Iran Hawks Graham, Cotton Draw Red Line for Deal: No Nuke Program for Tehran

Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton—among Congress’ most adamant defense hawks—made clear Thursday that they will only support a deal with Iran that completely eliminates Tehran’s ability to make nuclear weapons.

The lawmakers joined forces to promote their Senate resolution on preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, a resolution they say is modeled on President Donald Trump’s statements to Iran’s supreme leader.

“If Iran ever acquired a nuclear weapon capability … you’d have a nuclear arms race in the Mideast,” said Graham, R-S.C. 

“But more importantly to me, I think they would use it. I think if Iran had a nuclear weapon, they would use it as part of their radical religious regime. The ayatollah and his henchman are virtual religious Nazis,” he added.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)

Graham and Cotton, R-Ark., spoke to reporters to make clear their demands for any deal—full dismantling of Iran’s ability to construct nuclear weapons.

“Senator Cotton and I believe that the only way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is for them to completely dismantle their enrichment program,” Graham said.

He added: “To the Iranian regime: You claim all you want is a peaceful nuclear power program. You can have it, but you cannot enrich, and you must dismantle … . If negotiations and diplomacy fail, we need to go to Plan B, and Plan B would be a military strike to stop the nuclear program in its tracks.”

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. (center) and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., view an Iranian nuclear weapons program as an existential threat to world peace. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)

Cotton contended that Iran has “enough uranium for six nuclear weapons.”

“To be blunt, there’s no benign or good reason for Iran to have any of this,” he said.

“Iran can either have a nuclear program that is lying in ruins, smoking, destroyed, and dismantled, or it can have a peaceful civilian nuclear power program with no centrifuges, no enriching, no reprocessing and no pathway to a nuclear weapon.”

The senators did not comment on dropping economic sanctions on Iran during their remarks—a trade-off that the Trump administration is offering Iran in exchange for reforming its nuclear program.

Asked by The Daily Signal what Iran’s economic relationship with America could be after a successful deal, Graham said he would be open to it if Iran reformed.

“If they did all these things, maybe we could have a normal relationship with Iran. On the economic front, the key word is ‘normal.’ There’s nothing normal about this regime. They openly talk about destroying the Jewish state,” he replied.

“I am hoping to have a normal relationship with Iran, but they have to be normal. And they’re anything but normal.”

Cotton indicated that he wasn’t overly optimistic about opening trade relations with Iran.

“While we would welcome an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program—the easy or the hard way—it would only be a first step towards having any kind of normal relationship with Tehran,” he said.

The post Iran Hawks Graham, Cotton Draw Red Line for Deal: No Nuke Program for Tehran appeared first on The Daily Signal.