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Amanpour: Negotiated deal as alternative to war
By Christiane Amanpour, CNN
When the deal between Iran and the major world powers was announced in Geneva, Iranian reporters greeted Foreign Minister Javad Zarif with cheers at his press conference, and Iranians gave him and his team a hero’s welcome when they landed back home in Tehran. Such is the desire to get past this decades long crisis.
Many are cautiously hailing the six-month interim accord – which sees Iran freeze and rollback significant elements of its nuclear program in return for relatively modest and reversible U.S. sanctions relief.
One senior Western intelligence official describes it as significant in delaying Iran’s program and pushing back its so-called breakout ability towards a nuclear weapon.
Yet the official predicts a much more difficult set of negotiations ahead, which are aimed at finally settling Iran’s nuclear parameters as a limited and entirely peaceful program, in return for a total lifting of sanctions. This will require each side giving up much more than they have done this weekend in Geneva.
In the meantime the Obama Administration has a tough sales job ahead persuading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the merits of this approach, and to stop him slamming this diplomacy as a “historic mistake”.
On Monday, I spoke with U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes about Iran's enrichment after a potential permanent deal, his reaction to Israel's criticism, and when sanctions will be lifted, which he said could start "within the coming weeks."
The deal is not “historic,” as some have said. In 2003, under the leadership of reform President Mohammad Khatami, Iran completely froze its nuclear program for about two years. Hassan Rouhani, now President, was then Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator.
So why was a deal not struck earlier?
Former Australian PM Gillard on spying, sexism and the future
Part 1: Former Australian PM Gillard
Part one of Christiane Amanpour's conversation with Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Part 2: Former Australian PM Gillard
Part two of Christiane Amanpour's conversation with Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
By Mick Krever, CNN
Allegations that Australia spied on the Indonesian president’s phone are a “big issue” for the two countries’ relationship, former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview conducted Tuesday and aired Thursday.
It was her first news interview since being forced from power by her own party earlier this year.
As fallout from NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s revelations landed in Australia, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono froze military and intelligence gathering with his Australian ally.
Gillard's successor, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, has refused to apologize for the alleged spying, but has expressed regret for the embarrassment that media reports have caused to Indonesia.
Though Gillard said it was “not appropriate” for her to comment on “intelligence questions,” she praised U.S. President Barack Obama’s reaction to similar allegations that the U.S. spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“If he had been aware he wouldn’t have authorized it, and he could certainly say for the future that it wouldn’t happen again,” Gillard told Amanpour. “And I think that that’s an appropriate response from Australia to Indonesia at this very difficult time.”
Caroline Kennedy: From Princess of Camelot to U.S. ambassador
By Lucky Gold, CNN
Imagine a world where an American princess grew up to become America’s newest ambassador.
Among all the images of the Kennedy Presidency, perhaps the most enduring and endearing are of a father.
Before he became the leader of the free world, JFK played peek-a-boo with Caroline, his new born baby girl.
Two years later, he occupied the Oval Office with his finger on the nuclear trigger – and yet he still made time each day for his growing daughter and her little brother John.
We are ‘quite rightly obsessed’ with JFK, says historian
By Mick Krever, CNN
Fifty years after President John F. Kennedy’s murder, we are still obsessed with the young leader, and it’s no wonder, says historian Simon Schama.
“Even though John Kennedy was the ultimate political animal, like his brother and his father, we somehow felt that he was a richly complete human being,” Schama, who was 18 when Kennedy was gunned down, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
“As Jackie said, actually, partly about the complications of their married life: He was it all, because he wanted to live it all, and that projected itself right around the world.”
“So we are quite rightly obsessed with that rare and charismatic personality,” Schama said.
Eyewitness, a journalist, describes day JFK was killed
By Mick Krever, CNN
On the day that the American president was shot, the Dallas sky started cloudy but soon turned a brilliant blue.
It was a “wonderful November day,” recalls Hugh Aynesworth, who was a young reporter at the Dallas Morning News.
Incredibly, Aynesworth was witness to all three major events that frightful November: The president’s brutal assassination, the arrest of his killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Oswald’s own murder by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby.
He has written a book about his experience, “November 22, 1963: Witness to History.”
Aynesworth hadn’t been assigned to cover the trip of President John F. Kennedy – he was on the science and aerospace beat – but he decided to go down to Dealey Plaza just the same.
“You don’t see a president that often in your city, and I just wanted to see,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
‘Clear as day’ Iran would enrich after nuclear deal says ‘optimistic’ former U.S. official
By Mick Krever, CNN
It’s “as clear as day” that under any nuclear deal, Iran will continue to enrich fissile material, the former U.S. official on non-proliferation Mark Fitzpatrick told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
“There’s going to be some enrichment at the end of the day of any deal that’s done,” Fitzpatrick said. “Iran is just simply not going to capitulate no matter how many sanctions they face.”
Though the details of on-going nuclear talks between Iran and world powers are scarce, most agree that a deal would include the temporary removal of some economic sanctions in exchange for assurances that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons – though the country would likely still be allowed to enrich uranium for civilian and research use.
Though the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – to which Iran is signatory – allows for nuclear enrichment, numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions have called on Iran to halt all enrichment activity.
Fitzpatrick said he is “unusually optimistic” that the pieces are in place for a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
Elton John and Billie Jean King: 40 years of friendship, philanthropy, activism
Part 1: Billie Jean King & Elton John
CNN's Christiane Amanpour speaks with Tennis legend Billie Jean King and musician Elton John.
Part 2: Billie Jean King & Elton John
CNN's Christiane Amanpour speaks with Tennis legend Billie Jean King and musician Elton John.
Part 3: Billie Jean King & Elton John
CNN's Christiane Amanpour speaks with Tennis legend Billie Jean King and musician Elton John.
By Ken Olshansky and Mick Krever, CNN
When Billie Jean King first met Elton John, she nearly fainted.
“We met at a party,” King says.
It was 1973 and King was at the height of her fame as the premiere female tennis champion. She asked the host of the event what the reason for the party was.
“And he goes, ‘Oh, it's for Elton John,’” King recalls. “And I about fainted, because Elton was my favorite, but I'd never met him.”
“I'm so old,” John said as King chuckled, “I started playing [tennis] with a wooden racquet and hitting a ball up against a wall.”
Billie Jean King and Elton John spoke with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview that aired on Tuesday.
They are two revolutionaries, two comrades in arms, and this year they have two very special anniversaries.
Iran existential threat? Israel ‘is indestructible,’ shouldn't be governed with ‘holocaust memories,’ says fmr Mossad chief
By Mick Krever, CNN
In making a case against the oft-repeated argument that Iran is an “existential threat” to Israel, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that the country “is indestructible” and should be governed with “self-confidence,” not "memories of the holocaust."
As Iran and world powers negotiate a potential nuclear deal, Halevy says that Israel should be engaged rather than sit on the side-lines.
“I think that Iran is a very serious threat,” Halevy said from Tel Aviv. But “I believe that Israel is indestructible. And I think that this should be the basic tenet of every Israeli leader to have self-confidence, and the confidence in the future of Israel.”
That confidence, he said, “has to be the point of departure” for governing the country.
“It is wrong to bring up the memories of the past, the memories of the holocaust of so many years ago, when we were defenseless,” he said. “Then we were defenseless; now we are not defenseless.”
Halevy was born and spent his early years in the U.K., and he spoke with fondness of Winston Churchill.
Bad Iran deal ‘will lead to war,’ Israel minister warns
By Mick Krever, CNN
A bad nuclear deal between Iran and world powers “will lead to war,” Naftali Bennett, Israeli economy minister and leader of the hawkish Jewish Home party, warned on Monday in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
“There’s no one who wants a war less than us,” Bennett said. “However, it’s one of those cases where a bad deal will lead to a war, and a good deal with actually prevent war.”
A good deal, he said, would be one that “dismantles the nuclear weapon production machine.”
He warned of a so-called breakout capability, in which Iran would not actually build a nuclear weapon, but rather the ability to produce one, at the flick of a switch, at any given time, within a few weeks – he said “within six weeks.”
If a “bad deal” is brokered with Iran, he said, military action will become inevitable.
He cited the Israeli strikes on nuclear installations in Iraq in 1981 and in Syria – which the country has never publically admitted – in 2007.
Capture on high seas, Russian prison train, a brother in jail
By Claire Calzonetti and Mick Krever, CNN
The Russian detention of dozens of Greenpeace activists is about nothing more than a desire to drill for oil, the sister of one of those in jail told CNN’s Fred Pleitgen on Wednesday.
“They're trying to find some reason to detain them so that they can continue drilling in the Arctic, is what I make of it,” Lara Litvinov, sister of Dima Litvinov, who has been in detention in Russia since September.
It was a skirmish at sea that culminated in a crew on its knees, guns drawn, and communications equipment smashed, according to Greenpeace.
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