MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's hear from Senator Jeanne Shaheen now. She is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She's also a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and she co-chairs the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group. We wanted to hear her take on President Trump's shifting stance on Iran. So the senator is on the line now with us from Budapest, following the NATO summit in Ankara. Senator, welcome back to the program.
JEANNE SHAHEEN: Well, thank you. It's nice to be with you. And we had a bipartisan bicameral delegation in Ankara, as we always do for the NATO summit, and I think it's an important message to all of our allies about the congressional support for NATO.
MARTIN: So on Monday afternoon, the president described the war for CBS News as, quote, "pretty much complete." By yesterday afternoon, U.S. airstrikes had resumed. Now, obviously, you know, Iran is a player in this, making their own decisions about their own conduct. But do you have any visibility into the president's intentions in Iran at this point?
SHAHEEN: Well, unfortunately, I don't, and I'm not sure the American people do, either. The fact is, this is a war that he never should have undertaken. None of the goals that he set out in the beginning have been accomplished. We've not seen regime change. In fact, we have a more hard-line regime in place. They still have a significant number of their ballistic missiles.
They have now controlled the - they still have all of their nuclear material, and there hasn't been a decision about how to address that, and now they control the Strait of Hormuz in ways that have stopped commercial shipping to the rest of the world. So this is a war that needs to end. The president needs to get back to the negotiating table, but he needs to negotiate a deal that's going to benefit the United States and not Iran.
MARTIN: What do you think it would take to get back to the negotiating table?
SHAHEEN: Well, I do think a follow-up to the Iranian strikes against our allies and against shipping in the strait is an important response from the United States, and hopefully that will encourage the Iranians that it's time now to sit down at the table and negotiate.
MARTIN: So let's talk about another important conflict, which is also obviously a subject of great concern at NATO. I mean, the president now says the U.S. would allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot air defense systems. He also says the company that makes the interceptors isn't yet on board. Do you have a sense of what needs to happen before Ukraine makes those sophisticated interceptor missiles?
SHAHEEN: Well, I do think it's important to make sure that RTX, the company that makes those interceptors and the Patriot system, is on board with whatever's determined. But I do think it's very important for us to try and do everything we can to support Ukraine to get those interceptors as Russia continues to attack their civilian population and infrastructure.
Now, the momentum has shifted in Ukraine, and I was very pleased with the outcome of the NATO summit with respect to support for Ukraine, with respect to Trump signing on to the communique and the real change that's happened on that war. We need to put more pressure on Russia to get them to the negotiating table so that there can be a deal to end the war that benefits Ukraine and prevents further conflict in the future.
MARTIN: Any insight into why the president reversed his position on licensing Ukraine for manufacturing these Patriot defense systems?
SHAHEEN: I don't. But I do think there was a lot of discussion. One of the things that we know from the war in Ukraine is that our defense industrial base, both in the United States and among our NATO allies, is not as robust as we would like it to be as we're looking at potential conflicts in the future. And so a big topic of discussion at the NATO summit was co-production - how do we better cooperate among allies to ensure that we have what we need? And obviously, Patriot missiles and interceptors is one of the big things that we need.
And one thing we've learned from the Ukrainians in this war is that they are the most technologically advanced. They are the most innovative of any country in Europe right now. They aren't just a user of equipment and weapons from the United States, but they are a provider, as we saw in the war in Iran. So it is in our - to our benefit to ensure that we work with them and learn from what they're innovating.
MARTIN: I want to go back to some of the president's language while at NATO. I mean, he called the Spanish hopeless, bad people. He lashed out at allies for failing to fully support the war in Iran. He revisited the idea of the U.S. controlling Greenland. As you heard from Franco's piece, he did say that he felt that there was, you know, warmth and respect there as well. But he - but again, you add that to what he said about Iran's leaders. And I'm just wondering, you've been going to NATO meetings for a long time. You have your own relationships with many of the leaders there. I'm just wondering what you think they took away from that.
SHAHEEN: I think our NATO allies have figured out that the president is not consistent in his foreign policy or his statements, and that they are moving forward - the communique that came out of the NATO summit, I think, was very positive, as I said on Ukraine, on the commitment to work together, the focus on co-production. And all of that is what's critical. We met with a number of leaders of NATO countries, and we didn't hear anybody who really said anything about the president because I think people are used to his mercurial and inconsistent response. And, you know, in lots of ways, that's unfortunate because that means people are ignoring what he has to say.
MARTIN: So you think they just don't take it seriously?
SHAHEEN: I think people don't take a lot of it seriously.
MARTIN: Well, so before we let you go, I do want to ask about the Senate race in Maine, your neighboring state. You saw that Graham Platner announced he'll suspend his campaign. Do you think that this...
SHAHEEN: I did.
MARTIN: Do you think that Democrats still have a chance to win back the Senate?
SHAHEEN: I think there are a lot of really good Democratic candidates in states across the country, and they are working very hard. And so we do have a good chance to win back the Senate. And I think there will be a candidate in Maine who will run a good race.
MARTIN: That is U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen. She's a Democrat from New Hampshire and the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and she was part of this bipartisan bicameral group that accompanied the NATO mission. Senator Shaheen, thank you so much.
SHAHEEN: Nice to talk to you. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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