Coats Discusses Ash Carter, Iran on Senate Floor

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Dan Coats (R-Ind.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, today spoke on the Senate floor about his past work with Dr. Ash Carter on a 2008 Bipartisan Policy Center report entitled Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development. Dr. Carter is expected to be nominated for Secretary of Defense tomorrow.

Coats also discussed why he believes the Obama Administration’s ongoing negotiations with Iran will fail and why Congress must have a say on any agreement the administration reaches with Iran.  

Following are excerpts from Coats’ speech:

“It is widely anticipated that the president intends to nominate Dr. Ashton Carter to be the next Secretary of Defense. I would welcome that nomination. Should Dr. Carter take over the helm at the Defense Department, it would coincide with an ominous development on a national security issue that he and I have dealt with together in the past. That is the growing danger that Iran will soon be able to develop nuclear weapons, and the inability of prolonged negotiations with Iran to prevent it.”

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“In 2008, Ash Carter and I participated in co-authoring a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center entitled, Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy toward Iranian Nuclear Development. In that report we acknowledged that Iran’s nuclear program would pose ‘the most significant strategic threat to the United States during the next administration.’ Now, six years into that administration, we can see the truth of those judgments. Unfortunately, what we have also seen is that the administration has not dealt effectively with this growing threat. President Obama is not only ignoring the clear and present danger posed by Iranian ambitions, he is abetting those ambitions by surrendering key positions first and then pursuing negotiations that confirm our weakness.”

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“Any settlement of issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program is of paramount importance to the security of the American people and the world. Any proposed agreement requires thorough review and deliberation by Congress. An agreement on an issue of such vast significance requires a bipartisan, bicameral consensus and mutual support and agreement by both the executive and legislative branches of our government.”

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“Coping with all of that at once is what leadership is all about. Four American Presidents -- including the current one -- have declared that a nuclear weapons-capable Iran is unacceptable. To give meaning to that repeated commitment, to do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran from gaining that dangerous capability, is the most urgent matter facing U.S. and international security. A robust uranium enrichment industry in Iran means a capability to produce nuclear weapons within an unacceptably brief amount of time. The consequences of a nuclear weapons-capable Iran are not tolerable, not acceptable, and must motivate the most powerful and effective efforts possible to prevent it from happening.”

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