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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Tue Mar 10, 2015, 02:46 PM Mar 2015

Tom Cotton Tries To Offer Alternative To Iran Talks, Gets Almost Everything Wrong

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has laid out his alternative to the Obama administration’s ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran must completely capitulate or face military force.

" target="_blank">Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe one day after Bloomberg news reported that he spearheaded a letter to the government of Iran warning the Persian leaders that any deal they strike with the United States and its international partners will not last past the Obama administration, Cotton described his preferred course for preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon: “complete nuclear disarmament by Iran.”

Pressed by co-host Willy Geist over the improbability of such a demand — after all, even George W. Bush officials eventually conceded during his presidency that “there was no way to reach a deal without Iran retaining at least a face-saving amount of enrichment capability” — Cotton called for “more sanctions” and “confronting Iran.” The newly-minted senator argued that a credible threat of force should be on the table, adding “Israel struck Iraq’s nuclear program in 1981 and they didn’t reconstitute it. Israel struck Syria’s nuclear reactor, they haven’t yet reconstituted it. Rogue regimes have a way of getting the picture when there is a credible threat of military force on the table.”

But past experiences with Iran appear to undermine Cotton’s policy prescription.
As Secretary of State John Kerry pointed out during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing least week, the George W. Bush administration pursued a “no nuclear capability” policy on Iran throughout most of its eight years in office only to see Iran’s centrifuges grow. In 2005, Bush officials vetoed an agreement with Iran that would have contained its nuclear program and allowed for verifiable inspections, objecting to “any Iranian enrichment capability, regardless of the circumstances.” Rather than shrink its program under the weight of international sanctions, as Cotton and Republicans would have hoped, Iran actually expanded its nuclear infrastructure from 164 centrifuges to 19,000 centrifuges today. Regional experts predict that should the current round of talks fail, Iran “would likely have 50,000 centrifuges, a massive stockpile of highly enriched uranium, new facilities, thousands of experienced nuclear scientists and technicians, and a fully functioning heavy water reactor that can produce plutonium.”

more
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/03/10/3631757/tom-cotton-tries-offer-alternative-iran-talks-gets-almost-everything-wrong/

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Tom Cotton Tries To Offer Alternative To Iran Talks, Gets Almost Everything Wrong (Original Post) DonViejo Mar 2015 OP
This man is a blithering idiot CanonRay Mar 2015 #1

CanonRay

(14,036 posts)
1. This man is a blithering idiot
Tue Mar 10, 2015, 03:20 PM
Mar 2015

and has no business in any government post, let alone Senator. Shame on Arkansas voters putting this dingbat in a position of power.

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