Former U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Syria

CHUCK HAGEL, FORMER U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well, Christiane, thank you for having me. Well, I think the declassified formal report that was just released is no surprise to most people. It should have been released a long time ago. The United States cannot accept or tolerate the leader of a strategic ally, like Saudi Arabia, who is an assassin of an American journalist. There has to be consequences. Certainly, significant, strong sanctions against MBS are in order. I don’t know exactly what the president, President Biden, said to the king a couple of days ago in their conversation. But I hope President Biden was very clear and very direct about consequences and what those consequences will be. If we don’t stand up for what’s right here, with the world watching, and we continue to support this strong ally under MBS’ leadership, then we have lost all our moral standing in the world. So there has to be some serious repercussions. And I think it has to fit in a larger context of a review of our strategic interests in the Middle East. I mean, the Middle East is ablaze with problems. And this just is another one that has to factor into the larger view of the Middle East.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, let me just play a little bit of the debate question-and- answer to then candidate Biden about how he would handle Saudi Arabia. And let’s just remind everybody exactly what he thought back then.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them. We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are. There’s very little social redeeming value of the — in the present government in Saudi Arabia. And I would also — as pointed out, I would end, end the subsidies that we have, end the sale of materials to the Saudis, where they’re going in and murdering children, and they’re murdering innocent people. And so they have to be held accountable.

AMANPOUR: So, Secretary Hagel, some of those things have been enacted about the war in Yemen, about weapons sales and the like. We don’t know whether they’re permanent or not. But I just want to read you something that’s just come in from the secretary of state himself, in which Antony Blinken has tweeted: “The murder of journalist and U.S. lawful permanent resident Jamal Khashoggi shocked the world. Starting today, we will have a new global policy bearing his name to impose visa restrictions on those who engage in extraterritorial attacks on journalists or activists.”