PBS – Dec. 4, 2015 – This past Wednesday, former National Security Adviser Samuel M. Berger passed away in Washington at the age of 70. Berger, known colloquially as “Sandy,” served throughout the entire Clinton administration and was instrumental in shaping American foreign policy during those years. “Nobody was more knowledgeable about policy or smarter about how to formulate it,” President William J. Clinton said in a written statement.

On the Iran nuclear deal Sandy Burger told FRONTLINE:

… The question with Iran is not whether it is a serious threat, but what do we do about this threat? So the options are: You bomb it. Well, you know, that is not a very long-term solution, because you can’t unteach them what they know. So if you bomb them, you know, for three or four years you’ve destroyed it. If you can negotiate that program, if you can prevent them from doing that for 10, 15 years, in a verifiable way in which we’re pretty sure we can see what they’re doing, to me, that’s the smart thing to do.
So I’m for the nuclear agreement. Not in spite of Iran’s ambitions. I’m for a nuclear agreement because of Iran’s ambitions. And Iran, with a nuclear sword, is a lot more dangerous to us in the region than without it. It doesn’t mean they’re going to be any less hegemonic, or any less a troublemaker, or any less destabilizing. But I don’t want them to have the advantage of having a nuclear weapon or a near-nuclear weapon. I want to take that away from them.