Cotton: ‘The President Threatened the United States Congress More Than he Threatened Iran’

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) declared that, during his State of the Union, “the President threatened the United States Congress more than he threatened Iran” on Friday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show.”

“in the State of the Union speech, the President threatened the United States Congress more than he threatened Iran, and that the position that the President’s taken on sanctions is simply illogical. He has said that our sanctions, which the Congress drug him kicking and screaming into years ago, is what brought Iran to the table. Any time you’re negotiating, you know, if he was a lawyer, you want the most leverage. So if we pass legislation that would impose new sanctions months from now if the talks break down, then that just gives the President more leverage to achieve a deal that he supposedly wants. I’m very skeptical that Ayatollah Khamenei wants them. But also, the deal is not just about sanctions. It is about Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s position in the region and the world. The President says we’re getting all kinds of cooperation right now that we haven’t seen in years from Iran. Let’s just quickly review it. Iran is propping up Bashar al-Assad’s outlaw regime in Syria. An Iranian general was just discovered collaborating with Hezbollah in the Golan Heights ready to strike Israel with missiles, discovered by an Iraqi missile that killed him first” he stated.

Regarding House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress “John Boehner is the Speaker of the House. He can invite anyone he wants to come speak to us. And Benjamin Netanyahu is the prime minister of the government of Israel, our strongest ally in the world, the only country in the region that truly reflects our Western democratic, capitalist values. And I would tell that senior administration official that he should remember that I and lots of other senators have many more years in office left than Barack Obama does. And “I would say the foundation of our relationship with Israel is not the President. It’s certainly not the State Department. Nor is it even the Congress, even though that’s where you see it expressed the most. It’s the American people. The Congress is so strongly supportive of Israel and the U.S.-Israel alliance because the American people are. And we are reflective of the American people’s strong support for Israel.”

He also addressed derogatory comments made by administration officials about Benjamin Netanyahu, stating “this is a man, remember, who was a member of his country’s elite special operations forces, who was wounded in combat, whose family has paid the gravest price possible in the defense of freedom, coming from a President who was a community organizer with a bunch of staffers who have never served their country in uniform.”

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