[Wolf Blitzer, Cnn:] Happening now, the art of the deal. The man who wrote the book on deal-making slams the Iran nuclear agreement.
[Donald Trump , Presidential Candidate:] Never, ever, ever in my life have I seen any transaction so incompetently negotiated.
[Blitzer:] Donald Trump and Ted Cruz lead a rally against the Iran deal, but can Republicans still do anything to stop it? Putin power play. Russia admits it's sending troops and weapons into Syria. Will they prop up a brutal regime? Will they fight against ISIS, and could they be drawn into a confrontation with the U.S.? And unleashed. As Kim Jong-un shows off his missiles and rockets, there are now new troubling signs North Korea is building up its nuclear program. So how great is the threat? I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. It's been a day of important and dramatic action involving some of the most dangerous longtime adversaries of the United States. Demands for Congress to kill the Iran nuclear deal were loud and clear this afternoon at a huge rally outside the U.S. Capitol. Sarah Palin, along with presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, pulled no punches.
[Trump:] We are led by very, very stupid people. Very, very stupid people.
[Blitzer:] Beyond the threat posed by Iran, we're also learning new details today about Vladimir Putin's alarming military buildup in Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry is warning the Russians they're liable to make a dangerous situation even worse. Republican Senator Tom Cotton, he's a member of the Intelligence and Armed Services Committee, as well as an outspoken opponent of the Iran deal, is here in THE SITUATION ROOM. Our correspondents, analysts and guests, they're standing by with full coverage of all the day's top stories. Let's begin with our political reporter, Sara Murray. She was there at the rally up on Capitol Hill. She had a chance to speak with Donald Trump one on one. Sara, how did it go?
[Sara Murray, Cnn Political Correspondent:] Wolf, today was sort of an epic political odd couple. We had Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, both vying for the Republican nomination for president, holding a rally today here in the capital to protest the deal with Iran. And as you might expect, Donald Trump found a way to bring it all back around to how he would do a better job negotiating this deal if he were the president.
[Trump:] I've been doing deals for a long time. I've been making lots of wonderful deals, great deals. That's what I do. Never, ever, ever in my life have I seen any transaction so incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran. And I mean never. We will have so much winning if I get elected, that you may get bored with winning.
[Murray:] Now, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have very different approaches for how they would deal with the Iran deal, even though they both oppose it. Ted Cruz has said he would do away with it on day one, where Donald Trump said he would not do the same. None of those differences were on display today. The two gentlemen actually hugged quite a number of times before Donald Trump took the stage Wolf.
[Blitzer:] So basically, it was pretty much of a love-fest up there between these two Republican presidential candidates. Is that what I'm hearing?
[Murray:] There does seem to be a little bit of bromance brewing between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. And they even went so far as to admit it.
[Blitzer:] Sara, thanks very much. Let's get some more on what's going on. Joining us now, a key opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. He's a member of both the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees. He also served in the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senator, thanks very much for joining us. So you're with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz on this issue completely. Right?
[Sen. Tom Cotton , Arkansas:] And with a bipartisan majority of the House and the Senate, and with a two-to-one majority of the American people, who think that this nuclear deal with Iran is dangerous for the United States and dangerous for allies and world peace.
[Blitzer:] Because in effect you just heard him say the U.S. is now being led by very stupid people. He's referring, presumably, to the president of the United States and Secretary of State John Kerry. You know both the president and the secretary. Are they very stupid?
[Cotton:] Well, I'm saying they've had a very ideological approach from the very beginning. The president said in his first campaign that he would negotiate without preconditions, that he would extend an open hand if Iran would simply unclench its fist. Iran never did that. Iran still has a foreign policy that's centered around death to America. Yet here we are, about to cut a nuclear deal with Iran that's going to put them on the path to being a nuclear threshold state in as little as a decade.
[Blitzer:] You did your best to defeat it, but you failed, right?
[Cotton:] Well, unfortunately even though a large majority of the American people oppose this deal in a bipartisan majority, both the House and chamber oppose it both the House and the Senate chambers oppose it. It looks at this moment, barring any new information in the coming days, that the president with a very small partisan minority, barely one third of the two chambers of the Congress, will move forward. And that makes this truly unprecedented in the history of American foreign policy.
[Blitzer:] When you say truly unprecedented, you're not going to be able to block the deal, so presumably it will go forward. Anything else you can do now to try to kill it?
[Cotton:] It's unprecedented because, in the past, presidents would have submitted an agreement like this as a treaty, and it would have required a two-thirds vote of the United States Senate. The president himself did that just less than five years ago, when another nuclear arms control agreement with Russia. And it was ratified, even though I opposed the substance of it. That's what our Constitution calls for. So it is truly unprecedented for an international agreement like this to have a majority vote against it in the Congress, majority opposition among the American people, yet still go forward.
[Blitzer:] Because I don't know if you know, but on the House side, some Republicans now are saying that 60-day clock hasn't even started yet, because the administration has not provided all the details of this agreement to members of Congress. As a result, they want to delay this vote in the House of Representatives, and in effect delay the easing of sanctions against Iran at the same time. Where do you stand? Do you think that members of the House of Representatives will want to go with this procedural route, have a stand?
[Cotton:] Well, it's correct that the administration hasn't turned over all the agreements. I went to Vienna as part of my oversight work in the Intelligence Committee to go to meet with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and they acknowledge that there are two side agreements: one about the Parchin military base where detonators for nuclear weapons may have been tested. Two, the much broader question of Iran disclosing the past military dimensions of its nuclear work. I don't think the administration has followed federal law, and submitted those agreements, because they had an obligation to obtain them and submit them.
[Blitzer:] Have they submitted them in classified session, in executive session? Have you been briefed on those agreements?
[Cotton:] We've been briefed, but only on the one narrower agreement about the Parchin military base. More importantly, though, we don't have the documents. They haven't been provided to us. The administration has said that they do not have them, as well. Nor are they going to push the IAEA to disclose them to us. So I don't think that we're in a position yet where that clock should have started or until federal law the president has the right to waive sanctions, but frankly, the president has disregarded federal law and the Constitution many other times. In the end, whatever the procedural mechanism for the vote here, the important thing to recognize, that a majority of the American people and a majority of the Congress opposes this deal.
[Blitzer:] When you say the president has violated federal law in the past, what are you talking about?
[Cotton:] Well, I mean, he issued a decree last November to grant amnesty to up to 5 million illegal immigrants, and that's currently been stayed by a federal trial court and a federal court of appeals.
[Blitzer:] But that's in the courts now. So it hasn't been adjudicated. It was a violation.
[Cotton:] Well, there's been several Supreme Court cases the president has lost. Lost on a 9-0 basis, for example, when he tried to install appointees of the National Labor Relations Board that he lost, because it was clear that he didn't follow the Constitution or follow federal law.
[Blitzer:] That wasn't a violation. He didn't commit a crime.
[Cotton:] Well, there's lots of ways you can violate federal law that's not criminal law. And I would say the illegal amnesty decree would be an example of that. And the fact that he's not submitting this agreement is a treaty and required the kind of broad support across the American people. Both parties across all regions, which our Founding Fathers warned us, does disregard our Constitution.
[Blitzer:] Let's talk about North Korea, because you were recently in that part of the world, as well. The U.N. watchdog agency, the IAEA, says they're worried about what North Korea may be up to in the coming days, if you will. October 10, that's an historic day in North Korea. That's the day that the communist regime there, the communist party was founded. There's a lot of concern right now, I know, from what I'm hearing that the North Koreans might have a nuclear test, might launch some sort of ballistic missile. What are you hearing about October 10? What are you hearing about what North Korea may be up to?
[Cotton:] The IAEA should be worried, as I am worried about it, because North Korea is now a nuclear power state with a ballistic missile program. In fact, I think this is a precursor for what we might see in Iran down the road. In 1994, with a very similar agreement with North Korea, to supposedly stop its nuclear weapons program. President Clinton and the Democrats at the time were saying all the things right now that President Obama and Senate Democrats are saying about this Iran deal. Yet a mere 12 years later, they developed nuclear weapons. We now believe they're developing new warheads every single year, and they have ballistic missiles capable of striking all of our allies in the region and much of United States territory, as well. And as you said, Wolf, coming up in early October there is a consequential date in the history of the North Korean Communist Party, which over the past several years has been a time when the regime takes aggressive provocative actions, as they did right before I got to North Korea right before I got to South Korea by installing landmines in the DMZ, which blew the legs off of two South Korean soldiers.
[Blitzer:] Yes, a dangerous time indeed, but they calmed things down. Let's hope this October 10 date passes without any major developments. So Russia and Syria right now, what are you hearing about Russia's deployment of troops in Syria, presumably to back up Bashar al-Assad's regime?
[Cotton:] Well, there's nothing good about Russia's activity in Syria. It's been a bipartisan foreign policy of the United States for 70 years to try to keep Russia out of the Middle East. Yet the president's inaction in Syria and his monomaniacal focus on this nuclear deal with Iran has helped encourage countries like Russia to take advantage of the situation. The president has largely taken a hands-off approach in Syria and granted it as a legitimate sphere of interest to countries like Iran and like Russia. This is very bad policy, and it's going to lead to very dangerous consequences for our partners in the region, which is why so many of them are so opposed to U.S. policies.
[Blitzer:] Could it lead to, hopefully not, but some sort of confrontation between the U.S. and Russia?
[Cotton:] Well, in a country like Syria, which is in, you know, a four- or five-way civil war, Wolf. There's no telling the kind of battlefield incidents you can have. The United States is currently conducting airstrikes with coalition in Syria. Of course, it's possible, but there might be a Russian member of the Russian military in an area where strikes were taken, or if Russia gets involved in shooting war. It's possible that it might hurt one of our coalition partners, as well. Where people that we've been training have gone to Syria. That's one reason why it's so dangerous that we've taken this hands-on approach and essentially invited Russia back into the Middle East.
[Blitzer:] Senator Cotton, thanks very much for joining us.
[Cotton:] Thank you.
[Blitzer:] Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Coming up, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin, they're giving it their all around the against the Iran nuclear deal. We have the highlights.
[Sarah Palin , Former Governor Of Alaska:] I've always said, though, sweat is my sanity, so as I sweat, let's bring some sanity to this discussion about this insane treaty that's in front of Congress.