Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), two of the most hawkish members of Congress, are working together to sabotage the Trump administration’s chances of reaching a deal with Iran.
On Thursday, the senators held a press conference outlining a resolution they’re introducing that demands that any deal with Iran must include the total dismantlement of Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program, an idea that Iranian officials have made clear is a non-starter.
“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,” Graham said. “And you must dismantle now.”
Graham and Cotton said that any deal must require ratification from the Senate and must also impose limits on Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for its allies in the region, conditions that are also a non-starter for Tehran.
“A treaty with Iran in this space is only possible if you get 67 votes,” Graham said. “You’re not going to get 67 votes for a treaty regarding their nuclear program unless they deal with the missile program and their terrorism activity. So is it possible? Yes, if Iran changes.”
The senators also repeated President Trump’s threat that if there is no deal, the US will attack Iran. “Iran can either have a nuclear program that’s lying in ruins, smoking, destroyed, and dismantled, or it can have a peaceful civilian nuclear power program with no centrifuges, no enriching, no re-processing, and no pathway to a nuclear weapon,” he said.
Trump has been threatening to bomb Iran over its nuclear program even though his intelligence agencies recently reaffirmed that there’s no evidence Tehran is building a bomb or that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has reversed his ban on the development of nuclear weapons.
Iran is currently enriching some uranium at 20% and 60%, which is still lower than the 90% needed for weapons-grade. Tehran has made clear that it’s willing to bring enrichment levels back down to 3.67%, the limit imposed by the JCPOA.
