Mike Huckabee sounds off on Iran nuke deal

Republican presidential hopeful on his controversial remarks about the Iranian nuclear deal

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," July 27, 2015. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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O'REILLY: "Personal Story" segment tonight, it is getting very personal between Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama. Speaking about the Iranian nuke deal, Mr. Huckabee said this on Saturday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE HUCKABEE, 2016 GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This President's foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. He is so naive he would trust the Iranians and he would take the Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The particular comments of Mr. Huckabee are, I think part of just a general pattern that we have seen that is -- would be considered ridiculous if it weren't so sad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: With us now is Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee. Whenever you mention the Holocaust or Nazis or atrocities. It's emotional issue. Everybody gets emotional about this.

HUCKABEE: And they should.

O'REILLY: Why did you use that bit of conjecture? Because I'm sure you'd agree with me by saying that the Iranian nuke deal is going to lead to a Holocaust. Its conjecture. Why did you use that?

HUCKABEE: Bill, because the Iranians themselves have used that very term. The Israeli government officials, three different times recently have said we are going to create another Holocaust. One of them said that we will wipe Israel off the face of the map. The other once said, it's great that the Jews are all in Israel. That way we don't have to chase them down. They are all in one place. These aren't conjectures on my part, Bill. I have been going to Israel since 1973. Dozens and dozens of times. And I have also been to ought wits three times. The reason that happened was because people in Europe and in the United States said nothing like that can happen.

O'REILLY: And listen, you are right in the sense that the Iranians -- some in the Iranian government are "On the Record" that we want to destroy Israel.

HUCKABEE: That's their official position.

O'REILLY: That's their position. That being said, if you take that position, what they said, as gospel, you can't make a deal with Iran on any level at any time, you can't.

HUCKABEE: Why would you want to make a deal with people that don't ever honor the deals they made and won't quit that rhetoric? Now, if they made some concessions to preconditions and said, we will no longer say this about Israel, we will respect their right to exist. We won't continue to call America the great Satan and say death to America in the chambers of our government.

O'REILLY: But let's assume they are not going to do that because they are fanatical haters and that's who they are.

HUCKABEE: Yes.

O'REILLY: But you just said it, you can't make a deal with them. So, then the alternative is war, is it not?

HUCKABEE: No, is it not. And that's what President Obama and John Kerry keep saying --

O'REILLY: Right.

HUCKABEE: -- as if they have only ones who have come up with any options. The real option is to continue the sanctions, don't let loose. Make them even tougher.

O'REILLY: But Russia and China told us if we had walked away from this deal that they were not going to obey the sanctions any longer. And I think you would have had more defectors, too. So, it would have been the United States and maybe Britain and a few others --

HUCKABEE: There's an option. There's an option. Export energy from the United States. We have several hundred years of it right here under our feet. What we need to be doing is upsetting the balance of power against the Iranians, the Russians and for that matter the Saudis.

O'REILLY: Okay. But that doesn't stop Iran from getting a nuke. So, here's my dilemma. So, I'm really struggling with it.

HUCKABEE: Yes.

O'REILLY: If you don't make a deal with Iran, because as you rightly said, they can't be trusted and they are haters and they want to kill Jews and Americans. That's all true. Everybody knows that. Right? But if you don't make a deal with them, A, you give them the nuke because they will get it, all right? And, B, once they are on the verge of getting it, Israel is going to attack and World War III breaks out and we would have to support Israel. So war is a scenario. That, you know, basically the President and others who support him are saying, look, we don't want the war, so we know it's a bad deal. And I think even he knows it's a bad deal. We are going to do it that maybe there will be a revolution there and maybe they will be overthrown.

HUCKABEE: There won't be if we give them a $150 billion to buy arms, Bill. My God, we had an opportunity in 2009 to stop it and we didn't.

O'REILLY: But stay on topic here, if we don't make the deal, they get the nuke.

HUCKABEE: If we don't go in and militarily make sure they don't.

O'REILLY: So you are basically saying there would be war.

HUCKABEE: There could be. But the better thing is to cut them off economically. And when you say that the Russians and the Chinese will, we don't know that for sure.

O'REILLY: They absolutely said clearly.

HUCKABEE: We know what the Iranians have said and we know that the last time the world did not take seriously the threat to Jews, six million of them died, Bill. And for us to pretend that these are just empty threats. I have seen this movie before. It does not end well and American can do better than that, we didn't get the four hostages out of Iran.

O'REILLY: Last question. And I agree, we should have gotten the four hostages out a lot tougher and what we got on our side of the deal. Do you believe President Obama is a naive man or has ill intent in foreign policy?

HUCKABEE: I think he is naive, especially when it comes to radical Islam. He won't even call it by its name. And I do not think he likes Israel. He can say whatever he wants to. But he puts more pressure on Israel for someone building a bedroom on to the house in Judea or Samaria than he does on the Iranians who are trying to build a bomb, for gosh sake.

O'REILLY: All right. Governor Huckabee, thanks for coming. We appreciate it

HUCKABEE: Thank you, Bill.

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