Sen. Cotton Urges US Military Strike on Iran

Insists Attack Could Easily Wipe Out Iran's Civilian Nuclear Program

One of the Republican Senators railing against the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, Sen. Tom Cotton spoke to Israeli reporters today endorsing the idea of a US military strike, saying he believes the US could easily “send Iran back to day one” on its civilian nuclear program by wiping everything out.

Since both the US and Israel have been threatening to attack Iran non-stop for decades, parts of Iran’s civilian nuclear program are in underground bunkers, meant to be all but impossible to attack militarily. Cotton dismissed the concerns, insisting no one who knows anything would doubt the US military’s ability to wipe those buildings out.

Sen. Cotton went on to downplay the seriousness of a war with Iran, saying he believes it would be quick and easy, likening it to the 1998 US attack on neighboring Iraq, a four-day bombing campaign based on faulty US claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Cotton is one of several US Senators touting the 1998 strike as a model, despite that attack resting on faulty claims, and the US turning around just five years later and launching a much bigger, and much more disastrous war on Iraq on the exact same pretext.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.