Below are lengthy excerpts from an interview of Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. Senator Cotton is an Iraq War veteran. Mr. Goldberg served in the Israeli military.
Cotton: I think the president is his own worst witness against this proposed course of action. He said in, I would say, almost mocking terms, in reference to the Iranian military over the weekend, that they know they can't challenge us—we spend $600 billion a year on our military, they spend $30 billion a year on theirs. This is correct. Not only do we have the ability to substantially degrade their nuclear facilities, but we have the capability, along with our Gulf allies, who have increased their military spending by over 50 percent, to largely protect them from any kind of retaliatory air or naval strikes.
["substantially degade?" Hmm, not "end," "take out?" Substantially degrade is what the U.S. did and is still trying to do to al Qaeda.]
Cotton: I think the president is his own worst witness against this proposed course of action. He said in, I would say, almost mocking terms, in reference to the Iranian military over the weekend, that they know they can't challenge us—we spend $600 billion a year on our military, they spend $30 billion a year on theirs. This is correct. Not only do we have the ability to substantially degrade their nuclear facilities, but we have the capability, along with our Gulf allies, who have increased their military spending by over 50 percent, to largely protect them from any kind of retaliatory air or naval strikes.
["substantially degade?" Hmm, not "end," "take out?" Substantially degrade is what the U.S. did and is still trying to do to al Qaeda.]
Goldberg: Go to the deal. There's nothing in it that's fixable to your mind?
Cotton: Well, there's no deal within the framework, in my opinion. There's a long list of concessions that Iran's leaders continue to dispute they actually made. This framework, as you've written, is only a success within the specific reality they've created. And they created a very narrow and risky reality in which they were focused on getting any kind of deal they could. Now we're to the point where it is considered unrealistic to expect the United States to demand that Iran not engage in terrorism while we’re granting them nuclear concessions. I thought that [Israeli Minister of Intelligence and Strategic Affairs] Yuval Steinitz had a good list of proposed changes to the president's proposal, and I don't think you can argue those changes are unrealistic, because all he did was take all the statements that President Obama and John Kerry and [chief U.S. negotiator] Wendy Sherman made at the very outset of these negotiations about stockpiles of enriched uranium, about the past military dimensions of this program, about inspections and so forth. The positions he lists are positions that our government previously held.
Goldberg: If you were president right now, would you not be engaged in this negotiation at all? Would you issue an ultimatum?
Cotton: ...I wouldn't have started down this course of granting concessions to Iran, giving them billions of dollars when in return all we're getting is their willingness to sit at the table. They should be pleading with us to come to the table. And at numerous times through the negotiations, we should have been willing to walk away from the table and put more pressure on Iran.
...
Goldberg: Do you believe there's any condition in which Barack Obama would use force against Iran?
Cotton: I hope there are conditions under which the leaders of Iran and most Middle Eastern leaders think that the United States would take military action against Iran. But Iran does not believe that America has a credible threat of force against them right now. I think that's clear from their behavior. It's also something that senior Arab leaders have communicated directly to me—that very few people, if any, in the Middle East believe that there is a credible threat of force by the United States. I think Iran does fear that Israel may strike them. To the extent that there is daylight between the United States and Israel—to use the president's term from 2009—it makes the threat of Israeli military action less credible in the leaders of Iran's minds. So I do think that there may be some policy objective in trying to create this kind of daylight with the government of Israel, to further dissuade their leadership from taking action if they deem it necessary to their national survival.
...
Goldberg: Let’s go to the nuclear deal.
Cotton: The list of concessions.
Goldberg: Is that what you call it?
Cotton: It's not a deal.
Goldberg: Well, you wouldn’t agree that the Iranians made tremendous concessions?
Cotton: No.
Goldberg: How could a provisional decision to reduce their stockpile from 10,000 kilograms to 300 kilograms of highly enriched uranium not be understood by you as a concession?
Cotton: It's still unclear when or how they will do that—
Goldberg: I use the word provisional because we don't know anything about a final deal yet.
Cotton: It's unclear how and when they'll do that. It's unclear how that will relate to the number of centrifuges they'll be able to maintain. And I don't think of almost anything to which they've agreed as much of a concession when, by the terms of their own proposal, President Obama has conceded that Iran will build and develop a nuclear weapon 11 years from today.
Goldberg: I'm willing to see that both sides have domestic constituencies, and they're going to work things the way they work them. But let me get to the—
Cotton: No, I think it's different than just domestic constituencies. President Obama plainly said at the Saban Forum in December 2013 that Iran does not need an underground fortified bunker at Fordow. We have now conceded that they will have centrifuge cascades in that bunker.
...
Goldberg: Let’s say it's June 30, and you’ve won. You and the Republicans and some of the Democrats have managed to kill this deal. What happens on July 1? Does Iran say, 'Screw you all. You can keep sanctions in place but we're going to continue to spin and we're going to move toward breakout.' And so you have a situation in which Iran might have a nuke in six months as opposed to 12 years? How is that a better situation?
[Unfortunately, that is three questions in one and typically of human beings we answer the last first.
Senator Cotton does not answer the first of those questions, "What happens on July 1?" and Mr.
Goldberg does not follow up.]
Senator Cotton does not answer the first of those questions, "What happens on July 1?" and Mr.
Goldberg does not follow up.]
Goldberg: I don't get the sense that you're in total disagreement with Barack Obama on one point, which is that if there is no deal, the likelihood of a military confrontation as the solution becomes very, very high.
Cotton: Well I think we should try to get a better deal, and one way to try and get a better deal is to show the Iranians that we're serious about getting a better deal.
Goldberg: How would you do that? Let's say you're Wendy Sherman for a day. What do you do?
Cotton: Just take last week. It was reported that President Obama told his negotiators, 'Blow through the deadline, but make it clear that we're willing to walk away.' I don't think that's a result of Barack Obama being inexperienced or incompetent or a bad negotiator. I think it's a reflection of his ideological commitment to get a deal at any cost.
Goldberg: But go to this point: He says that if we don't have a deal, then you, the people who are against the deal, are actually saying that we need a military solution.
Cotton: We’re not saying that. [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu did not say that in his joint address [to Congress] and I'm not saying that. I'm saying that we have to be willing and we have to make the leadership of Iran realize that we are willing to take military action.
[There is a distinction between conveying the willingness to use military force and the use of military force but that is avoiding the question in this context. The U.S. cannot now convey to the Iranians the U.S.' willingness to use military force after 18 months of demonstrating and saying we are not going to bomb Iran. If Cotton was president on July 1 and there was no deal what would President Cotton do? Cotton has not answered that question.]
[There is a distinction between conveying the willingness to use military force and the use of military force but that is avoiding the question in this context. The U.S. cannot now convey to the Iranians the U.S.' willingness to use military force after 18 months of demonstrating and saying we are not going to bomb Iran. If Cotton was president on July 1 and there was no deal what would President Cotton do? Cotton has not answered that question.]
Goldberg: So you're not advocating for a 1998 Desert Fox-style operation?
Cotton: Iran's leaders need to know that we have both the capability and the willingness to take
Cotton: Iran's leaders need to know that we have both the capability and the willingness to take
that kind of action. Unfortunately, when your commander-in-chief draws red lines and then he erases them, that sends a very dangerous signal to allies and adversaries alike.
[Cotton again avoids the question there.]
[Cotton again avoids the question there.]
...
Goldberg: You obviously don't believe that this deal could have an ameliorating effect on Iran—that it could strengthen the hands of the moderates who want to rejoin the international community in some kind of way.
Cotton: I am skeptical that there are many moderates within the leadership—
Goldberg: You don't consider [Iranian President Hassan] Rouhani a moderate?
Cotton: No, and I don't think the students he oppressed in 1999 would consider him a moderate. [Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani, you know, a famous moderate, called for the nuclear annihilation of Israel. I don't consider that to be moderate either....
...
Goldberg: ...is it unfair of me to say that your path would lead us to either total capitulation to a nuclear Iran or a military confrontation with Iran within the next six to 18 months?
Cotton: I think the more likely outcome is a total capitulation because of the proposal that we have made. I also think that military confrontation is possible, although it would be a conventional military confrontation. If we agreed to the kind of proposal the Obama administration has made, then military confrontation may be further off, but it might also be nuclear.
Goldberg: Wait—that’s interesting and clarifying—you actually see the possibility of nuclear military confrontation 10 years down the road if this deal goes through?
Cotton: Twenty years, 10 years, 12 years, who knows? The proposal puts Iran on the path to
being a nuclear-arms state, and I think once Iran becomes a nuclear-arms state, this will lead
inevitably to some kind of military confrontation. It may not be initially with the United States, but I think that's virtually inevitable.
[I agree with Cotton there. I agree with Cotton everywhere where I don't say I disagree.]
Goldberg: And so your feeling is, deal with the problem now, before it gets worse?
Cotton: In security matters, this is almost always the case.
Goldberg: And if that means dealing with it militarily, then deal with it militarily?
Cotton: The world probably wishes that Great Britain had rebuilt its defenses and stopped Germany from reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936. Churchill said when Chamberlain came back from Munich, 'You had a choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will therefore be at war.' And when President Obama likes to say, 'It's this deal or war,' I would dispute that and say, 'It's this deal or a better deal through stronger sanctions and further confrontation with [Iran's] ambitions and aggression in the region.' [That is not realistic. After 18 months of "Parameters" the U.S. is not going to be able to get Iran to walk back whatever understanding or agreement they have with the P5+1. The alternative is a military attack on Iran by the U.S., Israel or both. Cotton is avoiding that reality.] And if it is military action, I would say it's more like Operation Desert Fox or the tanker war of the 1980s than it is World War II. In the end, I think if we choose to go down the path of this deal, it is likely that we could be facing nuclear war.
[operation Desert Fox was President Clinton's bombing of Iraq in 1998, NOT the proor invasion of Iraq under President George H.W. Bush, Operation Desert Storm. I'm down with foxes, not with storms.]
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/tom-cotton-obama-iran-deal-may-lead-to-nuclear-war/390327/
Cotton: Twenty years, 10 years, 12 years, who knows? The proposal puts Iran on the path to
being a nuclear-arms state, and I think once Iran becomes a nuclear-arms state, this will lead
inevitably to some kind of military confrontation. It may not be initially with the United States, but I think that's virtually inevitable.
[I agree with Cotton there. I agree with Cotton everywhere where I don't say I disagree.]
Goldberg: And so your feeling is, deal with the problem now, before it gets worse?
Cotton: In security matters, this is almost always the case.
Goldberg: And if that means dealing with it militarily, then deal with it militarily?
Cotton: The world probably wishes that Great Britain had rebuilt its defenses and stopped Germany from reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936. Churchill said when Chamberlain came back from Munich, 'You had a choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will therefore be at war.' And when President Obama likes to say, 'It's this deal or war,' I would dispute that and say, 'It's this deal or a better deal through stronger sanctions and further confrontation with [Iran's] ambitions and aggression in the region.' [That is not realistic. After 18 months of "Parameters" the U.S. is not going to be able to get Iran to walk back whatever understanding or agreement they have with the P5+1. The alternative is a military attack on Iran by the U.S., Israel or both. Cotton is avoiding that reality.] And if it is military action, I would say it's more like Operation Desert Fox or the tanker war of the 1980s than it is World War II. In the end, I think if we choose to go down the path of this deal, it is likely that we could be facing nuclear war.
[operation Desert Fox was President Clinton's bombing of Iraq in 1998, NOT the proor invasion of Iraq under President George H.W. Bush, Operation Desert Storm. I'm down with foxes, not with storms.]
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/tom-cotton-obama-iran-deal-may-lead-to-nuclear-war/390327/
