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Thune, Rounds, Cotton Want Shooting War with Iran

Remember that letter John Thune, Mike Rounds, and 45 other Senators sent to Iran’s mullahs last March to undermine President Barack Obama’s effort to negotiate a deal to stifle Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons? The author of that letter, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, continues to make clear that he (and thus, those who supported his letter to undermine diplomacy) wants war:

As opposed to the Iraq war, whose objective was to topple Saddam Hussein and required 150,000 troops on the ground, a military campaign against Iran would aim solely to thwart the regime’s nuclear program, Cotton said. A potential military confrontation with Iran would be similar to the US’s 1998 Operation Desert Fox — a four-day bombing campaign — or the Kosovo War, he said.

“You can destroy facilities. I don’t think any military expert in the United States or elsewhere would say the US military is not capable to setting Iran’s nuclear facilities back to day zero,” Cotton said. “Can we eliminate it forever? No, because any advanced industrialized country can develop nuclear weapons in four to seven years, from zero. But we can set them back to day zero.”

Israel destroyed the nuclear reactors in Iraq and Syria, Cotton said, and these acts succeeded in deterring these countries from trying to become nuclear powers. “Syria hasn’t been building nuclear reactors lately, in part because that use of force demonstrated the political will not to allow that country to proceed with nuclear facilities. Once it’s done once, a country gets the picture and they know that their adversary has the political will to stop them from developing those facilities” [Raphael Ahren, “US Senator: A Military Strike Could Send Iran ‘Back to Day Zero’,” Times of Israel, 2015.08.05].

Thune, Rounds, and other Cotton-picking Senators who want to undermine the Iran deal are tacitly supporting a political stance predicated on the belief that getting into a shooting war with Iran is a good idea.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post helpfully quotes Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut, who is a bit more realistic about Cotton’s buckaroo foreign policy:

Senator Cotton said this week that we could bomb Iran back to day zero if we took a military route to divorcing Iran from a nuclear weapon. Let’s get back to reality for a second about what a military strike would mean. You can set back Iran’s nuclear program for a series of years, but you cannot bomb Iran back to day zero unless you are also prepared to assassinate everyone in Iran who has worked on the nuclear program. Why? Because you can’t destruct knowledge. You can’t remove entirely from that country the set of facts that got them within two to three months of a nuclear weapon.

And so I know that members bristle at this notion that the president is suggesting it’s a choice between an agreement or war. But there are members of this body who are openly cheerleading for military engagement with Iran, who are oversimplifying the effect of military action, who are blind to the reality of U.S. military activity in that region over the course of the last 10 to 15 years. This belief in the omnipotent, unfailing power of the U.S. military is simply not based in reality. We could set back the nuclear program for a series of years, but the consequences to the region would be catastrophic [Senator Chris Murphy, quoted in Greg Sargent, “Tom Cotton: We Can Bomb Iran’s Nuke Program Back to ‘Day Zero’,” Washington Post: Plum Line, 2015.08.05].

We can follow President Obama’s negotiated deal, which checks Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons for ten to fifteen years while engaging Iran with science and trade, or we can play Cowboy Cotton, blow up Iranian nuclear facilities, make Iran more determined than ever to build nuclear weapons, and put ourselves and Israel at risk of a hot war with Iran with little to no backing from our allies, who would be miffed that we broke the deal they worked hard to help us achieve and hesitant to jump into a war on behalf of an America that fired first.

The future is always uncertain. Any Iran scenario could someday lead to dead South Dakotans in the desert. But Senators Thune and Rounds, with their backing of Senator Cotton’s belligerence, are angling to send South Dakotans to die in the desert much sooner and more surely.

40 Comments

  1. mike from iowa 2015-08-08 07:31

    I seem to remember Hitler Weasel Bush saying one time that we sold Saddam Hussein material for his nukular weapons program. The reason given was the US could better control his program and him if we knew exactly what materials he had on hand.

    The US sold Hussein the pre-cursors for his biological weapons as well.

  2. John 2015-08-08 09:19

    Ah, the chickenhawks crow. And like the chickhawks before them: Bush the younger, Cheney, et. al, know not of what they speak.

  3. MD 2015-08-08 09:41

    Wouldn’t conventional wisdom tell us that if a country was under threat of being bombed they would be more likely to pour more resources into preparing to defend their country? If we get a warmongering republican in 2016, it wouldn’t surprise me if Iran continued their nuclear preparations.

    When I was in Oman earlier this year, I found Islam to have much more in common with christianity (especially the conservative/evangelical interpretation of it) than I found different. Maybe our current dialogue will go farther at building bridges and realizing our similarities rather than our previous dysfunctional isolation policies.

  4. David Newquist 2015-08-08 11:38

    If the U.S resorted to the military option, it would be on its own and regarded by its allies, who participated in the Iran deal, as the aggressor. The U.S. is regarded as the major obstacle to nuclear disarmament, as Mikhail Gorbachev has analyzed the situation. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/08/06/on-hiroshima-anniversary-gorbachev-calls-u-s-an-insurmountable-obstacle-to-disarmament/]

    Our belligerence is a large factor in the anti-American attitudes and actions, not just in the nations that harbor radical Islam, but among those who are our friends. Taking military action against Iran bears the danger of nuclear nations selling it weapons so that it doesn’t have to take the time and trouble to build its own. The rest of the world sees the deal as a way to buy time to work out a more rational solution to disarmament throughout the world, not just with Iran. During the 21st century, the U.S. has slipped from the role of alleged peace-keeper to the most dangerous aggressor. And that is what gives he war-mongering bullies their swagger. That and the complete absence of intelligence and thought.

  5. mike from iowa 2015-08-08 12:12

    Yabutt we have the god given right to defend ourselves with first strikes whenever a wingnut feels threatened or dissed. Dumbass dubya said so. Trust (us) to do the honorable? thing and then lie about it.

  6. mike from iowa 2015-08-08 12:14

    ……and as long as no wingnut sons or daughters are placed in harms way.

  7. Jeff Barth 2015-08-08 12:18

    Ah, but bringing on Armageddon is the best way to provoke God into bringing on the Rapture.

  8. Porter Lansing 2015-08-08 12:44

    A VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN IS A VOTE FOR A WAR …. a vote for a Democrat is a vote for the middle class

  9. mike from iowa 2015-08-08 13:41

    Lawrence Eagleburger said wingnuts would have egg on their faces if the illegal invasion of Iraq produced no wmds as advertised.

    What would be on their faces if Armegeddon doesn’t bring on the hoped for “Rapture?”

  10. Donald Pay 2015-08-08 15:10

    I think it would be just great if Thune, Rounds and Cotton decided to don fatigues and go to war against Iran. I expect they won’t be around long if they try that. Good riddance.

    I have no problem with the three of them trying to pass a declaration of war against Iran, though I would oppose it. At least that would take some courage. But what these chicken shits want to do is politically maneuver and lie, as they are doing, to get us into a war that they have no intention of fighting themselves. They (Thune, Rounds, Cotton) are far more dangerous to America than is Iran.

  11. mike from iowa 2015-08-08 15:29

    Since congress has the power to declare war,if Obama told them to go F### themselves,he would be impeached in a heart beat. The last five wingnut Potii have all deserved to be impeached,but Dems would prefer to leave the impeachment stuff alone. They need a serious backbone enhancer so they will stand up to bullies from the right.

  12. Deb Geelsdottir 2015-08-08 15:45

    Ofergodssake!!! Are those chicken hawks so wedded to the Kochs, Exxon, Darth Cheney & Pals, etc., that they seriously Do Not Care about how many people die? Seriously?! This sickens me.

    ” — a four-day bombing campaign — ” And don’t forget, “We’ll be treated as liberators” and other lies we were told by the Shrub/Cheney Cabal. This is just as honest a statement as the pre-Iraq attack.

    I used to see America as the greatest nation on the planet. While it’s still a great country, it is also one of the most aggressive internationally. I don’t know if the terrible damage done to our moral standing by the Shrub/Cheney Cabal will ever be repaired. Definitely not if the Republicans continue as Chickenhawk Warmongers. They bring shame on the USA. It breaks my heart.

  13. caheidelberger Post author | 2015-08-08 17:26

    MD, you’re right: warmongering is the surest way to monger war. If I walk around saying, “Gosh darn it, I’m gonna shoot somebody!” everybody else is a lot more likely to buy flak jackets, if not get their own guns and get ready to shoot me when they see me coming.

    Deb, I share your shame. I want us to be the greatest nation in the world. I want the U.S. to be able to say, “Hey, how about we impose sanctions/stop climate change/save the polar bears/go to Mars/eradicate poverty,” and have two-thirds of the world say, “Heck yeah! We’re in!” If we can’t sit at a table with our allies, make a deal they like with Iran, and then stick to it without John Thune and a bunch of yahoos undermining it for macho-partisan purposes, we will lose any chance at exercising global leadership.

  14. mike from iowa 2015-08-08 17:36

    Wingnuts are politicizing foreign policy. Just like they accused Dems of when Ronnie Raygun refused to follow the law.

  15. Rorschach 2015-08-08 19:08

    The only thing separating us from war with Iran, and possibly world war right now is President Obama. If we had Benjamin Netanyahu’s good buddy Mitt Romney as President, Netanyahu would already have attacked Iran knowing we would do the deficit spending and the rest of the fighting for him. With President Obama, Netanyahu knows he can’t dictate our foreign policy. If the next President is a Republican Netanyahu will attack Iran, and we will spend trillions of dollars backing him up and dealing with the worldwide consequences. When our next Republican President licks Netanyahu’s boots and goes to war with Iran it will prompt Putin to start attacking former Soviet Republics to take them back over, and we’ll be stuck dealing with that mess too.

  16. jerry 2015-08-08 19:24

    We had some great rock and roll music back in the draft days, the grave diggers will be busy as Iran sure as hell ain’t no Iraq or Kosovo. These boys are motivated and they have some serious munitions. Those IED’s that we will find there can flip one of those mine resistant trucks with no problems. We got the Republican Guard to stop sending them to Iraq when we were there. I think that if attacked, they would put them back into play. Nasty things for sure. How many million men do you think will have to patrol the place once we think “Mission Accomplished”? Good source of cheap heroin over there though, so we will have that for our “warriors” to bring home with them. The Republican dream, to destroy America, is within their grasp.

  17. Roger Elgersma 2015-08-08 21:57

    I once heard a sermon that included a story about one of our pilots who got shot down in Yugoslavia. She could not understand how God would let that pilot get shot down and he prayed and a British harrier came and picked him up. So on the way out of church I asked if maybe God let him get shot down so the people in Yugoslavia might not get bombed by his bombs. I told her that we have to think about the other people and not just about us. She was shocked by her own lack of empathy. Since the Bible says do unto others as we would have them do unto us, we have to look at the Iranians situation. We bullied them with the Shah for twenty five years, just for our steady supply of oil. Now we are scared of our victim. Where does the Bible keep saying to continue bullying someone that originally did us no wrong.

  18. MOSES 2015-08-08 22:06

    I hear Thune is good with a basketball, but other wise a chicken hawk.

  19. jerry 2015-08-09 08:59

    Tehran John along with the two other dingalings that make up our proud corruption, make me wonder about their spouses and immediate family, how could they allow them to be so cavalier about watching American soldiers be killed and maimed without so much as a peep of discontent? Is the payoff in money so important to them to turn a blind eye?

    By the way, I ran track and played basketball too as did everyone else who grew up in South Dakota at the same time. What you want to take a look at is the trophies that I won. My shelf is about as bare as Tehran John’s I would bet.

  20. MD 2015-08-09 10:03

    We can’t forget that the current situation with Iran was the result of US meddling during the cold war. The US arranged a coup in the 50s which removed a popular prime minister. After this coup, the Shah became started to act more as a dictator and kept increasingly close relations with the US. With this dictatorship, he began a secret police, etc. The result was a mad populous that overthrew the country and installed a new government (though the new government isn’t much better). The populous blamed the US in part, and thats what led to the shattering of relations and the greater isolation from the US. Iran went and found other friends that didn’t like the US, and they multiplied.

    It is the same thing that happened with Cuba – US backed dictator, revolution, new government, US isolation, Cuba found new friends that placed missiles on their island.

    The answer to fixing these problems is not isolation. Isolation and war brought the conflict in the middle east to its current state. We cannot continue to demand US backed governments that go against the ideals of the populous, it is a recipe for rebellion/war.

  21. caheidelberger Post author | 2015-08-09 12:04

    Thank you for that history, MD. We need to maintain constructive relations with Iran, Russia, and the rest of the world. At the very least, we need to not sound like we are eager to drop bombs on people.

  22. leslie 2015-08-09 18:37

    we are not electing a candidate without a college degree.

  23. leslie 2015-08-09 18:57

    we already had one of those– gw bush. another was george custer. (i know bush is a “yale”-type and custer was a west pointer, like almost every other civil war general. neither learned anything of value. at least custer had combat experience-but no brains just like bush.)

    both “wanna be” cowboys. and i like real cowboys, despite they’re often republicans.

    flight suits, buckskins and red silk kerchiefs=bullsheit

  24. jerry 2015-08-09 20:44

    President Truman told the Russians that if they made a move on Iran, he would Nagasaki them and he was not bluffing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_crisis_of_1946 Does anyone really think that Russia would allow the United States to go on the warpath with Iran without the same kind of promise from them to us while we wander on their border? Always remember that the most belligerent nuclear countries are not Iran and North Korea, but Russia and the United States. We still aim those tipped missiles at one another and are still on the same kind of alerts.

    When you watch popcorn popping in the microwave, think of yourself if those were activated.

  25. leslie 2015-08-09 23:06

    well said everyone. don’t forget the last time some of us talked this way, and Obama was one, we were labeled unpatriotic for criticizing bush and that ticking time bomb from halliburton-i mean wyoming.

  26. leslie 2015-08-10 14:49

    why is it republicans’ TOP TEN responds with blame to: 1.) 911″anti-patriots” are those who suggest US policy may have been at fault; 2.) teacher shortage is fault of teachers and not low-pay; 3.) minorities cause civil disturbance because they are lazy, not because most assets/wealth are monopolized by a very few; 4.) wall street protestors are at fault for complaining about 2008 economic meltdown/corporate bail-out; 5.) assault rifle and attack dog owners have constitutional rights to threaten public peace; 6.) education becoming out of reach for all but voc/tech welders and garbagemen; 7.) bully banks over-fee just like payday/title lenders. those with assets are subject to seizure yet trump brags of 4 bankruptcies, unbridled wealth during presidential debate and is praised for it, while c/c and student debt is not eligible for bankruptcy; 8.) state asks underpaid teachers to be quiet, non-existant; 9.) obama is a fool for negotiating w/iran; 10.) daugaard blames kids for choosing poor majors while failing to make universities accountable. Regents and NSU could actually study supporting higher education access rather that acting as rounds/daugaard’s economic development and administration/SDGOP cover-up arm (EB5).

    as grudz would burble: “jus sayin”

    ferchrissake

    we have come to a water mark in our nation/world where civil/social confrontation is becoming inevitable. the masses can not be pushed much further into a corner. political involvement may be the only positive solution.

  27. Rorschach 2015-08-24 14:57

    I’m starting to think that maybe Chuck Schumer knows what he’s doing and the Iran deal should be killed by congress. Recall that that other member of the “axis of evil” North Korea went nucular during George Bush Jr.’s presidency after he abandoned the deal Clinton worked out, but even the inbred mental midgets running that country know they’d be annihilated if they used them on anyone. We haven’t gone to war with North Korea either.

    So who’s to say we would go to war with Iran if they went nuclear? We don’t want it to happen, but war is not inevitable if they get nukes. Like North Korea, Iran would know annihilation awaits if they used nukes on anyone.

    If this unpopular agreement goes into place, the Republicans will win the Presidency in 2016 and keep the senate. Then they will scuttle the agreement and Iran will get nukes just like North Korea did with chickenhawks in charge of what happens next. Must the Democratic Party shoot itself in the foot by pushing through an agreement that even Democratic voters don’t support? On the other hand if the deal is killed with Democratic help, Democrats may very well win the Presidency and the senate in 2016. And I trust Democrats more to keep us out of a war than I trust the GOP. Except Hillary. I don’t trust her at all.

  28. caheidelberger Post author | 2015-08-24 21:39

    Rohr, I disagree. Foreign policy doesn’t decide elections, not at the level of diplomatic agreements with abstract consequences. If Romney couldn’t win on ObamaCare, Cruz/Walker/Bush can’t win on Iran.

    Dems killing the Iran deal to boost their Presidential nominee would be as bad as Thune and Rounds writing to the mullahs to undermine the American President.

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