Iran Nuclear Program Quotes

After the heavily politicized 2007 Iran NIE, many of us in Congress found it hard to take some intelligence analysis at face value.

In Arab capitals, the failure of the United States to stop Iran's nuclear program is understood as American weakness in the struggle for dominance in the Middle East, making additional cooperation from Arab leaders on Israeli-Palestinian issues even less likely.

And we support Senator Joseph Lieberman, that it's time for our country to consider a military preemptive strike against Iran if they will not yield to diplomacy

For years, Israeli and American intelligence agencies assumed that if Iran were to gain the ability to build a bomb, it would be a result of its relationship with Russia, which was building a nuclear reactor for Iran at a site called Bushehr and had assisted the Iranians in their missile-development program.

There is no difference between me and Netanyahu in reading the threat of Iran. There is no daylight between us on this issue at all.

In addition, it is very likely that United States action in Iraq caused Iran to open its nuclear facilities for international inspection and suspend its uranium enrichment activities.

A diplomatic solution that puts significant and verifiable constraints on Iran's nuclear program represents the best and most sustainable chance to ensure that America, Israel, the entire Middle East will never be menaced by a nuclear-armed Iran.

I fear Iran continuing to be able to pursue uranium enrichment and to maintain several thousand centrifuges.

The Europeans are starting to show that they're finally serious about the Iranian nuclear program, and they appear to be willing to use sticks against Iran. So I think it is imperative that the United States sit down with the Europeans and say, "Let's make this very clear to the Iranians. Either they can give up their nuclear program and their support for terrorism, in which case we'll given them all kinds of benefits. Otherwise, we'll join in comprehensive, multilateral sanctions that will cripple their very fragile economy."

What can you do to mitigate the likelihood that Iran will develop nuclear weapons? There's a very simple method: move towards establishing a nuclear-weapons-free zone, which everybody in the world wants, but the US blocks.

I do not believe the efforts of the international community to stop Iran's nuclear program will bear fruit.

The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that said Iran had paused its nuclear weaponization work also reported with high confidence that such work had been going on through 2003. How far did they get? That's an important question, but I fear that the Iranians will never answer it, and we will not insist that they do.

We need to force Iran to dismantle its nuclear program entirely or face the threat of military force to destroy that program.

The bottom line is this - whereas Iran was steadily expanding its nuclear program, we have now cut off every single path that Iran could have used to build a bomb.

I respect the right of Israel to defend itself, and - and we stand with - with Israel. We're a - a nation - two nations that come together in - in peace and that want to see Iran being dissuaded from its nuclear folly.

I'm very concerned about the nuclear weapons development for Iran and the destabilizing influence it has and they have in that part of the world. And I strongly endorse continued pressure, diplomatically, financially, economically.

Before the economic sanctions, we had 200 centrifuges. Today we have 20,000. Sanctions have failed.

The broad goal, laid out by Congress, the Obama administration, and the U.N. Security Council, was that Iran would suspend all enrichment-related activities and not be permitted a path to ever pursue a nuclear weapons program.