Cotton: U.S., Iran nuke talks ‘farce’

WASHINGTON — The Republican-led Congress is looking at imposing sanctions against Iran in 2015, and it is time for negotiations over that country’s nuclear development to end, U.S. Sen.elect Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said at a foreign-policy forum Wednesday.

Cotton said the executive branch is refusing to walk away from the negotiations, which have gone on for more than a year, and has conceded too much to the Iranian government.

“It’s time for the responsible adults in Congress of both parties to step forward and say we’re going to put an end to this farce, and I hope we do it very soon,” he said. “In my opinion, the negotiations were a grievous mistake from the beginning, and they moved quickly into a sham. And now they are a farce.”

Congress should consider arming Israel to strike Iran, Cotton said.

“The Congress should take a serious look at … some of our surplus B-52s as well as 30,000-pound bunker busters, to send the right signal to our allies in the region and to the regime in Iran,” Cotton said.

In late November, the United States, several other world powers and Iran announced that the countries had agreed to extend negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program for up to another seven months.

The announcement has spurred some Republicans and a few Democrats in Congress to call for new sanctions against the Persian Gulf country within the next few months.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who will be the ranking Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2015, proposed adding sanctions to a defense authorization bill before the end of the year.

In a Nov. 21 statement, Cotton and the 10 other Republican senators-elect urged the president to ensure that any long-term deal with Iran eliminates that country’s nuclear program and all future nuclear capabilities.

Other Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and many Democrats have been more supportive of the current negotiations.

On Tuesday, national security adviser Susan Rice said additional sanctions on Iran would “blow up” negotiations over that country’s nuclear program.

“The Iranians would conclude that there’s little point in pursuing this process at the negotiating table,” she said at a conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal.

Wednesday’s forum was sponsored by The Raytheon Co., a defense contractor, and the Foreign Policy Initiative, a neoconservative advocacy group and think tank.

Congress needs to act because President Barack Obama’s administration hasn’t been successful yet, Cotton said.

“The president has been acting like a love-struck teenager with Iran and Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei for five, six years now,” Cotton said. “He’s written four letters that have been unreturned and unrequited.”

U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who spoke at the forum with Cotton, said Iran agreed to negotiate because of the severity of sanctions imposed by Congress. He said he was surprised that Obama’s administration doesn’t want more sanctions now.

“They are demanding that we take away their tools. They are demanding we take away the leverage,” Pompeo said. “It’s one of the most bizarre things.”

He said increased sanctions could be crippling.

“This is a country that can’t feed itself, this is a country that depends on trade for the continued stabilization of the regime,” Pompeo said. “To the extent we can place sanctions on it [that are] sufficient and serious and enforced, things will look a lot different.”

Cotton said sanctions could include stopping the sale of Iranian oil on the open market, and further restrictions on its financial sector.

“In general we want to make it as hard to trade or to conduct financial transactions with the regime in Iran as possible,” he said.