'Meet the Press' transcript for Jan. 4, 2009

MR. SANGER: Iran wants to re-establish itself as the greatest power in the Middle East.  And to do it, David, they don't even need to fully go nuclear. All they need to do is to demonstrate that they have the capability to go nuclear at any moment.  And you know what, as President Bush leaves office they're just about there.  They have produced enough uranium to make maybe one bomb's worth.  You don't break out and declare yourself a nuclear power with only one bomb's worth, but you're close enough.  They have--courtesy of A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who sold them much of, of their work, they've got a lot of the plans and a lot of the work done that they need to do.  They could declare at any point in the first year or two of Barack Obama's presidency, "Hey, we can make a bomb." And at that point you have changed the balance of power.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MR. SANGER: Because, as we saw with the Iraq invasion, it's a lot easier for the United States to go in after a dictator who it says may get the bomb than against one who has one.

MR. GREGORY: Katty:

MS. KAY: There's a huge amount of goodwill at the moment towards Barack Obama throughout the world, and even to some extent in the Middle East.  Even members of Hamas have said that they believe that Obama will be better than President Bush.  The problem that this is doing is that this is making the reality on the ground that much more difficult for Obama.  And there is only a, a certain distance that goodwill can go.  I mean, he now has this extremely complicated situation where Hamas is almost inevitably going to come out of this emboldened on the Arab street.  Look at the rock star status that Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, achieved.  And he was a Shia.  Even in the Sunni world he was massively respected after 2006.  This then puts the U.S. in a very difficult position.  There is an, an expectation that Obama will come to the, to the Israelis and say, "Listen, I am your friend, but you have to stop building settlements," for example.  Can Obama do this now?  This, this complicates...

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MS. KAY: ...his mission and the kind of thing that he can say...

MR. GREGORY: You speak, you, you speak to--Andrea...

MS. KAY: ...to the Israelis.

MR. GREGORY: ...Katty's speaking to the issue of ownership.  Here Barack Obama ran on a platform of change--and this goes to your book--but he's going to own these problems after a year's time.  And, and your new book, "The Inheritance," you write the following about Obama's problems: "In a year's time, [Obama] will not be able to blame problems on the mess he found when he walked into the Oval Office.  While Obama could order sped-up withdrawals of American troops from Iraq, his advisers know that if they leave too rapidly and sectarian violence flares anew, it will be blamed on the new president's overeagerness and inexperience. ... If Obama honors his pledge to commit more forces to stabilizing and rebuilding Afghanistan ... he risks getting bogged down in a country ... more ungovernable than Iraq.  If he authorizes more raids over the Pakistan border to root out al-Qaeda--as he vowed he would--he will be charged with acting as unilaterally as Bush did, in violation of Pakistani sovereignty.  If he fails to warn the Iranians that the price" of--"for refusing to dismantle their nuclear program will be high--and that `all options are on the table'--he runs the risk of looking like an easy mark." Andrea:

MS. MITCHELL: Well, not only does it limit his options, but he is now going to be under enormous pressure to do something to restrain Israel.  And that is an--a very difficult position for Barack Obama to take.  Hillary Clinton can give him some cover on that because of her staunch support for Israel along the way, but there's going to be almost universal pressure on him to do that. Now, there was a very promising negotiating track through Turkey and Damascus that--even days before this engagement began, before the air attacks began. They were very close, it was believed, to signing an agreement between Damascus and Israel, and Turkey was the broker there.  Turkey could become the broker through Damascus, again, to reach out to Hamas, to the Hamas leaders who are in, in Syria.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MS. MITCHELL: So there are negotiating strategies.  But before that can take place, Israel has to achieve some sort of exit strategy that gives it respectability, and Hamas has to feel that it has some sort of exit strategy. What the U.S. is hoping is that they can restore the 2005 agreements where Hamas will agree not to rocket Israel, Israel will agree to open the borders. And there are U.S. Army Corps of Engineer personnel on the ground right now on the Egypt side looking at the tunnels to see how Egypt could be reassured that there won't be continued smuggling through on that...

MR. GREGORY: And yet...

MS. MITCHELL: So this, this is a very delicate three...

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MS. MITCHELL: ...three bank shot, though.

MR. GREGORY: But that answer, David Sanger, from your book speaks to some of the larger challenges that the president-elect faces.

MR. SANGER: David, we're beyond the point of saying that Barack Obama inherits a lot of messes around the world.  He also inherits a lot of activities that President Bush began, and he's going to have to make some very difficult decisions about whether to continue them.  One of his intelligence chiefs said to me that President Bush wrote a lot of checks that Barack Obama is going to have to cash.

MR. GREGORY: Hm.

MR. SANGER: And I think what he means by that is there are covert actions that have begun that Obama's going to have to look at even before he fully understands them.  Another one of Obama's aides said to me, "You know, in many ways we have a Bay of Pigs problem," which is the action that President Kennedy inherited from Dwight Eisenhower, and he didn't fully understand it. Pakistan's a great example of this.  President Bush last summer authorized a series of ground actions that included going after non-al-Qaeda members, and Barack Obama's going to have to decide, do you do that or not?

MR. GREGORY: Hisham:

MR. MELHEM: Look, I mean, he has to come up with a different paradigm.  He cannot do what George Bush did.  What George Bush was--did was disastrous.  He really ignored the Arab-Israeli conflict until last year.  And even then, it was driving by Condi Rice's push for, for, for resolution.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MR. MELHEM: He has to come up with a paradigm that says our approach should be regional-centric, not Israel-centric.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MR. MELHEM: There is an Arab peace, peace initiative, and if everybody's interested in isolating Iran, there has to be a revival of all the peace tracks, including Syria, Lebanon, as well as the Palestinians.

MR. GREGORY: All right.

MR. MELHEM: But he has to push very hard and show the Israelis some tough love, as well as showing the Muslim world tough love...

MR. GREGORY: Thirty...

MR. MELHEM: ...because he's working on, on an initiative towards the Muslim world.

MR. GREGORY: Thirty seconds, Jeffrey.

MR. GOLDBERG: But let, let me, let me just point out a possible opportunity for Barack Obama in this.  And I don't mean to be Pollyanna-ish, and it's always safe to be pessimistic about the Middle East.  But if we come out of this with a weakened Hamas, that actually helps Barack Obama, because who is going to ultimately negotiate with Israel?  It's not Hamas, it's the Palestinian Authority, it's Fatah on the West Bank.  If Hamas is weakened, that gives them a chance to actually speak for the Palestinians and there might be a negotiation opportunity.

MR. GREGORY: All right, we're going to leave it there.  Lots of ground still to cover.  Thank you very much.

We're out of time, but we're going to continue our roundtable and talk about Gaza and the threat of a wider war in the Middle East in the MEET THE PRESS Take Two Web extra on our Web site this afternoon.  You can also find more information there on David Sanger's book "The Inheritance" coming out a week from Tuesday.  That's all on our Web site at mtp.msnbc.com.  And we'll be right back.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY: All of us at MEET THE PRESS would like to be the first to welcome two new stations to the NBC family, KBMT Beaumont and WNBW Gainesville.

That's all for today.  We'll be back next week.  If it's Sunday, it's MEET THE PRESS.

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