SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The war in Iran has been going on for a month. There is no end in sight. More U.S. troops are headed to the region. President Trump is demanding that Iran open the Strait of Hormuz by April 6, or he'll order strikes on Iran's power plants. President also said that talks with Iran are progressing, although Iranian officials deny that there are any discussions. Representative Adam Smith of Washington State is the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee and joins us. Congressman, thanks for being with us.
ADAM SMITH: Oh, well, thanks for having me. I appreciate the chance.
SIMON: And we will certainly get to Iran in a moment, but first, I have to ask you about the partial government shutdown. It's been 40 days.
SMITH: Yeah.
SIMON: Yesterday, House Republicans did not accept the Senate's bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security through September. The House passed a stopgash (ph) - stopgap measure last night, but just for eight weeks, headed back to the Senate. What's to prevent another shutdown in May?
SMITH: Well, first of all, you're kind of ahead of yourself. The Senate's not going to pass what the House passed, so it's not another shutdown in May. The one we're currently in is just not going to end. And, look, this is a very, very frustrating situation. And I do want people to understand, there is a huge policy debate here, and that policy debate is how to do immigration enforcement. And certainly, Democrats and Republicans are in a different place on that, and, frankly, within the Republican Party, within the Democratic Party, there's differences of opinion. But, you know, we Democrats, by and large, feel strongly that we need to reform the way immigration enforcement is done - Minneapolis being the most tragic example, with two Americans killed by ICE agents there. But you've seen rights violated all across the country by the overly aggressive - and we believe - unlawful actions of ICE agents. So OK, you've got that debate.
Department of Homeland Security is a lot of things. It's ICE and Border Patrol is part of it. We don't simply want to give a blank check to ICE and the Border Patrol without some kind of reforms. But we're also mindful of the fact that there are other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, most notably TSA, of course, but also the Coast Guard and FEMA. So for, gosh, over a month now, we've offered fund all of those, and then we can figure out the ICE part of the problem. And the Senate unanimously agreed. In a bipartisan way, they said, yes, let's do that. But then Mike Johnson refused to bring that up in the House. And the reason he refused to bring that up is because Trump wouldn't say one way or the other, whether or not he supported it, and Mike Johnson didn't want to do anything that Donald Trump didn't want. If that had been put on the floor, we would've gotten probably close to 400 votes. It would've passed easily, and TSA would be being funded. Chose not to do that. Chose to continue the fight, and that's the problem.
SIMON: We have to move to a discussion of Iran now. President Trump has said that Iran's missile capacity's been decimated. Yesterday, though, U.S. officials not authorized to speak publicly confirmed to NPR the U.S. could only determine with certainty that a third of Iran's missile arsenal has been destroyed. Decimated or reduced by a third. Do you think destroying Iran's missile arsenal is a goal that you support?
SMITH: Well, that's a confusing question. I mean, 'cause you always have to put into it, OK, would I like to wake up tomorrow and see that Iran did not have a ballistic missile capacity? Absolutely, of course.
SIMON: But I said, destroyed. I mean, you know, military action.
SMITH: Well, sorry. Yes, and I'm getting to that. You asked me if it is a goal that I would support to destroy Iran's ballistic missile program. Yeah. I'd like to see it gone, but what I've known for years is militarily, the cost of doing that would be enormous. It would be a full-scale Middle East war, a huge oil problem across the globe, which we've seen. And then to the point of your introduction, we do not have the military capacity to completely eliminate Iran's ballistic missiles. These targets are harder than they look. Yes, we can significantly degrade it. Is it a third? Is it a half? Is it 75%? Even the most wildly optimistic supporters of this war acknowledge that maybe 75% is achievable. And if they've got 25% - and we're not even talking about drones yet, OK, it's much harder to eliminate drones - Iran will still have the capacity to attack us. So what have we truly accomplished by what - by getting after 75% of their missile thing? Meanwhile, the war continues to spread. The Houthis have joined it. So that's the problem. Huge cost, and you would not be able to actually eliminate the threat.
SIMON: What's the best option to bring this war to a close now, do you think?
SMITH: It's getting worse and worse. As I mentioned, the Houthis, just a couple hours ago, started launching missiles at Israel. So they've joined the war from Yemen. I said the best option, you know, stop the war. Have a ceasefire. Move to some sort of negotiated settlement. Continued military action just isn't achieving our objectives. And we see the cost, certainly in the Middle East, but globally as well.
SIMON: Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington state. Congressman, thanks so much for being with us today.
SMITH: Thanks for the chance. I appreciate it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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