Senator Cotton Keeps Repeating the Same Erroneous Iran Arguments at Security Conference

“With all due respect Senator,” said the Center for a New American Security’s (CNAS) Ilan Goldenberg addressing Arkansas’ Tom Cotton, “I don’t think the president’s objective is to give the Iranian regime nuclear weapons,” a retort which drew a huge applause from the capacity crowd present at the CNAS conference in downtown DC.
The conference titled A World in Turmoil: Charting America’s Course, evoked in the attendees a sense of the chaos around them by displaying pictures of war and blight everywhere from Ferguson to the Gaza Strip. However, amidst these images of havoc, a rational and pragmatic discussion about the potential benefits and pitfalls of a nuclear deal with Iran was taking place, ably moderated by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius.
Well, relatively rational.
While most of the panelists were discussing the deal in terms of US strategic goals and interests and negotiating tactics, Sen. Cotton kept repeating his talking points from the past two years with little regard for the actual facts.
When David Ignatius asked him about the appropriateness of the letter the Arkansas Senator and forty six of his Republican colleagues sent the Iranians, Cotton repeated his condescending assertion that he wrote his now infamous letter because the Iranian leadership “doesn’t understand our constitutional system.” This despite the fact that the Rouhani administration has more cabinet members with doctorates from American universities than any other government in the world.
The Senator also insisted his letter was meant to bolster the administration’s bargaining position, despite his many past acknowledgments that his efforts are intended to kill a deal. Senator Cotton finally said that our goal should be regime change, and not negotiation, something Amb. Burns, a fellow Republican vehemently disagreed with.
Cotton also stated that 70% of Americans oppose the deal when in reality surveys show consistent support for the negotiations, often by a 60-70% margin or a 2:1 ratio. He then went on to repeat his maximalist demand that the only acceptable deal is one where Iran dismantles its nuclear industry completely, an unrealistic stance to say the least that even our closest allies don’t support.
Senator Cotton chastised the Obama administration for not supporting the 2009 Green Movement in Iran even though the leaders of that movement did not want any outside interference because it would have given the regime an excuse to crack down even harder.  Or that regardless of political affiliation, Iranians view having a civilian nuclear industry as their right.
He said we shouldn’t trust Iran because it is run by “crazy Ayatollahs” (a comment that drew a derisive chuckle from the audience). However, even the most hardline elements of the Iranian regime have proven again and again that they are willing to act rationally to preserve and enhance its position in the region, even cutting deals with its worst enemies.
Citing Iran’s destabilizing activities, he said “you don’t cooperate with the world’s leading sponsor of State terrorism, you don’t cooperate with the government with the blood of hundreds of Americans on its hands. You confront it in at every effort it makes to challenge the West.” But Goldenberg pointed out that we were more than willing to negotiate with the “Soviet Union which was sponsoring proxy wars which killed thousands of Americans at the time, was trying to subvert many of our allies” because it was in our national interest.
Quoting Yitzhak Rabin, Amb. Nicholas Burns said that “you don’t negotiate with your best friends, you negotiate with your worst enemy.” Ilan Goldenberg added that even though the Iranian regime is a “nasty regime” and we shouldn’t “bank on this agreement on changing that,” we should pursue the American interest of “preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon” by negotiating the same way we did with the Soviet Union.
Instead of focusing on the merits of an emerging deal, like the more reasonable critics of the Iran negotiations, Sen. Cotton keeps regurgitating his tired talking points about regime change. If a deal fails because of intransigence by the likes of Sen. Cotton, it would be very hard to keep the sanctions regime intact and Iran will have a free hand to pursue whatever nuclear technology it wants.
Cotton’s repetitive, almost robotic delivery of these fallacious talking points makes it difficult to tell if he actually believes what he is saying or if he is just trying to score political points. Either way, the fact that he might be able to derail a deal with Iran, and drag the US into another needless conflict, is a prospect more frightening than any of the horrifying pictures of war and devastation that were on display outside the conference hall.