CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" Transcript: Iran Nuclear Talks
Interview
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TAPPER: Let's hear from the other side of this.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas from the Armed Services Committee, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one of the strongest critics of this framework deal, joins me now.
Senator Cotton, your reaction to what Secretary Moniz just said?
SEN. TOM COTTON (R), ARKANSAS: Jake, Mr. Moniz is an eminent nuclear physicist, one of the leading physicists in our country, but this is not his deal. This is President Obama's deal.
He was acting on President Obama's direction. And what we saw yesterday was, frankly, not a deal. It was not a framework. It was just a detailed list of American concessions that is going to put Iran on the path to a nuclear weapon, whether they follow the terms announced yesterday or whether they violate the terms announced yesterday. And that's dangerous for America. It's dangerous for the world.
TAPPER: You heard President Obama say yesterday that the options are this deal or the status quo or war. What's your take?
COTTON: The president likes to accuse his opponents of making false choices, but that's the ultimate false choice.
TAPPER: Well, what is the option here? This is the deal on the table.
COTTON: Well, first off, we have to remember how we got here. The president let Iran off its knees after sanctions had driven them to the negotiating table to begin with in 2013.
One of the very key deals or key points not announced yesterday is when sanctions will be relaxed. The president and Secretary Kerry said it will be phased, but Iran's leaders say it will be immediate. That's why this deal may still not be consummated by June. But the alternatives to this deal is a better deal with continued pressure through the credible threat of military force and more sanctions and, if necessary, having to take military action.
TAPPER: So you think war, military action would be preferable to this deal?
COTTON: Jake, the president again likes to present a false choice.
TAPPER: Well, you just talked about military action, though.
COTTON: And there's lots of kinds of military action.
In December 1998, Bill Clinton waged four days of aerial and naval bombardment of Iraq specifically against their weapons of mass destruction program, because they weren't following U.N. Security Council resolutions and they were interfering with U.N. weapons inspectors, exactly what Iran has been doing, and much worse. There's a big difference from what you saw...
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TAPPER: I take your point. So you would support theoretically airstrikes against their nuclear facilities over taking this deal?
COTTON: That's exactly what Samantha Power said just a couple weeks ago. That's what the president has said all along.
The difference is that we need to be serious about the credible threat of military force. Again, there's a big difference between what, say, I saw in Iraq in 2006, 100,000 troops with heavy mechanized armor, and targeted aerial and naval bombing. That has to be a credible threat that's still on the table.
Otherwise, our diplomacy will not be effective. Like all Americans, I want to see a negotiated settlement, but I want to see a negotiated settlement that stops Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, not just today and tomorrow or during this administration, but 10 and 15 years from now.
TAPPER: What's your argument to those who say, look, we tried it your way during the Bush administration, there was no agreement ever reached, there were sanctions, Iran was ostracized, and guess what that happened during the Bush years? They developed most of this nuclear program. And your approach only leads to them continuing this development.
COTTON: Jake, it's actually accelerated over the last six years in the Obama administration, in part because President Obama, as Secretary Moniz said, has separated their nuclear program from their behavior.
Remember, the president's own State Department says Iran is the world's leading sponsor of state terrorism. As you just pointed out, as Marty Baron, the editor of "The Washington Post" pointed out, they are holding hostage a "Washington Post" reporter and an American preacher for spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ, an American Marine.
They are not a normal nation. And we cannot treat them as a normal nation. We certainly cannot allow them to be a nuclear threshold state.
TAPPER: The president has said that if Congress stops this deal, Congress and the United States will be the ones who lead to a path other than a peaceful negotiation of this problem.
COTTON: I would disagree.
I would say that we are trying to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. There are grave reservations about the path the president has taken us down on both sides of the aisle. Just 18 months ago, when I was still in the House of Representatives, I voted with 400 other members of Congress to impose new sanctions on Iran. The president strong-armed the Senate not to implement those sanctions.
Moreover, just a couple weeks ago, the House of Representatives said any deal must block all paths to a nuclear weapon; 370 members of the House of Representatives signed that.
TAPPER: But, Senator, I'm sure you agree that intelligence estimates say that the breakthrough period, the breakout period between Iran deciding they are going to build a nuclear bomb and them having a nuclear bomb is two to three months. What can be done in two to three months? Isn't this better, isn't this -- isn't creating a breakout period of a year, as this deal supposedly would do, better than allowing them to have this two- to three-month breakout period which exists right now?
Nothing much can be achieved in two to three months of sanctions.
COTTON: Jake, again, that's one reason why we shouldn't have been negotiating from a position of weakness. We shouldn't have relaxed the sanctions. We should have increased them, as the House tried to do 18 months ago, so we could negotiate from strength.
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TAPPER: President Obama has imposed harsher sanctions on Iran than anyone else in the history...
COTTON: Sanctions against which he lobbied before the Senate implemented them 99-0. What I'm saying is the president lobbied hard against new sanctions in 2013 and 2014 that would have only increased his bargaining leverage.
But, in any event, the terms announced yesterday, the former deputy director of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, one of the world's most respected experts in nuclear proliferation and arms control and inspection, has said would allow Iran to get nuclear materials sufficient for a bomb in a matter of months, if not weeks.
So these terms are not improving anything. They are only cementing the status quo or making it even worse and therefore more dangerous.
TAPPER: And what's next for the Senate? What are you going to do?
COTTON: Well, I'm going to do everything I can to stop these terms from becoming a final deal.
Iran may not accept them in the first place because Iran has continued to string along our negotiators, because, in the end, Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, may not want to accept any deal with the United States, since Iran is committed to the death of America. He was just chanting that publicly in Tehran a couple weekends ago.
But I am going to work with my colleagues in the Senate and House of Representatives to do everything I can to ensure there is no final deal along these terms.
TAPPER: Such as what? Take away the president's ability to waive the sanctions, which is in the law?
COTTON: And impose new sanctions and ensure that Congress has a final up-or-down vote, as a clear majority of the American people believe we should have.
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