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Excerpts of Interview with Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week”
Senator Marco Rubio
June 16, 2013
Full Interview: http://youtu.be/QPlhxmJkjdc
Note: Transcript as published on http://abcnews.go.com.
RUBIO: IRAN MUST ABANDON ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS FOR BETTER RELATIONS WITH U.S. AND WORLD
ABC’s Jonathan Karl: “We obviously had a big election in Iran over the weekend. The most moderate candidate won. So let — let me ask you this, is Iran under a President Rohani going to be potentially easier to deal with? Less of a threat than Iran under President Ahmadinejad?”
Senator Marco Rubio: “First of all, moderate from — by Iranian political standards is not what we could describe as moderate here in the West, but let me just say that I hope so, because the people of Iran do not want the future that their leaders have wanted. The people of Iran want to engage with the rest of the world, do not want to be isolated, don’t want Iran going back to the 16th and 17th century. They’d like to be part of the 21st century. The people of Iran, and hopefully this will be a step in that direction.
“But I’m not all that optimistic. At the end of the day, in order to have better relations, not just with the United States but with the world, Iran knows exactly what it needs to do. It needs to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions, and it needs to pledge to walk away from these things. And unfortunately, this gentleman who was just elected is a strong supporter of the nuclear program and the nuclear weaponization as well. And so the bottom line is that that we are hopeful that that’s the case, but at the end of the day, you know, the supreme leader calls the shots in Iran, and it’s still the same supreme leader that has put Iran on this very dangerous track.”
RUBIO: IMMIGRATION REFORM BILL MUST HAVE STRONGER BORDER SECURITY PROVISIONS
Rubio: “This is how the legislative process is supposed to work. You offer an idea, you get public input and the input of your other colleagues. From these criticisms or observations come out new ideas about how to make it better, and of course you can’t ignore that. Those things need to be addressed. And we have the opportunity to do that now, in particular on the border security element.
“Look, the vast majority of Americans, the vast majority of conservative Republicans are prepared to support immigration reform, but only if we can ensure that we’re not going to have another wave of illegal immigration in the future. And so I think they have pointed to valid criticisms of how the border security plan is structured in the bill, and quite frankly very reasonable ways to address it. …
“I think the debate now is about what that border security provision looks like. And if we do that, this bill will have strong bipartisan support. If we fail, we’re going to keep trying, because at the end of the day, the only way we’re going to pass an immigration reform law out of the House and Senate so the president can sign it is, that it has real border security measures within it.”