The Iranian regime, in my mind, is the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East.
Iran is not a nation-state; it's a revolutionary cause devoted to mayhem.
The Iranian regime doesn't express the wishes and values of the Iranian people.
There should be no doubt why Israel, our best friend and greatest ally in the Middle East, has determined that Iran poses an existential threat.
We have told the Iranian regime countless times, do not confuse President Trump's strategic patience with weakness.
In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, especially with regard to women's rights, as anti-Islamic and pro-Western, justifying its brutalities by ascribing them to Islam and Iran's culture.
Listen, every time we're meeting with our counterparts in Israel, the state of Iran is always something that's at the top of the list and the things we discuss. And that's because the regime in Iran continually threatens Israel, threatens the United States.
The Iranian regime suppresses its own people as well as others in the region. It prevents peace by sponsoring terror globally. With the ultimate weapon that it is deceptively developing, the regime aims to gain hegemony over the entire Middle East and hold the world's economy hostage.
I have studied the details, listened to Ohioans on all sides of this issue, and consulted with nuclear experts. This deal is not about trusting the Iranian regime, but instead working with our allies on comprehensive, verifiable restrictions to block Iran's pathways to a nuclear bomb without precipitating another war in the Middle East.
President Trump is right to get out of the Iran Nuclear Deal and impose economic sanctions in order to force a more legitimate agreement to fight the threat Iran poses to our interests, our allies, and peace in the region.
The nuclear deal with Iran's radical clerics and their military junta is the most dangerous and potentially deadly action that the Obama administration has yet taken.
We must not allow the Iranian regime to use the nation's vast energy resource as a financial pipeline for its nuclear ambitions.
Ultimately, the goal of sanctions is to ratchet up the economic pressure on the Iranians to such a level that the regime determines it is simply too great to bear, and they are forced to weigh the decision to carry on their nuclear development and their illicit quest for nuclear weapons against the ever-growing pressure from their own people.
We must make every effort to neutralize this threat peacefully, but be ever mindful of the growing danger Iran poses not just to a safe and free America, but to our allies abroad.
The Iranian regime gives financial support to terrorist organizations all over the world, denies the Holocaust, and calls for the wiping the state of Israel from the map, while developing long-range missiles and trying to obtain nuclear weapon.
No one was affected by the brutality and the terrorism of Qassem Soleimani more than the Iranian people themselves.
Iran's continued drive to develop nuclear capabilities, including troubling enrichment activities and past work on weaponization documented by the IAEA, and its continued support to groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist organizations make clear that the regime in Tehran is a very grave threat to all of us.
We can pursue peaceful diplomacy with the Iranian regime while also continuing our maximum economic pressure campaign, while also defending ourselves... To say that it's a war with Iran or nothing is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how foreign policy actually works.
The problem with the Iranian regime, of course is, one, its unsettling effects on the Sunnis, particularly Saudi Arabia, and, secondly, its potential threat to Israel.
Since 1979, the majority of victims of the Iranian regime have been the Iranian people themselves.
Our support for the Shah, the CIA coup in 1953 - has become infused into the Iranian political discourse. The regime that came to power in 1979 during the Iranian revolution actually defined itself as anti-American, and that's now a critical ingredient in the Iranian domestic political debate. That really is the source of our problems - the regime in Tehran continues to see itself as opposing the US. In their eyes, everything the US does is directed at them in a very malevolent way, and therefore they have to fight back against it.
There are nothing but hardliners in Iran.
It is one of the great ironies of the American war in Iraq - was that the guys who really got the most out of it were the Iranians. And they have us to thank for that. Yeah, I mean we basically put Maliki in power in 2006, but he has been - he's really not a friend of the United States. He's a friend of the Iranian regime.
The international community is unwilling to accept the policies of the Iranian regime.
I think first of all that Iran is a problem for the whole world.
