union had a formal proceeding said, no longer a terrorist group, if they ever were, they haven’t been for the last ten or fifteen years. They’re pledged to democracy, they’re pledged to secular government. A woman is the president-elect of the organization; they’re pledged to women’s rights. So the European Union takes them off the list. United Kingdom, they go to court, have a trial in the United Kingdom, taken off the list. They go to Court in the United States, it goes to Hilary Clinton, she hasn’t made a decision. The Court ordered her two years ago to decide. And suggested that the Court’s going to come out in the United States that they have in the UK, the European Union, that it’s not a terrorist group, but Hilary Clinton is sitting on the decision, the administration will not delist them.  And we think the reason for that is President Obama still labors under the illusion that he can talk to the Ayatollah.

Deacon: We’re speaking with former New York Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, and we’re speaking about Camp Ashraf, and actually Iraq and Iran and a whole bunch of different things that are going on here. Two questions for you mayor and again like the Rabbi said, thank you so much for being with us this morning. One question is, what can the average American do to help in this situation? When you put names like Freeh and Giuliani and Kennedy and Dean on the same side of an issue, there seems to be consensus here.

Giuliani: Well we have had some success. They were going to just relocate them on Christmas Day, and not tell anybody, and we stopped that. So now there’s still Camp Ashraf where they’re protected. The most immediate thing is to protect the lives of these people. Forty-seven of them have already been killed and some of the speakers yesterday and I’m not an expert about what goes on inside Iran but some of the Generals and some of the Intelligence people from Republican and Democratic administrations have accused Maleki of being a mass murderer, and raised the very same question that Rabbi Potasnick was raising, he’s our creature, I mean my gosh we put him there. Now we’ve got a guy doing in Iraq what Saddam Hussein used to do. And, what’s that all about?

Deacon: And we’re subsidizing it.

Giuliani: Yeah, but the main thing is, those people have to be protected, and they should be kept at Camp Ashraf, and they should be relocated as refugees from Camp Ashraf, so that this move doesn’t create an opportunity to do what we think the government wants to do which is to kill some more of them, or turn some of them over to Iran so Iran can torture them. Then the second thing that has to be done is, they have to be delisted as a terrorist group because if they are they can be far more effective in dealing with destabilizing the government. And finally why is everybody getting angry at them if in fact they are helping Israel to stop the nuclear program? It would seem to me, we should be giving them medals for doing that.

Rabbi: What are your thoughts? You know obviously we hear much about Iran, Israel, America…Do you see the sanctions as being that crippling that they’re going to change the direction of Iran or do you ultimately see a military option being utilized?

Giuliani: The only way I see a military option eventually not being utilized is if we can convince the maniacs in Iran that we will use one. You understand what I’m saying? In other words I think that we will back them down if they believe that we would bomb them and attack them and do serious damage to them. If they think Obama is not capable of that, they will then just play out his bluff and go ahead and I think can deal with the sanctions because, they always have China and Russia who are going to do business with them and make up a lot of the shortfall. And unless we get China and Russia on our side, and it doesn’t sound like we’re getting Russia on our side, we can’t get the sanctions complete enough so that the sanctions would crush them. It will hurt them, it will hurt them a lot, but they can deal with that. But I think if they felt that President Obama was to make my day, give me a chance to take out those facilities, you’d see a very different picture and this is where Obama really hurts us with this desire to talk and discuss and negotiate. See anytime they want to put things off they say oh ok we’ll suspend things and we’ll talk for six months. Meanwhile behind the scenes, they’re developing their nuclear capacity. And the President should also stop writing letters to the Ayatollah. Isn’t this a little crazy? I mean, the president of the United States two weeks ago writes a letter to the Ayatollah. What does he put in the letter? Dear Ayatollah, I’m begging to meet with you, will you please meet with me? I would love to talk to you and be reasonable. Best Regards, Barack Obama. The Ayatollah, I don’t want to say how the Ayatollah responds… you know it’s basically go to….

Deacon: So if that’s the mentality of the Obama administration where does this put Israel?

Giuliani: It puts Israel in a very precarious situation right? This is the first time the Israeli Prime Minister has to sit there in his office and wonder is the United States really there? Will the United States really be there? Go back to Truman through Bush, American presidents, even Jimmy Carter, he became anti-Israel more after he left the White House. But when he was in the White House he could count on them. I can’t give you a possible prediction of how President Obama will react. I can tell you how he should react. He should react from the point of view of our interests in Israel totally co-align. We’re exactly in the same spot. They’ve threatened to annihilate the state of Israel. Israel one of our closest friends. You should take them seriously. You should take Ahmadinejad at his word that he does intend to annihilate the state of Israel. I have no basis by which to say oh geez he just goes around saying that but he doesn’t really mean it.

Rabbi: I think one of the things we’ve learned about the hate mongers, when they say it, they mean it.

Giuliani: Well and it’s safer to say he means it

Deacon: Once the American Presidnet spent more time worrying about the American Bishops than he does the Iranian Ayatollah, I think we’ll be in better shape.

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